Page 5 of A Mastery of Monsters

I toss my hairnet in the garbage as I walk out of the employee entrance after my shift.

My phone vibrates, and I tuck myself into a corner to check it.

Meanwhile, Cam and Janey come out from behind me, laughing at something on Cam’s phone, their heads pressed together.

The center is busier now that it’s a more reasonable hour to be awake, and students filter in and out with backpacks or lounge at the tables.

As my coworkers reach the exit, they’re stopped by another Black girl.

She’s giving them some sort of pamphlet as she tosses her waist-length passion twists over her shoulder.

The girl has this almost obnoxious modern hippie look—gold septum ring, a shirt with an ungodly amount of tassels, and a half dozen rings on her fingers.

I look at my phone again. Texts from Bailey asking if I’m coming home for dinner, which I guess I will be.

And one from Jules telling me to text Bailey back.

I send her a simple yes . I’ll go to the island…

eventually. Midway through my shift, I realized that I didn’t have my knife anymore.

It took a bit of piecing together of my memories to figure out where it could be.

I know I went the wrong way and had been in a park.

I threw my knife at someone, which wasn’t great, but it happened, and then I ran away.

I pull my hair out of its bun, shaking the braids out. The knife had better be where I left it. I head toward the exit. By then, Cam and Janey are gone, but the girl handing out pamphlets is still there.

She shoves one at me. “Hi! I’m letting folks know that the Queen’s Black Student Society is accepting new members.

” My eyes are drawn to one of her many necklaces.

It stands out because it doesn’t have pendants or charms like the others, and the chain links are larger than I would expect given her style.

Every other piece of jewelry around it is small and delicate.

I switch my gaze to the sheet of paper. Why is she advertising a club in the summer instead of waiting until fall when all the freshmen will be here? “I’m not a student.”

“Too bad,” the girl says, actually looking upset. Then she glances over my shoulder and frowns. “Do you know that guy?”

“What?” I turn around but can’t see anyone I recognize. “Probably not. Like I said, I don’t go here.”

She nods, her eyes narrowed. “Okay…”

“Right…” I walk out of the building, shaking off the interaction. Campus isn’t busy, but it isn’t empty either. Classes are still held during the summer, and there are always enough students around. I go left since I remember that the park is around this end of campus.

It looks different during the day. For one, there are a lot more people. The tents still seem unoccupied, but there are couples walking their dogs, students heading to campus, and some kid on the baseball pitch throwing a ball around with his dad. Still, I know this is the right place.

I examine the trees, looking for my knife. The more I search without finding it, the faster I walk, and the tighter my jaw clenches.

“Look who it is,” says a voice behind me. I turn to see a group of three guys. They look a couple of years older than me. Not first year students. Maybe second or third? “Told you she’d come back to the scene of the crime.”

I ignore them and continue my search.

“This bitch,” one mutters.

I freeze. I try to remember what happened last night. I threw the knife at someone… fuck. I look back at the guys, and a twinge of familiarity strikes me. That girl had thought someone was looking at me in the ARC. It could have been this guy and his friends.

“Can I help you?” It comes out sharp with attitude, the way I want it to.

The main guy gestures to his left ear, which is wrapped with gauze. “Yeah, how about you fucking pay for this?”

“We have free health care.”

“You got jokes, eh?” He advances toward me with his friends.

I look around the park, but people are purposely veering around us.

I swallow and plant my feet. I need knives.

Without them, I’m going to get the shit kicked out of me.

My eyes dart between the trees, searching for the one with my blade.

I’ve often thought about carrying the whole set on a chest holster, but it’s risky enough to have one concealed on me as a Black person. Never mind a dozen.

“Is something wrong?” I turn, and there’s a Black boy approaching us. He’s tall and thick. I look over to the three guys, who stiffen as he approaches. They’re skinny, and the tallest one isn’t much bigger than me.

It’s good the boy is built like that because nothing else about him is intimidating. He wears tan slacks and a burgundy polo with a dark brown sweater-vest overtop. It’s summer . Who wears a sweater-vest in summer?

The guys look at him and then at me. I grin. “Not so eager now that the odds are more even, are you?” I reach behind me, knowing full well there’s nothing there, and the guys flinch.

