The Last Monster Read online

  “Mom,” I groaned. “Don’t pet it.” She looked offended, so I shrugged. “It’s weird.”

  “Oh, look, Sofia!” Mom giggled as she pointed. “He even got your cute little freckle just right.” My real leg, the one they amputated, had had a heart-shaped freckle on the calf. Mom must have told Barnes about it, but I was hurt that she hadn’t consulted me on something as personal as a freckle placement.

  Barnes sat at his workbench, which was lit with two bright lights on either end, just like the adjustable kind we used in art class. He put on his jeweler’s headlamp, which had a magnifying glass over one eye.

  “Try it on, kid,” he said. “Barnes has worked a minor miracle for his favorite patient.” He looked like a grinning cyclops. “Feel how soft it is too. New material.”

  “Oh!” Mom said. “I left my phone in the car. I wanted to get a picture of you two. Do you mind?”

  Barnes shook his head.

  “I’ll be back in a flash,” Mom said as she bolted out of the room. I was jealous, and not just because she could move so fast.

  It’s hard to describe the sensation of staring at your leg on a table while you’re standing at the other end of the room. This was probably why most patients weren’t allowed in Barnes’s lab at all but were ushered into a separate room with comfortable chairs. Maybe Barnes had decided he could trust me not to freak out in here because he knew I never tried to cheer people up. In a hospital setting, cheerful people are usually the most unstable.

  I grabbed the carrying case and pretended to inspect it.

  “What are you working on today?” I asked.

  He didn’t look up but motioned for me to hand him the tiny screwdriver that was just out of his reach. I did, glad to do anything but put that leg on. This one would be mine for a while. In January, Barnes had given me a temporary prosthesis that I had to practice walking on while he and Mom decided on a final model. It was like learning to ride a bike using training wheels. They wanted me to get the general idea before I graduated to the final leg.

  After four weeks with that first clunker, I had another couple of weeks working with a newer design while Mom and Barnes argued about the final fit. This was the leg I’d have for at least a year, until I started growing again.

  No one was sure when that would happen, because chemo can delay puberty. Cancer sucked on so many levels, and not just because of what it did to my hair. Since money was tight, we had agreed to do what everyone else did: get a bigger leg, put up with the gait issues for a year. Then we’d gone in to discuss my post-treatment plan of regular bloodwork and CT scans, and the doctor kept talking about the miracle of my cancer being caught early and entirely removed, because survival rates for bone cancer, especially once it spreads, haven’t improved much in years. Mom and I realized then that maybe waiting a year to get a better leg wasn’t a good idea.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have another year. No one was guaranteeing anything.

  Anyway, most of the time, Barnes built the legs too big so the patients could grow into them over time, kind of like how a mom buys her kids shoes that are just a little too big so they don’t outgrow them right away. Prostheses were incredibly expensive, and making them big helped them last longer, but Barnes knew I hated how the big one fit. He hadn’t been all that surprised when I told him we wanted a new one.

  What Barnes really wanted to build for me was a running blade, the kind of prosthesis that has no fake flesh and looks like a weapon instead of a leg. I hated them, but Barnes thought I would want to run again soon. I used to consider myself a major track star; as in, I’d been famous for majorly vomiting after every race, and sometimes beforehand too. I had run harder than anyone but never won a race. I got a lot of awards for participating, though. At least my best friend, Alexis, had thought I had potential.

  “Barnes, you know what’s sad? No one ever sees your best work,” I said. “Your real talent, all that complicated stuff inside? The fake skin hides your genius.”

  He looked at me with his huge magnified eye. It blinked, the fringed eyelid lowering and lifting like a garage door. “Your mother should be back any minute. She’ll want to see how this looks.”

  I refused to take the hint. I knew he wasn’t ashamed of his work, so which side was he on? Did he think prostheses should help patients blend in or stand out? Which one did he think was more important?

  “People don’t see how gifted you are,” I continued. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  He stood without turning back to me and opened the door. “I’m going to get you a soda pop,” he called. “And then we’re going to talk about the next genius prosthesis I’d like to create for you. No getting out of it today.”

