Chapter 2
two
. . .
I crouched down behind an old rusty tire wheel, listening intently for sounds from Mr. Andrea. The night was still, only interrupted by the cry of cicadas looking for love. Such an awful sound. No wonder they couldn’t find romance.
I crept through the weeds, hoping I didn’t find a tick, until I reached the caged racoon. I could have released it, but that wasn’t good enough, because that cage had to die.
I pulled out my wire cutters and got to work. After six cuts, the bars were loose enough that the coon could reach out and swipe me across the cheek as she wriggled and squirmed, trying to get out of the cage.
“Blistering monster,” I growled, tempted to snip something lethal under all that fur, but that would make me a hypocrite, liberation and then execution in the next breath. I worked at it, enduring a few more swipes until it made its way through, hissing at me before he leapt on my legs, claws digging into my skin through my pajama pants before it darted past me beneath my arm, into the thick weeds.
I ignored the sting and kept snipping until a light came on, revealing me there, crouched in my PJs beneath the old hoodie I had over my tank.
“Who’s that there?” Mr. Andrea asked, before I heard the ominous and unmistakable sound of a shotgun cocking.
“Honey, are you still looking for Hetta?” Danny called, giving me an alibi I hadn’t thought to ask for.
I slowly straightened up, hiding the wire cutters under my hoodie. “I didn’t find her, just the remains of this coon cage. Looks like terrorists struck again, Mr. Andrea.”
He gave me a sharp look before lowering the shotgun. “You shouldn’t be running around in the dark in that hoodie. Good thing you’ve got those teddy bear print pants or I wouldn’t be able to see you at all. Guess I’ll have to start shooting the critters that come around, since something has it for my cages.”
I clenched my teeth in a smile and edged towards Danny just as Hetta came running up behind him, then vomited on my feet as soon as I reached her. She looked up, panting, tongue lolling while she waited for me to rub her behind her ears or something else ridiculous. I couldn’t bend over to do anything as long as I was hiding the wire cutters under my hoodie.
“Bad Hetta,” Danny said, dropping down and wiping my feet with a handful of leaves. “Did you eat Sam’s erasers? What is wrong with you?”
“Seems everyone on that side of the fence has some issues.” Mr. Andrea went back inside his porch, the screen door snapping shut with a clang. He had to know that I’d been cutting his cage, like I’d done to the last six I’d been able to get my hands on.
“Next time, he’s going to shoot you,” Danny said with a grin. “Do you want to know where I was? Of course you do. I was smoothing over everything with Clarissa, so you don’t have to worry about lawsuits. I just explained about Sammy’s health issues, how stressful it is for you, and how you need to be treated with loving kindness and care.”
I snorted and went around to the side of the house for the hose, tripped on the septic valve sticking out of the lawn, and landed on my back with an oof. Danny stood over me, staring down at me while he laughed.
“That was almost as good as watching you throw Clarissa head over heels. You fell over from nothing.”
I twisted my legs and brought him down, rolling so he was pinned beneath me while I held my knife hand at his throat. “Do you want to get Hetta’s vomit all over you? That’s what’s coming next, loser.”
“You want to be on top of me? Sorry, but I’m not that desperate. You should give the good Doc a call if you’re looking for someone to stuff your burrito.”
That was it. I made a point of rubbing my feet all over his clothes while we wrestled old school, with some WWE thrown in for fun.
I was laughing by the time I got the hose and had sprayed him and my feet off. He looped an arm over my shoulder as we headed for the house, both wet and loopy. “You should do that more often, you know, let loose, have fun, that kind of thing. You could really go crazy and get drunk. I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“That’s so comforting to know that I have your great and notoriously amoral approval, as well as your discretion. You couldn’t keep a secret if your life depended on it.”
“I don’t know about that, Honey,” he said, elbowing me none too gently. My name was Honey, my real first legal name, which I hadn’t used since I was seven. Now days I went by Lara Jones, but before that, it was Mickey Matthews. He did call me Honey, but no one realized that it wasn’t just him being a dork and using a lame nickname. I’d been Honey Harper, who wasn’t nearly sweet enough to stay at any of the foster homes I’d gone to since I was two.
He had a point. He’d never blown my cover and revealed that the notoriously brutal fighter, Honey Harper was at his studio, and that would have given him an opportunity to bring in more clients, so he did show a lot of restraint in that respect, although it was probably just him not wanting me to upshow him.
“So, the Doc, other than wanting to wrap you in his burrito, did he have anything else to say about Sam?”
I shook my head and sighed while tension built up in me again from helpless frustration. “He said that there were some slight discrepancies in her white blood cells, but nothing that could cause her symptoms. Maybe we should go to a white blood cell specialist.”
