Monster (Gone 7)

“It was a bit short,” Cruz admitted slyly, “but they don’t make a lot of plaid skirts in my size.”

“What do you do when you’re not provoking violence at bus stops?”

Cruz had a silent laugh, an internal one that expressed itself in quiet snorts, wheezes, and wide grins, sort of the diametric opposite of Malik. “Are you asking what I want to be when I grow up? That’s my other secret. I’ve gotten to the point where I can mostly deal with the gender stuff, but writing . . . I mean, you tell people you want to write and they roll their eyes.”

“I’ll be sure to look away when I roll my eyes,” Shade promised.

“Yes, I want to be Veronica Roth when I grow up. You know she’s from here, right? She went to Northwestern.”

“What do you write about?”

Cruz shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know. It’s probably just therapy, you know? Working out my own issues, but using fictional characters.”

“Isn’t that what all fiction writers do?”

Cruz did a short version of her internalized laugh.

Shade nodded, head at a tilt, eyeing Cruz closely. “You . . . are interesting.” Something in the way she said it made it a benediction, a pronouncement, and a small, gratified smile momentarily appeared on Cruz’s lips.

After that they chatted about books, ate chips and salsa, and drank orange juice; they watched a little TV, with Shade leaving the choice of shows to Cruz because, of course, Shade was testing her, or at least studying her.

Cruz actually is interesting. And . . . useful?

The day wore on, and the swelling in Cruz’s ankle worsened until it was twice its normal size but then began slowly to deflate like a balloon with a slow leak. The pain receded as well, beaten back by ibuprofen, ice, and the recuperative powers of youth.

All the while Shade considered. She liked this odd person, this e) in a true-or-false world, this person who tried to wear a skirt to Catholic school, this smart but not too smart, funny, self-deprecating, seemingly aimless creature who wanted to be a writer.

Person, Shade chided herself. Not creature, person. She was aware that she had a tendency to analyze people with the intensity and the emotional distance of a scientist counting bacteria on a slide.

Blame DNA.

Shade needed help, backup, support, she knew that, and her only currently available choice was Malik, who would resist and delay and generally try to get in her way. Malik was a chronic rescuer, one of those boys—young men, actually, in Malik’s case—who thought it was their duty in life to get between every bully and their victim and every fool and their fate. Had he been at the bus stop, he would have launched himself in between the two football players and gotten a beat-down, and it would be his blood she was wiping away, and him she was making ice packs for, and him here in her bedroom . . .

And that is not a helpful place to go, Shade.

They had been drawn to each other from the start, four years ago when Shade had returned to live with her father after the life-changing disaster at Perdido Beach. At first they’d been friends. He had visited her in the hospital after her second surgery, the one to repair the nerves on the right side of her face—she had not been able to feel her cheek. In later years they had become a great deal more, each the other’s first.

The breakup had been Shade’s decision, not Malik’s. He had wanted more of her, more commitment, more openness. But Shade liked her secrets. She liked her privacy, her control over her life.

Her obsession.

Now Shade reached a conclusion: time to pull the pin on the hand grenade, or light the fuse, or some such simile.

Fortune favors the bold, and all that.

“My father is actually doing some work for the government,” Shade said.

“Like for NASA?”

“Mmmm, well, not exactly. How are you at keeping secrets, Cruz?”

Cruz waved a languid hand down her body. “I’m a gender-fluid kid who had been passing as muy macho until, like, six months ago. I can keep a secret.”

“Yeah.” Shade nodded, tilted her head, considered, careful to keep a gently amused expression on her face to conceal the cold appraisal in her eyes.

She owes me. I rescued her. She has no friends.

She’ll do it.