  I couldn’t risk following Barnes out, because he would talk about the blade. I didn’t want a freaky prosthesis that everyone would stare at. Besides, right now it felt good to be alone in a quiet room at the end of a hallway where no one needed to be rescued from sausage documentaries. I looked at the leg again. When I put it on, it would look as if nothing had ever happened, as if the past had just performed a vanishing act.

  “I want her to look completely natural, just like any other girl her age, and I will hold a thousand bake sales to pay for it, if that’s what it takes,” Mom had insisted during one of my last rehab sessions with the old leg. “My daughter deserves to look in the mirror and like what she sees.”

  It wasn’t a good time to mention it, but I had never liked what I saw in the mirror, and I had certainly never felt just like any other girl my age. At school, it seemed like every other girl was pretty or popular. I was neither. I was timid and mousy, and had fallen through the rungs of the social ladder in elementary school. When I looked in the mirror, it wasn’t to see what I looked like. It was to see what I could still fix. Truth was, there wasn’t a lot left. On my best days, I had a vague resemblance to a snapping turtle: sharp pointed nose, squinty eyes, thin lips. That was what I saw, anyway.

  Sighing, I slipped off my pants and then the stocking that went over my current prosthesis. I had zero energy after my first full day at school today, and it took me a couple of minutes to get the old prosthesis off.

  A fast little squeaking sound caught my attention, but I ignored it. It was hard work wiggling around. At least I had remembered to wear boy shorts instead of underwear.

  The noise grew louder, closer. I finally looked over. The girl from before stood framed in the doorway, breathing hard, one hand on her IV pole, one hand dragging the sack. Why hadn’t security found her already? She was attached to a pole; how hard could it be?

  I spotted a tear in the fabric of the pillowcase; inside was a big book, like the kind they made ages ago, with an engraved leather cover and tons of thick ivory-colored pages. She had been dragging around an old book? Most kids carried a teddy bear. What was wrong with this girl? I craned my neck to try to get a view of the hall, but I couldn’t see anyone—or anything—else out there.

  I pushed against the floor with my one foot, scooting myself back in the chair. Barnes or my mother would be here any minute, but for now I was stuck in my boy shorts and only one leg.

  “Everyone is looking for you,” I said.

  She stared at me, her face impassive, not a muscle moving. Only her eyes danced with happiness and relief, as if she had just finished a long race.

  “Now I know why you were chosen,” she whispered. “I saw you take care of that boy. You are a kind person and you’ll be brave for them.”

  I had no idea what she meant, but she was starting to scare me. “We need to call security,” I said. “We have to let someone know you’re safe.”

  Tears formed in her eyes. They rose, spilling down her cheeks as her chin quivered. “I will be. He promised.”

  The girl glanced down the hall fearfully and licked her upper lip, catching a tear. I immediately grabbed the pair of crutches and forced myself up. “Please don’t cry,” I said softly. “Let’s just call someone, okay?”

  One more big, fa
t tear fell from her cheek onto her nightgown. She stared at the spreading wet spot, as if mystified. Her gaze moved to the bottom of her hem and then to the bloodstains.

  “I’m not like you,” she sighed. “I tried to be brave and kind, but they scared me.” She paused, and looked at the ground as if ashamed. “Plus it’s hard to keep secrets. It’s lonely.”

  A gray mist snaked around her feet. The girl’s eyes widened in terror, and she slung the pillowcase forward, hitting me in the shin.

  Thrown off balance, I stumbled back, landing on my butt, hard.

  She reached for the tape that held the IV line inside her other arm. “She doesn’t want me to give it to you. She’s going to be very angry.”

  I scrambled to grab the crutches again and stand back up, but the floor was too slippery. The mist was growing thicker and rising. I vowed to write a strongly worded letter to the hospital about the decision to wax the floor of a prosthetics lab.