He squeezed my shoulders. “Maybe you should dump more money into finding out why, but some things can’t be controlled or understood, Honey. You have to leave it to fate.”
I slumped against him, because fate hadn’t ever really worked out for me.
I was just starting to fall asleep that night when I heard the thump and moan from Sam’s room that meant she was having another fever. I was so tired, because sleep had been elusive for months, but I dragged myself out of my bed anyway, to go check on my sweet baby, who should be bigger and stronger than she was, but instead was becoming weaker every day.
She was tossing and turning in her bed, sheets wrapped around her legs, whimpering like she was in pain. When I flipped on the light, she snarled and burrowed under her pillow, getting away from the brightness.
“Hey, sweetheart, can you drink some water?” I murmured, reaching under her pillow to feel her forehead. The heat was the first thing I noticed, then the prickly hair pressing against my palm, and then the sharp flash of pain as she bit me.
I gasped and pulled back, frowning down at the meaty part of my palm where her little sharp teeth had bitten down, drawing blood. I pulled off the pillow and stared at the brown fur flexing as it emerged, then retreated beneath her skin, like it was struggling to get out. I closed my eyes, because I hadn’t gotten great sleep for way too long, then opened them, squinting at my daughter’s sprouting face. I rubbed my eyes, then stared again, completely dumbstruck until a pair of little brown tufted ears parted her brown hair, then retreated, along with all the rest of her fur, and she exhaled and relaxed, settling back down to sleep.
When I touched her forehead again, the fever was gone, along with any remaining signs of fur, if that had really happened. Was I tired enough to hallucinate that kind of thing? I peered closer at her face, checked her ears, and she blearily swatted my hand away and rolled over, clearly exhausted and needing her rest, whether there was fur coming out of her face or not.
Had I really seen what I’d thought I’d seen? It wasn’t likely. People just didn’t sprout hair like that, although some kids could get quite hairy quite young depending on genetics and side-effects of drugs they were taking. Still, for it to come out and go back in? That didn’t make any sense. I shook my head and quietly left the room, turned off the light and went into the bathroom to fix my still-bleeding hand.
She’d broken through my skin in two places where her canines would be, showing the flat teeth marks between. One of them was quite deep and wouldn’t stop bleeding. I let my blood run down the sink while I stared at it, trying to process through what I’d thought I’d seen. Did it have something to do with her illness? Was there some rare situation where sudden hair growth was linked to white blood cell mutation?
What about the ears? No, I’d definitely imagined that. I wrapped my hand and went to the small kitchen, sitting on the stool at the counter piled with mail and small boxes I hadn’t recycled yet. I grabbed an envelope and a stubby pencil and started writing.
1-white blood cell aberrations
2- fevers
3- fur
4- ears
I erased ears because that was too ridiculous. There was no way that I hadn’t imagined that. I was too tired and couldn’t figure this out while I was exhausted. She’d probably be fine for a few days after that fever, and in that time, I’d talk to Dr. Soares, maybe even go out to dinner with him. I needed to make some changes if I was hallucinating ears.
I went to bed, and surprisingly enough, fell right to sleep. In the morning, sitting across the table from a cheerful Samantha, who had more of an appetite than normal, I studied her, looking for signs of anything unusual, but her cheeks remained smooth, and her ears as round and bare as they ever were.
“Do you have a pair of animal ears?” I asked as I stirred my multi-grain cereal around in my bowl, having less appetite for some reason.
“I have that old unicorn headband, but I haven’t worn it for years. No offense, but that’s for babies.”
“Right. How are you feeling this morning? You had a fever last night. Do you remember?”
She shrugged. “I had some weird dreams about playing tag like we used to do in kindergarten. Did it keep you up? You look terrible today.”
Ouch. Kids were so harsh and brutally honest. I yawned and rubbed my forehead. “I thought I saw you grow hair out of your face, and animal ears out of your hair. I stayed up way too late working, I guess.”
“Weird. What happened to your hand?” she nodded at my bandage.
“You bit me. Maybe you’re turning into a werewolf. Were any stray animals following you around, getting too close?” I wiggled my eyebrows at her.
Her eyes went enormous for a moment before she narrowed them at me. “Very funny. I’m not Little Red Riding Hood or the Big Bad Wolf. Anyway, turning into a werewolf makes you all powerful, not sick. Everyone knows that, I mean, if werewolves were real.”
If werewolves were real. That was a huge if, and yet… No. I needed real answers, not pointless speculation.
That day at work, I got a call from the school, the nurse I was very familiar with sounding at wit’s end.
“She’s not feeling well, but that wasn’t a good enough reason to attack another child. She has to have detention, Lara, and I’m not sure how that’s going to work with her grade. She’ll have to retake the entire school year at this rate.”
