Chapter Eight
The first time Tyler turned, two months ago, he shattered Breakneck’s front window, the glass firing all the way across the street to the sidewalk outside Seconds.
Tables inside were overturned, the vinyl cracked and scattered across the floor.
At the sound, so loud it was like a bomb had gone off, Sam and I, still at the end of the block, had screamed and crouched low to the concrete, hands fisted in each other’s jackets.
I glanced up just in time to see what looked like a massive dog hurtling through Breakneck’s open front window and tearing off down the street away from us.
At first, I was willing to accept the police theory that a wild dog had somehow gotten loose in the store.
This is DC – shit gets weird sometimes. And it wasn’t that far-fetched that Tyler, who’d been working at the time, should disappear after the fact.
He was clearly traumatised. Who wouldn’t be?
Up until that point, I didn’t even know I had been cursed.
Even so, something in the back of my head, a story my mom had told me on my birthday last year that niggled at my brain in the middle of sleepless nights, told me to dig.
While looking up the articles about Breakneck online the next day, it took about thirty seconds of peering at the pictures to realise the claw marks in the walls and wooden counters weren’t made by the average Schnauzer.
They were far too deep, as though whatever’d made them had pocket knives for fingers.
But it couldn’t be Tyler. Tyler, whose voice went so quiet whenever he talked about Joy Division, one of his favourite bands, that you could barely hear him.
Plus, the curse was only supposed to affect people I love, and I didn’t love Tyler.
Pretending to collect vinyl records just so I’d have an excuse to go near him did not a love connection necessarily make … right?
But I knew. In hindsight, it’s clear that I knew.
Knew enough that I needed to check for sure whether or not Tyler was the dog, if my presence had anything to do with it.
A week or so after the first time he turned, I arranged to meet Sam at a weekend market in Petworth where Tyler usually ran the Breakneck tent.
But I deliberately showed up late and called Sam as I approached, making sure she had eyes on Tyler at all times as I made my way up Georgia Avenue.
Sam, of course, just thought I was stalking my crush like normal, nothing to do with figuring out whether or not I’d turn him into a monster.
‘Are you still watching him?’ I’d panted into my cell, the combination of my down jacket and nerves making me sweat.
‘I’m sorry, you know I love you,’ Sam said. ‘But this feels really extra. Who cares if he’s here or not when—’
‘Because I’ve been practising what I want to say to him and if he’s not there then it’ll all be for nothing.’ The lie came out much more hostile than I meant. I swallowed, tried to calm myself down. ‘So, can you still see him or—’
‘Yes, I’m still watching him.’ Her eye roll was so pronounced, I could practically hear it through the phone.
‘He’s drinking coffee and looking at his phone.
Like a normal person. How he hasn’t completely frozen solid is, quite frankly, a mystery, though.
So, if you could please hit pause on your freak today and hurry up, I’d—’
‘I’m a block away, okay? Just keep looking at him.’
‘Yeah, yeah, eyes on Hot Tyler. I got it. When you get here, though, I expect no less than two Nutella doughnuts. Actually, since you’re,’ she paused, and I pictured her checking her phone, ‘three minutes late, I’m going to have to up the price to – oh my God.’
Dread coiled tight in my stomach. ‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘He’s gone!’ Sam exclaimed. ‘Indie, I swear, I was watching him and I looked at my phone for like, a second, and then he was gone. Where the hell did he go?’
My feet stuttered to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. A man bumped into my left shoulder and muttered something angrily, but I barely heard him.
‘Is there a dog there?’ I said quietly.
‘A what?’
‘A dog. Do you see a dog anywhere? Like, a really big, fluffy black one.’
‘Do I see a – holy shit, there’s a – that’s a big effing dog. How did you know?’
The world around me quieted, my throat feeling tight. Tyler was a dog. A monster. Because of me.
I really was cursed.
Suddenly the street snapped back into focus. People milling around the sidewalk. A grey sky. White tents in the distance. ‘Which way is the dog going?’ I said.
‘Why do you need—’
My voice reached a shriek. ‘SAM. WHICH WAY IS IT GOING?’
‘Down Upshur, towards the park!’
Upshur Street was less than a block away.
I broke into a run and turned left once I reached it, sprinting until I realised it was no use.
