Prey Read online

  “I want to pet a puppy,” she said. The standard request.

  “Oh. Okay. Do you have a parent here?”

  The girl jutted a small, sticky finger toward a dowdy woman near the store entrance, where puppies behind Plexiglas yipped and pranced. Loaded down with shopping bags, she seemed singularly unenchanted. Pete, the shift manager, was in the back room taking inventory, and Holly hadn’t shown yet. It was up to Chelsea.

  She gave the girl her best Disneyland grin.

  “Be there in a minute, okay? I have to finish feeding the rabbits.”

  The girl nodded but didn’t, as Chelsea had hoped, leave. Chelsea took another handful of food and counted faster, hoping the girl wouldn’t notice or question.

  138, 139, 140, 141.

  She did both.

  “Why are you counting? Why don’t you just pour it out?”

  141. 141. 141.

  Chelsea kept the grin plastered on her face but lowered her voice. “I have something called OCD.” Before the girl could ask, she added, “It’s a kind of sickness in the brain. Sometimes when I’m nervous or tired, it makes me count.”

  “Are you nervous or tired?”

  “Tired.”

  The cute little brow furrowed. “I count sometimes. It’s not a sickness. How does it work?”

  “Well, there’s a part of my brain that says if I don’t count, something very bad will happen.”

  177, 178, 179, 180.

  “Like what?”

  Chelsea thought about describing some of the haunting images that rose unbidden from nowhere and clung to her consciousness like burrs: bloody worms with toothy mouths that burst from her stomach, razors slicing her eyes, flames engulfing her body and burning her skin black and red, the poison that would make her swell up and die, or the tractor trailer that would crush her chest as she biked home from work or school.

  But she wanted to keep her job, so she said, “You ever afraid there’s a monster under the bed, ready to grab you?”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe. Sometimes. Yeah.”

  “My OCD tells me that unless I do certain things, like count, the monster will get me.”

  “But that’s stupid. Monsters aren’t real.”

  “Yeah,” Chelsea admitted. “It’s very stupid.” Dr. Gambinetti said it was good to be aware of how irrational the OCD’s demands were.

  “Is it like a voice in your head?”

  “More like a strong feeling. It’s a part of the brain that doesn’t think so well. It just thinks about survival. It’s like a reptile brain….”

  The girl’s eyes brightened. “A reptile brain?”

  “In a way…” Chelsea began, but before she could explain, the girl was hurling herself down the aisle, hitting chew toys and dangling leashes with her shoulders as she ran and sang, “Mommy! Mommy! That girl has a reptile brain!”

  It was 4:30. School was out but it wasn’t dinnertime yet, so Rhett’s Pets was at its busiest and at its busiest, it was packed. So of course everyone turned to stare. First at the shouting girl, then at horrified Chelsea, who wished she had told the little brat about the eye-slicing thing. Now wanting to die, she looked down, scooped more pellets into her hand and hoped the world would just go away.

  197, 198, 199, 200. Finished.

  She put the bowl into the aquarium tank. The warm scent of mammal and wood shavings hit her face as she lay the meal down inside. Rather than eat at once, the rabbits continued to stare at her as she slapped the pellet dust from her hands and stood up.

  Even the fluffy think I’m insane.

  Doing her best to pretend nothing had happened, Chelsea approached the girl and her mother. The woman’s ring-covered fingers gestured from the hoop of a shopping bag toward one of six rolling pups. “The golden lab, please?”

  Zach. One of the favorites, always chasing his tail, or rolling on his back. Chelsea named him after a hyper kid she used to know from group with ADD. How long ago? She was sixteen now, and she had known Zach in sixth grade, so, five years?

  There she was, counting again.

  The OCD had been bad since last night, ever since her boyfriend, Derek, asked her if she wanted to go to Hobson Night, the town-wide college party. Part of her wanted to go, but old lizard-brain insisted it would mean rape and death, not necessarily in that order.

  A wire mesh covered the top of the puppy box. If she didn’t count all the squares in the wire, all the puppies would stop breathing.

  No. No, I won’t do it. I won’t count anymore.

