The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (22 page)

“Or was it Chase?” I wondered, going to my closet to find my favorite pair of jeans. I needed to talk to Chase. I needed answers.

In the halls at school, all anyone could talk about was Chase’s “miracle.” There was talk of the baseball team going to the state championships. Some of the younger kids wondered if it had all been some kind of bizarre scam just to warn everyone about the dangers of drunk driving. Others were convinced he’d undergone some sort of super-secret experimental operation.

Me? I had an even stranger idea. But I didn’t know exactly how to broach the subject with him. “Hey, Chase … soooo did you by chance steal a magical talking fish that was sitting in my closet? More importantly, did you touch my bras and panties that were sitting in my dirty laundry pile? Perhaps you noticed the pile of clean clothes on the bed from the half dozen times I changed before you came over?”

No. Wouldn’t work.
Definitely
not if someone else was within earshot.

I expected him in fencing class, but he never showed up. Jasmine said he had “better things to do” now, specifically getting back into baseball shape so he could re-join the team in time for the weekend games. With him on my mind, I lost both of my matches. Again. The second match wasn’t even close. I couldn’t counter-riposte because I couldn’t think about anything other than Chase.

But Jasmine and Margaret looked good. So good, in fact, that their second matches were against boys. The team was coming together while I fell apart.

In the cafeteria, Chase was back with his baseball buddies. They’d commandeered three tables near the front, talking colorfully about some video game. Chase’s ex-girlfriend sat beside him, one leg resting on top of his. She was wearing skinny jeans and a pink t-shirt with short sleeves, her three girlfriends who sat nearby were wearing nearly the exact same thing.

I stared a second too long. Chase looked up, saw me, and gave a thin smile. His ex-girlfriend—apparently no longer an ex—turned and scowled.

“Great,” I muttered, clutching my pasta bowl tightly as I made my way to the back. “More enemies.”

Seth and Rachel and Clyde were already seated and sharing a whole pizza slathered with pepperoni and green peppers. Rachel had returned to her usual outfit of a black t-shirt and baggy jeans. Clyde was wearing his red flannel over an old Pearl Jam t-shirt. Of course he had his sunglasses. Seth had on his favorite t-shirt: an old faded brown Led Zeppelin thing that looked like it had been picked up at a hippie’s yard sale. The picture of the actual burning zeppelin was chipped away from too many washing cycles.

“Don’t look over your shoulder,” Seth said. When I instinctively cocked my head, he reached out with one hand, blinding my peripheral vision. “No, don’t! Trish is right there, dudette.”

“
Dudette
,” Clyde repeated, chuckling. “That’s a great word. I dig this guy. He’s, like, my brother from another mother.”

“Thanks.” Seth rolled his eyes. “Anywho, It would be totally awesome if I didn’t have to acknowledge my ex-girlfriend’s existence in any way, shape or form until the end of time.”

“Seems tough,” Clyde says. “Time is pretty relevant, man. It never ends.”

Rachel grabbed another slice of pizza. “I think he was just being melodramatic.”

“Hey fatty!”

I spun around, recognizing the voice, ready to more than happily throw a slice of pizza at Joey Harrington in exchange for an afternoon of detention. But he wasn’t looking in our direction at all—instead, his focus was on anyone sitting across the aisle who was foolish enough to turn and look. He pointed out one girl wearing a stretched red cardigan—obviously a freshman—and started laughing. His three guy friends joined in.

Including Ted.

And then, not to be upstaged, Trish and the other girls joined in, too.

“I could just dunk Trish’s head in a toilet,” I muttered, feeling a pain of sympathy for the poor girl whose face had turned beet red. Thankfully, most of the students sitting nearby hadn’t joined in the laughter.

“Yeah.” Seth stripped the cheese off his slice of pizza, dropped it into his mouth, then licked his fingers clean. “I wouldn’t mind dunking Trish’s head in the toilet, too.”

“That poor girl,” Rachel murmured.

Clyde nodded. “Yeah, man. Freshman year’s tough enough. It’s like
The Hunger Games
in this cafeteria.” He picked a piece of pepperoni. “Not sure how I made it out alive. I mean, I remember
some
things, like gym class, but it’s mostly a blur. Maybe I was in a coma or something.”

