Ann Aguirre - Mortal Danger

Silently, I shook my head. Whatever they wanted, I had to keep them from getting it. I blinked, once, twice, hoping they were the hallucination I’d claimed when Davina and Jen summoned Bloody Mary. In that split second when my lashes swept down and up again, the little girl-thing scratched against the windowpane, standing on nothing at all.

She spoke in the tinkling voice of an old doll, one with a cracked porcelain face and dead, unblinking eyes, “Let me in. This won’t take long.”

The glass between us frosted, such a thin barrier of protection, but when I mouthed the word no , she disappeared. Davina stirred on her futon and I ran back to mine, half afraid of what else might creep out of the dark and of the monsters my unconscious mind might create. You need other people to believe for your nightmares to be made real. But that didn’t comfort me much.

I didn’t sleep. Each tick of the clock, I wanted to call Kian. I didn’t. Be brave. Be strong. They need your permission to come in. Right?

If they didn’t, then life would get ugly, fast.

Early the next morning, Jen’s mom fed us a healthy breakfast of egg whites, fruit, and yogurt, and then I got the hell out before they noticed how haggard I looked. Davina’s mom was picking her up later, so I hugged Jen and then Davina, thanked everyone and ran for it. But I stopped on the sidewalk beneath the streetlight, staring at the dark imprint of man-size footprints that seemed to be burned into the cement. Of the two children who accompanied the bag man, there was no sign. But I read dire portents in the shape of his shoes:

This is mine now and I will return.

Nausea born of foreboding rose to the back of my throat, but I choked it down and started walking. Soon I broke into an uncontrollable run, wishing I could scream as well, but people were already staring since I had on jeans, not sweats or spandex, and I was carrying a backpack. All told, I hoped they’d conclude I was late, not crazy, but truthfully, if I had on a hoodie, they’d probably suspect me of antisocial crimes.

My body was covered in cold sweat by the time I got on the T; luckily, there was guy singing to his shoe, so that took precedence in the weirdness hierarchy. I got off at the usual stop and went home. My parents had papers spread all over the table, yellow legal sheets covered in complicated equations, along with rough sketches of how something or other could actually be built.

“Did you get your funding?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet. It’ll be a while,” my dad answered.

“Was it fun at Julie’s?” Mom wanted to know.

“Jen. And it was different. We watched movies, ate healthy food.” And called up something monstrous in the mirror. You know. The usual. Since my mom lacked all appreciation of whimsy, I didn’t joke about it. She’d take me seriously and assume I was experimenting with psychedelics, and then I’d get a lecture about the importance of sticking with natural recreational drugs.

Dad protested, “ My food is healthy.”

“But you never make me radish roses.”

“Oh, fancy. I don’t do fancy.” He seemed appeased.

After a little more conversation, I escaped on the homework excuse. Nobody but my parents would believe I planned to study at 10:00 a.m. on a Saturday, which was why it was kind of nice having professors in the house. They saw nothing weird about it.

After retreating to my room, I researched the bag man. In Latin American countries, he was known as “the old man with the sack” and he abducted children. Sometimes he ate them and left only the bones. Other times, he cut off their heads and stuck them in the bag, savoring the brains and making grotesque bowls out of their little skulls.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

And he’s stalking you. What the hell.

To take my mind off it and to make the lie a little bit true, I did my Intro to Japanese worksheet. That turned out to be a gateway assignment, as nerd habits died hard, and I couldn’t stop until I worked my way through the list. Schoolwork might be the only thing keeping me sane at this point since I could block off the threatening terror and confusion and sheer helplessness I felt in regard to the rest of my life. I had just finished up my last project when Vi popped up on Skype.

I answered the video call request with a smile that faded when I saw her expression. She looked like sickness, death, or sorrow, maybe some horrendous combination of the three. “What’s wrong?”

“Edie, is this … you?”

“I don’t—”

“This link, just a sec, I have it on my tablet.” She put it front of her laptop and touched the play icon on the screen.

The moment it loaded and I saw the first few seconds, I knew. The grungy room, normally used to store chairs and things for PTA meetings and parent days, was empty, as everything had been moved to the cafeteria, extra chairs for the winter festival. Each year, there was a theme with booths and decorations, and it was kind of like an open house. This was the first time I’d seen the video, though I knew it had been uploaded.

Title:

Dog girl in training

Description:

This girl is a dog. And she knows it. Watch her act like one. It’s hilarious! Pls like and subscribe, more awesome vids to come.

I couldn’t speak to answer her as memories scoured me raw. It took two of them to get the job done. While Brittany distracted me by being nice, friendly even—she apologized for all the harassment before—Cameron had spiked my water, just some roofies, no big deal. I drank it just before last period. When I stumbled out of class, they were all waiting. Sick and dizzy, I knew, I knew I had to get away but I didn’t have the strength or coordination.

So they took me.

To the bare room with the dingy floor and gray cement block walls in the basement. They could’ve done anything to me down there. Cameron put a black spiked dog collar on me and had me crawl around on the floor. He led me by the leash and said, “Bark for me, there’s a good girl. Bark, Eat-it. Bark.”

It was all there, on shaky camera phone. Me, on all fours, me barking, me leashed, collared, and crying, begging for them to let me go. I heard the echoed laughter all over again through my laptop. A hard shudder rocked through me when Cam dropped the dish of dog food in front of me. The fat version of me was weeping, red-faced, snotty tears, as I lowered my chin to the brown goo and lapped it up. The laughter got louder and louder.

Vi stopped the video. “Edie?”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “That’s me.”

With some logical corner of my mind, I was calculating. It was more than six months from the time this video was posted until the time I met Vi. A hard-core diet could, theoretically, produce results similar to what Kian had with his future-tech shaping gloves. Given how upset I was, it seemed unlikely that Vi would question my makeover.

“Such assholes. And what the hell, why would anyone send me this?”

I sucked in a breath, fighting for composure. Tears stood in my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall. Shame was a hot coal trying to burn its way out of my chest. Every day at school since the last before winter break, I went to class and people followed me, barking. They put dog biscuits on my desk. Someone tied a leash to my locker. Every. Single. Day.

I had told the school counselor how I felt … not that I was suicidal, but that things were just getting to be too much, and she said something like, “Some people just have trouble socially, Edith. Maybe if you…” Then she listed all the ways I could stop being the dog girl: if I worked out or bought makeup or went to a salon. I took her words to mean the problems were my fault, and that was what broke me.