Dweller - Jeff Strand [22]
He stood at his locker, trying to remember if he needed to bring home his history book, when Nick walked over.
“I need to talk to you,” Nick said.
“You’re not supposed to talk to me.”
“Look, I don’t blame you for being mad…”
“You don’t blame me? Well, that’s nice to know. I could barely sleep at night thinking that you might have negative thoughts about me. My conscience is cleared now.”
“I’m trying to be serious. What we did went too far. Everybody knows it. We got punished.”
“You got a dinky little slap on the wrist. One-week suspension. Oooooh, wow, I feel avenged!”
Nick let out a frustrated sigh. “I’m here to apologize, you little freak. Believe me, it’s a lot harder for me to apologize than it is for you to forgive me.”
Now Toby felt kind of bad, although it was a fleeting sensation and he quickly reverted to intense dislike. He needed more than an apology to forgive Nick. He needed bags of gold.
Still, there was no reason to get himself beat up again. “Okay, so apologize.”
“I just did.”
Toby was pretty sure he hadn’t, but didn’t dispute it. He supposed that having Nick not wishing him dead was better than the alternative.
“Okay. Apology accepted.”
“But I need to warn you about something.”
“What?”
“Larry. He’s…there’s something wrong with him. It’s like he’s obsessed or something. I’m afraid of what he might do to you.”
“Seriously?” Social stigma or not, Toby wasn’t going to just let Larry hunt him down. He’d tell a teacher, or his parents, or the cops if necessary, but he couldn’t let fears about being dubbed a tattletale cost him his—
“No.” Nick let out a mean-spirited chuckle. “He doesn’t give a crap about a zit-faced loser like you. Don’t be so gullible, Floren.”
Toby had no response. He braced himself in case Nick intended to start throwing punches.
“By the way, somebody took a dump in your locker,” said Nick, chuckling again as he walked away.
For a second, Toby considered flinging one of his text-books at the back of Nick’s head. The thick hardcover history book would leave one hell of a skull dent. But, no. It would cause far more trouble than it was worth.
He tried to think of something biting and clever to shout after him, something that the other kids would chant for the rest of Nick’s high-school career, but the best he could come up with was “Fatso!” And Nick wasn’t overweight. So he remained silent.
Oh well. He didn’t need friends like Nick anyway. He had Owen.
As Toby trudged through the forest, he wondered if considering Owen his friend was kind of sad. Even having a human friend who didn’t talk and lived in a cave that took over an hour to walk to might be a little sad by itself. When you added the whole “monster in the woods” element, this might be absolutely pitiful. And scary.
Well…so what? It wasn’t as if he and the monster were making babies. If he enjoyed coming out and throwing food to it, whose business was it of anybody else’s? Except for maybe his parents, if things went terribly wrong and the monster devoured his intestines.
Screw ‘em all. Especially Larry and Nick. He wished he could toss Nick’s head over to Owen and see if he liked the taste better than chocolate.
Nah. If he was going to feed Owen, he should feed him something with higher nutritional content than Nick’s head.
Behind him, in his peripheral vision, he thought he caught a glimpse of movement. His heart gave a jolt and he quickly looked over there, but saw nothing.
Relax. You’re in the forest. Things move in the forest. Happens all the time. It’s those eerie stillnesses that you’ve got to watch out for.
He kept walking. He had maybe a mile to go before he reached Owen’s cave. Perhaps he could get Owen to relocate, find him a nice den of sticks or something.
More movement, from the same spot. He only saw the source of the movement for a fraction of a second, but it was enough to identify his follower.
Did Larry really think he was that oblivious?
Well, discounting the fact that Toby had walked this far into the forest without realizing he was being stalked…
He pretended not to have