I stood up, aware of Eleanor’s sharp eyes on me. “Who was it? There’s no way that she wasn’t provoked. She doesn’t fight for no reason.” Not like I did at her age.
“We’ll have a meeting about that later. Just come and pick her up, okay? She has another fever and doesn’t want to drink anything I give her. Maybe staying home for the rest of the year will be exactly what she needs, more one-on-one time with her mom.”
That sounded awesome except how would I get the hours I needed to pay for my mortgage with one-on-one time with Sam?
I finally said, “Sure. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Sorry about the hassle, Deb. You’re a saint to put up with what you do.”
She laughed suddenly. “Tell that to my kids and my husband. See you soon.”
Eleanor came over to watch me pack up my desk for another day working from home. “You know that you need to be at the meeting this afternoon. You can’t miss another one.”
“My daughter’s sick.”
“I understand that, but surely someone else can watch her for one afternoon. Your last report had several errors in it. We were going to wait until the meeting, but I may as well bring it up now. An accountant has to be precise, to double-check, to be meticulous.”
“Are you saying that I need to get a babysitter for my sick kid so that I can be publicly chastised?”
“Don’t be so defensive, Lara. These are matters of business. If your sloppy work costs the company a lucrative account, naturally we’re going to make some adjustments.”
I wanted to burst into tears or scream and enact some violence, but I only plastered a smile on my face while my heart sank. “I understand.”
She gave me a sympathetic smile. “In your situation, it might be best to work for yourself, so that you can make your own hours, and not be tied to other people’s schedules.”
I walked out of the office reeling. I had to go to a meeting so that they could fire me. I’d have no benefits to pay for my daughter’s expensive medical bills. Maybe I should seduce Doctor Soares and get him to marry me so that we could have his insurance. Ha. The idea that I could intentionally seduce anyone was ridiculous.
What mistakes had I made? I checked and double-checked everything I did, because I was not a meticulous person at heart, but I’d learned how to be different, to make up for my own personal failings so that I could build up a stable life for my kid, stability that I’d never had growing up. Now, everything was crumbling around me.
I pulled into the school parking lot, going over to visitors, but didn’t stop in time as another car was pulling out. The crunch of metal against metal punctuated the doomed day.
Clarissa got out of her car, eyes flashing along with her cleavage as she came to see the damage. I backed up, and her fender was dented, but the body was fine.
“You!” she spat as I opened the door and got out to face her.
“Hi there, Clarissa. Sorry about that. I’m a little distracted right now.”
Her eyes narrowed on me, not buying the sweet act, not after I’d thrown her across the mat. “Your daughter went completely crazy, like her mother, hitting and biting my sweet, innocent Carrie. You can convince Daniel that you’re just having a rough day, but I’m onto you. If I have to bring a lawsuit on the studio to get my message across, that’s what I’ll do.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, but before I could say or do something I’d later regret, the principal came out, face flushed, wringing his pudgy hands.
“Mrs. Jones, could you please come and get your daughter? She’s completely out of control.”
I hurried after him, leaving my car where it was, blocking the drive, because having it towed was one more thing I needed to add to my to-do list for the day.
Sam was under the metal bed in the corner, glaring at everyone who came in, looking like a cornered racoon who probably had rabies. Maybe she’d gotten rabies from one of Mr. Andrea’s critters. I stood there for a moment, trying to stay calm, to analyze the situation before I acted, but Clarissa was breathing down my neck, wanting to see the feral monster so much like her mother.
I walked into the room, reached under the bed, and dragged her out by the back of her shirt, keeping out of the way of any teeth. I tucked her under my arm and carried her out, hissing and flailing, ignoring the lines of teachers and students watching us go. Oh yes, we should definitely take the rest of the year off, maybe life. At least she hadn’t sprouted fur in the office, because that would clinch it.
She waited until we were in the car to slump down with glassy eyes, relaxed and passive after all the energy she’d spent thrashing all the way there. She was too old for this behavior, and so was I. I needed two hundred pounds of muscle to help me deal with this mess that kept get piling higher and higher around me.
When we got to the house, I turned off the car, holding onto that moment of silence for as long as I could justify it before I turned to rouse Sammy. Why was this happening to me? To her? What could I do to make everything all better? Why was I so helpless?
Ears.
I reached out and carefully touched one, and then she threw up all over me the second I brushed the soft downy fur tufts. Were we having fun yet?
“Hey,” Danny said, opening her door and poking his head in, smiling manically. “Clarissa called me and told me all about the fun day you’re having.”
I stayed exactly where I was, frozen in place, because if I moved, I’d make the mess worse. “She didn’t tell you that I have to get to a meeting this afternoon at the office so that they can fire me to my face. She didn’t tell you about the ears, either. What am I supposed to do?” I asked, begging him with my eyes for a solution to this problem.
