Feral Page 4

  Claire glanced at the front of the general store, wishing her father would hurry up.

  “Ain’t no different than a sewer rat,” the man cautioned her, nodding once at the cat.

  When Claire didn’t respond, he continued, “That’s a barn cat. Which is just a nice way a’ sayin’ feral.” He pointed at the yellow tabby, then dragged his finger toward the cats perched beneath an awning at the far end of the lot, rubbing at their whiskers and ears with their front paws—then toward the cats crouched under the front porch of the old general store, lying close together for warmth, front legs curled contentedly under their bodies—and finally toward the cats taking shelter under a half-rotten canoe that leaned up against the side of the building, one of them with his back leg pointed skyward as he cleaned himself.

  “Same as any old squirrel or chipmunk or possum,” he said. “Wild creatures, all of ’em,” he added, smiling sickly. “Live under the store, most of ’em.

  “Maxine feeds ’em all the food that’s hit their expiration date,” the man babbled, not caring how his unwanted conversation was making Claire begin to sweat, even in the frigid temperatures. “Got a soft spot for anything ain’t got a home a’ its own. How her place got its name, you know. ’Cause when she first inherited the place from her folks, she was givin’ so much a’ her good stuff away to folks needin’ a hand—‘on credit,’ she said, but ain’t no credit with Maxine, it’s give. So by the time a payin’ customer came in lookin’ for milk or crackers or Band-Aids, she’d have to tell ’em, ‘Honey, you better buy it quick, ’cause we’re ’bout out.’”

  He opened his mouth, showing off black spots of missing teeth as he wheezed into a laugh. And started to walk toward her.

  Claire stood, turning her hands into fists. Her heart beat so hard, her jaw ached. She ran her eyes across the parking lot as she searched for a rock or a piece of glass she could use, if the man were to grab her.

  “Dad?” she called.

  “’Course,” the old man continued, “Maxine had to quit the credit business with any human—if she wanted to stay in business. But the cats? She never did quit givin’ to the cats. Now, though—” He paused to point again, this time at the cats hissing from a nearby bush—then at the cats huddled together on a stone wall behind the church across the street, tails flicking behind them. He shook his head. “Whole thing’s gotten a little outta hand.”

  “Dad!” Claire screamed, loud enough to make the back of her throat burn.

  The fear in her voice made the man’s head jut back with shock, his mouth droop sadly. “I didn’t mean—”

  Claire swiveled, racing straight for the store entrance.

  “Hey! You left—” the man shouted, pointing toward the nozzle still in her gas tank.

  But Claire couldn’t stop. Her legs pumped, racing all the way up the soft wooden steps that bowed beneath the weight of her body. On the front porch of ’Bout Out, beneath the corrugated tin ceiling, she pressed against the Nehi sign on the screen door and glanced over her shoulder just in time to see the old man squat down to pick a quarter up off the pavement.

  He flicked it into the air, caught it, smacked it against the back of his left hand. He lifted his right hand, and brought his face down to get a closer look at the coin. “Whaddaya know?” he called out to Claire. “It’s tails!” He pointed once more at the strays huddling for warmth, let out another wheezy cackle, and turned toward his truck.

  He was just coming after the quarter, Claire, she told herself. He wasn’t coming after you.

  She stepped inside the old general store, wiping her sweaty forehead and trying not to pant so hard.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THREE

  “Why would Serena be walking anywhere in this mess?” Becca asked.

  Still breathing deeply, silently asking her heart to slow down, Claire glanced up to find the two she’d encountered in the parking lot now standing at the checkout counter, along with another boy and a wide-eyed, petite cashier whose sweet, small-featured face looked barely old enough to belong to someone in high school. The voluptuous curves on her small frame, though, told a different story—and could have belonged to someone old enough to actually own the general store. “I don’t know—she doesn’t have a car,” the second boy said, leaning against a counter made of gray barn wood. “What else would she do but walk? I don’t really care what she does. It’s not my business anymore.”

