Unfamiliar Territory

I woke up to gentle shaking.

“Hey, sleeping beauty, rise and shine. We’re at your house.” Stallion was nudging me with his elbow, a playful grin on his face.

I rose from against the window and rubbed my eyes that were refusing to remain open. “Wha...Huh...?”

I was back in Mr. Mallard’s car after having fallen asleep on the way home. As this thought came to me, I chanced a look to the front of the car. Mr. Mallard had his hands folded in his lap and his chair was reclined. He wasn’t moving much, so I assumed he was asleep. Kat was still in the driver’s seat, face forward with hands firmly on the wheel. It was more than likely that she hadn’t, but I was suddenly awash with the fear that she had seen my horrible sleeping face.

“You need help getting inside?” Stallion offered. Mutt was being unusually quiet as he stared out his own window.

“No...Thanks. I can make it,” I said this as I fumbled with the door handle. I stumbled a bit as I got out, but quickly waved a hand when Stallion made to assist me. “Really, I’m good. Thanks. And, uh, thanks for letting me come today.”

“Sure thing, man. We will definitely be doing it again soon,” Stallion said before closing the car door for me. He quickly rolled down the window as Kat started to speed off. “See you tomorrow!”

I waved after him, barely acknowledging how very heavy my arm was.

The sun was long gone as I walked through my house and into my room in a bleary haze. After collapsing in my bed, I tried to think back. I assumed I had just fallen asleep in the car, but I couldn’t remember anything after drinking their tea. Like a big splotch of black paint in my mind that only got darker the harder I looked into it.

With a groan of defeat, I buried myself in pillows and blankets and fell asleep almost immediately.

When I woke up the next morning, I was sweating—my mind racing with a feeling similar to having a dream which felt too real. Though, I could not remember the dream. Everything from that day was a blur.

I never again thought to ask what was in the tea, or how they knew where I lived.

It all turned out fine in the end, I told myself. That’s all that mattered.

A month passed. Once a week, I would meet up with Kat and the others and we would visit a local cemetery and have tea. I talked pretty frequently with the guys. They didn’t have phones, but we would meet up sometimes on the weekends. Mutt even took me to see some crazy violent action movie once. He cheered after almost every explosion.

I never passed out again.

One morning, I tried to cut my hair. It was only getting longer, and I knew it was one of the reasons why I kept getting gender confused. Maybe it was also why Kat still showed little interest in me. She went out of her way to avoid me everywhere but at our club meetings, and even then she wouldn’t even say hello. Just a cold glare.

I found I was giving myself a similar look as I stood in front of the mirror—a pair scissors in my hand. My red hair fell all around me, hiding my forehead, my eyes, my face.

Maybe if she could see me.

I rubbed a free hand over my cheeks. Soft and smooth. Stallion liked to brag about how he already had to shave. Even Mutt had stronger features. More angled jawbone, shorter eyelashes. I bit my lip, but stopped when I saw how it made me look in the mirror. Vulernable. Weak.

“...and you wouldn’t make much of a meal...”

Tentatively, I raised the scissors. I opened them over a thick strand of hairs, but they wouldn’t stop shaking. Even using my other hand only helped to make the shaking worse. My mom called my name from downstairs and my hands clenched. Red hair tumbled into the sink. I stared down into the tangled mess. I looked back into the mirror.

Terrible.

I put the scissors down and rubbed my hands across my face and through my ruined hair. Damnit. What are you doing?

Mom called for me again. She would be furious if she knew what I was doing. I ruffled my hair around to try and hide the damage before leaving.

She had wanted to know if I needed a ride to school. Through the windows, I could see nothing but white clouds. A terrible chill ran through me.

The fog was back.

I told her I was fine and that school was not far. I didn’t tell her I didn’t want her to be there if I saw the dog again. No matter how much I wanted to not be alone.

It had become much colder after a few months. I never liked the cold, even burying myself in a barrier of jackets, scarves, and hoodies did little to keep the chill out. Like a child hiding under their covers, I peeked out from my layers, trying to pierce through the blanket of white. Knowing I would see the dog, but dreading it all the same.

Would I be next? Would I never reach school?

I was leaving my neighborhood when the sound of twisting metal, followed shortly by a screeching of tires, cut through the once silent morning. I screamed and spun around in every direction, foregoing my false sense of security.