  She lifted the puppy into her arms, trying hard not to look at the rows of wire squares. “Hey, fellah! How you doing? How’s my Zach?”

  “Zach’s a stupid name. I’m going to call him Zilbowser,” the girl said.

  The wire formed a grid. If she counted just one row up and down, she could multiply to get the total. Maybe that would be good enough.

  8, 9, 10, 11…

  No!

  She turned her back to the squares. Sweat broke out on her forehead as she carried Zach to one of the little rooms where the girl and her mother could sit and play with him. As she walked, the feeling rose.

  You’re killing that puppy! You’re killing it!

  An image flashed in her head—her throttling the puppy, grabbing it by its feet and smashing the little girl in the face with it.

  Shut up!

  Chelsea wiped her forehead, put the puppy down with the women, and went back and counted the wire squares.

  Eight by sixteen is one hundred and twenty-eight.

  Another failure to report to Dr. Gambinetti. Maybe it was because it was midterm week. Maybe because it was winter and the days were getting so short. Low serotonin levels supposedly influenced the disease. Maybe it was just Hobson Night. That always got to her too.

  Thankfully, Pete emerged from the storeroom with a sheepish grin on his pimply face, ready to take over for her. Now all she had to do was count the crickets for the reptile cages and in half an hour she’d be off for the afternoon. At least she was supposed to count the crickets. She could handle that. It was natural.

  “Chelsea?” The familiar voice was slightly surprised. At first she didn’t recognize the slight, dark-skinned woman it came from. The poised, smiling face seemed as horribly out of place in a pet store as a concert pianist at a circus. The face more rightly belonged in school, in front of a chalkboard full of tightly written biology notes.

  “Ms. Mandisa,” Chelsea said back. Good thing she’d caught up on all her homework during lunch that day, so she could talk cell metabolism if need be.

  “I’d no idea you worked in a pet store,” she said. “How exciting.” Her large brown doe-like eyes sparkled. With her confidence, the slight accent Chelsea could never place and her worldly air, Ms. Mandisa, as far as Chelsea knew, was the opposite of OCD.

  “Yeah,” Chelsea said. “I like animals.”

  Geez, I sound like I’m three years old. Maybe I should make some animal sounds for her too. I like the cow. It goes moo.

  “I know. I’m an animal lover myself,” the teacher said. “It’s what you want to study in college, yes?”

  Chelsea nodded. “I want to major in animal behavior at the University. I…I’m sorry about that first test.”

  She’d erased the first paragraph a thousand times, until the rough paper was as thin as onion skin.

  Ms. Mandisa shook her head. “Don’t be silly. Your essay was the best in the class. You just should have told me about your condition sooner. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, no?”

  Unless it maims you.

  “In fact…” The slight woman scanned Chelsea’s face. Chelsea felt an awkward urge to count the long seconds they stood there, but before she began, her teacher completed the thought.

  “I’ll be leaving early for winter break, heading home before it gets too cold. Never did get used to the snow.”

  Chelsea was disappointed. Not only was Mandisa her favorite, this meant a sub would be there for
the midterm, someone new she’d have to explain her “condition” to, in case she needed extra time to finish the exam.

  “Point being, I’ll need a pet sitter while I’m gone. Someone interested in animals.”

  Chelsea brightened immediately. “A dog? A cat?”

  Mandisa’s eyes twinkled mischievously. Her lips tightened into something between a grin and a frown. “A little more involved. It’s a bit of a challenge. I’ll need someone I can trust to do everything just right.”

  That was Chelsea. The OCD made sure of that. “Okay, so what is it?”

  Mandisa’s eyes flared. “Something wonderful, really. Amazing. It’s a…good-sized monitor lizard. Koko. That’s his name. You see, before I came to Bilsford to teach, I was a herpetologist in Egypt, in a small research facility in a city called Kom Obo. Mostly we studied crocodiles, but I specialized in monitors. I had seven in my lab. They’re the most sophisticated lizards in the world. Smart as dogs, really. Probably smarter. There was this one who stood out as really different, really wonderful. I just couldn’t give him up no matter how hard I tried.”

