“Please tell me you saw it, I can’t do that again,” he said, out of breath.
“I’m sorry Spud,” I shrugged. “It’s just no.”
“No?” he echoed, his face falling. “But…didn’t you see? She smiled, for a second.”
“Tiffany is always smiling,” I replied, taking a bite of food.
“You gotta be wrong.”
I didn’t need to reply. He was very quiet for a while, then he huffed.
“But every psycho-prodigy messes up once in a while.”
“No.”
“Really, there’s a chance.”
“No.”
He sighed. It was an unfortunate fact that neither of us got dates. I was frightening enough, and Spud, my only friend, was exclusively intimate with computer programming languages.
“Do I owe you anything?” he murmured.
“Nah,” I replied. “But you could show me some fun secret government files if you want.”
He grabbed his laptop far too eagerly for my comfort.
“I wasn’t serious,” I stopped him. He leaned back dejectedly, nibbling on his toast.
The day did not get any more interesting, but only got worse when the yawning math teacher Mr. Chex twirled his moustache and assigned us a massive test, during which time he took a nap. I was all too happy when school was over, only to walk out to my usual parking spot and be greeted by someone else’s car in place of mine. I cursed the crash again and started the long trip home on foot.
A mild breeze brushed the grass on the roadside. Every step away from the school and my lifeless day lifted tiny weights off my shoulder. Alli’s school wasn’t far from mine, and when I started to pass it on the sidewalk, I saw her hovering around a group. I strolled up, pushing my fingers through the chain links.
“Get in my van, I have candy,” I growled at her in my best creepy voice, and she turned from her friends, who all looked at me with expressions of horror.
“Get in my van instead,” she replied, “I’ve got a jar of punch-you-in-the-face.”
Her expression betrayed her words though, because she had lit up when I’d appeared. I usually drove myself home so I never showed up to see her. Her friends’ started breathing again, but I’d probably upset Alli’s chances of getting them to come to our house for a while.
“Where’s Spud?” Alli asked. I nodded my head back in the direction of school.
“In the library,” I said. “I’m here walking home all alone and lonely.”
“Mom said I could go with Kate and Sammy,” Alli said apologetically. Her friends continued to eye me suspiciously.
“I get it,” I said, shrugging. “I’ll just walk home, and probably get run over by a car, or mauled by a bear coming out of the trees—”
“Fine.” Alli sighed in defeat. Both of her friends looked at her wildly, but she paid them no heed. Sometimes I wondered if she could read my emotions too. She had changed from their side to mine and I hadn’t even gotten to my good begging yet.
She ran around the gate and joined me, waving to her friends as she disappeared.
“They’re not gonna be mad at you, right?” I asked.
“They’ll get over it,” she replied. “Hungry?”
She held out a remaining half of a sandwich. I shook my head. We walked in silence for a while, the March sun throwing pinks and yellows across the horizon that bordered the high canyon sides of the Valley. Multilayered clouds hovered above us like the fluffy shreds of a torn pillow littered across the sky. Cars drove slowly by us in the school zone, kids babbling as they traveled in packs down a crosswalk.
“Did you do anything today?” Alli asked, since I wasn’t talking.
“Not much,” I replied. “Lame stuff mostly. Math. I hate math.”
“I hate math too,” she agreed.
“You’ll die when you get to mine.” I elbowed her. “They use letters as numbers.”
“I’m already doing that,” she huffed. “X plus one equals four. What is X?”
“X needs to die in a fire,” I replied, and my sister chuckled. She always did that, at every crazy joke I made. That was probably why I’d gone to get her that evening. Which reminded me…
Without warning, I whipped my pocket camera out, and Alli dodged to get out of the lens. I was faster though, and rattled off a few snapshots as she struggled to hide her face.
“Stop it!” she demanded. This was our game. Alli hated me taking photographs of her. She wouldn’t take her hands from her face until I put the camera away.
“I got at least ten this time,” I gloated.
“And you’ll have none when I break that camera with a tennis racket,” she said.
Neighborhoods went by on both sides separated by the road we were following, the smell of damp grass coming from the vigilantly watered lawns. Some people were home from work and in their yards, babbling from terraces, blue fluorescent fly zappers hanging from the porches and armed for the attack of flying beasts. It was all a blur to me, because I’d seen this route every day for years now, even if it was from a car window. My steps became an autopilot.
“You’re not listening, are you?” Alli said, slapping my arm.
“What?” I looked at her quickly. “Of course I’m listening.”
“What did I just say?” she demanded.
“Something about death? Destruction?” I tried. She hit me again.
“I don’t know why you wanted me to walk home with you if you’re not listening.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “Look, I was in a car crash last night—I’m not in the best condition.”
I waved at my gauze-covered arm. “You can’t blame me. Then on top of that I had a really weird dream last night.”
“Were you chained to a chair and fed maggots?” she asked. My eyes widened in horror.
“What? No?” I coughed. “Where did you read that?” Holy hell, she’s only eleven.
“It was on TV,” she said. “I watched a show on a serial killer.”
“How do you even know what a serial killer is?” I said with dismay. “You’re supposed to still think that’s somebody who murders Cap’n Crunch.”
“I don’t even eat Cap’n Crunch.”
I gave in. “It was a dream about…running, from somebody.” I didn’t know if I should mention he’d been my client.
“Was he really ugly?” Alli said. “I dreamed of an old ugly man last week. But when he tried to get me into the gas chamber, I sprayed him with acid.”
I stared at her blankly. My sister stared back.
“I don’t really know how to respond to that,” I said, blinking. “But I think you might want to schedule something with mom when we get home.”
“I don’t need a therapist,” Alli said adamantly. “I’m eleven.”
I was about to retort but we were crossing another busy street and the cars covered my voice. We got onto the sidewalk again, passing into our neighborhood.
“Mom said I wasn’t supposed to ask you about nearly getting murdered,” Alli stated. I tried not to look at her suspiciously. She had a clever way of getting her intentions across.
“You know I do enjoy a good almost-murder story,” she said.
“Didn’t mom rule that out?” I replied. “I was just delirious, right?” Part of me wanted to know what my mom was saying about it.
“But still,” she insisted, “you remember something.”
I debated whether continuing with this conversation was a good idea. My sister’s head was disturbed enough. In the end, I decided I probably wouldn’t make things any worse up there.
So I told her everything that I could remember, from sneaking out of the house and quietly driving to meet Mr. Sharpe. My story followed what’d happened step-by-step, but I left out the silver claws and the flying. Even she would find that unbelievable, I thought. When I came to the end, we were nearly home, and Alli was quiet for a long time.