Page 6 of Only a Monster

On the stove, cocoa was still bubbling. Joan could hear the slow tick of the clock. The whole world seemed to have narrowed to Gran’s green eyes.

‘You mean I can make things disappear?’ Joan said. ‘Disappear and reappear?’ She wasn’t very good at it. If anything, that ability had diminished over the years. Gran and Uncle Gus could make whole paintings vanish, but Joan had never managed anything much bigger than a coin.

In the yellow kitchen light, Gran’s eyes were as luminous as a cat’s. ‘That’s the Hunt family power,’ she said. ‘Each monster family has its own power. But all monsters have a power in common. We can travel. That’s what you did.’

‘Travel?’

‘Humans are bound in time,’ Gran said. ‘Monsters are not. You stole time from that man and then you used it to travel from this morning to tonight. You travelled in time.’

Joan wanted to laugh. She wanted Gran to start laughing. But Gran was just looking at her. ‘What are you talking about?’ she said.

‘Life,’ Gran clarified. ‘You stole a few hours of life from him.’

‘No,’ Joan said. She didn’t understand.

‘You didn’t take much,’ Gran said. ‘Half a day, perhaps. He’ll die half a day earlier than he was supposed to.’

‘No!’ Stealing life from humans . . . Joan’s family had always called themselves monsters, but Gran was making it sound like they were monsters. Like they preyed on humans. Yeah, they shoplifted sometimes. Ruth could pick a bike lock. Bertie snuck into movies through the back door. But they weren’t monsters.

‘I didn’t,’ Joan said. ‘I didn’t steal life from him. I wouldn’t. None of us would. And travelling in time . . . well, that’s . . .’

Joan saw Uncle Gus’s hat then, on the kitchen bench. It was like all of Gus’s hats: beautifully kept. This one was a chestnut colour with a rich brown band. Gus was slimly built with a kind of 1950s style. He liked sharp suits and hats. Even his hair was old-fashioned: neatly smoothed and parted to the side.

Joan thought about what Aunt Ada had been wearing yesterday morning. Ada had an eclectic wardrobe, and Joan had always liked it. Yesterday she’d been up early, wearing a mechanic-style jumpsuit and a scarf in her hair with a knot at the top. The day before, she’d been in a white dress, like she was going to a 1920s garden party.

Like she was going to travel back in time to a 1920s garden party.

Joan pushed away from the table. The scrape of her chair was loud in the silence.

‘Joan,’ Gran said.

Joan gripped the edge of the table. She shook her head again. She didn’t even know what she was trying to deny.

Gran held out something. It was Joan’s phone, the one she’d dropped in the scuffle with Mr Solt. The screen was cracked.

‘Don’t forget the rule,’ Gran said. ‘No one can know what we are. What you are. You must never tell anyone about monsters.’

Upstairs, Joan’s room was just as she’d left it that morning—bed unmade with her pajamas strewn over the pillow. She stared down at her phone, at the long, jagged crack across the screen. Someone had turned it off. Gran had known to wait up for Joan tonight, and apparently she’d known to retrieve Joan’s phone as well. Joan swallowed.

She turned her phone back on. When it lit up, she felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over her. There were messages from Nick.

She wanted to cry suddenly. She’d wanted to spend the day with him so much, and she’d missed their date. Not only that, but she’d hurt him. She’d stood him up.

Throat tight, she scrolled through the messages. The first was the one she’d seen that morning. She’d been about to answer it when Mr Solt had arrived.

I’m on the Tube!

I’m here!

Everything okay? Are we still having breakfast?

Joan, are you okay?

Joan swallowed around the lump in her throat. The first message had been sent at seven thirty-nine a.m.; the last at six twenty-three p.m. She stared at her phone, not sure what to say. In the end, she went with:

I’m so sorry. I’m okay. A family thing came up.

You stole time from that man, Gran had said, and then you used it to travel from this morning to tonight. You travelled in time.

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