Laura looked at me and grinned. “I’m sure you will,” she said, and all three of them left. Jill was sitting down and digging through her purse with a scowl on her face, but as soon as the door swung shut behind them she was on her feet again. “I’m going to go get the car,” she said to me, slowly and carefully, like maybe I didn’t speak her language. “You can wait here. I will pick you up in a few minutes. You have a few minutes.”
“Jill, I’ll walk to the car with you,” I said, exasperated. “I’m not going to ask for his phone number!”
“Tell him that,” she said, and darted past. I turned around and there was Casimir walking toward us, looking slightly uncertain. “See you!” Jill sang out to Casimir, and kept going. He had a little piece of paper in his hand. “I—your friend—” he said.
“Jill thinks she’s being tactful,” I said, not sure whether to die of embarrassment or stare into his big brown eyes as a way not to stare at the piece of paper in his hand.
He held it out to me. “I was hoping if I gave you my phone number you would give me yours,” he said, and turned the smile on again. “It is a large enough piece of paper that if you tear off the bottom, you could write yours on it.”
Our hands met as he gave me the paper. So many connections exploded I could feel the smoke coming out of my ears. I could barely write, or remember my phone number—I had to sort of mutter it over to myself so the rhythm would remind me. I could have pulled out my pocket phone, put his number on it, and sent mine to his, but where’s the romance in that? Besides, my hands were shaking so badly I’d probably have pressed the wrong buttons and sent my number to Joe’s Live Bait House, which is a major local landmark on the edge of the barrens, but I didn’t want Joe asking me out for a cup of coffee. It was my pocket number I gave Casimir, of course. I didn’t want Mom or Ran or—worst—Val to answer the ground phone with Casimir on the other end. Supposing he did call, which still seemed to me about as likely as that I’d decide to go to Runyon after all to study physwiz. (It might even be worth living at home, if Casimir was my TA next year.) When I gave him my little piece of paper I could see that at least half the restaurant was watching. Some of the women were really old. He probably did this six times a night every night with different girls. I wasn’t going to think about that.
“Talk to you soon,” I said, and fled.
CHAPTER 4
JILL WAS STILL PUNCHING THE AIR WHEN SHE dropped me off. I went up to the front door smiling—and then noticed that the light was still on in the living room. Shimatta. And toxic pond slime. Margaret Alastrina, I said to myself, pull the circuit breaker. It’s not even eleven yet (quite. It better not be, or I’m in big trouble). They’re just watching television or something.
As Mongo hit me going at full escape-earth’s-atmosphere velocity—oof—my mother appeared at the end of the front hall. Her eyes were red-rimmed. Yabai. Crap zone. I’d forgotten about our conversation earlier. Casimir was suddenly a figment of my imagination. This was reality.
“Hi sweetie,” she said. “Good evening?”
“Yeah. Except for the school-tomorrow part,” I said, petting the ecstatic Mongo (he had to have kangaroo blood, the way he could leap around on his hind legs), and hesitated. If it had just been Mom, I might have told her about Casimir. But I knew she wasn’t alone. Val was in the living room.
I had a moment to think, oh, come on, I don’t know that, I’m just guessing, they’ve been married less than two months, of course they’ve been smooching on the sofa after Ran went to bed. But I did know. I could feel him there as clearly as if I heard him cough. Or maybe it was his shadows I was picking up.
“I was about to make hot chocolate,” said my mother. “Can I make you some?”
It was a peace offering. I knew it was a peace offering. I didn’t want hot chocolate—well, no, I always want hot chocolate, but I didn’t want to drink it with Val, and I did want to go to bed and think about Casimir. Why couldn’t they just leave me alone. I could feel my head start to throb and I wanted to scream and throw things. But I hadn’t had a tantrum in about fifteen years and this probably wasn’t a good time to recharge that old skill.
I felt thirty years old. No, forty.
“Sure,” I said. “That would be great.”
Mom turned to go into the kitchen and I braced myself to join Val in the living room. I could do this. It was okay. Five minutes for Mom to make the hot chocolate. Two minutes to drink it—all right, five. Then I had to walk Mongo. It was a school night. I really did have to go to bed soon.
Where I was standing, about halfway down the front hall (next to the dining room that used to be a garage and the blank wall where the quilt should be), you can see the back of the sofa that faces the TV. You can’t see anyone sitting on it unless they tip their head back or hang an arm over it or something. I couldn’t see Val. He might be sitting in the big chair. Mom might have been sitting on his lap before I came in. It was a good chair for that. Jill used to sit in Eddie’s lap in that chair while Takahiro and I folded little paper things, sitting on the floor next to the coffee table. Eddie used to say things like, Hey, that’s amazing, what you guys can do with paper, that’s a . . . potato chip! I can tell! And that’s . . . Mr. Grass-ass’ ass! Wow!
Eddie always was a broken tool. But he didn’t have shadows.
As I was standing there in the hallway taking deep breaths and telling myself I only had to stay ten minutes, this shadow appeared over the back of the sofa—this long narrow snaky shadow—except it was too fat to be a snake, and it had this jagged outline like feathers or spiky plates or something—it drizzled along the top edge of the back a little ways, waggling back and forth, leaving a trail, or something, dark and shiny as a beetle’s back except as long as your arm. It looked like maybe it was trying to catch my attention, but I was bent over and holding onto Mongo like a drowning person hanging onto a piece of broken boat. Disappointed, I guess, when it reached the end of the sofa, it slithered or unrolled or something down the front, and then oozed across the seat and fell or dripped to the floor. . . .
I’d had it. I’d had it.
I could have done one of two things. I could have screamed, run back out the front door and never come back. I could have become the Phantom of the Shelter, only coming out at night to clean kennels. Or I could get so furious I forgot to be frightened, thinking this monster, this magic user, living in my house, married to my mom—and run forward, straight at the snake-shadow thing, and screamed at Val.
I chose the second.
“What the gods’ holy engines is it with you?” I shouted. “I’m sick of your stupid horrible shadows crawling around! What are they! What are you? What are you doing out there in the shed? What are you? What are you doing here?”