Grudge.doc

“Heads up,” Michael Glass said, and jerked his chin at something over Shane’s shoulder. “Incoming.”

Shane didn’t even need to look. Michael’s expression said it all – the kind of amusement only a best friend can have when your life is about to hit the brick wall. And there was only one brick wall who’d be walking toward him during the break between classes. (Well, two, but he didn’t think Principal Wiley was out to get him this week. So far.)

“Oh, hey, Shane!” said a girl from behind him. He already knew it was coming, but the voice still gave him cold chills. She was just being so nice. It was completely weird. “Funny running into you here.”

Shane slammed his locker door, spun the lock, and turned to face Monica Morrell, the crown princess of Morganville High School – at least in her own mind. And he wasn’t really all that sure she was wrong, which sucked. He didn’t like her. In a big way, actually. But she did have power, and power was important everywhere in Morganville ... even in English class.

“What, in the same hallway we both walk every day?” he asked. He managed to keep most of his sarcasm out of it, though. “You need something?” He was hoping he was giving off enough not interested, go away vibes to drive off a dozen Monicas, but from the glow in her eyes and the smile on her face, she was definitely not picking up the clue phone. She’d gotten some tanning thing done, and he had to admit, Monica was beautiful, in that predatory mean-girl kind of way. The kind that owed more to product than personality.

She stepped up very close, close enough he could smell the expensive perfume she’d drenched herself in, and dropped her voice to a low purr. “I definitely need something,” she said. Monica was his age, sixteen going on seventeen, but she acted like she’d jumped over the teen years and straight to being some oversexed middle-aged cougar. Not that he had anything against oversexed middle-aged cougars; he’d take one of those over Monica any day. “Let’s find someplace quiet and discuss it.”

Somewhere behind him, Michael – who was unconvincingly sorting through books at his own locker, killing time and shamelessly gawking – made a choking sound. Shut up, man, Shane thought, but he couldn’t look away from Monica. She was too dangerous. “Yeah,” Shane said slowly. “About that. I’m – I’ve got class.” And he tried to back up and move around her.

She got in his way. Her smile stayed on, and stayed bright, but he saw a little flicker of impatience in her eyes. “Oh, come on, since when is Shane Collins concerned about class?” she practically cooed. And before he could stop her, she came at him, backed him up against the lockers with a bang that attracted the attention of the fifty or sixty MHS students currently in the hallway, and ...

And then all of a sudden she was all over him, hands in the wrong places, sliding up under his shirt, and she was kissing him, and for a long second his body was mostly saying, mmmm, girl, warm, before his brain yelled Monica! and the whole thing went very wrong.

Shane grabbed her by her shoulders and shoved her back. Hard. Monica stumbled, shock all over her pretty face, and for a second he saw genuine hurt ... but only for a second.

Then it was anger, turned up to eleven.

“Oh, sorry, didn’t know you were gay, Collins! I should have known you and Glass – “

“Hey!” Shane said sharply. “Back off.” Because she was already drawing a crowd, and there was nothing Monica liked better than a stage for her personal drama. Michael slammed his locker door, and when Shane glanced over at him, he saw that his friend’s face had gone very still. Michael could get really cold when he wanted, but the last thing he needed right now was Michael weighing in, especially when Monica was bound to push buttons. “Walk away. Look, I’m already doing it.” And he did, shouldering his backpack and pushing past her in the general direction of his next class.

Monica followed. “That’s it? You’re just going to walk away?” Her voice carried so well she really should have been a drama queen. “So you get me to do all those awful things and then you pretend like it never happened?”

“Make up your mind, Monica, either I’m a perv hookup artist, or I’m gay,” Shane said, and kept walking. “Pick one.”

“You’re a walking social disease. I don’t have to pick anything!”

“Certainly don’t have to pick me,” he said, and flashed her a grin and a finger on the way into his classroom. “Not interested.”

And he figured, in his innocence, that it probably would blow over by the end of school.

Wrong.

###

There was no sign of Monica, or any of her posse, lurking around for Shane when school ended, which he figured was a good thing. Michael had headed off to practice guitar, as he did pretty much every day; Shane, on the other hand, was all about the slacking off, preferably someplace not his own house, but in a pinch that would do. Today, he thought he’d walk his sister Alyssa as far as the front door – because he was a good brother, mostly – and then see what kind of trouble he could find in one of the game shops, preferably the one that let him play for free, as long as he bought a game once in a while. His mom would gripe, because he wouldn’t probably show for dinner; his dad wouldn’t much care, because, like most nights, he’d probably wind up at the bar and end up not caring about much.

