Battle of the Beasts Read online

  But Cordelia felt a different look. She felt the look of the person who had been watching her—back again, seeing what she was going through, and feeling pleased about it. She whirled around at the window, but no one was there. I’m losing it!

  She could only think of one place to go.

  Cordelia dashed down the hallway with her hands in her bag. Why had she not worn something with pockets today? Because, she thought, I wanted to wear leggings with this vintage sweater.

  Tim Bradley, from her chemistry class, suddenly appeared at the end of the hall. He was tall, on the basketball team, with shaggy red hair, blue eyes, and a sweet smile. He sneaked glances at Cordelia in chemistry when he thought she wasn’t looking—but Cordelia always knew when someone was staring at her. Especially a cute guy.

  Still, Tim never talked to her. Maybe he didn’t have the courage. Except now he was waving at her, holding a hall pass.

  “Hi, Cordelia . . . are you okay?”

  “Can’t talk!” Cordelia said, moving past him. She couldn’t believe it. Boys never knew how to time anything.

  “But . . . wait! You’re going into the—”

  I know, thought Cordelia as she dipped inside the women’s faculty restroom.

  She closed the door. The faculty restrooms were like hidden temples at her school; no one had ever been inside them, and they could contain anything. Luckily this one was empty. Cordelia pulled out her hands to examine them.

  They were worse. Like gnarled old sticks with gray hide pulled over them. Like fossilized snakeskins. With great difficulty, she managed to lock the door, noticing as she did that her hands were still getting older, shriveling and cracking in real time, like they were going to fall off and leave her with stumps—

  Like the Wind Witch, she realized. Who had a hand like this? Dahlia Kristoff, that’s who.

  Cordelia’s hands were cold. Ice-cold. Suddenly she had an idea. She used her elbows to turn on the sink’s hot water.

  When we were on the pirate ship, what did the Wind Witch do to me? She turned me to ice. And what’s the opposite of ice?

  Cordelia shoved her hands into the sink. The water burned; she jerked back but held firm. Steam rose into her face. Tears came out of her eyes.

  This is good; this will help. Beat the ice. Beat it with heat.

  She wiped her eyes on her shoulder. When she looked down, her hands were back to normal. They were swollen, crimson, and throbbing, but they no longer resembled Dahlia Kristoff’s hands. Cordelia collapsed on the bathroom floor.

  She returned to class. Nobody said a word. She guessed that Mrs. Mortimer had warned them to respect other people’s privacy. But now everyone would be talking about her. She needed to find Brendan and Eleanor ASAP, to discuss what the heck was going on. But not until they got home. Talking about the Wind Witch in public was dangerous.

  At lunchtime, Cordelia didn’t feel like eating, or talking to anyone. Fortunately Bay Academy had a sushi bar, so she grabbed a tiny prepackaged container of salmon sushi and sat by the window.

  “Hi, Cordelia.”

  It was Tim, from the hallway. Cordelia had a momentary burst of excitement before she remembered the crazy situation she had been in that morning—then she felt a quiet numbness as she realized she’d need to lie to Tim.

  “Yes?”

  “I just . . . seeing you before . . . are you okay? I mean, you seemed upset—”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I thought I was getting the stomach flu, but I’m okay now.” Cordelia forced a smile, took a bite of sushi.

  “Look,” said Tim, a bit nervous, “I was wondering . . .”

  “Yes?” asked Cordelia, taking another small bite.

  “If you’re not too busy this weekend, would you like to go to a movie with me?”

  Cordelia blinked. Somebody put this day in the calendar! The first time a boy has officially asked me out! Hopefully the freaky thing with my hands won’t happen again. Maybe I imagined it all. Maybe everything’s just fine.

  But there was one thing that wasn’t fine. The last time Cordelia’s heart had raced like this, it was because of Will, and she still missed him. . . .

  But you know what? Will’s gone. He had his chance and he never showed up. And Tim is right here.

  Cordelia didn’t want to appear too eager. She took one last bite of sushi, for dramatic effect, ready to answer yes, when she heard a chunk and felt a tugging in her gums. Now what?

