SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

But she wouldn’t hold still for it like that, would she? There was always that funnier, fainter, more horrible picture of the big cat in her suddenly rearing up and deciding she’d had enough, that she wasn’t going to tolerate strangers…Nate laughed. The puke came back up in his mouth. He rolled over again.

He would have to make the party part, the fun, tromping camping-trip part all there was. He’d have to lead them off into some different woods, some bigger woods (he didn’t know where) where they could all laugh loud, and drink, and whack trees with sticks, and make a campfire out of piles of leaves, and roast the random things they found in their pockets, and no one would even remember what it was they were supposed to be looking for. Other kids in class seemed to be able to do this sort of thing all the time, without thinking or planning. The bright, lazy adventure that wasn’t meant to end up anywhere or accomplish anything. That was what kids without Griffins in their backyards did with all their Saturdays.

But Eric wouldn’t forget, Nate knew. He’d come into the woods grinning wide, expecting not to find her. And when he didn’t find her, it would be the beginning of a very long joke, and the end of everything else. From then on, whatever he said, whatever he did, there would only ever be one thing to talk about. It would be worse than Princess Zelda. Longer, and worse.

Nate laughed a burbling laugh, and choked on it, and laughed again and choked. He kept laughing, and kept choking, until he got up out of bed and puked, a real, great big awful puke in the bathroom sink. Then, he went to lie down again, and stared some more at the ceiling.

He must have fallen asleep, because he woke, shivering in his sweat, to the soupy grey light of morning. He lay there, shivering, listening to a big-lunged bird pipe out a long, low scrap of song. When his alarm clock went off, he let it ring, and ring, until his mom came in to see what was what, and he told her with genuinely chattering teeth that he didn’t think he could go to school.

Once she left for work, and the house was nice and empty, Nate began to feel better. He lie half-sleeping in bed for a while, trying to think of nothing, listening to the song of the bird, drawling and persistent and repetitive. Finally, he sat up, shook himself, shook the windowpane to shut the bird up, and went downstairs.

He sat in a square of sunlight at the kitchen table and ate a whole box of cereal out of a metal mixing bowl. And while he ate, he thought about his griffin. Why had he been so sure how everything would be, last night? Why should he even think she’d let herself be looked at by strangers at all? Didn’t she hide well enough from everybody but him? Probably, he thought, she would just be able to keep her distance. Disappearing here, reappearing there, a strange, enticing furry, feathery flash in the trees. Eric and Jackson and Dash could troop along with their eyes glued to the treetops, hooting and hollering and pointing, while Nate behaved like an expert trapper, finding feathers, and droppings, and telling them which kind of claws were which. That wouldn’t be unsafe at all.

And even if he did lead them to her. Even if he did. There was no telling what they would do. They might stand there with their mouths open while her cat muscles rippled and her eyes flashed. They might stand there holding their breaths, until Nate stepped forward, and the griffin ate a steak out of his hand. That was just as easy to picture. Nate the lion-tamer. Eric and Jackson and Dash as the audience, eyes and mouths popping, brows up. “Fucking hell!” Eric would say.

Nate stood up and went to the screen door, smiling out at his woods, for a moment. He mouthed the words over. Fucking hell! Fucking hell, Nate! What, do you have a death wish or something? You’re one crazy mofo!” And then he went to watch TV.

It was late in the afternoon when the cordless phone rang.

Nate forgot to sound sick when he answered it.

“Hey, Faker, where the hell are you?” said Eric on the other end of the line. At least Nate thought he said Faker.

“I didn’t go to school today,” said Nate.

“No shit.”

“I didn’t sleep,” he added.

“Well, punch yourself in the face or something. We’re on our way over. We wanna see your bird-lion. You still have one, or did you shoot her and eat her?”

(There were some snorts and matching cackles behind him, much louder and shriller through the phone).

“Maybe a different day,” said Nate, licking his lips. “I’m…she’s sleeping already.”

“Wake the lazy bitch up! Tell her we’ll bring her a whole dead horse, or something!”

A full minute went by of nothing but laughter, high and distorted. Eric’s voice barely came over the top of it. “…on our way! You still live in the same house, right?”

And then a click. The call was over.

Nate swallowed a hard, dry swallow. He exploded out of the screen door toward the woods, the cordless phone still clutched in his sweat-slick hand. His ears pounded. His legs pounded. He breathed in flurries of hot dust and leaves and pollen. I wasn’t serious, he wanted to telegraph to her. I wasn’t really going to let them. I wasn’t.

But Eric’s words kept coming in over the top of his: Wake the bitch up! Wake the bitch up! Shake her awake!

He didn’t go in deep to look for her. He planted himself under the first skinny cluster of trees, in a spot where he could see the front door, and waited. When they came, they made noise like a biker gang. The sound of their skateboards on the sidewalk was a long, slow, thundering sound. It didn’t drown out the shouts and whoops and curses. They had brought other kids, like he thought they would. Kids from other schools, and street corners Nate had never even been on.

The first one he saw was Eric, sliding up to the door, and ringing the doorbell three times. Then three times more. “Wake up, Faker!” Eric hollered up to the bedroom window he thought was Nate’s. “Time to get your ass out here! Time to go lion hunting!”

There were a bunch of high-pitched laughs. Dash banged on the door with both fists. Then Jackson. Then two or three others. “Get your ass out here! Get your ass out here!” The door screamed a little bit on its hinges.

Still staring up at the bedroom window, Eric pulled out a cell phone. The cordless phone chirped in Nate’s hand. Nate answered it, quick.

“Hey, we’re here. Where are you?”

“Who is this?” swallowed Nate.

Eric scowled. “It’s Eric, Faker, did you fall back asleep?”

Nate paused. There was a kid throwing those tiny, sulphery snap-pellets at the ground. The kind you throw at the cat when you want to make it scream.

“You’ve got the wrong number,” he said, and hung up.

Eric craned his neck, confused. Nate tensed to stay still. The phone chirped again. Nate picked it up, and hung it up, before Eric could speak. The kid with the snap-pellets, and another one with something plastic under his arm (an airsoft gun?) stretched their necks around the corner, toward the back of the house.

The phone rang again. Nate let it ring twice, then picked up the call.

“What the hell’s going on, man?” said Eric, maybe louder than he’d meant to. “Let us in. It’s a hundred-and-fuck degrees out here! Hello?”

“You better go the fuck home,” said Nate, dead as air. “She’s pissed because you woke her up, like I told you she’d be. If you try to come back here now, she will rip your fucking throats out, I swear to God.”

And he ended the call.

It worked. They all milled around for a few minutes longer, looking squirmy, and spinning the wheels on their skateboards, and trying not to look too far around the other side of the house. And then Eric shouted “Psycho!” up to the window and skated off, with most of the others following him.