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

“They’re all gone,” Nate called out to her. “I didn’t let them past. You can come out, now. If you want.”

There was a rustle somewhere in a bigger, darker clump of trees. It might’ve been her. Or it might’ve been the wind.

That night was still. There weren’t even the regular night-noises at Nate’s window. The shadows were all stationary. He had hours to lie there, and think, and blink, and wait for it to get light outside.

The next morning, he lied there like a dead person until his mom stopped feeling his forehead and went to work. And then Nate got out of bed and went to the garage. He took two ice cream bars, and two bloody steaks from the freezer in there, and a camping lantern, and an old dirty pup tent from a big jumble of camping equipment. And then he went into his woods. Her woods.

He went further in than yesterday—to a clump of thick old broken trees he’d seen her scratch her back on before—but not too far to see the front door in case Eric and them decided to come back and hop the wall into the backyard. He set up the pup tent, and sat very still in the open flap, holding one of the steaks out so she’d smell it.

There was a rustle. He waited. Another rustle. He waited. But then it was completely still again.

“There’s no one here,” Nate told her, or the breezes. “I didn’t let them.”

There was a rustle, so far away it could have come from anywhere, so small it could have been anything, and then nothing.

And nothing, and nothing and nothing. Nate ate one ice cream, and then the other. Inside, the tent got hot, and then cold. And the steaks got hot, and then cold, and then started to stink.

Eric did come to the front door again, and he and Jackson and Dash skated up and down the sidewalk, and rang the doorbell five or six times. But they didn’t shout, or bang on the door. They just skated up and down, back and forth, with their eyes on the bedroom window, until Eric was satisfied that Nate wasn’t going to come out. And then they thundered away.

“They’re gone, now.” Nate told her, “and they’re never coming back. So please come out.”

When all he heard was more of that low, drawling birdsong, Nate crawled miserably into the pup tent and played on his Nintendo DS until he was almost asleep.

When his mom came home from work that evening and found him in his tent in the backyard playing video games, she told him he was obviously well enough to go to school the next day, and screamed at him for ruining two good steaks.

Nate didn’t even try to argue with her.

It was easy enough to avoid them the first part of the day. There were classes to go to, and at Nutrition, Nate just sat by himself on a bench somewhere and didn’t look at anybody. Probably Eric and all of them were giving him looks from the handball court, but that didn’t matter as long as he sat there pretending he couldn’t see them. Nobody sat next to him. Nobody talked to him. Nobody asked him any questions. He might as well have died, or never existed.

It wasn’t until hours later, at lunchtime that Jackson finally broke Nate’s barrier of non-existence and came over to where he sat. “So what’s wrong with you, anyway?” he asked.

Nate looked up from his DS. “What’re you talking about?” he said.

Jackson blinked aggressively. “You’re full of shit,” he said. “You’re so full of shit, everybody knows it.”

“About what?”

“About the other day!”

Nate looked blank. Jackson’s mouth split into a combative grin. “Stupid-ass story. There’s no half-eagle, half-lion going to tear our throats out. You made that shit up. There’s nothing there.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Nate, twisting out his own smile, “that. I didn’t think you thought I was serious about that.”

Jackson stared.

“What, did I scare you or something?” Nate asked him.

“No,” he snorted. “Was that what you were trying to do, scare people?”

“I mean, did you think I was serious?”

“No one thought you were serious,” He said, caustic, and triumphant. “It was a stupid-ass story. I knew there was nothing could eat a dog.”

And he went back to the handball court, scowling and grinning. For the rest of lunchtime, Dash stared at him with a partly-opened mouth, and Eric watched him with a strange, close look, slamming the same ball over and over again on the same piece of wall.

Princess Zelda passed by him several times, so many times it had to be on purpose, smiling her smirky smile every time. But Nate had his head in the DS. He could ignore her at least until it ran out of batteries.

It was out of batteries by the time Nate made it to the bus stop. He had to stand there on the curb with nothing in his hands, staring straight and hoping that the blonde kid who looked like Eric’s older brother wasn’t Eric’s older brother. So he didn’t even see her coming. She’d been standing there not blinking at him for a crazy long time before he saw her.

“So what is wrong with you?” she asked him, cheerfully.

Nate felt like throwing something at her. “Nothing,” he said.

“I tried to bring you your homework yesterday, but you were asleep in your tent.”

“Oh,” said Nate. “Sorry.”

Princess Zelda blinked, finally. “I don’t care if you do your homework. I was trying to see if you were sick or something.”

“Yeah. Sick.”

“With what?”

Nate shrugged.

Princess Zelda tilted her head at him so that all her pale hair waterfalled off to one side. “She’ll come back, you know,” she said.

It was a split-second too long before Nate answered. “What are you talking about?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

“No, I don’t. She can’t come back, I made her up,” said Nate.

“She’ll come back,“ Zelda said, and went back to not blinking. Her large, light eyes were brighter up close, one a silvery kind of blue, the other a silvery kind of green.

She chewed the nail on her left pinkie finger. “Why’d you tell them about her, anyway?”

“What do you mean?” He glared at her. “Why does anyone tell anyone anything?”

“I mean, why did you tell them about her ? They don’t even know what she is. Why didn’t you just tell them something else if you needed a story so bad?”

Nate sputtered, chewed his lip. “Something else like what?” he asked, finally.

She shrugged. “Tell them your dad’s a racecar driver who died in a huge car-crash. Tell them you swam with sharks and punched one in the face, just to see if you could. Tell them you saved like, five babies from a burning Baby Gap and that’s why you don’t have to pay for stuff at the mall anymore. Tell them whatever you want. But for God’s sake, Nate, don’t tell them anything that means anything. Don’t tell them anything true .”

Nate studied her face. He tried to hold her not-blinking.

“They’re not better than nothing, you know,” she finished suddenly.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her. “No one knows what you’re talking about.”

Princess Zelda smiled at him, not her little smirky smile, but a wide, laughing one, with bright, slightly crooked teeth. “Anyway, like I said, she’ll come back. She’s still singing for you, right? That’s her I heard singing?”

And she turned and walked away toward a dry little hedge, where she would probably sit happily not talking to anyone until the bus came.

Nate watched her for a minute. And then ran all the way home.

He did not stop running until he’d reached his pup tent. But he didn’t shut himself inside. He sank to his knees in the leaves and grass, and wispy forest air.