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we?”
    “Guess so.”
    Jack looks at you quickly and then away, and once again you’re enthralled by his countervailing waves of awkwardness and ferocity. “Grayson, about yesterday … my dad …”
    “He’s not here, is he?” you say, playing at being scared, though actually the ice man does sort of scare you.
    Jack laughs. “God, I hope not. Dad barely tolerates extracurriculars. He thinks I should be training… . Hey, you want to go into the city with me tonight? I’ve got an extra ticket to Modest Mouse.”
    This would be marginally appealing even without the additional bonus of Jack, but you look back down at the braces girl, now chatting with her friends. Your hunger is starting to feel like that first time, a longing that cuts into your muscles and makes the world turn red. You can’t go much longer without a meal.
    “Sorry,” you say. “Can’t.”
    You know you ought to offer a better explanation. Homework or community service or a part-time job. But you don’t want to lie to Jack.
    So you hurt him instead.
    “Okay,” Jack says. He looks away. The game is starting again. He walks back onto the field. Deliberately, knowing he’s still looking, you move so you’re right behind the girl. You smile at her.
    “Haven’t seen you here before,” you say.
    She goes bug-eyed. She blushes. You can smell her blood like it’s already broken the skin. “Visiting from Boulder,” she says. She says other things. You can’t quite hear her. Jack is staring at you from the edge of the bench. Even from here you can see the ice in those blue eyes. Like he wants to kill you.
    You arrange to meet the girl—she has a name, but you try not to remember it, easier that way—in the parking lot in an hour. You tell her about some concert you have tickets to, would she like to come? In a converted farmhouse just outside the town limits. You wonder why you always get away with this routine. Like none of these girls or boys ever actually listened to a thing their guidance counselors told them about date safety. Sometimes you want to shake their shoulders and yell, “Hello? Doesn’t this sound strange to you?”
    Whatever. You’re hungry.
    The game is almost over when Jack’s dad walks onto the field. His limp is more obvious now, but it doesn’t make him less threatening. The referee stops the play and yells atthe ice man for a few moments before deciding it’s hopeless. Jack doesn’t say anything, just walks off the field with his shoulders stooped. You wonder what’s happened—did he forget target practice again? You wait for him to come back, but instead he grabs his gear and leaves with his father. He glances at you once. You can’t see his face from so far away, but somehow you know he’s afraid.
I need you to be ready
, the ice man said yesterday. Ready to kill a monster?
    You’re not as careful as you should be when you meet the girl after the game. You don’t check if anyone sees you leave together. You don’t even bother to have a conversation once she gets in the car. The doors are locked. The prions have done their job—she has entered a permanent bug-eyed state. Her pulse speeds up like old faithful when you look at her. You’re pissed that you have to do this. Angry like you haven’t been since you first woke up in the lab. About the normal life stripped away, at the maniac left behind. You want to be at that Modest Mouse concert with Jack so bad your stomach hurts. But you can smell the food beside you, and the urge to eat it
now
, at the intersection two blocks away from school, is almost overpowering.
    It’s dark by the time you get to the woods. By now even braces girl is starting to get a little worried, but you tune her out. You don’t like it when they scream. Really, you don’t like it when they’re alive at all. Best to just knock them out and be done with it. But you hate to mess up the car, so you make up some excuse about the engine breaking down and stop in the middle of the