He was being a little melodramatic, but he was kind of right: freshman year was hard enough. The last thing that poor girl needed was the attention of the bully. And where was Chase during all of this? Where was the guy who’d written such a great book report on how tough it was being an outsider?

Well, isn’t it obvious? He was sitting with baseball buddies and his ex-ex-girlfriend, smiling at the bully.

At the end of lunch, Trish cornered me. Seth slipped away with Clyde, using a crowd of underclassmen as a shield.

“Hey,” she said with a pouty face. “Ted told me you guys didn’t work out. What the heck happened?”

“Uh … he’s a weird, controlling creep.”

“And?”

“And nothing!” I exclaimed. We pushed our way out into the hallway, heading toward the staircase. Trish was wearing a cute denim jacket with a pink top underneath; she also had a considerable amount of blush on. That was new. She never wore so much blush before.

“Well, OK, point taken. Geez, will you take the steps one at a time like a normal person?”

I slowed down. We let two of the baseball guys pass so we had the hallway to ourselves.

“Look, you need to reconsider because you’re on the verge of becoming a total loser.” She put a hand on my shoulder. As if she was consoling me after a death in the family, for crying out loud. “It doesn’t help that you’re hanging out with Tina Hyena and that weird Clyde guy. You’re becoming
irrelevant
.”

“I’m not dating Ted,” I stated flatly.

“OK, well at least come hang out with me at lunch time. Seriously, the other girls are starting to consider putting you on their Unsocial Networking list. Do you even realize what that is?”

I did. Everyone knew about that. Basically, the most popular girls went on the social networks and used their influe
nce to force other people to defriend certain students they’d deemed “losers.” Or sometimes they just went after a girl who ticked them off. Or sometimes it was even someone in their own clique who’d said or done something inexcusable. Basically they were branching out their “mean girl” philosophy into the virtual world.

It was really quite wonderful, quipped the sarcastic hero.

“At the very least,” Trish continued, “you should try to wear a little less purple from here on out.”

“Violet,” I corrected.

I caught her rolling her eyes. “
Violet
, sorry. Style is huge this year. It’s making or breaking potential cool people. Now, your … um,
fencing skills
are helping a lot. The boys on the team are impressed and it’s generating some positive buzz in the halls. But hanging out with style nightmares like Tina Hyena and Clyde are hurting. I mean, the guy wears
flannel
. Flannel! I don’t even know what that is.”

“Why did you break-up with Seth?” I demanded.

“Because I like Brandon now.”

I stopped her. A big group of football guys and their stick-figure girlfriends walked past us. A couple pointed out a potential catfight before snickering and walking through the first-floor doors. “Who the heck is Brandon?”

“He’s dreamy,” she said, nearly swooning and falling right down the staircase. She reached out, grabbing the railing. “And rich. And he’s part of The Golden Whelps, which is like,
the
youth group now.”

“The Golden Whelps ...”

She picked up her pace to match mine. “Geez, one stair at a time! Do I really have to remind you? Anyway, The Golden Whelps are big. They’re very selective. You have to have lots of money, you have to do all sorts of volunteer work, you have to have your own car …”

“He sounds wonderful,” I murmured. I opened the door to the second floor, letting her take the lead. In the hall, students were rushing to their next class. Well, most of them. I could see some of the football players huddled together next to the green lockers on the right-hand side, right between rooms 201 and 203.

“Ugh,” I muttered, interrupting Trish’s rambling about the merits of popularity during senior year. I walked closer, hoping the huddle of no-necks would at the very least move a bit so I could walk by. I just wanted to get out of here and hide away in the library. How awful is that? I enjoyed school. I didn’t
love
it by any means, but I enjoyed it.

Now … now I wasn’t so sure anymore.

The moment I reached the mass of muscle, a hand reached out for me. I dodged right, slapping it away before I even saw who it belonged to.

Then he appeared, parting the sea of meatheads with his Cro-Magnon gaze. OK, I’m being a little harsh here—Joey Harrington was the quarterback, so he wasn’t exactly a giant monster. But he was tall, and built, and had perfected his scowl over the course of four years. A scowl that intimidated not just his football opponents, but pretty much every single kid in school, including his friends.

