Chomp

My spoon clanked against my bowl rather loudly as I stirred my dinner. Brian’s cooking was amazing, as usual. He had made me Juka, a special soup from Lithuania that he had learned about when he and Tanya first took me in.

“Is it too hot?”

I glanced up from the bowl. He and Tanya both looked at me, worry painting their features. “If it’s too hot, I can put an ice cube in it,” Brian continued, getting to his feet. “There’s no sense in having a burnt lip over something silly like that, especially when burns can cause major infections. I once saw a lady with a shriveled up hand at the supermarket—all because she burned her finger. This hand was all mangled and—”

“I… don’t need an ice cube,” I interrupted. I was already put off eating; I didn’t need a mangled hand making it worse. “The soup’s fine.”

He beamed. “Good, good,” he breathed, sitting back down in his chair. He straightened his glasses and picked up his fork and scooped some corn onto it. “I was worried. All they had at the store was turkey blood, and I wasn’t sure if that was anything like the chicken blood I normally use. But it’s okay?”

I nodded and took a sip from my spoon. It was definitely different; then again, everything else in this place had been as well. At least turkey blood was something small.

“You okay, Baby?” Tanya asked. She had cleared her plate of the roast chicken, corn, and potatoes long ago. “You look a little glum-bum.”

“Oh god; it’s the wrong kind of blood, isn’t it? Pookie-Bean—it’s the wrong kind! I messed up! Do you think there’s a doctor that looks after—”

“It’s fine, Brian,” I replied shortly. “I like the turkey.”

His panic switch flipped off almost immediately and he cast me a sideways glance. “G-Good. Well… your mom’s right. You do look glum-bum.”

“Everything was okay at school?” Tanya pressed, leaning forward. “If someone picked on you, I will find them.”

I shook my head and smiled weakly. For all their worrying, they both really cared deeply for me. “That’s just it. I think… I think I messed up at school. I don’t know how, but I must have.”

My mind had gone through the day’s events like a fine tooth comb over and over again. Nothing stood out to me as being anything but normal. The only thing that may have come off as being strange was when I sniffed the air in the basement. But with the amount of mould and overall gross stench, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable for any kid to do it, either.

“What do you mean, messed up?” Tanya asked, her face paling. “You didn’t…? Is everyone okay?”

“I didn’t do that,” I answered quickly. It had been years since anything like that had happened; the fact that she thought I would do that was a slap to the face. “You know I wouldn’t.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, there’s this girl at school…”

It was like the angry and irrational fear switches had been turned off in their brains. Tanya and Brian exchanged loving glances.

“Aww, our little boy is growing up!” Brian exclaimed, grabbing a napkin. “I always knew it would happen, but I’m just… I’m just so proud.”

Confused, I looked at Tanya.

“The first day of school and you’ve already found yourself a girlfriend. I didn’t know we were raising such a devious little fox,” she said, laughing. “Just remember what I told you about those birds and bees. I don’t want any little… any little bats flapping around the house while you’re in high school. Or college. Ideally before marriage, but we’ll talk later if we need to.”

Brian cleared his throat as my mouth hung open in shock. “I think that might be a little racially insensitive, Pookie-Bean.”

The cat notebook had nothing on this type of mortification.

“That’s not what I meant!” I half-whined, half shouted. All in all, it was a rather pathetic sound. “She’s not—She’s not my girlfr—”

“Certainly not with that attitude, she won’t be,” Tanya said, waggling an empty fork at me. “Listen, girls aren’t as sensitive and gentle as the media makes us out to be.”

She looked at Brian, her blonde brows raised. He smiled at her, then looked back to me, clearly clueless. But a banging from under the table that caused a yelp from him was able to effectively get across her point.

“Nope!” he squeaked, leaning down. I had a feeling he was rubbing his shin gingerly. “Believe it or not, your mom was quite the rapscallion—I mean… The power feminist princess…?”

“What he means,” Tanya said, rolling her eyes, “Is that some women like to be gently pursued. He had liked me since the first day of college. There he was, this weedy little thing standing before me, trembling, stuttering, and later crying. All because he wanted to ask me on a date.”

Brian’s cheeks flared and he looked away.

“And… that worked?” I asked, slightly disbelieving. I supposed it must have; they had been married the year they both graduated.

“’Course! We sucked face and did the do for about four days after the fact; he was just so sweet!” Tanya declared, nodding. Brian grabbed her hand and planted a gentle kiss on the top; she swooned while I felt bile rising in my throat.

I pushed my Juka away, the bowl scraping loudly on the wood table. As I got to my feet, my parents both glanced up at me with curious expressions. “I’m… not hungry any more. Thanks.”

As I stomped up the stairs, I had to mentally bleach the image of them ’sucking face and doing the do’ from my poor, defenseless mind. I knew they had sex; as a married couple who had tried to have their own biological children in the past, it had always been assumed. But that didn’t mean I cared to have the image burned into my long-term memory.

