Carrie Jones - Need

"What's it say?" lssie asks.

I squint at the faded pencil marks. " 'Stay out of the woods.' " "Good call," Nick says. His hand drops from my shoulder. I feel abandoned, colder somehow. I go to the back of the book where the due dates are stamped. No one has taken it out since they've pasted in a new sheet on the back page. But there's writing underneath it.

I start peeling off the edges while lssie says, "I am really not into this pixie thing. You guys think this is right, don't you? About the blood tributes?"

"Yeah, I know it's right," Devyn says. "But what does it mean that he's pointing at Zara all the time?"

"That's obvious," Nick adds. "He wants her to be his queen."

I swallow, but I don't look at Issie when I talk. Instead I stare into Nick's eyes. "Why not? It doesn't say that the pixie queens are bad."

"It doesn't say they're good!" Devyn almost yells.

The magazine guy throws hisEconomist on the table and stomps away.

Issie lowers her voice. "We probably just haven't read the part about the pixie queens being murdered and raped and turned into blood tributes."

"Right," I say.

"Zara…," Nick warns. "You're thinking something."

"No, I'm not," I lie, standing up. I grab the book we've been reading and a couple others. "I'm going to go check these out. It's almost dark. Betty'll kill me if I don't get home before dark."

"Do you think she knows?" Devyn asks.

"Knows?"

"About the pixies?"

I imagine Betty with her gruff flannel shirts and her fact-gathering nature. "No way."

Nick gives me a ride home to where Yoko waits alone since we carpooled. We are silent a good part of the way.

"I don't know if I really believe this," I finally say.

"But?"

"But if it's true…"

"It sucks."

"Basically. Yeah."

He puts the MINI in park. "Maybe once we figure it all out we can set a trap."

"A trap?" I pick at the back of the book, where the due date is. The little wheels in my head are working overtime.

"What are you doing?"

"Nerves, I guess," I say and then it peels away, revealing the way that people used to take out books from libraries. There's a list of people who had the book, all their names handwritten in neat lines. I gasp.

Mick leans over, dark and forest smelling. "What?"

The words blur on the paper. "On the take-out list. The last name."

"Matthew White?" He looks at me.

A tear escapes out of my eye before I can trap it in there. Nick reaches out with his thumb and wipes it away.

"That's my dad," I stare at the name, written in his scratchy tall letters. "That means…"

"He knew."

"He knew about the pixies?"

Nick nods, "But look at this."

Written in pencil scratch around all the names like a border or something, it says,Don't fear. Here there be tygers, I57.

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"Is might know. It sounds familiar, doesn't it?" Nick says, but his eyes shade as he pulls out his cell phone.

"You're not telling me something."

"What?"

"You're hiding something."

"And how would you know that? You're psychic now?"

"Your cheek is twitching. I have this, um, this theory that your cheek twitches when you lie or you're hiding something. It's like you're trying to run out of your own skin."

He shakes his head, keeps punching buttons. "I don't know what to do with you."

I smile. "You could just tell me what you're thinking."

"Hold on," he says and then tells lssie what we found. She says something back and he hangs up.

"Well?"

He shifts his weight and slips his cell into a little nook between us. "She thinks it's a reference to the old medieval line, 'Here there be dragons.' It was used on maps and stuff to warn sailors away from dangerous places."

"I knew it sounded familiar."

"Mm-hmm."

"But that doesn't make sense."

"Why?"

I point at the first two words. "It says not to fear."

"And it's not dragons."

"It's tigers."

"Weird."

Betty comes to the front door and yells, "Are you two going to sit out there forever?"

I blush. "I should go."

"Yeah."

I step out of the car. The cold air bashes against me as I stuff the library book into my bag with all the others. I hoist the bag onto my shoulder, buckling under the weight.

Nicks jumps out of the car so quickly that I don't even notice it, and he's suddenly beside me, taking the bag off my shoulder. "Let me get it."

I am all for equal rights and everything, but it's pretty heavy. "Thanks."

"No problem," he says, walking with me to the porch where Betty's still standing, arms crossed over her nonexistent chest, smiling at us. Nick lowers his voice to a whisper. "Don't do anything stupid."

"You either," I whisper back.

Betty snorts as we clomp up the steps. "Well, Mr. Colt. Would you like to join us for dinner?"

"She's cooking," I warn.

Betty swats me with a dish towel. "Spaghetti. What can I do to spaghetti?"

Nick puts my bag just inside the door and actually looks scared. "That's okay. I've got a steak planned at home."

"Fine," Betty winks at him and then winks at me. Nick blushes. "I'll let you two say your good-byes."

"How embarrassing," I mutter.

Nick laughs. Dimples crinkle up the skin near his lips. I will not look at his lips. How can he never have used those? That's a crime against humanity right there.

"Bye," he says. "See you in school."

"Bye," I say, and he walks away. The sun is pretty much gone. The woods are dark, tall masses that lock the sky to the ground. Anything could be hiding there. I watch him get in the car. I watch him drive away. The whole time I expect something to jump out, grab him, and take him away, a blood tribute. I shake my head. The taillights disappear around a curve.

Betty's hand comes around my waist and I jump.

"You're letting the cold in," she says, and she shuts the door.

"So, John McKee's son has a ruptured appendix," Betty says as the water for the spaghetti boils.

I put forks on the table. The tongs of my fork touch an old water stain that looks like a cloud on wood.

"That's too bad."

"It's more than too bad," Betty grumbles. "It means that I might get called in. We're the only paramedics in town. We're the only ones who can handle anything big. The first responders are just the drivers. They need John or me to deal with the big stuff."

"So?"

"So? So?" She tosses the pasta into the pot in one big clump. Half of it pokes out above the rim. "So that means I have to figure out what to do with you."

My words come out slowly the anger right beneath the surface, bubbling. "What to do with me?"

"If I have to go."

I push her out of the way, grab the pasta spoon tiling, and push at the spaghetti so it goes down beneath the boiling surface. "You can leave me here. I'm a big girl."

"I don't want to leave you here alone."

"Why?"

"People get more depressed at night. Almost all my suicide calls are at night. We just want… we want you to be okay, Zara."

I turn the heat off high so the water doesn't boil out of the pot, down to medium. "Is that why Mom sent me here? Because she thought I was going to kill myself some night?"

Betty's eyelid twitches. "She was worried about you."

"I'm a big girl," I mock. "I'm fine."

"You miss your dad."

"Of course I miss my dad!" I point the pasta spoon at her, which feels way too melodramatic. I put it on the counter by the coffee maker. "That doesn't make me suicidal. That doesn't mean I have to have some freaking EMT babysitter standing over me all the time."

Betty's face crashes down but her thin, wiry body hardens up like she's made of steel. "Is that what you think of me?"

"No. I'm sorry. That was mean." I swallow hard, look away from her hurt face, and turn back to the stove. I grab the stupid pasta spoon again and swirl it around in the water, pretending like it's really important that none of the spaghetti noodles stick together. "I could come with you if you have a call."