Alyssa would care, but she was a big girl now, and she’d just have to get over it, the way Shane had gotten over all of the crap that came along with being a Morganville inmate. 

He loitered outside of the junior high gym until his sister came out – a leggy, willowy girl with a face that was going to be beautiful when it finally gave up the baby fat. For now, she looked ... sweet. 

And deeply amused. 

“What?” Shane stayed slumped against the concrete wall. She slumped next to him and crossed her arms. Out on the grass field, the Morganville High Vipers football team was making an effort to look tough. Not very successfully. 

“You,” Alyssa said, and laughed. She had a nice laugh, when it wasn’t directed at him. “I hear you got all up Monica’s nose today.”

“She did it first,” Shane said. “She was all over me in the hall. I guess you heard that, too.”

“Hands down your pants?”

“What? No!” His ears were turning red. He didn’t even want to have this conversation with his twelve-year-old sister. “It wasn’t like that.”

“So what was it like? Did she kiss you?”

Yes. “Kinda.”

“Tongue kiss?”

“Shut up, Lyss.”

“Because tongue kissing Monica would probably give you some dire germs.”

“I’m not kidding, shut up!”

Alyssa made a rude noise, but she let it go, pushed off the wall and started walking with long, easy strides. She was wearing gym clothes – gray shorts, a t-shirt Shane personally felt was too tight, and cross-trainers with little footie socks. She was sweet, and shy with everybody but Shane, it seemed like. “So after the thing we won’t discuss, I heard you punched her.”

“Do you really think I’d punch a girl?”

“Well, it’s Monica.”

“No. I pushed her off me, that’s all. Then she – “

“Wait,” Alyssa said, and turned backward as she walked, facing him. She was basically the only person Shane had ever seen who could walk backward as fast as forward. It was weird. “Let me guess. She said – uh – you were gay?”

Huh. “Yeah.”

“Well, that’s her go-to insult for anybody who doesn’t drool over her like a total perv. Did she go to level two?”

“You tell me.”

“Did she Myspace bomb you yet?”

Shane blinked. “No.”

“Wow. Bet she did. Bet everybody who owes her a favor has gone out and trashed your page.” Alyssa executed a perfect twirl and fell back in step, walking forward. “Next thing she’ll try to get her big brother to arrest you or something.”

Richard Morrell was newly hired on at the Morganville Police Department. Shane didn’t know him well, but any Morrell was bound to be worse than than he expected. “Great,” he said. “Just what I need, a record.”

“Tough guy,” Alyssa said, and sent him a brilliant, sly grin. “Race you.”

“I’m a tough guy. I don’t run.”

“Loser!” She stuck her tongue out at him and set off, long legs flying, her long brown hair whipping like a flag behind her. It was hot still in Morganville – fall wasn’t making itself felt yet – and heat shimmering off the pavement made it look like she was running through water.

“Crap,” he sighed, and kicked it up to a jog, just to keep her in sight. 

Today was a fairly typical day – nobody on the streets, doors and windows closed even during the day. And nobody lurking, at least visibly, to snatch Alyssa off the street. Shane didn’t so much worry about pervs in Morganville – although he was pretty sure they existed – as vampires.

Because it was just a fact of life. Morganville had vampires. And he and Alyssa were both wearing bracelets – leather, with an embossed symbol – that identified them as being minors under the Protection of a vampire named Sullivan. Not that Sullivan was worth much. For a vamp, he did a crappy job of intimidating people, or taking care of them, or even just showing up when he was supposed to. Maybe he was a drunk, like Shane’s dad was. Who knew? 

All Shane knew was that he despised the vampires, and when he turned eighteen, he was not going to sign up with one of the undead bloodsuckers. He was going to live free, live fast, and die young.

Speaking of which ... “Lyss! Slow down!” Because she was pulling so far ahead now he could hardly see her at all. She waved, jogged backwards, and then sprinted around the corner.

He was maybe fifteen feet behind her when something rushed at him from the mouth of a dark alley, and dragged him into the shadows. Shane let out a surprised yelp and immediately tried to get himself on his feet, but whatever was pulling him, it was strong, and fast, and he was off balance.

A kick hit him in the ribs, and he rolled into a ball. Lyss, he thought, in despair.Keep running. If she looked back and didn’t see him, she might come back. She might get hurt.

He couldn’t let that happen. 