“You ever throw something at me again,” he said, “and I swear I’ll knock your head right into a locker.”

“You don’t scare me,” I snapped.

His nostrils flared. He reached out for my hair. I leaned back, reaching up with both hands and grabbing his wrist. I squeezed, bending it forward, then let my weight fall back. The force pulled him toward me. I spun out of the way, twisting his arm, letting go with one hand and pressing it firmly into the small of his back. I gave him a good push, sending him face-first into the nearest locker.

His head hit the thin metal surface with a loud bang. The other jocks stepped back. Trish gasped. I let go of Joey’s hand, stepping away from him, ready to have at it.

He clutched his forehead. When he pulled his hand away, his skin was stained with a nickel-sized bit of blood. He cursed me through gritted teeth. Before he could close the distance between us, two of his friends grabbed him, holding him back. He started cursing louder now, and it only took two breaths before Mr. Tuck emerged from room 202. He got between us.

And escorted both of us to the principal’s office.

Chapter 5

“You have
got
to be kidding me!” I shouted. I could feel my heart pumping against my chest, as if the man sitting behind his desk wasn’t the principal at all, but a Corrupted on the verge of finally doing in yours truly. My palms were sweaty, gripping the armrest of the uncomfortable plush chair. I was
losing
.

Principal Sanders—AKA Coach Sanders, as in “Coach Sanders led the Washington High football team to another victory today”—remained stoic. He was a silent gargoyle, features and all: hair combed over the bald spot on top of his pasty head, a square chin that resembled a brick, a tie hanging loosely from his thick neck.

Dad sat beside me, saying nothing. He was mad. His big ears were red and he’d only said two words since arriving and getting the somewhat misleading low-down from the principal. Those two words were “OK” and “Huh.” There would be no defense from Dad, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.

“Joey tried to grab my hair,” I said. Sanders put his hand up so I continued in a louder voice: “He’s getting detention so that he doesn’t miss the football game on Friday night. You’re playing favorites with him because you need him to win the game.”

“No, Alice, I wouldn’t do that.” To emphasize his point, he shook his head.

I turned to my dad. “He’s lying, Dad! Joey Harrington is a bully! He’s been in more fights than you can count on both hands and he’s
never
had an expulsion hearing. He treats everyone like crap! I’m being punished because I didn’t want him to hurt me!”

Principal Sanders sighed, folding his hands. He had a messy desk. A big desk. There were a lot of documents, but there was a football, too. And hanging on the wall next to his teaching degree were three Championship Titles, each one encased in a wooden frame. No pictures of his kids … yeah, don’t worry, kids, daddy will be home after he’s done protecting another crop of jocks from being held responsible for their actions.

OK. I was mad. Obviously.

And so was my dad.

“But I have a good reason to be mad!” I exclaimed on the car ride home. He was driving a little faster than normal, taking every yellow traffic light. Definitely not something my dad normally did.

“You
attacked
him,” Dad said. “You harmed another human being. I can’t believe it. You could have been expelled. You’re lucky you weren’t expelled!”

“Joey Harrington has done things a hundred times worse!”

“I don’t care what he’s done!”

“Dad—”

“What’s gotten into you? Why are you all of a sudden playing the tough girl?”

“Because I’m trying to survive, Dad!” I’d begun crying. My vision blurred. I felt my body shift as Dad made a hard right turn. My stomach lurched. “You don’t know what it’s like to be bullied like this!”

“We had bullies in my time, too!”

“Not like this, Dad! These bullies are everywhere! They’re on the Internet! They’re in the cafeteria! They’re in class! They’re in the hallways! They’re in the bathroom! And the principal doesn’t stop them! The teachers don’t do anything! Joey Harrington gets away with everything because he’s on the football team!”

“You don’t attack someone,” Dad said. It was nearly a growl. “There are enough human beings harming each other in this world. And where does it get them? Nowhere. Ever.”

“Dad …”

“Don’t use violence to solve your problems with people,” Dad said. “You know who told me that? My parents. And they got it from their parents. And I’m passing that along to you.”