  “Don’t!” I yelled, shoving the pillowcase behind me to get it out of the way before I tried to stand again. “You have to leave your IV in until a nurse takes it out.”

  “Tell them all I’m sorry, especially the Golem.” With that, she ripped the IV line out as the mist rose over her head and the outline of the same woman began to form. Blood bubbled up from the place where the IV had punctured her skin.

  “Mom! Barnes!” I yelled. “Somebody!”

  She took off running, her IV pole crashing to the floor. Her bare feet padded hard against the blue floors as blood dripped from the IV line and trailed behind her.

  “Help!” I screamed. “Stop her!” I crawled into the hallway.

  Barnes was rounding the corner carrying two soda cans when she crashed into him and fell. The cans flew out of his hands and burst against the walls. A shower of dark cola erupted, and Barnes shielded himself. The girl scrambled back to her feet and ran into the waiting room, then directly out into the storm.

  I caught one last glimpse of her through the window at the end of the hall. Her white nightgown blew in the wind as she ran. Above her, lightning split, and in that brief flash, the terrifying shadow woman was illuminated across the sky. She pointed one long finger at me, her eyes blazing until her face dissolved into the night rain.

  I took a deep breath, forcing myself to slow my racing heart. The drops of blood and the girl’s tears and the evil shadow flashing through a dark sky shredded by lightning…Black dots gathered in the edges of my vision. My thoughts were a blur and so was the hallway, the floor tiles swimming in shifting shapes.

  My mom’s high heels clacked rapidly toward me. I couldn’t breathe or speak as she began calling my name more loudly. Security guards in blue uniforms swarmed the entrance; flashing blue and red police lights danced outside.

  The black dots in my vision got thicker, my own dark storm.

  Suddenly, I knew why they called it blacking out.

  Monday, February 24

  “Your test scores on evolution were disappointing,” Ms. Kerry said with a clap of her hands, waking up a kid in the front row. “And contrary to what several of you implied, our principal, Mr. Reeves, is not proof of the missing link.”

  Two boys from class who wore eyeliner and dyed their hair black laughed quietly.

  “However, one student in particular had a fascinating answer to the extra-credit question on the next stage of human evolution. Sofia, would you care to read your answer?” Ms. Kerry spoke slowly whenever she addressed me, as if losing a leg had affected my hearing. People were nice to me in the most extraordinarily stupid ways.

  I shook my head. “No.” Then, to be polite, I added, “I would not care to do that.” I said it fast, hoping she’d get the point. I had come back to school last week for half days from Monday to Thursday so I could build stamina and rest in the afternoons if I needed to. Friday had been my first full day of seventh-grade reality. When you have a prosthetic leg, you burn more calories than other people, even just doing ordinary stuff. The body looks whole, but invisibly, it’s always working to make up for the loss. If my doctors thought it was my body that needed to adjust, they were wrong.

  I was suddenly receiving a ton of attention. People who didn’t know my name last year had signed a Welcome Back, Sofia banner, as if my absence had left a big hole at the school. We all knew it hadn’t, but everyone pretended it was a big deal that I was back. I knew people were reacting to the cancer, not me. They were terrified of it, so they celebrated that it hadn’t killed me, because everyone’s worst fear is that it could kill them.

  The banner wasn’t really for me, even if it had my name all over it. No one would understand that, and I didn’t try to explain. But it felt wrong, even dishonest, to be called brave or have anyone want to be friends with me now.

  I felt more invisible than ever, yet overwhelmed with attention. How weird was that?

  Right now everyone was staring anyway, including my former best friend, Alexis, who was sitting two rows up, wearing her track team jersey. Before class started, she had motioned for me to take the seat next to her, but I had pretended not to see her. We had said hi to each other a couple of times, but there hadn’t been a chance to say anything else, and I was grateful for that. I had no idea what to say yet. We hadn’t really talked since my life fell apart, just a few quick, awkward phone calls, but with the winter break and all the excitement of January’s huge snowstorms, maybe she didn’t miss me that much anymore. I hoped she didn’t hurt inside like I did.