It was my turn. It was my turn, but I wasn’t going to make it easy.

But I didn’t see it. There was a loud splash and people screaming instead. I could barely make out shapes moving in the distance and followed after them. My body was stiff from the cold, my muscles tense. I kept my fists clenched, just in case.

It was mostly students from my school. They stood by a metal fence, twisted and broken as if someone had plowed straight through it. As I moved closer, I saw that was exactly what had happened. There were skid marks in the road leading up to the fence, like the person had tried to hastily break before the inevitable. The fence had once separated the road from a steep hill which led down to a lake. From what I had heard, the lake was a popular tourist attraction during the warmer months. It had frozen solid last week, another hot topic with students who swore it’s never happened before.

And today a truck drove into it. As I approached the fence, I could make it out. Big and red. It had made it a good distance into the lake, the front half of it buried beneath the ice. There were a few people already down by the shore, shouting, but none of them were keen on entering the frigid waters.

I stood a short distance from the ruined fence, debating what to do next, when something flew by me, nearly knocking me over. I wanted to scream, but couldn’t. It had the same affect on several others nearby. I scrambled over to the fence right in time to see a dark shape dive into the water. More screams. The people near the lake were shouting again, but now they were running away, running from whatever it was that dived in. I couldn’t pull my eyes away.

The lake was still for only a moment before something burst back out from the water. The few people left on the edge ran closer as two figures made their way to the shore. A man and a dog.

The German Shepherd.

It pulled the man’s arm and released it when the dog pulled the rest of his body free from the ice cold water. It scampered away when people rushed over to aid the man. Before it vanished into the fog, it stopped. I watched with wide eyes and bated breath as it turned, looked straight up at me, and smiled.

Then I was standing. Running. Wanting to scream—to cry, but being unable to.

The other students were already having grand discussions about the dog before class even started. A name did stick this time. Hero. They wondered if it was a stray, or a police dog gone vigilante.

No one mentioned seeing it smile.

When they weren’t talking about the dog, they were talking about me. Whispering behind my back. Giving me the same suspicious looks they gave Mutt, Kat, and Stallion. It had been going on for months now, there had to be some story circulating about the Dead Tea Drinker Society. There was always a story with these people. I was quickly learning this school had a thing for the strange. Maybe they told ghost stories about us, the weird kids who meet up at graveyards. Thinking about it made my stomach hurt.

Mutt was missing again during class, so I was having a harder time than usual distracting myself from thoughts of the dog. It being the main topic of the other students didn’t help much, either. By the middle of the day, I was desperate to have someone to talk to. Anyone at all. But I was in a maze of leering eyes and condescending whispers. The walls were tight, the air thick, and at every step I expected to see the German Shepherd smiling behind a hunched-over student or feeling its breath on the nape of my neck.

I stepped outside of school, needing the fresh air. The fog had gone away again, but the cold was bitter. I weathered its chill and started to walk the quarter mile or so it took to get to the school’s track field when I saw her. Kat, sitting under a tree.

I raised my arm, prepared to wave and call out to her, when I saw how motionless she was.

My heart slowed as I stepped closer. Her eyes were closed. I couldn’t see if she was breathing through the large coat she wore. The grass crunched under my shoes as I neared, but she never stirred.

I kneeled in front of her. Her skin was so pale. Like a ghost. I held my breath as I reached a hand to her mouth. It was like dropping the weight of the world when I felt her breath on my fingers. I fell back on my backside, flinching slightly at the stirring of the frosted grass beneath me, but still she did not wake. Heavy sleeper.

Her red backpack was open against her and there was a sketch pad open on her lap. I leaned in again. I could hear her gentle snoring. My face grew hot as I fought the urge to look back up at her face.

The picture was of a squid. A giant one. Deep in the ocean with a lone submarine dwarfed in its shadow. It was all done in charcoal with black smears decorating the page. I thought again of the rubbings in the graveyard. Kat did them all perfectly after the one time she tried showing me how to do it. I looked from her blackened fingers to the piece of charcoal that had fallen in the grass and started to reach for it when I had the sudden, hair rising feeling of eyes watching me.

“How long have you been there?”

I straightened up. Kat was awake in much the same position but now with those green eyes fixated directly on me. I scooted back from her and tried to stand, but it was like her eyes locked me in place. So, instead, I looked down at the piece of charcoal lying in the grass.

“Well?”