  She pulled the piece of sushi out of her mouth. The salmon was covered in blood.

  Protruding from the top of it, like a gravestone, was one of her teeth.

  Tim Bradley stared at the tooth in horror. He looked at Cordelia, back to the tooth, back to Cordelia. . . . “Uh,” muttered Tim, “I just remembered. I have to get a haircut this weekend. Maybe some other time.”

  Tim backed away, bumped into a table, and made himself scarce. Cordelia cupped the tooth-sushi in her hand and rushed out of the cafeteria. Kids gasped and stared, but there was nothing she could do—she needed help. She barreled down the hall and pushed open the door to the nurse’s office, screaming: “You need to put it back in! Can you put it back in?”

  “Put what back where?” Nurse Pete said.

  Bay Academy’s school nurse weighed almost three hundred pounds, with big sweat stains in the underarms of his dress shirt. He was bald, with a small gray goatee, black glasses, and fuzzy blue Uggs. The office was covered in posters about depression and lice.

  “My tooth fell out!”

  Nurse Pete pointed to a bench. Cordelia sat while he took the sushi, then handed her a towel to stop the bleeding. As it subsided, he placed the tooth and sushi in separate Ziploc bags.

  “Can you explain what happened?”

  “It just came out like a baby tooth.” Cordelia moved her tongue into the spot where her tooth had been. She could feel her exposed, ragged gumline.

  “Baby teeth get loose before they come out,” Nurse Pete said. “Was this tooth loose?”

  “No—”

  “But sushi’s very soft. It’s nearly impossible for food that soft to extract a tooth. This is very disturbing, could be serious.”

  “Like how serious?”

  “Gum disease, mouth ulcer, oral cancer—”

  “Cancer?”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “You’re the one who said cancer!”

  “Here.” Nurse Pete handed Cordelia two Advil and a Solo cup full of water. “Take these. And most importantly . . . you need to see a dentist. A dental specialist. Have your mother make an appointment.”

  Yeah right, Cordelia thought as she took the Advil. Nurse Pete meant well, but of course she couldn’t discuss this with her parents. Her parents would send her to a bunch of specialists, but they wouldn’t find anything, because this was no normal tooth decay. This was a curse. And it had something to do with Kristoff House.

  Come to think of it, Cordelia thought, should I even tell Bren and Nell? If she told her siblings that her hands were turning geriatric and her teeth were coming out, what would that accomplish? It would be one thing if she were the little sister and everyone was expected to take care of her. But she was the oldest—she was supposed to be the strong one. How can I expect to be successful at anything if I can’t even handle my own problems?

  Once she was out of the nurse’s office, Cordelia scratched at her arm as she walked down the hall. Nurse Pete had told her to go home but she didn’t want people to start talking about her, so she was just going to sit in class, keep her mouth closed, and eat broth and triple-whipped smoothies to protect her remaining teeth. But now her arm was itching something fierce. What’s going on?

  Cordelia began to pull back her sleeve. When she reached the itchy spot, several peach-colored flakes fell onto the floor. Cordelia picked one up and examined it. Skin! There was a torn patch on her arm, as if the flesh had been peeled away like cheap black ink on a Lotto card. Like she’d been scratching for hours, getting through her skin—r />
  And under it was ice.

  No veins. No muscle or blood. Just clear blue ice.

  Terrified, Cordelia tapped the ice with her fingernail. It made a small clacking sound. She pulled her sleeve back down. Her flesh was cold beneath it. She wasn’t going to look. She wasn’t going to say anything. She wasn’t sure how, but she was going to deal with this herself.

  On the way home from school, as soon as Angel had rolled up the partition in his town car (he was shouting at sports radio, “No way should that bum get into the Hall of Fame! He ate steroids like M&Ms!”), Brendan asked Cordelia, “A frozen Snickers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know what’s worse: you lying to me, or you expecting me to believe such a ridiculous lie.”

  “It’s not a lie.”

  “Do you know how many lawsuits Snickers would have if people bit into their candy and lost their teeth?”

  “Sorry for not following the Snickers lawsuit blog. But I do know it happened to me. Anyway, what happened to your backpack?”

