Michael Grant - Monster

Shade was effortlessly charismatic, with a hint of something regal about her. But despite the charm and the cheekbones, Shade was not a popular kid at school. She was too bookish, too aware, too impatient, too ready to let people know she was smarter than they were. And beyond that, there was something about Shade that felt too old, too serious, too dark; maybe even something a bit dangerous.

Malik knew where that feeling of danger came from: Shade was obsessed. She was like some online game addict, but her obsession was with a very real event, with fear and death and guilt. And it was no game.

It was chilly out on the street, not real Chicago cold—that was coming—just chilly enough to turn exhalations to steam and make noses run. The little business section of Dempster—Starbucks, pizza restaurant, optometrist, seafood market, and the venerable Blind Faith Café—was just west of the corner with Hinman Avenue. Hinman—where Shade lived—was a street of well-tended Victorian homes behind deep, unfenced front lawns. Trees—mature elms and oaks—had already dropped many of their leaves, gold with green accents, on lawns, sidewalks, the street, and on parked cars, plastering windshields with nature’s art.

Shade and Malik walked together down to Hinman where the bus stop was. There were six kids already milling around.

“Well, I’ll see you, Shade,” Malik said. There was something off in the way he said it, a tension, a worry.

Shade heard that note and said, “Stop worrying about me, Malik. I can take care of myself.”

He laughed. He had an unusual laugh that sounded like the noise a hungry seal made. Shade had always liked that about him: the idiot laugh from such a smart person. Also the smile.

And also the feel of his arms and his chest and his lips and . . . But that was all past tense now. That was all over and done with, though the friendship remained.

“It probably won’t work,” Malik said.

“Are you rooting against me?” Shade asked archly.

“Never.” The smile. And a sort of salute, fist over heart, like something he’d probably seen on Game of Thrones . But it worked. Whatever Malik did it generally somehow worked.

“I’m going to do it, Malik. I have to.”

Malik sighed. “Yeah, Shade, I know. It’s called obsession.”

“I thought that was the name of a perfume,” she joked, not expecting a laugh and getting only a very serious look from Malik.

“You know you can always call me, right?”

Shade lifted her cup to tap his and they had a cardboard toast. “You should not be hitting on high school girls,” she said.

“What choice do I have? Northwestern girls aren’t dumb enough to buy my line of bullshit,” he said, and started to go, walking backward away from her toward the Northwestern campus just a few blocks north. “Anyway, you’ll be a college girl next year.”

He was six months older than her, always a year ahead.

“Also, wasn’t the Sandman basically a god . . .?” Shade called after him.

“I’m going to class now,” Malik said and covered his ears. “I can’t hear you. Lalalalala.”

But Shade’s focus had already shifted to the new kid at the bus stop. A Latino boy, she guessed. Tall, six-two, quite a good-looking kid.

Wait. Nope. Maybe not a boy exactly.

Interesting.

He or possibly she looked nervous, the new kid. His dark eyes were wary and alert. And made up, with just a little eyebrow pencil and a delicate touch of mascara.

The others at the stop were a pair of freshmen boys who looked like they should still be in middle school; a black kid named Charles or Chuck or something—she couldn’t recall—who had never yet been seen without earbuds; and two massive, muscular members of the football team, one white, one black, neither in possession of a definable neck.

“That is going to be trouble,” Shade muttered under her breath. Both of the Muscle Twins were eyeballing the new kid with a bored, predatory air.

No one spoke to Shade as she positioned herself a little apart, on the sidewalk, where she could watch. She sipped her coffee and waited, watching the football guys, noting the nudges and the winks. She could smell violence in the air, a whiff of testosterone, sweat, and pure animal aggression.

She noticed as well that the new kid was quite aware of potential trouble. His eyes darted to the football players, and when they moved behind him, Shade could practically see the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

Evanston had always been the very epitome of enlightened tolerance, but a perhaps gay, perhaps trans kid and bored football players with their systems pumped full of steroids did not always make for a good mix. And lately Evanston had begun to change, to fray somehow, to fade a little as if it were a movie being shown on a projector with a dimming bulb.

“Hey, answer a question for us,” the white player said to the new kid. Shade saw the newbie flinch, saw him withdraw fractionally, but then, with a will, recover his position and face up to the player who was an inch shorter, but heavier by probably a hundred pounds of muscle.

“Okay.” It was a distinctly feminine voice. Shade cocked her head and listened.

“ What are you?”

There was a split second where the new kid thought about evading. There was even a quick glance to plan an escape route. But he didn’t back down.

“My name is Cruz,” the kid said. He wore his black hair long and loose, almost to his shoulders, swept to one side. Shade shook her head imperceptibly, watching, analyzing.

“Didn’t ask your name, asked what you are .” This from the black player. “See, I heard you’re crazy. I heard you think you’re a girl.”

Shade nodded. Ah, so that was it. Shade was gratified to have an answer. She had never really talked to a trans person before, maybe she should make an effort to meet this new kid—assuming he survived the next few minutes.

Mental check: he or she ? Shade made a note to ask Cruz which worked best for him. Or her. And decided in the meantime to insert female pronouns into her own internal monologue. Not that her internal monologue—or her pronoun choices—would matter to the kid who, from all indications, was seconds away from serious trouble.

Cruz licked her lips, glanced up the street, and sighed in obvious relief: the school bus was wheezing and rattling its way up the street. Thirty seconds, Shade figured. Cruz thought she was safe, but Shade was not so sure.

“I don’t think I’m a girl, and I don’t think I’m a boy, I just am what I am,” Cruz said. There was some defiance there. Some courage. Cruz wasn’t small or weak, but she was both when compared to the football players.

“You either got a dick or you don’t got a dick.” The white one again. Obviously a philosopher. Shade had the vague sense that his name might be Gary. Gary? Greg? Something with a G.

“You seem way too interested in what I have in my pants,” Cruz said.

Shade winced. “Mmmm, and there we go,” she said under her breath.

The bus rolled up, wheels sheeting standing water from the gutter. It was the black one (who Shade believed was named Griffin . . . or was she confusing her G names?) who shoved Cruz into the side of the still-moving bus.

Cruz lost her footing, staggered forward, and threw up her hands too late to entirely soften the impact of her face on yellow-painted aluminum. There was a definite thump of flesh-padded bone against aluminum, and the rolling bus spun Cruz violently, twisted her legs out from under her and she fell to her knees in the gutter.

The bus stopped, the door opened, and the gnome of a driver, oblivious, said, “Let’s move it, people.”