Monsters Read online

  “Would the top of the list be that I walked home with Alex?”

  “Of course that’s part of it. Come on. You kissed—”

  “She kissed me.” Cole interjected, but did it really matter? And was it even right to interrupt Michael in the first place?

  “And you were the last person she saw.”

  “I just didn’t want her to walk home alone, Mike. That’s it. I didn’t…I wanted her to be safe. I’m sorry.” How stupid. How stupid to say that, even if it were true. Because she hadn’t been safe. She’d been murdered. But what else could he have done? Gone inside the house? And then what would Michael have thought? Her blood would’ve been on Cole. Literally. Just like Ashley’s blood, and Maggie’s. All of this went through his head, but Cole only added “I’m sorry” again.

  There were never enough sorrys.

  If Michael wanted to say anything more about Alex, he didn’t. Instead, he gathered himself, and shook his head as though he’d nodded off and was trying to wake himself up. He went on to what must’ve been item number two on the why-things-are-weird-with-Cole list: “I don’t like that Eva’s been spending so much time with you.”

  “And Brady. We’re just friends. All of us.”

  “At Alex’s wake, she’s off talking to you about whatever, and I’m just standing there on my own. It was my sister’s wake, Cole.”

  “I know it was, Mike. I felt bad about being there, because everything that went down, and she was just trying to make me feel better about it. That’s all.”

  “I needed Eva with me. That’s the point. It wasn’t about you.”

  Cole didn’t know what to say. He thought about it, maybe for too long. He scanned the room, counting students. Seventeen.

  “Do you remember after the vigil at the clinic? When I chased after you?” Michael asked.

  “Yeah, I said we were friends. We both did,” Cole said.

  “Right, yeah. Friends. So if we’re friends, why are you doing all of this to me? Why’d you do that with Alex? Why are you trying to take Eva away?”

  “I’m not trying to take anything from you, man,” Cole said, “I—”

  The classroom door opened and the math teacher, Mr. Dumas, walked in. He fumbled with some papers on his desk, pushed some out of the way, and straightened others out by stacking them together and knocking them against the desktop. Eventually, he looked up and smiled at nobody in particular. “Morning, everybody.”

  Mr. Dumas walked to the front of the class. Cole wasn’t sure if he was waiting for a collective “Good morning, Mr. Dumas” or not, but he paused as though expecting something anyway. When nothing came, he added “welcome back” to his salutation.

  Then he met eyes with Cole, and to Cole’s chagrin, Mr. Dumas saw fit to create a greeting, special for him. “Let’s all welcome back Cole Harper to Wounded Sky First Nation High School.”

  Cole’s new classmates provided some polite applause. Mr. Dumas kept going. “Mr. Harper, I have to say, everybody here owes you a debt of gratitude.”

  Mr. Dumas fell silent. The classroom, too. It became apparent that he wanted Cole to say a few words.

  So, Cole said, “I just want everything to get back to normal, Mr. Dumas.”

  Mr. Dumas didn’t hide his disappointment that Cole hadn’t stood on a chair and given some epic speech about his heroism. Cole wanted to be thought of positively in the community, but he didn’t have any desire to get into public speaking. Mr. Dumas adjusted his glasses. “Yes, well. Let’s pick up where we left off. I know it feels like forever ago, but we were just getting into algebra.”

  Mr. Dumas walked over to the whiteboard, ignoring the collective groan, and scrawled a question on it.

  “Now, can anybody solve this problem? How about no homework for whoever can do it? You’ve got five minutes.”

  Cole looked through his backpack, rummaging through the textbooks Choch had given him one by one, and realized that he’d not been given any paper (or pencils, for that matter). He sat up straight to find Pam placing one piece of paper and one pen on his desk.

  Cole smiled. “Thanks.”

  “All good,” she said.

  Cole watched as she shimmied between two chairs and sat down at her desk. She exuded something from her cute button nose to her chin-length black hair to some kind of code written on her forearm to her white Chuck Taylors with notes scrawled all over them with black marker.

  “Hey. Psst.”

