Undertow (11 page)

“This is such bull,” Jorge shouts. He's so angry, he kicks an empty desk really hard and it slams into the wall.

“Kid, shut your mouth,” the soldier barks. His hand is already on his rifle.

Mr. Ervin jumps in without missing a beat. “He calls himself Fathom and he is the son of the Alpha king, which I learned this morning is called a prime. Thus, Fathom is a prince—he's royalty, and I have been asked to inform you that he is accustomed to a level of respect you may not give your friends.”

“Hey, prince, you suck,” Jorge shouts.

Fathom peers down the aisle at him.

Jorge laughs. “Yeah, I said it. What are you gonna do about it?”

“Son, that's strike two,” the soldier shouts at him.

“Let's all have a seat,” Mr. Ervin says.

Ghost and Luna slip into a couple of empty ones near the front while Fathom slides into one next to me. My heart rate multiplies, and I'm sure I'm bright red. I want to crawl under this desk and die, yet I can't help taking quick glances at him. His hands are criss-crossed in white scars, and I can see the horrible open wound where his blades break the skin. His arms are rock hard with bulging triceps, and his face is—oh, he's staring at me like he's waiting for me to tell him what to do. I bury my head in my hands.

“Where's Deshane?” Jorge asks.

“Deshane will not be back,” Mr. Ervin says.

“Did he go to jail?” one of the girls in the back asks. I think her name is Lynn.

“He did,” Mr. Ervin responds. “But he was released to his uncle. Together it was decided that Deshane would be better off in a different learning environment, so he was transferred to a new school.”

Jorge stands up and points at Ghost. “What about him? He started it all.”

Ghost stands and hisses. “If you feel you've been wronged by me, you are welcome to challenge me.”

“Bring it to me, ugly,” Jorge shouts, knocking over another desk.

“That's it. Let's go,” the soldier shouts. He charges down the aisle and snatches Jorge by the scruff of the neck. The boy struggles to free himself, but the soldier is too strong. All Jorge can do is flail and scream on his way to the hall.

“Fine with me. I don't want to be around those things, anyway. They smell!”

“They are simple beasts, with no backbone, Your Majesty, like sea cucumbers that can talk,” Ghost says to Fathom, then sweeps his gaze over the rest of us. “Cowardly, too. What about the rest of you? Or are humans all talk, like they say?”

Mr. Ervin slams a book down on his desk. “Ghost, sit down.”

“I don't take orders from the likes of you,” Ghost says. “You grunt like a blobfish, and you're only slightly less ugly than—”

“Silence yourself,” Fathom commands. “This man is a teacher, like the Children of Ceto, and he deserves your respect.”

Ghost is startled by the criticism. “Your Majesty, these beasts can't be compared to Ceto!”

“I have three challenges that await me in the camp, Son of Nix. Are you proposing a fourth?”

Ghost shakes his head. His eyes are full of panic.

Another soldier enters to replace the first. “Enough talk. The next person to make a peep is going to the Tombs.”

When the bell rings, ugliness floods the halls like bursting sewers after a long rain. It comes pouring out of every room, a boiling soup of aggression aimed at the Alpha, and it threatens to drown us all. My classmates aren't happy that Deshane is gone, even though most of them probably wished for it at one time or another. Someone has to answer for the outrage, and the Alpha are at the top of that list. Luna is cornered and called a whore to her face. The stupidest kid in the world tries to start a fight with the big Selkie. Ghost can't walk six inches without getting shoved, but it's the smallest of the bunch, the Ceto girl, who I learn is called Bumper, who gets most of the abuse. She's small and quiet, but it's her troubling appearance that makes her a target: a flat nose and a soft, pudding-like face. Her shoulders and neck have thick, black crustacean-like growths and her skin is slightly see-through. But like Ghost she hides something deadly, and if the others provoke her enough . . . No, I can't get involved.

No one bothers Fathom. Perhaps it's how regally he stands, or his confident stride, or maybe it's the wounds all over him that shout loudly that he will fight back. Whatever it is, no one dares punk him, but he does get plenty of attention. Everywhere he goes, people stare, which is unfortunate because he's right behind me, step for step.