Someone yanked his head back, and he felt sharp nails digging into his scalp. The perfume wave hit him a few seconds later, sickly sweet and familiar, and then Monica Morrell smiled nastily down into his face and said, “I forget, where were we? Oh, this is Brandon. He’s my Protector.” She put her free hand on the vampire standing next to her, the one holding Shane’s left arm in a viselike grip. Brandon had that dark, broody thing going, all black leather and pale attitude, and he looked like he really couldn’t give a crap about Shane or Monica, and ripping Shane’s arm out of its socket was just another day at the office. “He wants you to apologize.”

Shane gritted his teeth against a wave of pain from his shoulder, which was complaining it wasn’t supposed to bend that way. “I’m sorry you’re a vicious skank,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t punch you when I had the chance. How’s that?”

Monica’s fingernails dug deep enough in his scalp to cut, and she shook his head side to side, miming a no like he was her puppet. “Not what I was looking for, you jerk. Apologize. Now. And ask me out.”

“Ask you out? Are you out of your freaking mind? Ow!” Because that had made her nails really dig in. “Do you really think we’re going to hit it off, you crazy – “

“I didn’t say I’d say yes,” she said. “Fine. If you won’t apologize, then you’re just going to have to be a tragic cautionary tale for all the rude people. Brandon?”

She said it with a kind of bratty assurance, and she even snapped her fingers, as if she had the vampire right where she wanted him. Shane could have told her – without even knowing Brandon at all, except to avoid him – that she’d just made a serious mistake.

“What?” Brandon asked softly, and Shane felt the pain in his arm start to retreat. Brandon had let go of him. “Are you calling a dog, you spoiled little girl? Because dogs bite.”

Monica, who’d been lost in her own sleazy sense of victory, suddenly snapped back to reality, let go of Shane’s hair, and stepped back, looking very, very alarmed. “I didn’t mean – I’m sorry, Brandon, I just wanted – “

“I said I’d do you this favor,” Brandon said, with emphasis on the word favor. “I’m finished now. You should put some thought into how you’re going to pay me back.”

And he turned and walked off into the shadows, avoiding the sunlight, heading who knew where.

Shane rolled up to his feet. He was tall, and even if he still felt awkward in his body, he knew he wasn’t a pushover. And Monica – Monica wasn’t even a big girl. 

He didn’t threaten her. His heart was pounding, and he saw red, and he wanted nothing more than to make her pay for scaring him that bad, but ... he couldn’t. He just stared at her for a long, hostile moment, then said, “Leave me alone, bitch,” as he turned and walked away, heading for the sunlight.

At the end of the alley, he saw a tall girl’s shadow, hovering uncertainly near the entrance. Lyss. She’d come back, which was stupid. “Go!” he yelled at his sister, and waved her off. “I’m fine! Go on!”

Behind him, he heard Monica Morrell say, in an ice-cold whisper, “Nobody does this to me, Collins. Nobody.”

He swung around, intending this time to scare the hell out of her, but ... she was running the other way. Chasing after her pissy vamp boyfriend, maybe. Not that Shane cared.

He got to the end of the alley. Alyssa was standing there, looking wan and scared and suddenly younger than twelve. “What happened?” Her eyes were big and round. “Shane, you’ve got dirt all over – “

“It’s nothing,” he interrupted, and put a hand on her shoulder to move her off down the sidewalk, fast. “Let’s just get home.”

###

Home wasn’t that much of an improvement, but after having run into Monica – violently – Shane didn’t feel real good about letting Lyssa stay home alone. Mom was out doing mom-things – he didn’t really know what – and Dad, well. Dad would be over at one of the two bars, pounding back boilermakers and pretending like life was good. 

“I thought you were going to the game shop,” Alyssa yelled from behind her closed bedroom door as she changed clothes. “You don’t have to babysit, you know! I’m not a kid!”

“You are, and I do, and shut up,” Shane said. “I’m opening a can of SpaghettiOs. Better hurry up.”

She made a vomiting noise, which made him grin. He went downstairs and, true to his word, opened up the can, microwaved the SpaghettiOs, and started wolfing them down. When Lyss finally showed, he tossed her the can opener. “Make yourself something.”

“Wow, you are some babysitter. Why don’t you just tell me to go play in the street?”

“Not nearly exciting enough. Make yourself something and I’ll play you on Super Mario Brothers. Winner gets to pick dessert.”

“Twinkies!”

“I said winner, loser.”