  Cole swivelled around. Eva raised her eyebrows and motioned to his piece of paper, then the time on her phone—a nudge to do the math problem. Cole gave her a thumbs up and reviewed the question on the whiteboard. He read it over a few times, then got to work. He was still done before anybody else. He looked around the class, but he tried not to look at Pam again because he didn’t want to feel creepy.

  “Cole. Wanna give it a shot?” Mr. Dumas had an erasable marker in hand. He extended it towards Cole, who, in turn, made a mental note to take way more time to answer questions in the future. Refusing to go up, however, seemed like a bad choice.

  Do nothing to make people look at you the way they did before.

  Cole stood slowly, and walked just as slowly to the whiteboard. He accepted the marker and wrote his answer underneath the question Mr. Dumas had given.

  Cole placed the marker down. The sound was louder than it should’ve been. He stepped back to allow Mr. Dumas to review the answer.

  “You got it.”

  Cole nodded sheepishly. He half-expected more applause, like clapping for him was mandatory after catching the killer. Lucy sized him up, coming at him with her eyes, which was as intimidating as when she’d come at him physically before class. Pam raised one eyebrow, like The Rock. Cole didn’t know whether she was impressed or just being sarcastic. Eva and Brady looked unimpressed, like, so what, they’d seen him do way harder things than solve a math equation. Mike burrowed into Cole’s soul with a look of hatred. It gave Cole a chill, and he looked away. He walked to his desk, head down, but he felt Mike’s eyes on him the entire time.

  Making things right with him was a problem Cole didn’t know how to solve.

  3

  VITAMINS

  “DIDN’T THEY GIVE YOU A LOCK?” Brady asked Cole when all four of them, Eva, Brady, Cole, and a subdued Michael—but at least not a glaring Michael—arrived at their cluster of lockers after first period.

  Cole cupped the broken lock in his pocket in case it made a bulge. “I guess not.”

  “Kids’ll steal your stuff,” Michael said.

  Eva nodded in agreement. “They will.”

  “I don’t really have any stuff to steal,” Cole said.

  “Suit yourself,” Brady said, “but, I have to tell you, there’s a black market up here for textbooks. It’s pretty scary, actually.”

  “Right,” Cole laughed.

  “Hey, you guys want to head over to the clinic?” Eva asked.

  “Don’t we have second period?” Cole asked.

  “No, there’s a spare,” Brady said, “didn’t you get a schedule?”

  “Not yet,” Cole said, “going to school here was kind of a last-minute thing.”

  “Clearly, since, you know,” Brady waved his hand up and down, putting Cole’s wardrobe on display. It wasn’t Cole’s wardrobe; it was Brady’s.

  “Is he at least paying you rent?” Michael grumbled to Brady, but everybody pretended not to hear.

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing my kókom quick,” Brady said.

  “Trying to see your kókom,” Michael corrected.

  “Trying to, yeah,” Eva agreed. “Visiting hours have gotten strange.”

  “They wouldn’t even let me in yesterday because I didn’t have family there,” Cole said.

  “My kókom’s your family,” Brady gave Cole a pat on the shoulder. “I’ll get you in.”

  Cole shrugged. “Worth a shot. Sure.” And if Dr. Captain was there, he’d see if she had a small supply of pills that could get him through the n
ext however-long-he-would-be-here.

  “And then we just have lunch, so there’s no rush,” Eva pointed out.

  “After lunch is…” Cole prompted.

  “Gym,” Brady sighed.

  “Okay, so we can’t miss that,” Cole said, “especially if there’s a basketball court.”

  “I mean there is—” Eva started.

  “But it’s crap,” Michael interjected.

  “Excuse Mr. Grump over here,” Eva said, elbowing Michael in the side, who then brushed her arm away.

  “Hey, if there’s a hoop and any kind of ball, I’m good.” Anything, Cole thought, to wash away this morning’s experience.

  The basketball talk had led to a conversation about Cole’s team in the city, which Cole kind of enjoyed, even though lately every conversation seemed merely a distraction, for him and for everybody else. So they didn’t have to talk about sickness or death. So, for Cole, there were fleeting moments where he didn’t see Ashley’s face, or Alex’s, or Maggie’s. Or Scott, the one who had killed them.

  When the clinic was visible, the basketball talk ended abruptly.