  Alexis’s long, curly brown hair was pulled up in a high pony. She must have run with the team that morning. I envied her for that, and for all that hair. I wondered if you could envy someone so much you actually hated them. I wished we could be friends again, but that wasn’t fair to her. We had spent most of our time together at track or cross-country practice. Now I couldn’t run. Was she supposed to rearrange her whole life just to spend time with me? A real friend would let her go. She needed to run because it made her happy, and she needed some happy in her life. There was too much drama at home for Alexis; running was her only refuge.

  “Oh, I don’t mind, then.” Ms. Kerry pulled my paper from the stack on her desk. “I’ll read it for you.”

  I lowered my face into my hands. This was going to be painful, and I knew pain.

  Ms. Kerry began. “The extra-credit question was, ‘Pretend that you have discovered the next step in human evolution. How will humans change, and why?’ Here’s Sofia’s answer:

  “Humans will lose their eyesight, because most of what everyone sees now is fake. Like the people on TV. They look real, like they’re really there, but they’re not. When people want to know the weather? We look at a screen instead of the sky. People don’t even see what’s real about the ones they love. Instead, they see what they wish we were, or what they wanted to be themselves. And it hurts if you know that the image will never be real. So humans were made to see real things, but no one does. So we’ll all go blind soon. Or maybe we already are.”

  Everyone snuck glances at me while she read my answer. I was the weird, quiet girl who used to hide behind stringy brown hair that fell into my eyes and covered my face as I worked, the girl who always had a book in her hand instead of a phone. They didn’t know much about me except that I stayed off the social radar, but they forgot that I had been pushed off a long time ago. Besides, teachers never embarrassed kids in class for reading, not like they did for passing notes and texting. No teacher had ever grabbed my book and read a passage to the class just to teach me a lesson. So my personal thoughts and interests were kind of a curiosity to everyone, especially since my name was now on a banner near the front office. I was the bald mystery girl with a fake leg (“Is it the left?” “No, it’s the right.”), and now I had just accused all of them of being blind. (It actually was my left.)

  Alexis turned and stared at me, probably wondering if my answer was a cry for help, a sign that I was finally reaching out. My face grew hot from frustration and embarrassment. Honestly, I
was just trying to score some extra points, because Mom would do her happy dance when my next report card had all As.

  At least I hadn’t written about my latest theory on global warming: that global warming was really caused by the Earth getting bigger every year, and therefore closer to the sun. Millions of people die annually and get buried in the ground. Millions and millions, year after year, decade after decade…shouldn’t the Earth be getting bigger all the time?

  Ms. Kerry was passing out the tests, instructing us to correct any wrong answers before the end of the period. Above me, a thin black spider slipped down from its web, floating on an unseen current. No one else noticed it. My pencil kept slipping from my hands as I worked on my test. I hunched over my paper so no one would see. I had finished my chemo three months ago, but it had a lot of side effects that took months longer to go away, if they ever did, including how my muscles felt like rubber bands. Even holding a pencil was challenging at times. I dropped it repeatedly while I corrected my answer on natural selection. “The weak get weeded out” took me two whole minutes to write. Finished with that sentence, I shook out my hand and let it rest.

  I squinted up at the spider, trying to decide what species it was. I had seen a documentary on them on Animal Planet. Spiders looked horrifying, but they were delicate and even beautiful in a strange way. Plus they had eight legs. If they lost one, it probably wasn’t a big deal.

  The spider slipped farther down and I leaned back in my chair and cupped my hands, hoping it would land in them so I could get a closer look.

  I accidentally locked eyes with the new guy, who was staring at the spider too. Technically, he wasn’t new anymore, since he had transferred here over the winter break, but I’d overheard girls gossiping about him nonstop since I’d been back. Apparently he was wild and unpredictable, but the stories they told sounded far-fetched. I doubted he had really meant to superglue a sixth grader to the bench in the cafeteria. Plus, no one had seen him put the plastic roaches in the teachers’ lunch bags, so it wasn’t fair to assume he had done that either.