She sounds almost like a circus barker or something and it makes me giggle. She giggles too. I turn into her and whisper, “I can’t believe we are training people to fight pixies.”
“I know!” She leans back a little and gives a handbook to Tonisha Walsh, who starts reading it before she even turns away. “Like, who would have ever believed it?”
She must see the doubt in my eyes, because she adds, “You’ll do a good job, Zara. No worries.”
“Yeah. We will,” I say, and wink at Cassidy, but I’m still sort of wondering where Nick is.
She holds up the box and yells out, “All gone, people. We’ll make some more for tomorrow. Share for now.”
People stand in clumps and alone. Their body lotions and perfumed soaps and deodorant smell like lilacs and baby powder and musk. Some of them are flipping through the manual. It seems so skimpy, like there isn’t nearly enough information in there to keep them safe. I blow the hair out of my face. It flops right back in it. I tuck it behind my ear and decide that this is it. It is time to take charge, time to prepare for war.
I clear my throat. People stare at me. Jay Dahlberg crosses his arms over his chest. He rocks a little backward and then comes up and stands right beside me. I resist the urge to grab his hand. Instead I give him a little sideways hug. He relaxes a tiny bit and I let go. Someone tosses his jacket into the basketball hoop. It hangs there and then drops hard to the floor.
I turn to the crowd and yell, “All right, everybody, let’s learn how to kick some pixie butt.”
First, Issie and I give a little introduction, explaining who the evil pixies are, what they are capable of doing. Then we go into the fitness drills, running the length of the gym, working on quick turns. I make them do sit-ups and push-ups and suicides. It’s all about coordination and strength, and sadly, a lot of people have none of it. The basketball players do well. Yeah. That’s about it.
Apparently, in every eighth-grade year the Bedford Middle School has a medieval fair. The boys make foam weapons and sell them to each other. Every guy here has about three swords made of gray foam that they’ve brought to practice with. We move into combat simulations and I watch them jump and lunge and parry, giving pointers where I can.
“Not something I’ll be putting on my college application,” I say as Callie totally beats down Paul with her foam saber.
Paul looks at me, momentarily distracted, and says, “You think we’ll live till college?”
Callie smashes him in the gut with her elbow. He falls to his knees and covers his head. “I give up! I give up!”
She does a happy dance and Nick strides across the gym. He must have just gotten here.
Nick leans toward me, crossing his arms in front of his chest. He hems and haws but finally says, “Real pixies won’t be this easy.”
I nod as Callie helps Paul back up into standing position. “I know.”
“And foam swords aren’t real weapons,” he adds.
Someone fake screams.
Someone else shouts, “Die, you pixie scum!”
“I know. We’ll get real weapons,” I say.
“How?” Nick scratches at his scalp, just above his ear.
“There’s a Web site. It takes two days to ship. They have axes and swords and crossbows and stuff.”
Nick nods. “Okay. Sorry I just got here. I was out hunting.”
“I know.” I don’t add that he smells like death, which is good because until today he’d been coming back not smelling like anything, smelling like he maybe froze in the woods, like maybe he wasn’t hunting at all. I think about how he didn’t do anything at first when we saw those giants. Maybe death changed him. Maybe he’s lost some of his bravery, but I don’t push, don’t ask like I would have before. Instead, I let him have his space.
“What about real weapons?” he asks.
It takes me a second. “You mean guns?”
“Yeah.”
“Only the kids who hunt are any good,” I explain, wishing he’d been with me and Dev when we talked all this out. “So there’s no point in training them to work with them. They can’t bring them to school, and legally they have to keep them locked up in their trucks when they’re traveling.”
“I doubt the law matters much anymore,” Nick scoffs.
“Well, yeah. But anyway, you can’t get handguns unless you’re over eighteen and pass a background check, and that takes time. Guns aren’t the most effective against pixies anyway, not unless you have iron bullets. Wait. What are bullets made out of?”
He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. It still slows them down at least.”
“True,” I agree.
We all stand there for a moment, a truce and trade-off, and then I decide enough is enough. Everyone is sparring, but it’s all too slow motion. It’s all too … human. I jump up onto the bleachers and yell, “Hey!”
Nobody notices.
I try again, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Hey!”
Nothing.
Issie rolls her eyes and scrambles up the bleachers next to me, nearly flopping sideways because she misjudges the distance between the steps. I catch her by the arm and she rights herself and murmurs, “Let me, ’kay?”
“Sure,” I say. “Good luck.”
“YO! PEOPLE! ZARA NEEDS YOUR ATTENTION!” Her voice is huge and powerful and not what I expect from super-quiet Issie.
“Wow, Is,” I murmur as everyone turns to stare. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Projection. Voice lessons in grade school.” She beams and promptly sits down. “Plus, I was trying out the Loud Person in Charge identity.”
Her sheer cuteness makes me want to hug her, but everyone is looking at me, expectant. I am the leader here right now. Me. Weird. I clear my throat.
“Look,” I start. “You all are doing an amazing job, but pixies are faster than humans. Pixies are trickier. They are the predator and you all are the prey. You need to be ready for that.”
“Who says we aren’t ready?” Austin asks, all basketball-jock cocky with his foam sword by his side.
It strikes me the wrong way. I bristle. Issie murmurs something like “uh-oh” under her breath, and I leap off the risers in one massive jump, landing softly and catlike on both feet, my knees slightly bent. Someone gasps. I take two stealthy steps toward Austin.