  Cordelia pointed to the plastic bag below Brendan’s seat, where he was carrying his books, having ditched his knockoff Mastermind bag in the locker room trash. Eleanor looked at it too. Brendan had a lot of explaining to do.

  “I, mmm . . .” He fumbled. “I met a collector.”

  “A collector?”

  “Yeah, a guy whose hobby is collecting Mastermind stuff,” said Brendan.

  “This ‘collector’ just happened to be hanging out at school?” asked a skeptical Cordelia.

  “Mom said you’re not s’posed to talk to strangers who hang out around school,” said Eleanor.

  “It wasn’t a stranger,” said Brendan. “It was someone I know.”

  “Who?”

  “Norm the janitor.”

  “Norm the janitor’s kinda weird,” said Cordelia.

  “Yeah,” added Eleanor. “He’s always asking me if I wear Louboutin shoes.”

  “Anyway, he offered to pay me one hundred dollars more for the bag than I originally bought it for,” said Brendan.

  “The school janitor is going to pay you eight hundred bucks for a backpack?” asked Cordelia.

  “Yep,” said Brendan. “Then I’ll be able to pay Mom back and—”

  Eleanor interrupted. “That’s even stupider than Cordelia’s story. You both need to stop lying.”

  Brendan and Cordelia looked at the floor. It hurt to be called out.

  “All right, it’s my turn to tell you guys what happened today,” said Eleanor. “But I’m telling the truth. These two girls told me I need a new phone.” Eleanor pulled out her starter phone. “Is this really so bad?”

  “Yeah, Nell,” said Brendan. “You should ask Mom for a new one.”

  “But I like it! It’s good enough for me! I don’t need all this fancy new stuff we have. I don’t even like being driven around in this car! It’s weird.”

  “You’re the one who made all this happen,” said Cordelia. “You wished for the money. Think how broke we would be if we didn’t have it!”

  “I don’t care,” said Eleanor. “And think if you’re Mom. Would you want to hear me asking for a new phone the same night you hear that you lost your backpack and you lost your tooth?”

  Eleanor was getting upset.

  Cordelia gave her a hug, and then Brendan did.

  “Don’t worry,” said Brendan. “After she finds out how messed up Deal and me are, she’ll be happy all you’re asking for is a new phone. And if those girls at school make fun of you again, just get your big brother on it.”

  “Yeah?” asked Eleanor, still held tight by her siblings.

  “Sure,” said Brendan. “You shoulda seen what happened when Scott Calurio started hassling me today. Let’s just say he won’t be doing it again.”

  “Thanks, Bren,” said Eleanor.

  Brendan gave her a big fake smile. Cordelia noticed this and realized her brother was lying. But she didn’t say a word. She just felt cold. We’re all lying about something. Maybe even Eleanor.

  The car went over a big bump and their hug separated.

  Back at home, Eleanor waited for the right moment to approach her mom. She decided that after dinner, when the dishes were cleared and the dishwasher was on, she’d send a text with a riddle she heard at school: What do you call a snoring bull? But she wouldn’t add the answer: A bulldozer. Then she would make up a story about how her phone was broken and some of her texts didn’t always get sent.

  When the time came, though, Eleanor decided, I’m not lying to my mom. We’ve got enough secrets in this house.

  “Hey, Mom!”

  Mrs. Walker was on the couch. Brendan and Cordelia were off upstairs. Dr. Walker had never showed up for dinner.

  “I think it’s time for an upgrade.” Eleanor presented her phone. “I know you don’t want me on the internet a lot, but you can get me a data thingy with tiny internet, or I could just take Dad’s other phone if he doesn’t want it—”

  Mrs. Walker sat up straight. “What do you mean, ‘Dad’s other phone’?”

  Eleanor backpedaled. “I meant, Dad’s old phone.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Walker. “You definitely said other.”

  “Right, well . . . you know, being dyslexic, I sometimes screw up words,” Eleanor said.

  “You and I both know that isn’t part of being dyslexic,” said Mrs. Walker. “Does your father have a secret phone?”