“Not long. I like your drawing,” I said in a quick breath.

Her eyes narrowed as she closed the drawing pad. She slowly stood up. My entire body tensed. My knees wouldn’t stop shaking when I tried again to stand. The wind that blew between us in that moment of silence was especially cold.

“Why are you here?” She held the pad close to her chest.

I was unable to speak. Meeting her eyes was like challenging her, and I didn’t want to challenge her. I was trying not to screw up again, to say the right thing, but she spoke with no emotion. Only a frown and glaring eyes.

“Is there a club meeting today?” I tried.

“Why do you care?”

“Well, I just...”

I was screwing up again. Damnit. Why couldn’t I speak normally? Why couldn’t I speak normally around her?

“This isn’t for everyone. You might think you are right for this, you might even look the part, but if you have any reservations at all then you don’t belong with us.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. Why now? Why was she telling me this now? I’ve spent weeks and weeks with them. I’ve been to their meetings. I talked with them. I was nice to them. What more did she want?

I swallowed. “Are you testing me?”

Her eyes widened. The cold wall faltered. “What?”

I took a breath. “You’re always giving me a hard time, ever since we met, and I think I know why. Mutt and Stallion, they’re your only friends, right? Your only good ones, at least. I’ve seen how everyone acts around you guys, how they’re starting to act around me now, and you want to make sure I’m not one of them.”

I took another breath to steady myself and met her eyes. I stared straight into them. I could have sworn I saw her flinch.

“I am right for this. I’m not like the others; I want to be one of you.”

A staring contest started almost straight away. I was facing down the wild animal as it debated whether or not to eat me alive. When it opened its mouth, I considered running, apologizing, begging for my life—but then it sneezed.

A loud noise. Enough to make me stifle a surprised cry. Kat wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve. The cold wind smacked me straight in the face and I almost fainted. What did I say? Did I really say all that? What is she thinking? What is she going to do to me? Did I just screw everything up—?

“If you are serious about being one of us, there is something you have to do,” she said. She sniffed and turned away from me. I watched her walk back to her back pack, slipping the sketch pad into it, before gathering up the nerve to speak again.

“And what is that?”

She looked back at me and my mouth fell open. She was smiling. Smiling. At me. But it didn’t make me warm inside—didn’t fill me with hope or thoughts of the future. There was nothing comforting about that smile.

I adjusted my footing, crinkling the grass again. I might have to run.

“There’s a girl, her name is Mary. We call her Mouse. She’s small. Brown hair. Glasses. Almost always reading a book. You might’ve seen her around.”

“Mouse?”

“Cute, right?” Kat said, her voice flat, her smile already faltering, “Anyway, I know you’ve seen her. She’s in two of your classes.”

“I—Wait, two of my classes? How do you know that?”

“We keep track of our own.” Kat’s eyes darted to the ground for a brief moment. “Well, she was one of us, but she quit the club last year and won’t come back. I want you to go on a date with her and convince her to come back to us.”

Too much. It was too much and too fast. How could I keep up? My throat wouldn’t cooperate. Too dry, too tight. When did it become so warm?

Her smile returned. Could it be possible it was even worse the second time?

“What’s the matter? Have you never been on a date before?”

I didn’t have words to say. Again. She wanted me to go on a date? With someone else? How was I supposed to react to that?

“You don’t have to worry, there is a DTDS meeting today in 314. Be there and, as a group, we can discuss the plans for the date.”

It had become so quiet. There was no one here. Not a soul. She wouldn’t stop watching me, wouldn’t stop smiling. I had to put a stop to this. Make a change here. I opened my mouth.

Then came the blaring ringing of the bell. I looked back towards the school. That explained the silence.

I bit my lip. There was still time. I turned to her. “Kat—”

Green. How did she get so close without making a sound? Those green eyes were all I could see. She smiled for a third time and patted the right side of my face with a fingerless gloved hand. My cheek erupted with sparks of pain and warmth.

“Good luck,” she said.

She walked around me and past me. I had a moment of déjà vu as I stood there listening to her retreating footsteps.

The piece of charcoal still lay forgotten in the grass. A little black spot in a field of green and white. I walked over and picked it up. It was wet, but smeared easily on my fingers. I placed it in my pocket and rubbed the black smudges between my finger tips.

If I touch my face everyone will see. If I touch my face, everyone will see.