“Dad, if you just—”

“We’re done talking.”

I wiped the tears from my eyes. There was no point in fighting anymore. Joey Harrington had won again. The little tiny cut on his forehead would heal and then who knew? Maybe next time he would be even bolder. And you’d better believe I was going to defend myself again.

If only the fountain pen could help me out of this jam. What good was it to be the hero if it didn’t help with high school?

I ate dinner as quickly as I could and then retreated to my room. I couldn’t stand dealing with the questions from Mom. The more honestly I answered, the more convinced she seemed to be that I was either “on drugs” or “depressed.” Neither of them was listening to me about Joey. Neither of them believed me that our principal could be so crass.

“Briar,” I mumbled, lying on the bed. I waited for him to appear. When he didn’t, I cried myself to sleep.

Back on the ship. The moon had grown fuller now, casting a long pale glow over the dark water. The sails were up, the crew of shadows moving from mast to mast. One of them slid down the fore mast, landing on the deck with a thud. He took the rope in his hand and tied it to a steel loop attached to the deck.

“Blood and thunder, boys!” cried one of the sailors. “Get those lines in!”

They moved to the winch next to the foremast. Two of them were turning the rusty iron crank while another ten began pulling in the massive net as it slipped up over the bulwarks. Water and fish splashed across the deck. I stepped back, bumping into someone. I turned, raising a fist.

“Easy, lass.” It was Ishmael, the sailor from the night before. His long, graying hair was wet and stringy, which seemed to be his favorite style. “No need for that.”

“How can you see me?” I asked. “How can you hear me?”

He smiled. Shadows danced across his pale face. The sailors hurrying past us all had the same shadows clinging to their bodies. They all had long hair, either pulled back or held back by black bandanas. They all wore the same rusty-looking waders—heavy rubber pants held up with suspenders—and long-sleeved coats buttoned up to their necks to protect them from the not-quite-cold water.

Shadows—no … humans being
consumed
by shadows.

“Well?” I asked. The ship tilted and my hand instinctively reached out for the bulwark. I felt a sliver of wood dig into my hand. “Ouch!”

The man stared at my hand, curling his upper lip. “Pain … I miss pain. We feel nothing on this ship. We care about nothing. All that drives us is the captain’s spell. The desire to find that cursed fish. Check them all, boys! The captain says he hears the music sure enough, so the fish must be nearby!”

The other shadow sailors were bent over, using long curved hooks to sift through the hundreds and hundreds of fish being pulled in by the net. The ship rocked again, and dozens of fish slid off the deck.

“Easy!” Ishmael shouted to the dark shadow operating the massive wheel-like helm above the captain’s cabin. “Keep her steady! And get those fish into the hold!”

“You’re keeping them?” I asked.

The man nodded. “We sell them at port. I sell them.”

“Why you?”

“I’m the newest one onboard. Haven’t quite … ah,
lost my good looks
like the rest of these poor blokes. The captain took me just a few years ago. Made me a deal too good to pass up.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I can imagine hopping aboard a spooky pirate ship is probably pretty tempting.”

The sailor snorted. “Pirate ship? No, lass. This is a
whaling
vessel.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the open hatch. “Take a look for yourself.”

My arm slipped away from his wet fingers. I fell into the hatch, followed by dozens of flopping fish. I landed below on a soft pile of rotting fish, fish that must have been caught earlier. It smelled horrible. The cavernous, empty hold was dark, save for a lantern swinging from a rusty curved nail hammered into one of the support beams farther down. In the light of the lantern was a fat, shadowy man with a glistening bald head, standing over a massive marine animal three times as big as him. Its tail was long, the fins wide and delicate-looking.

The shadowy butcher clutched his sharp carving knife, staring at me.

“A whale.”

I spun, aiming high. Ishmael caught my hand and brushed it aside.

“We come from the ocean,” he continued, stepping off the pile of fish. I stepped back and he walked past me with sturdy sea legs, reaching out with one hand to steady the swinging lantern. The shadows stopped dancing on the wooden walls of the hull. The ship rocked side to side. The sound of crashing waves penetrated the hull and made my stomach lurch. I stared ahead to keep myself from going dizzy, noticing for the first time that deeper into the ship, beyond the man standing over the whale, was a furnace much like the one I’d seen inside the orphanage of doom. Only this furnace had an anvil next to it and a large table filled with tools.