  “Not your—damn it, Chas,” Becca shouted, “this is a person. I don’t care if she is your ex. She’s also a person in a storm.”

  Chas took a step to the side, craning his neck to look over the cashier’s shoulder, through the front window. As he straightened up, Claire could see he was far beefier than lanky Owen. And far sloppier, with unruly dark hair and baggy black pants that fell behind the tongues of high-top sneakers and a letterman’s jacket with thick black leather sleeves. Claire couldn’t quite understand how he could stand to wear that coat. The general store was apparently heated by a wood stove that almost made the small room feel too hot—like a dry sauna.

  “Is it really getting that bad out there?” Chas asked.

  “Yes,” Becca asserted.

  “Why does something bad have to have happened to her?” Owen asked. “Why are you so freaked out?”

  Still rooted into her spot by the entrance, Claire slipped a hand inside her coat to clutch her suddenly queasy stomach. She didn’t completely understand the conversation, but she didn’t like it, either.

  “Because she didn’t come home after school, because I can’t get her on her cell, because this is totally unlike her,” Becca claimed. “You sure you haven’t talked to her?” she asked Chas.

  “Been here all afternoon with Ruthie,” he said, nodding once at the cashier, then pointing at the string of Dr Pepper cans lined up on the counter in front of her, as though it were evidence of how long he’d been in the general store.

  When Becca turned an accusatory glare her way, Ruthie swiveled her eyes down, bit her thumbnail hard enough to chip the bright purple polish. She hugged her chest, forcing her cleavage to bulge out of the top of her tight sweater.

  “All afternoon,” Becca repeated. “Figures,” she snarled.

  Ruthie squirmed, shooting a pleading, doe-eyed look at Chas. When Chas caught her eye, he only shrugged, shook his head. Rolled his eyes.

  So that’s what this is about, Claire thought. Her father had homeschooled her throughout the rest of her sophomore year and the first semester of her junior year. It had apparently been just enough time to forget about this—the high school drama, the petty jealousies, the boyfriend-stealing, the gossip. Claire felt her wave of nausea subside.

  “She’s not at her house—even though she said she had to get to work on a story for the paper,” Becca told Chas.

  “The paper,” Chas grumbled, rolling his eyes at Owen in a way that made him chuckle.

  “So what?” Becca snapped. “She likes to write for the paper.” When the two boys continued to snicker nastily, Becca thundered, “Might be good if you two goons cared about something other than football and getting laid.”

  Ruthie squirmed, shooting her pleading eyes at Chas again. Tell her, she mouthed. Chas pretended not to understand.

  “Look, he doesn’t know, okay, Beck?” Owen groaned.

  “Serena has to be somewhere,” Becca barked.

  Owen sighed so loudly, the sigh was itself almost a word—a Jeez. “Let’s go home,” he said. “Please. This is crazy.”

  “And do what?” Becca screamed. “I can’t just—”

  “She’ll turn up.”

  “She’ll turn up? Owen, she’s not some old set of keys, for God’s sake.”

  “Do you see how bad it’s getting out here?”

  “If you had answered your phone, we could have started looking two hours ago. You owe me—”


  “Becca, I already told you I was helping my mom carry groceries out of the car. It’s not like I sit around doing nothing but staring at my phone. Besides, neither one of us can help anyone if we’re in a ditch,” Owen told her.

  “Put your tire chains on,” Becca said.

  “That’s sheer ice,” Owen argued, pointing through the front window. “You want to die out there?”

  “I should call my dad,” Becca blurted.

  “Whoa, Beck,” Owen said, reaching out to snatch her phone. “The sheriff? Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I’m serious. This is so not like her.”

  “Fine,” Owen grumbled. “Look. I’ll take you by Serena’s house again. See if her mom’s heard anything. She’s probably there right now. Probably just had to stop by the library before she went home or something.”

  “Principal Sanders told everyone to go straight home,” Becca argued.