  Chelsea fought an urge to count the fluorescent lightbulbs. “Didn’t some guy get eaten by his pet monitor?”

  Mandisa’s sparkly laugh at once made Chelsea feel foolish and at ease. “That was four years ago in Oregon. He had six full-sized water monitors, let them wander around his apartment freely and hadn’t fed them in over a month. When he died of a heart attack, they just did what came natural. And that’s probably the only story you’ll find about a monitor attacking its owner. Ten or fifteen people a year are killed by dogs. Even more by domestic horses. Koko is well fed, gentle, and in a very, very secure cage. I wouldn’t even expect you to take him out. You’d just have to feed him and make sure his temperature’s regulated. I’d pay you three hundred dollars for the two weeks, and if you want, you could write a little paper on him for extra credit in class. Just the kind of thing that would look good on a college application.”

  “Umm…thank you. Thank you so much. I’d have to talk to my parents.”

  “Of course. Have them call.” She scribbled a number on a piece of paper, handed it to Chelsea, smiled again, and turned to leave.

  Chelsea stared at the number. She counted the little blue lines, counted the pen strokes that made up the numbers. She’d lied. She didn’t have to ask her parents. They’d be thrilled at her doing something even a little risky. Her father, Ben, would anyway, and he’d talk her mother into it.

  And she was sure Ms. Mandisa would make them think it was safe.

  And of course it was.

  But still, she counted Ms. Mandisa’s elegant steps as she exited the pet store, afraid that if she didn’t, her teacher might lose both her legs.

  2

  Derek chomped on a cheese fry, its thick end dark with barbecue sauce. Though sixteen, same as Chelsea, he still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of closing his mouth when he chewed. Strands of what looked like bleeding potato were visible between his teeth. It made Chelsea think about what she might look like in the mouth of a lizard.

  As he ate, he talked. “What do you think Restrooms will say?”

  “Restrooms” was Derek’s clever nickname for her shrink. Three years of Italian class, starting in middle school, had left Derek with one word, gabinetto, which meant “washroom” or “bathroom.” Derek found toilet humor hysterical. For a while, poor Dr. Gambinetti was “Restrooms” Gambinetti, Mafia hit man. Time and boredom (Derek and Chelsea had been seeing each other six months) shortened it to “Restrooms.”

  “Dr. Gambinetti will say it’s a great opportunity,” she said listlessly. “A perfect chance for me to challenge myself.”

  It was after her shift at Rhett’s, before her weekly therapy appointment. The two of them sat in a coffee shop, surrounded by Bilsford University students with their heads buried in laptops or books.

  Derek nodded vigorously, remembering to be supportive. “It is! Definitely. It’s like kismet. I don’t understand why you’d even think of saying no.”

  “Hello?” Chelsea waved her hand in front of his face. “Big, old house. Big, old lizard? Can it get creepier?”

  “Sure,” he said, munching more fries. “It could be two lizards.”

  Chelsea closed her eyes. Of the 30,368 residents of Bilsford, 19,878 were students enrolled in the University. That left 10,490.

  Derek read her face. “Are you doing it right now? Counting?”

  “No,” she lied, but she couldn’t look at him. She poked her Caesar salad and fought an urge to count the croutons. “I just don’t want to be there alone with something that might eat me.”

  Derek brightened and managed to look cute, despite the dollop of sauce on his lip. “That’s the beauty part, L. C. Big, old, empty house. Who says you’d have to be alone? You could be with me!” He took a quick slurp of his soda. “It’d be like having our own place for two weeks!”

  She raised an eyebrow at her boyfriend. Derek was sloppy but sweet, and into digital photography. He was cute and very understanding about the OCD, but he could also, on occasion, like many boys, approach her with all the subtlety of a mastiff in heat.

  He leaned forward across his orange plastic tray. “You’d be crazy to pass that up.”

  “First of all, I am crazy. Second of all, we wouldn’t be alone. There’d be Koko. A monitor lizard. Same family as Komodo dragons. Ever hear of them? They can grow more than ten feet long and attack and eat horses.”