My room may not have smelled like my own yet, but it still felt comforting to flop face-first onto my bed. I rubbed my nose into the quilt Brian had made from fabrics I picked out when I was a kid.

Even back then, both my parents had been odd. Maybe I only started noticing how ill-prepared they were as parents when I started becoming an adult myself. Somehow, they had turned a potentially serious conversation into a joke. Usually, parents were supposed to do the opposite—from what I had seen on TV and heard from old classmates, anyway—but then again, they had never been normal. None of us were, and navigating the world as such was a nightmare.

I rolled over onto my back, staring up at the white, popcorn ceiling. It was almost eight o’clock; try as they might in my youth, my parents were never able to get me into a normal sleep schedule.

’Well, not normal,’ Tanya had said, fumbling with her words. After all, how did you explain something like that to a seven-year-old? ‘Just… More like us. Like everyone else’s, you know?’

There was a lot more to be concerned with, sleeping schedule aside. I exhaled loudly.

Agnes’ words still rang in my head.

The best thing I could do, I told myself as I got dressed for school, was to ignore her. There was little chance that anyone had heard her accusation, and the chances were even slimmer of anyone actually believing her anyway.

I smoothed my hair down in the hall mirror as best I could before reaching for the door. Having curly hair meant looking like I was perpetually caught in a windstorm.

The sky was a moody grey, and the clouds threatened a heavy rain they never delivered. As I sauntered along, the sounds of early morning played in my ears. It was surprising to hear birds in the city, but they cooed as they pecked at bits of food that had been left on the grimy sidewalks. The rush of cars had come to be so much of a constant and familiar sound that I barely heard them anymore; it was like breathing.

Speaking of breathing, someone’s was being held in an odd way.

I rounded the corner and made my way to another street in our subdivision and stopped. There it was—the sound of staggered breathing. I tilted my head up ever so slightly to take in the smell.

Agnes had clearly burned more incense than the last time we met; the smell hung about her body like a discount perfume. I resisted the urge to turn around and call her out for two reasons. One, because it would appear more suspicious that I was able to pick up on her being there, seeing as she was doing a fairly decent job of being quiet.

And two, because I lacked the stones to do it.

So I glumly walked myself over to the crosswalk, not uttering a word. I jammed my thumb against the button and waited for the light to change. Barely seven, and there was already traffic.

Snide glances over my shoulder told me Agnes followed me all the way to the school. She ducked behind trash cans, trees, cars—anything she could find to remain hidden. Her movements were quiet enough, I supposed. Realistically, if it was anyone but myself, she probably would have gone completely undetected.

I ignored the shiver that scraped down my spine as I remembered what she said before. ’I know what you are.’

She couldn’t. Could she?

When I arrived at school, I made my way to the basement. After getting my locker, there was no sense in carrying around everything in my bag all at once. Sure enough, I wasn’t the only one down there; a few of the janitors were pulling on their school logo-emblazoned cardigans, getting ready for the day.

I spun my lock around to the final number when Agnes finally approached me.

Her curly ginger hair had been pulled back into two high ponytails, each fashioned with some sort of plastic skull clip. She traded in the short skirt for tight black leather shorts and striped tights paired with a see-through, lace shirt that didn’t do much to hide her black bra.

“Good morning,” I murmured, crouching down to open my bag.

“How can you be in the sun?” she demanded, her jaw set.

I pulled the Tupperware out from my bag and placed it into the locker; spaghetti and meatballs with the leftover Juka as sauce. “What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice steady.

“This morning. The sun was out,” she said flatly, putting a hand on her hip. Her eyes were narrowed suspiciously, and I felt them burn into my face. “How were you outside in the morning?”

Dumbstruck, I begged myself to come up with an answer that didn’t sound suspicious, but found myself wordless.

“Listen, getting up in the morning is tough for everyone, Twi-Hard. Now leave my boy here alone.”

Both of us turned to see Kevin standing, his chest puffed out and a large shiner on his eye. It was odd to see such a rich purple on him.

I squinted at it. “What happened to—?”

“I’m not a Twi-Hard,” Agnes spat, crossing her arms.

Kevin rolled his eyes and turned to me. “She accuse you of being a vampire yet? She does that with every new kid.”

I tried not to let the great rush of relief I felt show on my face. “Yeah…” I laughed awkwardly. “What’s a Twi-Hard though?”

“She’s obsessed with the book series; you know Twilig—”

“Am not!” Agnes hissed, her nostrils flaring. “Those are barely even books. How dare you accuse me of being—being—”

“Whatever, no one cares,” Kevin said smoothly. Her eyes widened in shock, and a heat grew in her face. “C’mon, Sam. They’ve got cookies in the caff before class.”

As we walked upstairs to the cafeteria, I was over the moon. The emo—no, goth—whatever—girl accused everyone of being something they weren’t. She was suspicious of everyone, so her feelings toward me wouldn’t raise a single eyebrow.

