“I don’t like the drawings, if I’m being completely honest.” God continued watching the street, the emotions on his face now clear as the cold winter day—he was worried. “Dark needs people like you in his life. People he can trust. People who are willing to see him for who he is now and not just some kid who did something in middle school once.”
“What did he do in middle school?” Claire asked.
God hesitated. “Something stupid. Something he’s paid for a thousand times since then.”
Claire wanted to push him for more answers, she wanted to grab God by the shoulders and force him to answer the same question that had kept her up for hours last night—was he dangerous?
God shook his head and said, “Please just trust me? Just give him a chance and don’t do what everybody does.”
“And what’s that?”
Just then, a teacher’s aide Claire didn’t know—but who obviously had dealt with God before—came outside and told them to follow her to the office. And before she knew it, God’s face had transformed. He was smiling and talking to the aide, all while he directed Claire to the doors behind him, saving her from whatever would happen next.
Claire was still thinking about God and Dark and so she didn’t see Dr. Palmer until she was standing right above her desk.
“Are you deep in thought or completely ignoring my gracious offer of a free period full of nothing but enjoying classic works of literature.”
Dr. Palmer gestured dramatically as she spoke, unfazed by the way the entire class was now staring. Claire sunk down in her desk.
“I’ve already read it,” Claire managed. “Multiple times.”
“Multiple times. Really . . .”
Claire could tell Dr. Palmer was sizing her up, so she went against standard operating procedure and rattled off some trivia.
“Shelley wrote it when she was eighteen, almost on a dare. And a lot of people didn’t think she’d written it because, you know, she was a woman and obviously a woman couldn’t have written something so popular and insightful and revolutionary.”
“Revolutionary?” Dr. Palmer pulled an empty chair next to Claire’s desk and sat down. “That’s an interesting word choice.”
Claire was sitting up in her desk now, her voice beginning to rise with a passion for the book she hadn’t felt in years. If people were still watching, she didn’t care.
“I mean, look at the Monster. It switches to his point of view. Suddenly we’re in the Monster’s head. So, I don’t know, it feels pretty . . .”
“Revolutionary. I hear you. I hear you.”
Dr. Palmer leaned back in the chair, staring off into the distance. This was more than Claire had spoken in the entirety of the past school year. And now, in the wake of her sudden outburst, she wanted to disappear inside the neck of her T-shirt. She could feel every single set of eyes on her, their stares heavy and burdensome. But none more than Dr. Palmer, who was smiling like she discovered a secret.
“So, what do you think the Monster is feeling?”
The question surprised Claire, not because she didn’t know the answer. It was something she’d spent many nights thinking about and, during one eventful language arts class, it had caused her to verbally annihilate a kid who implied that the Monster was nothing more than a thoughtless beast.
But those were old words from an old world. And maybe she’d spent her allowance for the day, because she suddenly couldn’t talk. So she shrugged instead and sat there, hoping that Dr. Palmer would save her and just walk away. When she didn’t, Claire simply said, “I don’t know.”
“Well, I guess you’ve found your project, then.”
And then she stood up and returned to the front of the room.
God and Leg were waiting for Claire at the front door after school. As soon as they saw her, Leg said, “Right” and started walking down the staircase. She nearly fell trying to catch up with them, dodging students and teachers as they wove through the crowd, down the sidewalk, and away from the long line of yellow busses.
“I’m going to miss my bus,” Claire said.
“Good! School busses are instruments of institutional control!” Leg was looking back as he yelled, seemingly about one second from raising his fist in the air and exhorting his fellow students to rise up, rise up! And then he started laughing and dropped his skateboard to the ground, slowly rolling a few feet in front of Claire and God.
“He’s an idiot,” God said.
They were almost to the corner before Claire asked, “Um, where are we going?”
God didn’t say anything, just pointed across the street. A large truck was passing, momentarily blocking her view of the intersection. When it was clear, she saw Dark, head down and drawing in his notebook.
“What is he doing?”
“He can’t be on school property. That’s officially not school property.”
Dark looked up as Leg shot across the street on his board, nearly getting hit by an oncoming car. The driver hammered his horn, to which Leg gave a classy, almost royal, wave. When he got close to Dark, he faked a few punches. Dark didn’t respond at all, just stood there enduring it.
Once Claire and God made it across the street, they all started walking down Lexington Avenue, a road that would eventually land them at Claire’s house. And for a moment, she thought maybe they were walking her home. That they expected to come over and sit around in her living room—an idea that made her breath catch.
But then they turned left on to Selby and made a right onto a street Claire didn’t know, and then another left, until suddenly Claire had no idea where they were. She tried to note every side street (breathing, breathing), hoping that she’d be able to string them together in case . . . what? She needed to escape? The word was an invocation, transforming her body into a jelly-filled panic. Every single muscle told her to run, even though she felt like she could barely walk.
“Hey . . .” God was staring at her. Leg and Dark were halfway inside the door of an apartment building. “This is Dark’s spot. We were going to go in and chill. Are you . . . good?”
Claire managed a thumbs-up, but when God turned to follow his friends into the apartment building, she didn’t move. Couldn’t, actually. Maybe God remembered the skating park. Or maybe Derrick had told them more than she knew, and God had been prepped for a classic Claire freak-out moment. Either way, he let the door close and stood there, waiting.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? She didn’t know when a new nightmare would pounce out of the dark corners of her mind, gripping her entire body in a terror that might last thirty seconds or the rest of the week. She didn’t know why she couldn’t walk to Dark’s apartment, or why she simultaneously felt foolish and under attack.
God wasn’t fazed. “Do you want to call your brother?”
“Yes,” she said, pulling out her phone. “Where are we?”
God gave her the address and watched as she nodded and hit the button for Derrick, smiling as the phone rang (breathing, breathing) and she tried to quiet everything down.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Hi. I went with God and those guys. To Dark’s apartment. We’re at”—she looked at God again for the address—“the corner of Milton and Portland. Next to a church that looks like it should be in a BBC miniseries about friars and nuns.”