“Forget it,” the leader says, and they walk away from me and the boy toward campus.

My shoulders drop, and I let out a slow breath. I look around the space again. The knife. I go back to searching, and a laugh sounds behind me.

“Oh, thanks, I guess.” I throw to the boy over my shoulder. That’s clearly what he wants. He’s shockingly cute given the way he dresses, but digging for a thank-you for being decent? Big ick.

He says, “The words I was looking for were ‘Sorry I threw up and then ran away without offering to help clean.’?”

“Uh, I doubt that. You’re a literal stranger.”

His mouth drops open. “You seriously don’t remember?” He points toward the baseball diamond. “I live over there on the corner across from the courthouse. White fence leading into the patio area. Brick house with green trim. Any of this ringing a bell?”

I squint at him, trying to place his face or remember any of those details, and shrug. “Nope.”

He sighs and rummages around in his pocket, pulling out a knife.

My knife.

“That’s mine.” I stalk toward him and reach for it, but he pulls it out of my grasp, holding it high above his head.

“I’ll be straightforward because I do try to be a gentleman when I can.”

I fake gag. “Oh my God, did you really just say that?”

He continues as if I haven’t spoken. “I need to ask you some questions, and I’m not giving this back until you answer them. It’s in your best interest to cooperate. Let’s start with a name. You are…?”

I drop my arm and take in his wire-rimmed glasses and leather loafers. This dude dresses like a seventy-year-old man while looking like the sort of football player whose only job is to tackle people. Which is enough to intimidate those other guys, but I’m built different.

My phone dings with an alarm. It shouts, MUST LEAVE FOR FERRY NOW . “Shit,” I mutter. “Give it to me. I’m going to miss my ferry.”

“Ferries come every hour. Also, in case you didn’t catch that earlier, I was asking for your name.”

“I want to take the ferry that comes this hour.”

“A woman of mystery, are we? Wonderful. Well, I haven’t been to the island in a while. I’ll come with, and you can answer my questions.”

I don’t want to entertain this guy. But I also want my knife, and I’m not naive enough to think I could take it from him otherwise.

Also, my headache has come back, and Bailey is supposed to pick me up from the dock.

If I’m late, she’ll tell Jules, and I’ll get yet another lecture about how poorly I treat our aunt.

I sigh, and the boy grins.

I refuse to say anything on our walk to the bus stop, nor on the actual bus ride, and then again nothing as we wait to board the ferry.

Meanwhile, Virgil—his name, which he helpfully supplied—has no problem filling the quiet with talking.

Dude even has an old man name to go with his aesthetic.

And his last name is apparently Hawthorne, which only adds to it.

When I ran away last night, he went and got my knife, since he saw me throw it on the security cameras.

I thought icing him out would make him give the knife back to me, but it hasn’t.

I drop onto one of the seats on top of the ferry.

Most of the space on the vessel is taken up by cars and trucks as people from Wolfe Island head home after a day of working on the mainland.

It’s only twenty minutes, so it’s convenient.

It’s free, too. It just sucks when you miss the last one and get stuck in Kingston.

Virgil is in the middle of droning on about how much he enjoys the breeze off the lake when I finally say, “What do you want from me?”

He smiles. His teeth are unnaturally white. Like he grew up wanting to be in a Crest commercial. Judging by his attire, I don’t think it’s entirely outside of the realm of possibility. “A name would be great.”

“August Black. Make a joke, and the first thing I’ll do when I get my knife back is throw it at you.”

“I can assure you that I’m not pedestrian enough to mock someone’s name. Nice to meet you. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Get on with it.”

“I’m curious about how you accurately threw a small knife when you were so drunk that you literally forgot about meeting me, and how you managed to put enough force into it to embed it in a tree.” His expression loses the easy mirth it had before. “It’s not exactly the work of a beginner.”

“I have practice.” I shrug. “Aren’t you glad you came all this way for that?”

“Remains to be seen. You practice throwing knives?”

I slouch in my seat and stare out at the water. From here I can see not only Kingston but some of the Thousand Islands. In the distance, the largest of the islands, Wolfe Island, is marked by the dozens of tall white wind turbines on the land.