Unspeakable Things(56)

Ricky Tink and Wayne Johnson appeared at his shoulders. Ricky was wearing even more bandages than usual. His warts must sweat in the summer. Wayne was smirking.

“How do you feel about public nudity?” Clam asked. At least it looked like Clam, but just like in the band room, it wasn’t really him. I thought of what Frank had said about the boys here being like werewolves. Were Ricky and Wayne changed, too?

“I saw you at Mr. Connelly’s the other night,” I said, the words coming out fast.

Ricky and Wayne did a double take.

“What?” Clam said. “That’s stupid.”

He was so confident, I wondered if I’d imagined it. But I hadn’t. He’d been there. I’d seen only the side of his face, but it’d been Clam for sure. “What were you doing there?”

Something clenched behind his eyes. “I said I wasn’t there.”

“What’d he look like, Clam?” I asked. “The man who attacked you.”

Wayne gasped. Clam was looking at me like he’d already killed me every which way but Wednesday and was deciding what to do with my bones.

I stepped back from the force of Clam’s rage. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest. I searched for the pulse at my neck, genuinely afraid I was going to die of a heart attack.

“That scar of yours,” Clam said, pointing at it. “Was it because someone tried to hang you?”

“You know she was born with it,” Ricky said.

Ricky sounded normal, like he was standing up for me. Relief flooded my body.

Frank stood up in the water behind me. “Cassie?”

“Well now, who’s your friend?” Clam walked to the side of the bank and held out his hand, a regular ol’ gentleman.

“Don’t take it,” I yelled. I wanted to turn and help Frank myself, but no way was I showing my back to Wayne and Ricky until I was sure whose side they were sticking on.

“Holy shit, lookit this bike!” Ricky strode over to Frank’s BMX. He tipped it up and straddled it, raising the front wheel in a mock wheelie. “Yee-haw!”

“Hey, that’s mine!” Frank launched himself out of the water and toward Ricky but stopped just shy of him, like Ricky was surrounded by a force field. One of Ricky’s Band-Aids had come loose, and it was hanging over Frank’s handlebar.

Wayne hooted. Clam stepped closer to me and put his finger on my scar, tracing it. His touch burned. He had something green in his teeth and smelled chicken soupy, like my dad after a hard day’s work.

“Are you like your sister?” he asked.

“What?” I spat the word.

Clam chuckled. It was a dirty, scraping sound. “I’m wondering if you’re like Sephie. If you like chips like she does. Her favorite brand is Free-to-Lay.”

Ricky and Wayne matched his laugh.

“Yeah!” Wayne said. “Sephie is easy like Sunday morning!”

A coldness overcame me, beginning at my feet and crawling like sludge through my veins. Something about their laugh, their words, made me achingly lonely, fear replaced with desolation. I couldn’t escape them, there was no way. I was a girl against three boys, and I had Frank to protect to boot. My brain told me to go to sleep, to get whatever was gonna happen over with quick. I might have rolled if Clam hadn’t flicked my left breast.

“Musta been a mosquito there.” Clam flicked again. “Looks like it bit you!”

Ricky and Wayne were crowding in, I saw it out of the corners of my eyes, but I didn’t care, not anymore. I’d let Clam touch my neck, but his hand on my boob was too personal. I could feel the poison of it leaching into my skin, then my muscles, and if I didn’t pour it all back on him, it’d set up permanently in my bones.

I launched myself at Clam, yelling and scratching and kicking, my limbs moving so fast that they were a blur even to me. I felt his flesh collecting under my fingernails, and it spurred me to fight harder. Someone grabbed me at the waist and I got lucky, connecting my elbow with his jaw.

I was dropped, and I turned to see it was Wayne who’d grabbed me, his eyes wide, his hand to his bleeding mouth. I turned back to Clam, spitting, and saw the same expression of disbelief plastered on his face. Their surprised expressions would have been comical if I weren’t so terrified.

“Run, Frank!”

He was staring at me from the riverbank, slack-jawed, appearing closer to five years than eleven, but he was a smart kid at any age, and he jumped on his chrome BMX and speed-pedaled ahead of me, up the hill and out of the woods. I grabbed my backpack and flew onto my own bike, pedaling like my life depended on it, biking away from the horrible things Clam and Wayne were yelling that they’d do to me when they caught me.





CHAPTER 35

“You fought like Isis!”

I’d caught an episode of the show at my grandparents’ two summers ago. Beautiful science teacher Andrea Thomas discovered the Tutmose amulet on an Egyptian dig. When she exposed it to the sunlight and invoked Isis, she was endowed with magical powers. It was good TV.

“But your hand’s bleeding,” he finished.

I glanced down at my handlebars. The gauze over my punctured hand was speckled with red. “That’s not my blood.”

Frank barked a laugh. “You really gave him the what for.”