  Eleanor gulped. Her mother’s eyes were . . . Eleanor looked for the word. Not mad . . . not sad . . . Anxious. And that’s worse than anything.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Look.” Mrs. Walker took Eleanor’s hand. “Your father hasn’t been acting like himself, and I really need to find out what’s going on. I can’t promise you that it will be easy, but if he has a secret phone, and you show it to me, it will help us figure out what his problems really are.”

  “And then we can solve them?”

  Mrs. Walker nodded.

  “And be a normal family again?”

  “Well. I don’t know if any family is normal.”

  “We used to be more normal.”

  “I will grant you that.”

  “Okay,” Eleanor said. “I’ll show you, Mom. But you can’t tell anyone what I’ve been doing.”

  Eleanor brought her mother into the kitchen and said, “First, you need to cook up some pizza rolls.”

  “What? Now you’re hungry? I thought you were going to show me the phone—”

  “It’s in the attic.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Brendan’s in the attic,” said Eleanor.

  Mrs. Walker made a face, knowing this was underhanded. Still, within five minutes, the pizza-roll smell was wafting through the house and Eleanor was pulling her mother out of the kitchen as Brendan ran down toward it.

  “I’ve been going to the attic when Bren’s not around,” Eleanor admitted as they went up the back staircase.

  “Nell! It’s his room! Why would you do that?”

  “To pretend—” started Eleanor, but she was cut off as they heard Brendan chanting: “Pizza rolls! Pizza rolls! Pizza rolls!”

  “What do you pretend when you’re up there?” asked Mrs. Walker.

  “That the house is a big ship,” Eleanor said, “and the attic’s the captain’s quarters, and I’m the captain. Or that it’s the starship Enterprise and I’m Spock. Brendan does this thing where he hangs the rope in a certain way to try and catch if people go in there, but I know how to put it back so I don’t get caught.”

  “Nell,” Mrs. Walker said admonishingly, “it’s important to use your imagination, but it’s equally important to respect other people’s space.”

  Eleanor nodded. She couldn’t admit the real reason she played in the attic: to look out the window and remember how it felt when she first saw the forest outside Kristoff House. Back on their adventure. When everything was so exciting. And when the Walkers were
working together, facing challenges, being close—not lying to one another.

  They reached the attic steps. Eleanor explained to her mom: “Okay, so sometimes, besides playing in the attic, I play in the dumbwaiter.” She pointed to the square metal door in the wall.

  “That’s awful!” said Mrs. Walker. “I mean, if the thing broke, you would—”

  “Fall and break my neck?”

  “What on earth are you going to tell me next? That you’re joining a gang?”

  “Relax, Mom. I’m just explaining how I saw Dad go into the attic.”

  “Oh.”

  “Friday after school, I was playing in the dumbwaiter, and I saw him go in. Like, secretly.”

  Eleanor led her mom up the stairs.

  There were two big piles of magazines in Brendan’s attic—Sports Illustrated and Game Informer—and one continuous snaking pile of dirty clothes that led to a hamper, which curiously held no clothes. Posters on the wall had started to peel off and been reattached with gum. A plate of blue-tinged grilled-cheese crusts rested on top of a goldfish bowl where Brendan’s goldfish, Turbo, refused to die.

  “Dad was only in here for a minute,” Eleanor explained, “but after he left, I came up to see what he was doing. He left that bottom drawer open. Just a crack. When I looked inside . . . I found the phone. It was tucked under Brendan’s old dinosaur pajamas, which he would never wear.”

  Mrs. Walker went to Brendan’s bureau and opened the drawer. Nestled under the bright green pajamas was an iPhone.

  Mrs. Walker picked it up. The phone was locked. She tried to unlock it with Dr. Walker’s birthday: 0404. That didn’t work. She tried her own birthday, 1208, and sighed.

  “What?” Eleanor asked.

  “No matter what I find on here,” said Mrs. Walker, “I know he’s still thinking of me.”

  Mrs. Walker went to Recent Calls, but all the outgoing calls were made to just one number.

  “415-555-1438,” Mrs. Walker read.

  “What’s that, Mom?”