The furnace was out.

“The captain was lost for so many years,” Ishmael said. “He couldn’t hear the fish’s song anymore, so he and his crew sailed the sea. They fished and fished and sold it all to shady merchants so they could afford repairs. The
Leviathan
is an old ship, too old to be out here. Even now, her bones rattle and crack, threatening to send us all to Davy Jones’ Locker. But the captain will not relent. He wants this fish that sings to him.”

“You caught this whale in the ocean,” I said, stopping a few feet from the massive dead marine mammal. I wrinkled my nose. There was something missing from the stench down here.
Salt
. “We’re not in the ocean anymore. We’re in fresh water.”

Another shadowy figure appeared beside the bald one, slipping out of the shadows. The boat rocked again and the lamp began swinging, and each time it swung in the direction of the men, the shadows refused to bleed away. It was almost as if they weren’t
afraid
of the light. The second man was taller, wearing only a pair of loose-fitting trousers that had been ripped away at the knees and no shirt, leaving only taut, rippling muscles scaled with barnacles and strips of seaweed, as if he’d just emerged from the ocean after a long nap. He wasn’t wearing any shoes, and it was plain that he was missing more than a few toes.

The bald one with the hook tore into the massive gray whale, cutting across its belly and removing a strip of white blubber slicked with blood. The other man grabbed a long spade, stood on the blubber, and began cutting it up into pieces.

“The blubber will fill our bellies,” said Ishmael, “as well as light our lamps.”

“You’re human beings, all of you,” I whispered. “But the captain …”

The man cocked his head. “You know what the captain is.”

“A Corrupted.”

He smiled a sad, pathetic smile. The shadows seemed to fight it, squeezing the edges of his mouth. “And we are bound to him.”

I suddenly found myself floating again, pulling away from the ship. The man with stringy hair—Ishmael—watched me go, the shadows over his face darkening as I drifted back, slipping effortlessly through the hull of the ship and soaring over the empty water. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying not to throw up as I picked up speed. Where was I? Ishmael had mentioned the ocean, but those fish were freshwater fish. The
Leviathan
was headed somewhere …

The cool air chilled me to the bone, whipped across my ears. I had to open my eyes, no matter how badly I wanted to barf. I had to take in the
details
, just like Briar trained me. For a moment, there was nothing but water in every direction. It was so empty that my heart began to race—I had this sudden fear come over me, as if I would be stuck out here forever.

I held out a hand but saw nothing. It was invisible once again, and I was willing to bet the change had happened the moment I left the ship. That ship had some kind of magical power, both over the sailors and my dream form.

Below me, the waves began to cease. It was a vast wasteland of water, and I once again had that feeling of absolute emptiness. There was nothing. Nothing in every direction. Moonlight cut a narrow strip of bluish-white across the surface of the water, and then it was gone as clouds gathered overhead. The water turned black. Fear seemed to creep across me like the cursed sailors’ shadows. I felt so
empty
.

Then, on the horizon ahead: land. I laughed silently, feeling an intense relief I can’t describe. I never thought I’d be so happy to see land. My body slowed as I got closer. I could see buildings now, each one’s roof lit up with blinking red and blue lights to warn airplanes. Only a few lights were left on in the windows, but the skyline was recognizable enough.

Milwaukee.

I passed over the beaches on the south end of the city, right where I’d had that fateful encounter so long ago with the strange Corrupted creature inside the tunnels who’d begged me to destroy him. The beaches gave way to a marina with dozens of sailboats floating in the water. When I passed over it, I began to slow down even more. I flew toward the shipyards, where long massive docks were split up by wide two-story concrete buildings with multiple cranes sitting idle on the rooftops, waiting to unload the next ship’s cargo. There were no ships docked. Each of the buildings beside the docks had fat floodlights attached to the exterior, lighting up the docks and the street beside them, where a handful of trucks were parked in designated spots divided by yellow lines.

There was only one person visible.