Lyssa popped a spoon in her mouth and crossed her eyes at him, poured soup into a bowl, and stuck it in the microwave.

Two hours later, he’d lost at video games, Lyssa had her Twinkie, and somehow they ended up watching bad movies. Mom called. She was stuck at work. Not too surprising, she ended up staying late a lot these days. Probably couldn’t deal with Dad, who of course still hadn’t shown up. Shane put on a DVD – one of those Pixar movies Lyss loved, and he secretly did too although it probably wasn’t cool – and she fell asleep halfway through it. He let it finish, then nudged her with one foot. 

“Hey,” he said. “Go upstairs, sleepy butt. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

She stretched and yawned. “So do you!”

“Yeah, but I’m in charge, so I get to stay up. Go on.”

“You suck, Shane.”

“Do not make me come over there.”

She made a show of being too tired to run up the stairs, and crawled up them on her hands and knees, which was funny and odd, and as soon as she was gone, Shane picked up his cell and texted Michael about Monica. 

Michael was worried. Yeah, he was, too, kinda. Plus, Alyssa was probably right, his Myspace page was going to be a mess. 

Shane decided to worry about that in the morning. For now, there were language, violence, and nudity warnings on HBO. 

Sweet.

###

He fell asleep on the couch, just like Alyssa had. When he woke up, HBO was running boxing, and it was really late. Mom and Dad still weren’t home. Shane yawned, considered watching boxing, and decided to wander upstairs instead.

That was when he smelled smoke, halfway up the stairs. 

For a second he thought, somebody’s barbecuing, and then, stupidly, what, at midnight? And then he smelled more smoke, and saw it, a pale white haze in the air, and the smoke detectors started going off with loud whooping shrieks upstairs. 

Oh God.

Shane ran the rest of the stairs. The smoke was thicker at the top, choking and rancid; it tasted like burning plastic, and before he knew it he was on his hands and knees, crawling instead of running. The air was better there. He could hear something crackling now, and that had to be the fire, fire, Alyssa was in her room and he had to get to her ...

“Lyss!” He banged on her closed door, yelling and coughing, then rose up to his knees to try to open it. He couldn’t. The knob burned his hand, and the paint on the door was blistering, smoke pouring out from underneath like water on a sinking ship. “Lyssa!”

He had to try. He had to save her.

Shane fell onto his back, gasping for air, coughing constantly, and pulled both his legs back for a last effort at a kick. He hit the doorknob, and the whole door shuddered, then flew back on its hinges.

A ball of flame erupted out at him, and he rolled, feeling his clothes catch fire. He had to keep rolling to put it out, and then he crawled back. Alyssa’s door was open. He had to get to –

Somebody grabbed him by the feet and started dragging him backwards. “No!” he screamed, or tried to; he couldn’t breathe, it felt like his lungs were stuffed with wet cotton. “No, Lyssa – “

It was his father. Frank Collins dragged him out to the stairs, then collapsed in a coughing heap, sucking whatever air remained near the floor, and rolled Shane down the steps. Shane barely felt any of it. The world was taking on dark, glittering edges, and his chest hurt, and none of it meant anything because he had to get to his sister ...

His mother was there, too, grabbing his arms and dragging. His dad made it down and helped.

They dragged Shane outside, and suddenly there was all this air, and he began coughing and vomiting out black stuff and shaking and crying and oh my God Lyssa ... 

His dad grabbed him and shook him. “Why didn’t you get her?” he yelled, right in Shane’s face. “She was your responsibility!” He was slurring his words, so drunk he could hardly stand up.

Shane couldn’t help it. He laughed. There was something terrible about it. Something broken.

His mother was trying to go inside. The firefighters and cops were there now, and they stopped her and brought her back. She sat down on the wet grass with Shane and rocked him back and forth as their house turned into an orange, flickering bonfire against the cold black sky, as their Morganville neighbors – and even some of the vampires – came out to watch.

And then Shane looked up, and he saw Monica Morrell and her two BFFs, Gina and Jennifer. They were standing at the edge of the crowd, closest to where Shane sat, and Jennifer looked horrified and fascinated by the fire – but Gina and Monica were staring straight at Shane.

Monica held up her hand. She had a Bic lighter, and she flicked the wheel and showed him the flame. Then she made a little finger-and-thumb gun and shot it at him.

Shane heaved himself up off the grass and went for her, screaming, raving, crazy and not caring at all about the rules, about whether or not she was a girl, about anything because if she’d done this, if she’d ...

