As for Andy, all the fight was gone. He stared at the floor just in front of his feet, blinking every once in a while. When Dad finally gave him a chance to speak, he only shrugged his shoulders.
“Come on,” Dad said, putting a hand on my shoulders. “When he’s like this, you just have to leave him alone.”
I glanced back, just once, and I saw that Andy wasn’t staring at the floor anymore. He was staring at the wall where the tape had exploded, studying what he had done.
Chapter Four
I went on a date a few months ago. I finally understood why they use the term “blind” date. You have to be visually challenged to agree to go on one. Calling him fat would be kind.
Now, before you start thinking I’m even more of a bitch than you already do, you have to understand the situation here. I’m no catch; I realize that. My issues, stacked one on top of the other, would cast a shadow on the Eiffel Tower. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m still quite pretty. That’s not bragging – it just is what it is. I’ve heard it my entire life, from the age of three on. On multiple occasions, I’ve had people tell me I could be a model. Granted, those people were idiots, but it doesn’t mean their opinions were completely invalid.
My hair is black, but my eyes have always been a vibrant, cold blue. I’m too short to be a model, but not so short that it’s noticeable. I’ve tried hard to stay slim, even though I have enough of my dad in me to completely blow up if I ever stop trying. In other words, I’m used to getting looks from just about every man I meet. It’s distracting enough that I tend to keep my eyes on the ground, just to avoid the awkwardness. They see me coming and like what they see, and the reactions are as varied as the men are. Polite smiles. Curt nods. Aw-shucks glances at their shoes. Outright creepiness in the form of making my clothes vanish with their imaginations. The message, regardless, is clear: “Hello. I’m a man. May I?”
That changes when they get close, when they really see me, really see the parts I don’t want them to. All of a sudden, that nervous energy shifts, and the balance of power tilts in their favor. It sounds awful to say, but there are, quite simply, tiers that exist between the sexes, instantly recognizable categories that we all fall into like colored marbles into jars. I hate it, but I, more than most, can’t deny it. If my life had progressed differently, had I just ignored the thing that crept into my house, I feel certain that I would be in the high end of the tiers. Certainly not the top, but miles away from the bottom.
This thought occurred to me when I met my date. His name was, I dunno, Bob maybe. He certainly looked like a Bob. Thin hair, parted to minimize the damage. Beard that acted as camouflage, hiding a weak chin. Striped polo, tucked into khakis. Vanilla pudding made sentient.
We talked. We ate. He laughed. He was, simply, over the moon. Somehow, by some insane alignment of the planets, he found himself on a date with someone he shouldn’t have been on a date with. The type of girl who had no doubt shunned him for the better part of his life. The type of girl who moved in flocks in high school, running him down, making him feel small, making every ounce of fat on his body feel like a ten-pound weight. And yet there I was, sitting right in front of him, smiling, nodding along, trying to make the best of the whole thing. Regardless of how the rest of the night might go, the simple act of eating a meal with me was a victory, and he basked in it.
When it was all said and done, he drove me back to my car, which was parked in front of a grocery store – a neutral meet-up suggested by a coworker whose ass I would ream on the following Monday. As he drove, I actually fretted over how to end this whole thing, not because I liked Bob, but because I was so damn lonely. I’d made an effort to hide everything throughout the meal, keeping the worst parts of me hidden as best I could. I’d grown remarkably good at it over the years.
I considered, really considered, going home with him, if for no other reason than to lie beside another human being in bed. Then, as we made small talk, he saw it. It was my fault. I’d been careful throughout our meal. I was always so careful, but sometimes, you just mess up. You slip. Though his gaze was still focused on the road, the shock in his eyes was bright, sharp, and totally familiar. He realized, in a single instant, what I’d known since the date began. The world flipped, and the balance was thrown upside down. As he pulled into the lot and parked beside my car, he looked at me, not as an object of desire, but just an object. In a single moment, the power shifted completely to him. I was no longer his desire, just his pity, someone he could throw it to just to make me feel better.
“So,” he said, grinning, “let’s go back to my place.”
I stepped out of the car, pausing just long enough to turn back and say, “I’d rather drown in shit.”
I spent a few minutes attempting to piece the tape back together, but it was all for nothing. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I dropped the shattered bits into the trash can just as the doorbell rang. It was Ruth of course, there for the camera, foot tapping, eyes narrowed on me. I handed it over, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t notice the tape missing.
“Sallie said something about her doll.” It wasn’t quite a question, but it made me breathe a sigh of relief.
“I… uhhhh… I’m not sure where it is, Miss Renner.”
“Mrs. Renner.”
She stared at me. I stared at my feet. Neither of us spoke for an awkwardly long time. Finally, she sighed, as sharp a sound as a tire springing a leak.
“You know, she really loves that toy. It means a lot to her.” She studied me, waiting for my reaction. “I can’t imagine it means anything to you.”
I shrugged and she turned on the heel of her pristine white sneaker and she was gone.
The next day at school, Sallie wasn’t happy with me, but I told her the truth. Part of the truth at least. I didn’t think it would do any good to tell her about the… thing that took her doll, even if I desperately wanted someone else to know. I promised to keep looking for it, and that was just about all I knew to do.
I was more concerned about the Toy Thief anyway, which was how I had begun referring to the creature in my head. Whatever it was, I was equal parts horrified and mesmerized by it. So, despite my fear, I decided it would be best to try to catch it in the act once more, to regain some bit of evidence to replace what Andy had destroyed. It was, in hindsight, nine-year-old logic. There wasn’t much else I could do, but this felt like some kind of momentous secret, one that had come to me alone to explore and understand. I wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass.
I planned a stakeout for the next night. Planned might not be the right word. I might have been watching too much A-Team at the time, but this particular little adventure turned immediately into an opportunity to get equipped with whatever sort of gear I could find. As you can probably tell, I’d always been a bit of a tomboy, and any chance I got to play adventurer, I took it. There wasn’t much to speak of in the way of legitimately helpful equipment, but I began to dig into my closet all the same, clawing my way through old boxes of junk in search of anything that might help, again with nine-year-old logic applied.
I had a pocketknife, a cheap brass and wood job with a lock on the back. It was too dull to cut butter, but I still wasn’t sure exactly what I was up against, and a weapon is a weapon. I found a handful of bottle rockets, probably too old to actually fire, along with half a dozen roman candles. Powerful firearms, equivalent only to rocket launchers in the mind of a child. There was a roll of thickly threaded string, probably from a kite, that I figured I might be able to set a trap with. Batteries of all sizes, perfect for cracking open to gather the acid within. The deeper I dug, the longer the list grew, but the greatest treasures were relegated to the garage.