He rubbed his chin and then shot me a grin. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of everything. We’ll get Sam cleaned up, although she’s not bad, since she mostly puked on you, tuck her in bed, and I’ll watch her while you go pretend to care. They won’t fire you, Honey. You’re the best, cheapest, hardest-working person they’ll ever have. If they do fire you, you sue them for discrimination against single moms. It’ll win in every court. Come on, get cleaned up, and then go back to face the piper.”
“I don’t want to,” I confessed, pulling out a napkin and trying to undo some of the damage.
“Then quit and find a new job. That’ll show them. Seriously, though, how would you pay the mortgage without your job? This is my place, too.”
“You own the studio. You could live in the apartment above it.” I shook my head, because that was so pointlessly irrelevant. “Do you think that werewolves could be real?”
“Um, what?”
I put my head back and closed my eyes. “Carry Sam in for me. I’ll just be a second.”
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Are you worried about me or your housing issue?”
“Both. Don’t worry it’ll all—What the fur!?”
He was holding Sam, but staring at her furry face, like he saw it too. Great. Not going crazy, but also not great because what was I supposed to do about furry teenagers?
“Yeah. Maybe she got bitten and infected by one of her friends?” I said with the vague understanding I had of how fictional werewolves came about.
“That’s so weird,” he breathed, all hushed as he watched the fur recede back into her skin. “What was her dad like?”
“I don’t want to?—”
“How hairy was he?” he interrupted, shooting me a frown. “I know you don’t like dredging up the past, because you’re still running from it, but seriously, this is a thing you have to deal with. Was he hairy enough to have given her these genetics?”
I didn’t want to think of him , definitely didn’t want to talk about him , particularly covered in Sam’s puke, but Danny was probably right. “He had beautiful hair, luscious locks that you’d die for, and a beard for days.”
He blinked at me. “You like beards? All this time, you’ve been holding out on me. I could have set you up with a dozen biker dudes in the past twelve years, but I always took you for a clean superman type, probably because of the crush you had on Thomas Sinclair back in?—”
I got out of the car, not waiting for him to finish that thought. I had things to do, things I didn’t want to do, that I’d rather die than do, but if there was any chance that Samantha’s father was responsible for her current health issues, I’d need him to help me resolve them, whether it was a fantastical werewolf issue or a rare genetic thing.
I showered and dressed in my sharpest skirt suit, pulling my hair back in a neat chignon and wrote out a proposal for the leave of absence that would make me feel less like I was being fired if they accepted it.
On the way to the office, I stopped at the bank and cleaned out my savings account. Ten thousand, two-hundred and sixty-two dollars and twenty-seven cents. It had taken me ages to get it above ten thousand, but I still owed Gloria, and if I was going to do this, I’d need backup.
I was three minutes early to the meeting, Eleanor standing at the front of the room next to old man Morris with her lips pursed when she saw me. I smiled my most professional smile and started handing out papers outlining the conditions of my leave of absence.
“What’s this?” Old man Morris asked, giving me a confused and sweet smile. His smile hid a mind as sharp as a tack, even though he did tend towards kindness if it didn’t get in the way of the bottom line.
“I’m going out of town for a few weeks for personal reasons. Eleanor was kind enough to suggest that I establish my own business on my own time since things in my life have been so unstable lately. I have included in the sheaf the rates of my freelance work, which will be higher than as a full-time employee because it won’t include benefits. I think that you’ll find my conditions favorable, including my taking responsibility for any errors made instead of the firm, but if that isn’t the case and you’d prefer to find another full-time employee to replace me, I understand.” I smiled at all the senior accountants and stood there, body relaxed, confident, capable, not cowering under the bed like Samantha had been, even though I definitely understood the appeal.
Mr. Morris cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses and then read my proposal. “Well,” he finally said when he looked up again. “This is very reasonable, Miss Jones. What do you think?” he asked, turning to Eleanor.
She gave me a taut smile. “It is very reasonable,” she agreed, because you didn’t disagree with your boss, but at the same time, it wasn’t the plan she’d had for me.
“Excellent,” I said, stepping forward to shake their hands. “I will let you know my availability once I’m settled.”
“Where are you going?” Eleanor asked.
I took a deep breath before I exhaled it in a long, steady stream. “Saint Louis.” That’s where Josiah Benton had established his current residence, and it was also where Gloria lived, another foster sibling that I trusted to know who I actually was.
“Well, good luck,” Old Man Morris said, patting my shoulder. “I wish you well and hope that you get back soon.”
I held onto my smile until I got to the parking lot where my sad little car waited for me. I had one more stop to make: the liquor store, and then I’d go home, pack up whatever we needed and go. He had to help her, because I didn’t have anything else to try.