“You’re so stupid. I was kidding,” Shelly said. Except her voice was 100 percent awe.
“Real, live, human flesh! Come and get it!” Julia said. Her arm itched with a chemical kind of heat, and she felt the displaced air of something else’s movement. Her fingertips trilled with the sensation of something living and breathing that was very close. Her hand wasn’t alone. She should have been worried, but she wasn’t, because everybody looked terrified, and impressed, and spellbound. For once, these Maple Street All-Americans were in awe of ghetto Julia Wilde.
“Oh no!” She rolled her eyes and drummed her legs against the wobbly slab. “Help! It’s got me!” she cried.
“Get off!” everybody was shouting, but she didn’t care. This was fun. This was real. Now that she’d done this, nobody had the right to tease her or Larry. Not ever again.
Then: The air against her hands got hotter and wetter. It blew like breath. The entire slab rattled, screws singing with vibration. Something lunged. She yanked back. Not in time. The pain was strangely clean. She screamed for real. Her hand tore free. Steaming fumes shot up through the knothole as she fell back and rolled off.
“It bit me!” Julia cried, except her voice didn’t come. She’d inhaled some of the fumes. Her lungs were hot; burning! She didn’t feel the warm blood running down her wrist, or even the pain. Just this adrenaline sense of something clean and thoroughly done to both sides of her palm. A bite that had met in the bony middle.
—CRACK!—
Something punched the slab from underneath. The wood went convex.
“It’s alive!” Sam shouted. “Holy cow! It’s alive!”
The Markles jogged a few feet away. So did Ella.
Larry made this terrible sound, this mewl, his hands over his ears.
CRAAAACK!
The whole slab popped, spitting out its anchors and wrenching free from its sonorous rivets.
Sam started running back toward the houses, then Ella and the Markles. Dave’s expression registered unease at the sight of Julia’s hand. He weaved on his feet like he was going to faint. You couldn’t see her wounds for all the blood. “I’ll get help,” he said, staggering back. Then he was running, too.
Only Larry and practical Charlie stayed. “Are you okay? What can I do?” Charlie sputtered. “That definitely needs stitches, plus tetanus shots and maybe rabies. You have health insurance, right? It’s okay if we call an ambulance, right?”
“Go away,” Shelly rasped. “It’s never gonna happen. She thinks you’re a sphincter.”
Julia’s hand was gummy. Her breath short. By the time she had the presence of mind to speak, Charlie had backed up. “I’ll get help,” he called, soft and nearly inaudible.
“Get up,” Shelly said once he was out of earshot. “That hole’s still barfing steam all over us. I can’t stand it.”
Julia shook her head and pointed at her chest, which was burning.
“Come on!” She pulled Julia by the upper arms and made her stand, then walked with her, step by step.
Julia looked ahead and behind. She couldn’t see Larry. Was he near the hole again? Had he gone with the rest of the kids? She couldn’t catch her breath! She pulled her hand from the cradle of her chest to look at it. She could see puncture wounds, two on each side. Fangs. Was she infected? she wondered crazily. Would she turn zombie?
She lost her center of gravity and sank down, feeling faint. “Go,” Julia coughed out. “Just get Larry. I’ll be fine.”
“Larry’s gone already, like we should be.”
“I can’t move, Shelly.”
“I’ll get in trouble if you die,” Shelly answered as she dragged Julia along the tar-sticky grass. “Come on!”
Julia helped, using one arm to scoot. Pretty soon they were forty feet out. She’d left a trail of blood, which worried her. Because maybe the thing down there had caught her scent.
Shelly got down and scooted alongside Julia.
“Move!”
Julia went faster. She could breathe a little deeper. She knew she was supposed to hate Shelly, and mostly, she did. But being alone with her felt comfortable. It felt like something missing, suddenly returned.
“You’re such a liar, Jules,” Shelly said as they scooted. But her voice was much warmer than before, like she was thinking the same thing.
Fifty feet, maybe more. A safer distance. Julia took a deep breath, and a little more air got through. Her rational mind returned. It had to be an animal down there. A scared dog on some ledge, trapped and trying to break out. Ralph the German shepherd had bit her… right?
“What are you talking about? I don’t lie,” Julia said.
Shelly stopped scooting. Red veins skittered across her pupils. Those tufts of black hair were now slicked to her bony scalp with sweat. “You never told your parents that I wanted to live with you. You lied.”
“I did so ask them.”
“Bull.”
Was Larry ahead of her? He had to be. She wanted to call for him but her breath and throat, her everything hurt too much. “Lady, I need stitches and Larry’s AWOL. I can’t deal with your drama right now.”