  “Come on, L. C. Restrooms says you have to fight harder!”

  “I am fighting!” she said, eyes flaring.

  “Oh yeah? How many fries have I eaten?”

  “With or without the barbecue sauce?”

  “I always use sauce.”

  She shook her head. “You scarfed three down before you could peel the lid off the packet. Since then it’s been thirty-two. I can’t…I can’t help it.”

  His tone softened. “I know, I know. Fine. Forget about Hobson Night. Forget I ever asked to come over. Forget about us. This is important for you. It’s what you want to do, right? You love animals. And a monitor lizard? What could be cooler, L. C.? This lizard, it’s part of the cycle of life.”

  He called her L. C. for short. It had something to do with El Cid, a hero of some sort. Ages ago, when he first came up with the nickname, it’d seemed adorable, like Restrooms Gambinetti. “It’s like me eating the fries that fall back from the rest of the herd.” He scooped up a handful. “I do not eat out of anger or malice, but only because I must feed.”

  He stuffed them all in his mouth at once. Little bubbles of white burst from the golden brown. She couldn’t help but laugh.

  He swallowed, then tried to look serious. “You can’t let the OCD stop you from realizing your dream, can you?”

  Chelsea sighed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s exactly what Dr. Gambinetti is going to say.”

  “Score one for Restrooms,” Derek said, popping his fifty-sixth fry into his mouth. “You can’t go around the rest of your life being afraid of everything.”

  But Derek was wrong about that. She could, she really could.

  At age eight, Chelsea washed her hands thirty times in a row then stood on her bed in stark terror, eyes wide, and refused to move for two hours, because everything, everywhere, except for the one little spot on the old green blanket where she stood, was contaminated and would kill her. A few days later, she was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder.

  Three months earlier, she’d visited her grandmother on her deathbed, seen her cancer-withered face, witnessed her shallow, troubled breathing. Her mother, Susan Kaüer, was convinced that this foolish decision to let Chelsea say good-bye to her nanna was what caused the disease. The visit had overwhelmed poor Chelsea, broken her.

  But doctor after doctor said it could have been anything, real or imagined. Some OCD sufferers reported that their symptoms began the first time they saw the Wicked Witch of the
West in The Wizard of Oz. It could have been a dead animal in the street, a scary face on Halloween. A nightmare. The reptile brain saw it all as real.

  Her mother never believed that, just as she never believed Chelsea was one of the lucky ones. But she was. She never missed school and did well in most classes. It didn’t stop her from making friends or having a part-time job. It just kept her almost constantly frightened.

  Some sufferers, on the other hand, couldn’t leave their homes. For others, the OCD was an early sign of Tourette’s syndrome. The first time she heard that, Chelsea felt her head twisting, wanting to twitch. That was part of the OCD too. Suggestibility. It could latch onto any thought and run with it until it was something horrid. But Chelsea was never even medicated, though Dr. Gambinetti held it out as a possibility if she didn’t manage to overcome the compulsions on her own.

  And today she didn’t seem able to overcome anything. Once she left Derek, the OCD roared for the entire bike ride to the square, old brick house in the center of town that held his office.

  What if that gas pump leaked and someone tossed a cigarette down and all the cars and the people burst into flames?

  She counted the parking meters in front of the building.

  What if you scratch yourself on a rusty needle and get one of those infections that are resistant to antibiotics?

  She counted the steps up to the white door and walked inside. The building was old, creaky, typical New England, but everything was painted white and there were lots of windows in the waiting room, so it was too bright and sunny to think of it as anything but cheerful. Though the OCD tried.

  What if Dr. Gambinetti was killed by his last patient, a serial rapist who’s waiting for you inside the office?

  The magazines on the table. 8, 9, 10.

  Finally, Dr. G. opened the door and, barely looking at her, motioned her in. The fuzzy teddy bear of a man hummed as he swiped his rumpled tweed jacket back, adjusted his Snoopy tie and sat in his old swivel desk chair. As usual, he flipped through the massive piles of papers on his desk, humming cheerfully as he looked for her file.