One of Us

Conner Allen stood in the men’s room of

Sylvia’s Grill and watched himself in the mirror as he pulled back

the bandage on his neck. In the harsh glare of the single light

bulb overhead, he frowned at the wound beneath the bandage. It

wasn’t very big, and two days ago Conner would’ve sworn it was

almost gone, finally,it was taking forever to heal. But

this morning he had woken to a dull pain in his shoulder, and the

wound was back to looking infected again.

It was a bite, no doubt about it—there were

two large puncture holes that looked like fangs had torn into him,

though he’d be damned if he could remember what happened. A ring of

teeth marks connected the holes to form a mouth-shaped bruise on

the tender skin at the base of his neck. An animal bite,

definitely, and Conner had already spent so much time trying to

backtrack in his mind—he would’ve thought he’d known if something

just came up and bit him. The most he could recall was cutting

through the woods about a month ago on his way home from work—it

had been like one in the morning and raining when he left the

restaurant. Water came down in sheets, cold and cutting, and the

thought of trooping through the downpour and the puddles along

Wolfried Road, his normal route, was simply too much. So he ducked

into the woods, they were safe enough, and the trees overhead kept

him mostly dry. He couldn’t seem to remember much of the walk, but

it was a mess of a night and God knows, he just stripped off his

wet clothes and collapsed into his bed once he got home. The next

morning the wound was there, fresh and bloody. Conner remembered

feeling feverish for a day or two, nothing serious, and after a

while it looked like the wound was beginning to close up.

Until now.

Someone banged on the bathroom door behind

him. “Just a minute!” Conner called. He smoothed the bandage back

in place and tugged his T-shirt up around his neck to cover it a

bit. Then he washed his hands, reached for a paper towel and found

the dispenser empty, and rubbed his hands down the front of his

jeans to wipe them dry. A quick look in the mirror—the bandage

wasn’t thatnoticeable—and he pulled open the door. His

boss, Sylvia, stood in the doorway with one hand on her hip, the

other raised to knock again. She was a crass, older woman who

didn’t take shit from anyone, but there was something about Conner

that she liked enough to let him squeak by from time to time. When

he saw the stern look on her face, Conner teased, “The ladies’ room

is next door.”

Unamused, Sylvia handed him an apron. “You

know you ain’t hiding from me. What’s with the bandage?” Conner

touched his neck, and she rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you got

another tattoo. Does your mother know?”

“I’m eighteen—” Conner started.

Sylvia wouldn’t hear it. “And late for work,”

she said, steering him into the restaurant’s dining room. “It’s

Friday and there’s supposed to be a full moon out tonight, so you

know this place is going to be whack. You’re waiting tables and

you’ve got two already seated. Get busy.”

It was only quarter to five—still afternoon,

really—but the restaurant was already a sea of faces, each one

louder than the next. Conner found an order pad and pencil in the

pocket of his apron and followed Sylvia’s pointing finger to his

first table. As he approached, he almost groaned. Seated in a

corner booth were a bunch of guys he knew from high school, a year

or two older than he was and all of them popular. He knew who they

were by sight—two of them, Brett Branson and Price Hewitt, used to

play football for the high school team, and Rand Davis had been

Macon High’s first Mohawk-haired punk, though now he sported a

ponytail halfway down his back instead. Dreading what they might

say when they recognized him, Conner started, “Hey guys—”

“Dead man walking!” Brett called out. The

others laughed when he did, and half the restaurant turned at the

sound. Conner wanted to sink into the floor and vanish, but when

Brett held out a hand, he slapped it amicably enough. “Conner, kid.

How’s the family business going?”

With a shrug, Conner told him, “You know how

it is—people are just dying to get in.”

That earned him more laughs. Conner’s family

ran the local funeral parlor, a fact that had earned him quite a

few odd looks during the course of his life. When he graduated last

spring, the last thing he wanted to do was follow in the footsteps

of his three older brothers, who studied Funeral Services at the

local community college. This job at Sylvia’s was a way out, but

Macon was a small town and people knew who he was. Some of them,

mostly guys he’d gone to school with, liked to rag on him about it.