Somebody stopped him. The face didn’t register with him for a long couple of seconds, but then he saw it was Michael, grabbing on, and then Monica’s brother Richard, the cop. 

“She killed her!” Shane screamed, and felt his knees go out from under him, because saying it had made something awful become horribly real. “She killed Alyssa!”

Michael hadn’t realized, Shane saw; his friend’s face went white, and he looked at the house, and whatever he said, Shane couldn’t hear it over the violent pounding of his heart. He tried to get up. Michael stepped back, but Richard Morrell kept him down.

“Shane!” Richard was yelling, and shaking him, but all Shane could see was Monica’s face over her brother’s shoulder. She wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, she looked as pale as Michael, and now she was staring at the house, too.

Like she hadn’t known.

Like she hadn’t thought.

Shane kept screaming, and fighting, until Richard finally rolled him over and put him in handcuffs, but even then, Richard’s hand on his back was only there to keep him down.

To keep him from doing something insane.

Monica, you stupid bitch.

She hadn’t known. She hadn’t realized Alyssa was still in the house.

And Shane didn’t care. He didn’t really care about anything anymore.

By the time the fire was out, Monica was gone.

###

Time passed. Things happened. Shane didn’t much care, still; he felt numb, even days later. He felt numb when he picked through the wreckage of the house, looking for something that hadn’t been destroyed. Looking for something of his sister’s. 

The cops brought him in, along with his parents, and gave them the dog and pony show. Terrible accident, faulty wiring, no reason to believe ...

It was bullshit. Shane knew it. Big coverup, because Mayor Morrell’s precious baby girl just couldn’t be a killer. Wouldn’t be right.

Sometime in there, his dad got screaming drunk and his mom started taking Valium and still, Shane really didn’t care. He sat alone, mostly. He thought about nothing. He just ... existed. They were stuck in some crappy motel room with borrowed clothes and no money and no home, and Lyssa was gone. So what did any of it matter anyway?

Michael tried. He kept coming over, he kept trying to talk, trying to get Shane to think about something else. And that was cool and all, but Shane just couldn’t even care about Michael, either. He guessed Michael knew. He saw the pain in his friend’s face, the confusion, but none of it touched him.

He just wanted people to leave him the hell alone.

He was out buying a pizza – they never ate anything else these days, when the three of them remembered to eat at all – when he saw Monica Morrell outside the store. She was with her brother, the cop.

Shane put the pizza down on the counter and walked outside.

Richard got in the way, fast. “No,” he said, and put a hand flat on Shane’s chest. “Listen to her. Just listen.”

Monica looked bad. Worse than Shane had ever seen her. She wasn’t pretty; her face was puffy and red, her eyes swollen, like she’d been crying for days. Her hair was stringy and unwashed. She looked miserable.

He didn’t care. He wanted to hurt her, and it took everything he had inside – everything he had left – not to deck Richard and go after her, right then.

But somehow, he stood there, numbed, waiting.

“I didn’t know,” she said. Her voice was muffled, and her nose was running. She was crying again. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.”

“She didn’t do it,” Richard said, staring into Shane’s face. For a Morrell, he didn’t look like a complete jerk, but again, Shane just couldn’t care. “My sister did not do this. Understand? She was trying to piss you off, and she pretended she’d started the fire. She didn’t know Alyssa was in the house. She wouldn’t have done that. She didn’t torch your house. It was an accident.”

Shane laughed. It was a dry, empty sound, and he saw Monica flinch, like he’d hit her. “Oh man,” he said. “You really don’t know her at all, do you?”

Richard’s face turned hard. “I know this,” he said. “You come near my sister, and this is going to get ugly. You want your parents to lose another kid?”

Shane didn’t answer. He looked past Richard, at Monica, and made a little gun out of his finger and thumb.

Then he silently fired it at her.

Then he went back, got his pizza, and went to the motel, where the world was still dying in slow motion.

###

Two days later, Michael’s grandfather Sam Glass arranged for them to get out of Morganville. Shane didn’t know how, didn’t know why, didn’t care. His father was sober enough to drive, for a change. His mother – he didn’t know what his mother was doing anymore.

They drove past the borders of Morganville, and it occurred to Shane that maybe this was Richard’s way of keeping Shane away from his sister. Well, it had worked. They were out of town, and heading ...

“Where are we going?” Shane asked. It was the first thing he’d said in hours.

His dad said, tightly, “Nowhere.”

And he was right about that.