  “Yeah, and if Serena needed background info to work on a story, do you think a warning from Sanders could keep her from it?”

  Becca slumped, her posture saying Owen was right.

  “We’re stopping by Serena’s house first,” Becca said, just as a door banged open in the back of the store.

  “Ruthie!” a woman’s voice thundered. “We got honest-to-goodness paying customers in here. Gossiping with your friends is fine when we don’t have any shoppers, but I told you to knock it off now that the storm’s closing in. We got to help people get ready.”

  A heavyset woman appeared with a metal cart loaded with boxes and shovels and bags of ice melt and kitty litter. “Come on, now,” she urged, grunting as she reached forward to start unloading the supplies, “you got to help me get some of this out on display.”

  “Yes, Mom,” Ruthie said quietly.

  “Here, let me,” Owen said, trying to relieve Ruthie’s mother of a large cardboard box of canned goods. But the box teetered in his arms.

  “Watch out there, pretty boy,” Chas said. “Oughtta leave that to the athlete.”

  “Whatever,” Owen grunted, refusing to give up the box, even as he struggled for balance. “I’m on the football team, too.”

  But Chas reached out and plucked the box right out of Owen’s arms. In Chas’s hands, it seemed more like a box of matches than a box of heavy canned food. “What’s with you?” he teased. “You act like you just ran about a hundred wind sprints. Your mom’s groceries must’ve worn you out. You’re even wussier than usual.”

  “Are you two done with your pissing contest now?” Becca interrupted, tugging on Owen’s sleeve. “Can we go look?”

  “I’m staying to help,” Chas announced, wrapping his large hand around a couple of shovels and carrying them toward a display space by the door.

  “Fine,” Becca snapped. “Come on, Owen,” she insisted, stomping right past Claire in a flurry.

  “Claire!” Dr. Cain shouted, popping into her face. “Got some things for us. Maxine, the owner,” he said, pointing at Ruthie’s mother, “took me into the storeroom to give me the pick of her canned goods. Been a run on them in the last couple of hours.”

  Claire accepted her father’s plastic shopping basket. Cradling it in her arms, she peered inside to find cans of Spam and chili, pork and beans and vegetable soup.

  “That kerosene lamp!” Dr. Cain shouted, pointing. Ruthie turned to pluck it from a shelf behind the counter. “Looks like the last one, too,” he said, happily handing over his credit card. He hummed as Ruthie punched the buttons on a brass cash register that looked like it had been freed from the shelves of an antique store, not noticing the embarrassed flush that was still painted across her cheeks following her exchange with Becca.

  Dr. Cain pushed Claire outside quickly, announcing, “It’s getting dangerous. I think we can make it before the storm turns the roads completely impassable, if we hurry.”

  They’d moved so fast, in fact, that the couple who’d clustered about the counter were still piling into the white Honda as Claire and her father stepped through the door of ’Bout Out.

  In her haste to get in the car, Becca knocked an empty NOS energy drink can into the lot. Her voice carried across the still parking lot as she urged, “Come on. Hurry.”

  Car doors slammed; the Honda revved and skidded across the lot.

  Claire swore that the girl in the passenger seat was eyeing her through the windshield as the car swerved around the gas pumps toward the exit. Suddenly feeling self-conscious, Claire reached for the lapels of her coat, cinching them together.

  “What’s that all about?” Dr. Cain wondered, as the car screeched onto the street.

  “Looking for their friend,” Claire assured him. “Trying to beat the worst of the storm.”

  They walked down the front steps, into the lot, grocery sacks propped on their hips. Claire flicked her free hand, once, as though to toss off the way her fingers were inexplicably trembling.

  She pulled the nozzle from the Gremlin’s tank and lowered herself into the passenger seat, her paper bag crackling loudly into her lap.