Despite what my own conjecture had suggested, Agnes didn’t follow us upstairs. Her smell was missing from the early crowd that filled a few tables pre-class. Kevin took a seat at a fairly crowded table next to a blonde girl with a pixie cut and a floral blouse. There was a strong surge of some sort of pheromone, no doubt emitted by Kevin himself.

He pecked the girl on the cheek. “Morning, beautiful!” he chirped.

She smiled, revealing stunningly perfect teeth. “Hey,” she laughed, her bright eyes lighting up. She glanced at me, her smile faltering slightly.

“This is Sam,” Kevin said, gesturing for me to take a seat opposite them. I moved a bag from the bench and sat down. “Sam, Zoë. Zoë, Sam.”

Zoë hitched her smile back onto her lips and gave a little wave. “Nice to meet you.”

I nodded. “You too.”

“Sam is my good luck charm,” Kevin continued.

I stared at him, feeling my cheeks flush. Since when? Zoë must have thought the same, because she snorted and rolled her eyes.

Kevin remained convinced. “It’s true! I showed him around, and we won the championship. We haven’t won in… I don’t even know,” he said brightly. I smiled; apparently it wasn’t his little sister that was into ice skating after all.

“Someone still elbowed you in the face,” Zoë argued, pointing to his eye.

He shrugged, his grin still in place. “Don’t care; still won. So, I saved him from being cornered by Morticia in return. Who knows, maybe we’ll get to State next time!”

The two laughed—Kevin, with his hearty guffaw and Zoë, with her high pitched giggling. It took me a minute to realize who they were talking about; I gave a half-smile.

“Ugh. What’s the saying? ‘Speak of the Devil’…” Zoë said, nodding to the tables behind me. Kevin and I looked over to see what she was talking about. “’And she shall appear’?”

There she was indeed.

Agnes sat, legs crossed, on top of one of the tables in the far corner of the room. Her eyes were narrowed, and her tongue was sticking out slightly as she fiercely scribbled something into what looked like a notebook.

“How much you want to bet she’s putting our names down on a shooting list?” Kevin asked, snickering into his hand.

Zoë rolled her eyes. “Please. The whole school’s been up there since day one. Besides—shooting isn’t her style. She’d probably bring that stupid scythe again!”

The two fell into another fit of laughter. I stared down blandly at the swirls in the wood table, ignoring the sour taste in my mouth.

We were joined by a large, muscular guy with an afro and petite girl that strongly reminded me of Betty Boop.

“Did I hear someone talking about Circus Freak again?” the guy asked, taking a seat to my far left; he must not have realized that I was sitting with his friends too.

My feet lifted off the ground as he sat on the corner of the bench, but that wasn’t what I found most concerning.

The feeling of discomfort grew as the group pursued the subject. I let their voices become a distant fuzz as I glanced around the fairly empty cafeteria. It was almost nine, so many of the students had left. Besides our table, there were only two more occupied: one with a group similar in size to our own, the other with Agnes.

She had stopped writing, and her eyes focused on the people gossiping about her. Her brows were furrowed, but it looked like she couldn’t actually hear what they were saying about her.

It was probably for the best.

As I tuned back in, Betty Boop was the one taking the stab this time.

“—how short her skirts are, you’d think someone would have fucked her by now. Nope! Carter said he wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole—and he sleeps with anything that moves!”

The group’s words sounded like pack animal yips, and their blood pounded in their necks from the verbal blows. Regardless of what an animal had on them—fur, scales, clothes—they all got the same arousal from attacking another.

Scooping up my backpack from the floor, I got to my feet. From the corner of my eye, I could see Agnes staring at me, her expression unreadable. The table went silent.

“Where are you going?” Zoë asked.

“Class starts soon. I don’t want to be late…” I replied lamely. It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but it certainly wasn’t why I was leaving.

Kevin snorted. “It’s the second day. As long as you’re there on the first, the teachers don’t really care. You think everyone’s at class?”

“He’s been eyeing Morticia,” the guy with the afro chimed in. He gave me a smug smile as if to say ’Yeah, that’s right. I saw it all.’

“Oh my god, Sam,” Betty Boop whined, pouting her lips. I wasn’t even aware she knew my name, but Kevin must have said something when the two of them sat down. “Don’t do something stupid like that—it’s social suicide.”

“I wish she’d learn a little something more about suicide,” Zoë said darkly, staring over at the ginger. The sound of Agnes’ writing—pen scratching against harsh paper—resumed at a more furious rate.

This was the second day of school, as Kevin pointed out. The second day, and they were already tearing into someone like they hadn’t eaten in weeks.

I felt rather small, but I turned my back on them and headed to class. Their whispers followed for a while, but I didn’t pay them attention. I was here to learn, not build my own self esteem by breaking someone else’s.