“I think you have a stalker,” Bex says when she looks over her shoulder at him. “Sigh. Even in this dress I cannot compete with Lyric Walker.”

“You can have him if you want,” I grumble.

“No take-backs,” she says as she spins off into her chemistry class.

I sneak a quick peek myself. There he is, my own personal lost puppy. Does he really not know that people are going to notice him waiting for me at drinking fountains and outside the ladies' room? Are all the boys in my life really that dumb?

I dart down a less-populated hall, then spin around on him.

“You can't follow me!” I growl as low as I can. “Do you understand? People are staring.”

He looks around. He needs proof and, seeing it for himself, nods and gestures impatiently for me to move on. It hardly matters. Mr. Doyle has put him in my English lit, biology, and history classes, plus my fourth-period study hall. I'm fully prepared to find him standing at the podium in my debate class when I get there, but Doyle stops me in the hall.

“I'm giving you and the prince some privacy so you can get to know each other,” he says.

“What does that mean?” I say.

He ignores my question and leads me up two flights of stairs to the third floor. We wait in the stairwell until the bell rings and all the students are in their classes. Then we continue on, stopping at a doorway surrounded by ten soldiers and Terrance Lir. When he sees me, he stands a little taller and gives me a smile that's full of hope. Again I look away. I've never been this cruel to anyone before, and my mind torments me with flashes of his kindness: how he read Samuel and me stories when we had sleepovers, how he bought me a stuffed walrus at a birthday party at the aquarium, how he made waffle sandwiches with bananas and Nutella for us to eat during the long sun-soaked days at the beach.

“He's waiting inside,” Terrance says softly. I've wounded him.

Mr. Doyle gestures to the door. “We'll be right here.”

“I'm going in alone?”

“These soldiers are here if you need anything, and Mr. Lir will stand by to help with any communication issues. You'll be fine.”

Terrance opens the door. I take a big breath and let Mr. Doyle's promise play on a loop in my head.
You'll be fine. You'll be fine. You'll be fine.
It's just an hour . . . alone . . . with a boy who has arms that turn into machetes. I step inside and Terrance closes the door behind me with a click.

Fathom is crazed. He's tearing the brown paper off the windows and growling like a rabid dog. He's completely different from the arrogant kid who hovered over me in my last class.

“Please don't do that,” I beg. “They put that up so the lunatics can't see us.”

He ignores me and continues pulling the paper down until we're exposed. Then he stands in front of one of the windows, hands on hips, defiant and grinning.

“There are people out there with guns who will shoot us.”

He looks at me and throws his head back as if what I'm saying is ridiculous. Then he bends down, opens the window wide, and sticks his head out into the sunshine.

I charge back through the door, slamming it behind me.

“What's wrong?” Terrance asks, clearly concerned.

“He took the paper off the windows,” I say.

“Why?” one of the soldiers asks.

“I don't know why. I'm not trying to be difficult, okay?” I look around, wanting Doyle to see my panic, but he's gone. Of course he is! He wound the key in my back and set me down to run about. If Fathom stomps on me, it's none of his concern.

Terrance reaches for the door. “I'll talk to him, Lyric.”

I flash him a pleading look.
Don't use my name, Mr. Lir. Don't be familiar!

“No,” one of the soldiers says as they file into the room. “We'll handle this.”

Now I'm alone with Terrance Lir.

“How is your mother?” he says softly.

I point to the camera mounted on the ceiling. Terrance looks up at it and frowns.

Through the door I hear shouting, something falls over, and then there is more shouting. I hear the window slam shut, and then the door opens and one of the soldiers pokes his head out. “He would like to speak with you,” he says.

Terrance again tries to enter, but the soldier stops him.

“I'm talking to her,” he says, pointing to me. “Give us a second. We're putting the paper back up.”

The door closes, and Terrance and I are alone again.