  “You know what I want to know, now that Mihko is back?” Eva asked.

  “What they’re doing here?” Brady said.

  “What they did here,” Eva said.

  “And what they had to do with…everything,” Cole said.

  “Right,” Eva said. “It’d be awesome to know why I was a lab rat.”

  “Couldn’t have been harmful, at least,” Michael said. “You never noticed anything anyway if they were experimenting on you.”

  “That’s the point,” Eva said. “I never even knew anything was happening, that they were, I don’t know, pumping something into my body?”

  “Vitamins,” Cole said.

  “What?” Brady asked.

  Cole hadn’t noticed saying anything out loud, but obviously he did. “Vitamins,” he repeated. “I thought I was getting vitamins, from my dad. Maybe you did, too.”

  Eva looked trapped in thought. She looked around, her eyes darting here and there, her mind working. She shook her head. “I don’t remember…”

  “Maybe it wasn’t,” Cole shrugged.

  “You can’t just say that, and then say it wasn’t,” Michael said.

  “My dad was doing something different,” Cole said. “That’s what I mean.”

  “Different how?” Brady asked. “He worked for them, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but what he did on me was, like…” Cole tried to remember the wording in the file on him, wording that had been different from the files on all the other kids, including Eva. “…unauthorized.” That was the best word he could come up with.

  “And it worked,” Eva said.

  “Yeah,” Cole said. “It worked for some people. Some people, not so much. Like Chief Crate.”

  “Cole, he died the night you got back, you couldn’t have done anything about that.”

  “What about all the others?” Cole said, and he meant more than just the ones who’d fallen ill. He meant everybody who had died, everybody he hadn’t been able to save.

  “He’s right,” Michael said.

  “Shut up, Mike,” Eva said.

  “Why are you always on his side!?”

  “Because you’re wrong, that’s why!”

  “Hey!” Brady said. “Stop it. We’re supposed to be in this together, okay?”

  “Why, because we all know Cole has mutant blood?” Michael said.

  “Because we still have stuff to figure out,” Eva said.

  “Cole, where are those files?” Brady asked.

  “I don’t know. They disappeared, so…”

  “Well we should find them,” Eva said.

  Yeah, if Jayne ever bothered to show up I could ask her, Cole thought. “Yeah, we should try,” he said.

  “I’m going to ask my dad about vitamins, I guess,” Eva shrugged. “It’s a start, right?”

  “Let’s see if we can even get in first,” Cole said. He was relieved, at least, to see a different guard at the clinic’s front doors. This guard could still try to keep him out for the same reason, but at least he wouldn’t know that Cole had been here yesterday.

  “Family you’re seeing?” the guard asked when the group got to the doors.

  “I’m going to see her dad,” Michael said, pointing to Eva.

  “Is he a relative?” the guard asked.

  “Hey, we’re all cousins, right?” Brady said in an attempt at humour.

  The guard didn’t bite. He just kept looking at Michael, waiting for an answer.

  “No, but—”

  “Sorry, no admittance unless you have family,” the guard said, echoing the exact words the other guard had recited to Cole yesterday.

  “Mike, just tell them you’re seeing your mom, man,” Cole whispered.

  “She’s not working right now,” Michael said to him. “They put her on leave.”

  “On what?” Cole imagined the pills he’d wanted dissolving into thin air. “Why would they put the only doctor on leave?”

  “She said they wanted to give her a break, so they made her take time off,” Michael said. “They’ve got other doctors here anyway.”

  But none that would help me out, Cole thought. Now what was he going to do? Maybe see Scott. Ask him about the files, about why he’d really killed his friends, and try to get Scott to say more than, “That’s classified,” like he’d said at the camp. But Cole figured that would be nearly impossible, not just to get Scott to talk, but to get in to see him at all. If a guard was at the front door, there would definitely be a guard outside of Scott’s room. And Scott might not even be conscious to begin with. On the weekend, Cole had heard he was still in a coma from the beating he took from Cole—and the gunshot from Eva.

  “You?” the guard asked Cole.

  “Oh, uhhh,” Cole scrambled to pull his thoughts back to the task at hand, “my Auntie. Mariah Apatagan.”

