Chapter Four
The next time the bus stopped, my day changed completely. Looking back, I think maybe my whole life changed.
A new girl got on the bus. She was cute. She wore one of those girly coats with a hood that had fake fluffy white fur coming out of it. The white fluff encircled her face like a picture frame. Her nose was small and turned up a tiny bit. There were three tiny freckles on the tip. That nose and her naturally smiling eyes made her look like an elf. I liked her immediately. Sometimes, a girl’s face will just strike me as especially nice, even though a hundred other guys wouldn’t think she was anything special. This was one of those times.
Everyone stared at her. In Camden, everyone is somebody else’s second cousin, and we aren’t used to new kids. Every once in a while, someone would try to move into our town who wasn’t special like us. After a few months they figured out that Camden was no normal little backwoods town and they would move out again-usually really fast in the middle of the night. But even that kind of thing was rare. People from Burns and other small towns in Harney County knew about us. They knew there was something different about our little town.
Oh sure, they might smile nervously at us when they stopped to get gas or to buy a cola at the Stop-n-Go. But they weren’t trying to make friends. They just didn’t want any trouble. They smiled at us the way you might smile at a mean dog that is curling its lips, but hasn’t come after you yet. Oh sure, they acted friendly enough, but none of them would ever even think of moving here.
The elf-looking girl was very self-conscious. She knew we were all staring. She didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. She came down the aisle slowly, looking for an empty seat.
“Jake, get down,” I hissed.
“What?”
“Just get down off the seat. Sit on the floor.”
“Why?”
“Just do it, for me, man,” I said. I half shoved him down to the floor.
He muttered something about being mistreated just because he was a toad and sat on the floor. I scooted over into his spot, with my legs hanging over his shoulder.
“What the-” he complained.
“Shhh!”
Sure enough, the girl saw the open spot. It was the first one in sight, and she headed right for it. I knew she would. All she wanted to do was get away from all those eyes, and the quickest way to do that was to get her rear into a seat.
She slid in next to me. I felt my heart quicken. She smelled good, like fresh snow and perfume and fruity shampoo.
“I’m Connor Ryerson,” I said, putting out my hand.
She looked at me and stuck out her hand slowly. “Elizabeth Hatter,” she said, “But everyone calls me Beth-” she broke off here, noticing Jake, who glared up at us.
“Who’s that?”
“Oh, that’s Jake,” I said breezily. “Don’t mind, him, he likes it down there.”
“I do not,” said Jake, pinching my leg.
I gave him a mild kick.
“Nice to meet you, Jake,” she said, trying not to laugh.
“Let me up,” he complained.
“No, you can’t,” I hissed. “If Mrs. Terry sees we have three in the seat again, she’ll fuss about it.”
He glared. “You owe me, dude.”
“I’m the only one that didn’t laugh, remember?” I reminded him.
“You still owe me.”
Beth looked from one of us to the other in bemused disbelief. She looked around on the bus, and for a panicky moment, I thought she was going to get up and find another seat.
Right then, Mrs. Terry finished marking down the new arrival on her clipboard and the bus lurched back out onto the road again.
“Great to meet you, Beth,” I said with my best winning smile.
“You too,” she said. She shook her head at us and laughed. “You guys are the class clowns, aren’t you?”
“You figured it out!” I said, laughing with her.
She addressed Jake, and leaned down toward him. “You really like squatting down there?”
“Squatting,” I chuckled, “a very good choice of words.”
Jake made a growling sound. “One word about toadstools and I’ll bite your legs off.”
Chapter Five
We hadn’t gone another five minutes before I was certain she was a normal person. For most people, this is a good thing, but not in Camden. If you’re not a monster in my hometown, sooner or later, you are going to have a problem. Normal people, or mundanes as my mom calls them, never seem to like living in a town full of creatures. Once they figured it out, they panicked every time.
But in matters of the heart, I’m not always reasonable. Well, in truth, I’m never reasonable about girls. Heather would say that I’m totally immature and that I freak out every girl that likes me. My mom says I’m not even in high school yet and not to worry about it. But I do.
Beth was different. She was so easy to talk to, not like most of the boring girls in town who all wanted to know if I had changed or not yet. That was all they cared about. But Beth wouldn’t know anything about that. In fact, she probably would be happy if I turned out to have no powers at all. If I was a mundane, I would eventually have to leave Camden. That was clan law, our law, everyone here had to have the power to change or they had to leave.
“I like math, do you like math?” Beth asked me.
“Yeah! Well, no,” I said.
Beth pulled down that fluffy hood of hers and revealed hair that was somewhere between brown and red. It was straight and long and she had a gold barrette clipped over each ear. A wisp of white fluff caught on one of her barrettes and just floated there as we talked. To me, it seemed like an angel’s halo.
“What about Geometry?” she asked me. “Have you got that far yet?
“No,” I admitted. “I’m in Algebra.”
“He’s getting a D in there, too,” said Jake, interrupting.
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
Beth giggled.
“I’m getting up. I’m done squatting down here,” Jake said. He began pushing his way up onto the bench seat with us.
“Toads like squatting,” I told him.
“Not one more word,” said Jake. The green vinyl seat wasn’t really wide enough for three. I found myself pressed up against Beth.
“What is it with you guys and toads?” asked Beth. She started talking very quickly and excitedly. I liked the way she did that. “Do you like them or hate them or have you been traumatized by a wild herd of toads? Or what?”
“Or what,” said Jake.
“Well,” I said slowly, not sure how to tell her.