  As her father pulled out from the lot, steering toward the farmhouse they’d rented, Claire glanced through her window just in time to see a yellow tabby cat step into the gray sheet of icy rain and completely disappear.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  FOUR

  Claire felt as though night had taken her up in its fist by the time her father’s car snaked its way off the main road and down a gravel path. A dark charcoal sky loomed just beyond the windshield; bare tree limbs etched an even deeper, darker black into the horizon, like a kind of deathly-looking fringe. Claire’s ears filled with the sounds of deep-voiced dogs barking. Gravel popping against the tires. And the icy rain, of course. It pattered against the windshield, the roof, ceaselessly.

  An animal skittered straight into the headlights, making Dr. Cain hit the brake. Claire wrapped her hand around the door handle, eyes wide, as the car slid in a diagonal line, the front tires skidding to a stop an inch from the ditch.

  The cat they’d nearly hit pulled himself out of his defensive crouch and raced toward the opposite side of the road.

  Dr. Cain let out a shuddery sigh as Claire shook her head at the creature who raced off into the darkness. Just how many cats are there around here? she wondered. Her eyes darted about, taking in the barbed wire fence in the headlights, the thick, winter-dead underbrush that seemed to have gone untouched for the better part of a century.

  “Close one,” Dr. Cain muttered, backing the car up to square it in the lane, then shifting back into drive again.

  He steered past a looming two-story house, down a road without a single streetlight to help cut into the darkness.

  He finally pulled into a driveway, paused to let the headlights shine on a two-story white farmhouse. The house featured all the quaint details Claire had expected to find when her father announced he’d rented a home built at the turn of the twentieth century: a large covered porch complete with a swing, wooden shutters, and filmy white lace curtains hanging in old sash windows. A second-story balcony wrapped the entire home.

  The years had bullied the house, though, giving it a sad, used-up look. The place was desperately in need of paint; the asphalt shingles were starting to curl, the clogged gutters coughing and sputtering in the rain like an old man with emphysema.

  Tonight, the house was also wrapped in a thin sheet of ice, which caught the hazy moonlight in a break between the clounds, sparkling like a star against the black sky.

  Claire took a step from the car, her shoe sliding underneath her. She gripped the door for balance, and glanced up to find a figure in the front window of the house across the street. A hulking figure, enormous, standing so close to the glass that he looked like a featureless silhouette as he stared at her, the light of his living room shining brightly behind him.

  She narrowed
her eyes, refusing to gasp. Turning back toward the car, she tugged her suitcase from the backseat and her phone from the glove compartment. She slammed the car door as she stared at the silhouette, hoping it sounded like a punch.

  “Hey,” her dad called, already halfway up the walk. “What are you doing just standing there? You’ll catch your death.”

  The phrase kicked Claire. “Coming.” She forced her feet to start moving up the ice-coated front walk, straight through the entrance, into a tiny sitting room with a fireplace and a wood floor and doilies on chairs and a couple of Norman Rockwell framed prints.

  “How about the official tour?” Dr. Cain asked. They dragged their suitcases with them, going from one tiny room to the next, finding that each one featured a slightly different pattern of floral wallpaper. The out-of-date kitchen décor sported a linoleum-covered counter and a small sink with a dishpan, a round fridge from the fifties, and an old enamel stove.

  “We can light that thing with a match when the power goes out,” her father said, pointing at the stove while the rain continued to patter against the drafty windows.

  “Wait,” Claire said. “When the power goes?”

  But Dr. Cain had already moved on to the note in the center of the table: Welcome! their temporary landlords had written. A casserole is in the fridge, a loaf of homemade bread on the counter. Make yourselves at home. —The Sims Family.

  The bathroom offered only an old-fashioned claw-foot tub with a free-standing porcelain sink and pink and aqua floor mats. Her father grunted at the tub. “No shower,” he grumbled.

  Together, they climbed the stairs, the threadbare green runner halfheartedly absorbing each blow from their shoes. “No second bathroom,” he sighed, after having stuck his head through every doorway.

  “Which one of these do you think is the master?” Claire asked with a chuckle. Because the three bedrooms—each barely big enough to hold a desk and a twin bed—seemed exactly the same size.