He turns to the wall, his face hidden from the camera. “Your father doesn't want you to talk to me, right?” he whispers.

I don't say anything.

“Lyric, I'm still your friend.”

“We're ready,” the soldier says when the door opens.

Back in the room I see a couple of desks have been overturned and the contents of a trash can have spilled all over the floor, but the brown paper is back on the windows. Fathom, however, is still feverishly pacing back and forth.

“Why are we here?” he says.

“I'm being forced. What about you?”

“The same, but for what purpose?”

I stifle a laugh. His speech is so dignified, like he's a Shakespearean hero. It's also dripping with an accent that's hard to place—something between British and Irish. I realize Ghost and Luna speak with it too, and that I've heard hints of it in my mother's speech.

“They think if you and I spend time together, you will want to be more like me,” I say. Maybe Doyle didn't want me to share his master plan, but honesty feels right.

“Are they not worried that you might want to be more like me?”

“I guess not,” I say.
I'm already too much like you, pal.

I sit down at a desk closest to the door and realize I've been in here before. This is an English classroom, and it has its own modest library of dog-eared books—
The Hobbit, The Turn of the Screw, Fahrenheit 451, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
some Kurt Vonnegut, some Mark Twain. There's also a handmade wall display with the heading
the most common grammatical mistakes
. The first one reads, “If you really want to do something, you are ‘eager.' If you are intimidated or fearful of doing something, you are ‘anxious.'” I got a C-minus in this class when I was in the tenth grade, but I get the difference now. I am eager to leave and anxious he will kill me before I get a chance.

Fathom crosses the room and sits down next to me. His feet tap, and his hands fidget. He looks to the windows and then up at the dusty bulbs that hang from the ceiling. He squints at them then looks back at me, slightly pained.

“Very well, get on with it,” he says.

“Get on with what?”

“Making me want to be more like you.”

I laugh, until I realize he's not making a joke. “Okay, well, is there anything you would like to know about me?”

“No. I would like to be addressed as Your Majesty, or My Prince,” he grumbles.

I laugh but stop when he scowls at me. “You're serious. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Humans, at least Americans, don't call anyone ‘Your Majesty.' We're sort of proud of it too.”

“I will be treated with respect!” he shouts, then slams his fist down on the top of the desk. It rattles me, and I leap to my feet.

“Calm down!” I cry.

He's on his feet so suddenly, I throw my hands up in front of my face, certain he's going to attack me, but instead he springs to the windows and rips the paper down again.

“Stop it!”

When he doesn't, I scamper toward the door, desperate to get away.

“Where are you going, human?” he shouts. “I did not give you permission to leave!”

I snatch a marker from the dry-erase board tray by the door. “Here's what I think of your permission, prince,” I shout, then scrawl the words “Screw You,” large and in charge. I slam the door on the way out.

“I think we can call that day one,” Terrance says to the soldiers.

“Agreed,” one of them, a woman, replies. She has a serious face, but she's smiling, and I can tell that she's trying to help.

“Tell Doyle I'm trying,” I cry, worried he'll blame me for Fathom's freak-out.

“I'll explain to him what happened,” she says.

“This will be a slow process. It isn't going to happen overnight, and this won't be the first bump in the road,” Terrance adds.

“Can I use the bathroom?” I beg, and without waiting for permission, I dart down the hall to the ladies' room. I blast past the toilet cop and into a stall. I lock myself inside and try not to hyperventilate.

The day drags. I drift from class to class, unable to concentrate. People speak to me, but I can't hang on to their words. A teacher asks me if I'm on drugs, and I'm too despondent to deny it. When school lets out, I'm so relieved, I almost cry. I grab my stuff and run down the halls, darting around people to get outside. Bex and Shadow meet me on the stoop. They know something is wrong, but I make up some story about too much homework. I haven't told them about Fathom. I just don't want to talk about it. I want to put it in its own little compartment and lock the lid. If no one knows what I have to do, I might be able to pretend it's not happening.

My father is waiting just beyond the barricades for us. He brought a squad car and a nervous expression.