“Girl,” the monster says.
Julie sighs. Honestly, she still hasn’t bothered to learn all the rules and bylaws governing the relationship between the good people of Indianola and the monsters who made this spot of Texas their home; no one else in town seems to care, and Julie has big plans to get the hell out of Indianola as soon as she graduates. What do you need to know about monsters once you leave the county limits? Nothing, that’s what, because nothing is exactly what you’ll remember about the stupid things anyway.
The monster turns around in the cage and settles its head down on its paws. Weird that it had gotten so far away from the power plant—the ones who can’t talk usually stay close, since they’re considered vermin and can be exterminated. A threat to the human population, that’s what the official documents say. Julie doesn’t like the idea of killing them, even though it was the monsters themselves who said it was okay, that it’s like killing rats or deer. It almost never happens, and she’s never had to, but still.
They drive on. The edges of Indianola disappear into the fields of pale grass, already turning yellow in the summer heat. The radio station crackles and then disappears, the way it always does—once you pass the power plant it’ll kick up again, as strong as ever. Julie switches it off, though, because she knows from experience that sometimes you hear voices in the static.
The power plant materializes on the horizon.
Julie has seen it dozens of times, but it’s always a surprise, and it always leaves her with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. It looks like a painting on the poster for a science fiction movie, a convoluted tangle of gray pipes, twisting and winding on top of one another. At night the pipes twinkle with amber lights. Julie’s only seen that once. She knows you don’t come out here at night.
There’s smoke today, a thin trickle of it seeping out of the plant and flattening against the pale sky.
“So what do y’all got cooking in there?” Julie asks, trying to deflect her nervousness.
“Girl.”
Julie shivers, her chest tightening. “Jesus, I hope not.” She pulls up to the entrance gate. The KEEP OUT sign’s still there, dotted with rust. It’s not the sign that keeps people away. Not even dumbass football players try breaking in here. Everyone in town knows it’s bad news.
And yet her father won’t give her a job at the video store like she keeps asking, and so here she is, punching in the access code.
The gate screeches open. Julie eases in. The monster shuffles in its cage, trying to sit up.
“Almost got you home,” she says, cruising down the narrow main road. The power plant rises up on both sides, hemming her in. Julie clenches the steering wheel tighter. The van and the smoke are the only things moving in the entire plant.
Finally, she makes it to the main building, where Aldraa spends his days. She parks in the usual spot, climbs out, heaves the monster’s cage out with a grunt. It’s hotter here than in town, the sun reflecting off all these acres of asphalt. When it catches the metal in the pipes, it throws off broken shards of white light.
Julie takes a deep breath, puts in her earplugs, tells herself nothing’s going to happen, and then goes inside.
Being inside is even worse than being outside. The monsters have the buildings fixed up the way they like, warm and humid and crawling with strange dark green plants that look sort of like moss. Julie does her best not to look at those plants, because when you do, you see that they twitch and pulse like they’re breathing.
“Julie Alvarez.” Aldraa’s voice booms through the room, rattling like thunder, reverberating across her eardrums. It hurts even with the earplugs. “You are here.”
He always knows who it is. “Yes, I’m here.” Julie sets the cage on a clear patch of floor, where she can see the speckled tile from when this used to be a place for humans, and peers into the thick, dingy dark. “One of your boys got out.”
A pause. Julie’s heart thuds. She wants to drop off the monster and leave, the way she’s supposed to. Except today she’s got some questions for Aldraa.
“I’d like to speak to you.” Her blood rushes in her ears. “I need to ask you something.”
Another pause. Aldraa’s breathing somewhere in the recesses of the lobby. The monster rattles against its cage, and Julie kneels down and opens the latch. The monster shoots out, scurrying into a tangle of plants.
The floor shakes. Once, twice. Footsteps.
Julie straightens up. She braces herself.
Aldraa appears.
He’s enormous, almost as tall as the high lobby roof, and shaped like a person but not quite. His proportions are off, his arms and torso too long and twisting, his head too small. Julie tries not to look straight at him, but still she feels the beginning throb of a migraine in her right temple.
“What do you want?” he says.
“You’re in violation of the agreement,” Julie says, keeping her eyes on a spot just above his left shoulder. There’s something about him that makes her dizzy, like he’s much more solid, much more there, than the things around him. And that includes her.
“I haven’t left the power plant in forty-nine years.”
The headache surges in time with the beat of his voice.
“I realize that. But the monster I just brought in was at an Indianola citizen’s house. In town.” She points off at the undulating vines, her hand shaking. “The only thing he could say was ‘girl,’ so he could have been exterminated.”
“But you didn’t exterminate him.” Aldraa kneels down, the floor shuddering beneath him. He opens his mouth and reveals the rows of sharp gleaming teeth through which he makes a rattling noise that bores deep into Julie’s brain. She cries out, digs the palm of her hand into her temple.
The monster from Mrs. Sudek’s house slinks out of the plants and scurries up Aldraa’s arm.
“Why did he say ‘girl’?” Julie asks, drawing herself up, trying to eke out her bravery. She tells herself that she’s protected, that no harm can come to her.
“Why do you assume there’s a reason?” Aldraa does something with his mouth that’s meant to be a smile; it’s something he learned from humans but doesn’t work with the muscles of his face. Seeing it sends a wave of nausea rushing through Julie’s stomach and she has to take a deep breath to stop from throwing up.
“Because,” Julie starts. The nausea worsens; her thoughts are becoming gummy and loose like melting candy, turning to slime in the room’s humidity. He’s doing this to her. Aldraa. “Because there’s a girl there, a new girl—you aren’t going to hurt her, are you?” She can’t remember much about the new girl. Only a flash of green eyes, a gleam of pale skin. The phone call—Brittany saying Got a monster down at Mrs. Sudek’s.
“Stop,” she says. “Please, whatever you’re doing with my head, just stop screwing around with me.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Yes you do.” Julie takes a deep breath and concentrates.
“Are you certain Lezir was in the town?” Aldraa strokes the monster’s back with his long vine-like fingers. Gray fur ripples through them.
“Yes. Dammit, Aldraa, stop. Answer my question.” Her voice sounds far away and muted. “You know you have to. It’s part of the treaty, if I think something’s wrong, or that someone’s going to be hurt—”