Tyler was a monster – there was no way I’d catch up with him.
That’s when I stopped, lungs burning and hands on the back of my head, and turned around only to see a giant mass of fur moving towards me.
Because Tyler hadn’t torn ahead – he was behind me, trotting along with his gargantuan head swinging from side to side as though he was in an intro for one of those seventies sitcoms my mom was always trying to get me to watch with her.
He even paused for a man pushing a shopping cart to pat his head.
I stood, frozen, watching as Tyler crossed right in front of me, his claws clicking on the sidewalk as he turned left towards the entrance to Rock Creek Park, the huge sprawl of woodland nestled in the centre of DC.
Once inside, he swerved around trees, veered off trails, crisscrossed up hills with me on his heels, until he reached the cave.
It was dark and damp, but the imprint in the pile of leaves in the far corner made clear it was where Tyler had gone last time. This was his monster home.
And, judging by the way he stared up at me with his long, black tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, I was now his monster keeper.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ I say as I gently thread my fingers through a snarl in Tyler’s fur.
‘This is all supposed to be about love. I actually do stuff with Avery and she’s fine.
But I stalk you at work, and suddenly you’re Wolf Man if we happen to go to the same show.
’ My fingers catch on a matted wad of hair the size of a golf ball.
I reach for the brush in my backpack. ‘How does your fur look like this right now?’ I say, raking out the clod.
It unleashes a spray of dirt. ‘What have you even been doing today?’
At this point, I’m not sure which statement is more accurate: that Tyler’s fur is full of leaves, or there’s fur in the pile of leaves on Tyler’s head.
Every time I think I’ve cleared a section, I lift another chunk of hair and find what appears to be the entire contents of a leaf blower, plus ten twigs.
Tyler just chews his mouthful of pizza, ignoring me.
I brought him his own box this time, after when I was here last – that second night, after he’d changed at the market in Petworth – Tyler practically shredded my backpack trying to get to the Ziploc bag of cold leftover Meat Supreme pizza I’d brought for a snack.
I thought about pointing out to him that human-Tyler is vegan, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it.
‘Although, I guess doing stuff with Avery doesn’t mean I love her.’ I chew the inside of my cheek. ‘And when you add in the physical stuff – maybe that’s why it feels so intense. Not because it’s real.’
But catching the look on Avery’s face when I said I didn’t vote for her, even if she didn’t actually care – my regret had felt real.
‘You should’ve seen me at her house today,’ I say, cringing at the memory. ‘I only managed to stay for like, ten minutes, because every time Avery kissed me, I kept expecting her to turn, so my face was in like, a constant flinch. She asked if I was constipated, which was obviously super romantic.’
Tyler uses two sharp, dirt-smeared claws to pick an unusually large fleck of oregano off his pizza and flicks it to the floor, unbothered.
Even though I don’t fully know what gets through to him and what’s coincidental grumbling, I’ve already stopped being embarrassed in front of him.
With Sam off limits, Tyler is really the only one I can talk to about any of this stuff.
‘Is this just what my life looks like now? I can’t even have a self-sabotaging hook-up, I just have to swear off people for good?’
My fingers grip too tightly around a particularly stubborn leaf in Tyler’s fur, and the strands break with a brittle snap. He shifts beneath me, pulling me out of my thoughts.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m almost done. It’s just – I’ve seen what swearing off people, relationships, all that, looks like, and it … it …’
A lump almost too big to swallow forms in my throat.
It sucks. It sucks so much.
I pluck out a few more brown leaves, crunchy ones left over from autumn, and let them flutter to the floor. A stillness slips between me and Tyler in the absence of my voice. Just the sound of the Cure playing softly from my phone.
I retrieve my water bottle from my backpack and take a long drink. ‘That’s the best I can do for now,’ I say, twisting the lid back on and nodding down at the pile of leaves and twigs beside us.
Tyler peels another slice of pizza from the box at his feet before clambering on to what’s left of the sleeping bag. He shovels the entire slice crust-first into his mouth, globs of drool streaking across the sleeping bag’s shredded surface.
‘I bought you some toys that’ll be here for next time.’ I grimace, then add quickly, ‘But hopefully there won’t be one. A next time, I mean.’