  The guard looked Cole over carefully. “The old lady?”

  “That’s right,” Cole said. “The Elder.”

  “He’s actually my cousin, for real,” Brady piped in. “Elder Mariah’s my kókom.”

  “And kókom means?” the guard asked.

  “Grandmother,” Eva said with an eye roll. “Honestly, if you people are going to come into our community, eat at our restaurant, sleep in our community hall, shop at our grocery store, keep us from seeing family or friends, and do whatever the hell your doctors are doing inside here, you should at least learn some basic Cree.”

  “Grandmother, aunt, check,” the guard said to Brady and Cole respectively. “And what about you, sunshine?” he said to Eva.

  “My dad, Wayne Kirkness.” Eva looked like she was holding in a sharp response. Her lips had disappeared into her mouth.

  The guard looked at the clipboard he had, nodding his head. “Alright, go on in. Except you,” the guard said to Michael, “you’ll have to wait outside.”

  “Really? What’s the big deal?” Cole asked, mostly in an attempt to score some points with Michael.

  “Sorry, kids, I’ve got my rules,” the guard said.

  “It’s fine. I’ll just wait,” Michael said to the group.

  “You sure?” Eva asked, at which Michael nodded.

  Before he turned to leave, he shot Cole a look, one that indicated that Cole had not scored points at all. Cole was spending time with Eva, again, without him.

  Inside, they split up. Brady went to see Elder Mariah, and Eva and Cole went to check in on Wayne. At the very least, Cole wanted to hear the vitamin question Eva planned to ask. Without the files, without his own father to ask, it was probably the best—the only—productive thing to do. They found Wayne awake and sitting up in bed when Cole and Eva entered the room.

  “Hey, Dad.” Eva sat down beside the bed.

  “Hi, Mr. Kirkness.” Cole stood at the foot of the bed to give Eva and her dad some space.

  “Hey, kids.” Wayne put his pocketbo
ok down to give them his full attention. Cole looked him over. This was the first time he’d seen Wayne since the night Scott shot Wayne in the stomach. For a second, Cole pictured Eva’s dad in his arms, bleeding all over Cole as he carried the man to the clinic. Wayne looked a million times better now. That night he had looked white, cold, and perilously close to death.

  “How are you feeling?” Eva asked.

  Wayne patted a bulge under his hospital gown where his stomach was. “Oh, you know, fine. A lot less sore today. I’ll live,” and then Wayne looked at Cole, “thanks to you.”

  “Mr. Kirkness,” Cole said, “you were shot because of me, remember? You’d be fine if it weren’t for me.”

  “Yeah, and Eva would be dead,” Wayne said. “Not being shot and her being dead is not fine. I’ll take the bullet any day of the week and twice on Sundays. So, you did save me.”

  “Twice on Sundays.” Eva imitated him sweetly. “Dad, you sound like an old man.”

  “You saved me from a life without my daughter,” Wayne said. “Thank you for that if nothing else.”

  “You know,” Cole met eyes with Eva, “Eva actually saved my life, Mr. Kirkness.”

  “Oh God, Cole, would you just let my dad thank you so we can move on?”

  “You’re welcome,” Cole said with a bow, at which they all laughed until Wayne held his stomach and grimaced.

  “Dad,” Eva leaned forward and put her hands on his forearm, “are you okay? Should I call somebody?”

  Wayne laughed. “You could, but they wouldn’t be here for a week.”

  “Why?” Cole asked. “Isn’t that their job?”

  “They’re far more concerned with the people who magically recovered from the flu,” Wayne said. “I’m chopped liver.”

  “That was weird, everybody suddenly recovering like that.” Eva gave Cole a knowing look.

  “Super weird,” Cole agreed.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Wayne said. “All I have to do is get better, then hopefully I can leave. I could probably leave right now and nobody would notice.”

  “Except for the guard at the front door,” Eva said.

  “We could do it like in the movies, only reversed,” Cole said. “We could dress Mr. Kirkness up like a janitor or something, and then leave with him. Poof. Done.” Eva and her dad had stone faces. They didn’t know what he was talking about. “Like in The Fugitive? When Harrison Ford dresses up like a janitor and goes into the hospital…”