Free Fiendish by Brenna Yovanoff

matter how steadily he looked at me, the truth was, I scared him a little. Just maybe not the same way I scared the Maddox boys.
    The moment thudded between us like a heartbeat and I had an idea that any dare or challenge I gave him, he would take it. Maybe he’d do it to prove something to his friends, maybe just to make them nervous or think that he was brave. I didn’t care.
    “I’m going down to that zoo on Crooked Mile,” I said. “Do you want to come?”
    For once, he didn’t have anything smart to say. He shook his head, looking disgusted. “What do you want to go someplace like that for? It’s completely cruel.”
    “I know. I’m going to go let the badger out.”
    He raked his hair out of his face and squinted. “Serious?”
    “Do I look like I’m lying?”
    His eyes were softer now. When he smiled, the shape of his mouth made my blood go hot.
    He glanced back at the other boys, who watched us with their hats pulled low and their hands shoved deep in their pockets, gumming on their chaw and spitting brown streams of it onto the sidewalk.
    Across the street, Shiny and Rae were looking at me with their heads cocked and their arms folded, but I was out in the world now. I could find my own way home. The night was coming on, and I was ready to do something wild.
    When Fisher smiled again, it was sharp and fierce. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, let’s go.”

THE ZOO
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    I ’d thought we might be going to walk, since that was how Shiny and I had come into town, but Fisher paused at the corner of Main and Chester and steered me across the street.
    It was just starting to come down dark, and the streetlamps were flickering on. His car was sitting by the curb, nearly glowing in the light that shone above it.
    When he’d driven me out to Myloria’s, the car had sounded so loud and vicious I’d had an idea that it wanted to pull loose from the road and tear up the whole world. So I’d known what to expect, and still, I had not expected it. It was jewel-blue with a white stripe, all long shark’s nose and hungry body and a saucy little flip at the tail. The words TRANS AM were printed across the back, tiny flowers of rust flaking around the edges.
    “Where’d you get it?” I asked, marveling that someone my same age could own something so fancy.
    “Used to be my dad’s,” he said, throwing himself into the driver’s seat. “Now it’s mine.”
    I got in on the passenger side. “Oh. Did something happen to him?”
    Fisher didn’t look at me, just shrugged and jammed the key into the switch. “If disappearing in the middle of the night when I was five counts as something happening.”
    He said it like it didn’t matter, but when I blinked, I could see the strange trails of light again, shining around him in the dusk.
    Under me, the vinyl seat was smudged with ash and dirt, and it was peculiar knowing it had come from my own bare legs—that just a few hours ago, I’d been sitting in the same seat, with my eyes stitched shut, feeling the sun and the air on my face for the first time in years.
    Then Fisher turned the key and it was hard to think about anything at all. The engine roared as we swung away from the curb, aiming down Chester Street and out of town.
    We drove with the windows down, dust flying up around us, and the back end of the Trans Am squirreling on the gravel whenever Fisher put his boot on the gas.
    We stayed quiet, not because there was nothing to say, but because the road was loud and the night was mysterious and electric. Then we turned out onto County Road 5, toward the Willows, and Fisher killed the engine and the lights.
    “The zoo’s farther down,” I said in the sudden quiet, squinting through the windshield at the road.
    He nodded, coasting onto the shoulder and setting the brake. “I don’t know about you, but I see no reason to go announcing ourselves to the whole neighborhood right before we start turning the animals loose.”
    Then he got out and shut