second man was better at hiding ulterior motives. Experienced sex traffickers were excellent actors, or so Anthony assumed.
The stocky man’s sincerity combined with the tall man’s latent wickedness and Anthony’s own concern for his family, the rest of whom might be rising now and hoping to find the Saturday Breakfast Ritual intact, kept Anthony’s mouth shut and made him grab the flier. A clump of egg dropped off the spatula he had been holding and rolled across Jesus’ face.
The men nodded in sync and turned away.
“Who’re they?” Delaney stood next to him in shorts and a T-shirt with a giant heart on it. She had come down the steps so quietly to stand next to him that Anthony twitched in surprise. “Don’t have a heart attack, old man. Mom would be upset.” She patted his back and laughed. The sound was high and light and wonderful.
He smirked at her. “Only Mom would be upset, huh?”
“Well,” Delaney said, “she’s the only one who really likes your eggs anyway.”
He grabbed her in a loose headlock and she immediately started to giggle the way she used to when she was a kid and he’d chase her around the house pretending to be a monster. “Nobody likes my eggs, you say?” he said in an exaggerated baritone.
“That voice is
He found the ticklish spot under her arm and she squirmed her way out of his grip in a cackle of laughter. “I have to get ready for SAT prep,” she said. “Where’s my breakfast?”
“Coming right up, your majesty,” he said and started to close the door.
He stopped. The broad-shouldered man, with the loose wisps of hair and the wrinkle veins in his suit stood at the bottom of the front porch steps, watching him with those blue eyes. Something about those eyes, something in that expression.
“Can I help you?” Anthony tried to sound annoyed but his voice cracked with concern.
“Your daughter,” the man said and smiled large again. A shark smile. “She’s very pretty.”
Then he turned and walked down the driveway, following after the tall guy who was already down the road, nearly out of sight.
3
Brendan awoke before seven, turned off his alarm clock five minutes before it would buzz to life, and began the ritual. He made his bed first, pulling the sheets tight and folding the corners snug under the mattress. Then he showered. He had only started showering two years ago and only did it three or four times weekly and usually only at his mother’s insistence and always at night before bed. There was never anytime in the mornings before school for Brendan to shower with Tyler and Delaney fighting over use of the bathroom, not that Brendan wanted to, anyway. Showering was annoying. He didn’t miss baths (they were too childish), but he didn’t care for showers. It was like standing in a downpour. Sometimes his mother had to tell him to get back in the shower because he had forgotten to shampoo his hair or clean the dirt out from under his nails. Sometimes he just stood in the shower and counted the seconds until he knew five minutes had passed: the required minimum number of seconds (300) his mother deemed necessary for a shower to be truly effective. Adults, as well as his teenage siblings, seemed to enjoy showering. Brendan didn’t understand. Maybe they enjoyed standing naked in the rain.
Mom’s insistence about his bathing habits had stopped. She no longer ushered him into the bathroom to shower during
The gods demanded a sacrifice.
Dad wasn’t as good as Mom about forcing Brendan to shower and then checking on the shower’s effectiveness, but he tried his best. He made sure Brendan was up on school days in time for a bowl of cereal and maybe a few minutes of cartoons before handing him some money for lunch and telling him to have a good day. He always reminded Tyler to drive him and Delaney to school, but the second half of his senior year gave Tyler something called Late Arrival, which meant he didn’t have to get up until after his brother and sister were both on the school bus. Delaney always wanted Brendan to sit next to him on the bus, but he never wanted to. All she ever did was complain to her friends, through text-messages, how unfair it was that she was sixteen and didn’t have a car. Dad said she was smart, but Brendan didn’t see it.
But those were weekdays; today was Saturday and Saturday was a unique day that had to be observed correctly. When the original calendar was created, Saturday was deemed a magic day—the Romans used it as the first day of the week, meaning it was symbolic of Creation Day. Most sacrifices to the gods (offerings of animals), which were meant to win the favor of the gods, were performed on Saturday. A holy day. A day to be respected and acknowledged. Or else suffer the consequences. He knew this was true because he had read it.
Dr. Carroll had given him the book (along with little white pills meant to help him “focus”) back in October. The book was titled
Even on Saturday, however, showering was annoying, yet Brendan spent an extra long time, nearly fifteen minutes, during his Saturday showers to get his hair really clean and his nails dirt-free. He even scrubbed behind his ears, though he wasn’t sure how dirt could settle there in the first place. He rubbed soap over his face and furiously sanded it into his skin because Delaney had told him that twelve-years-old was the age when blackheads started forming, especially on the nose. He had asked her what blackheads were and she said they were like zits only they created craters in the skin and got filled with dirt, which got infected and could even rot skin enough for it to fall off. He figured she was lying, at least stretching the truth, but that didn’t stop him from soaping up his face and scrubbing until his flesh burned.
After the shower came the clothes. He set them aside last night under his bed wrapped in a plastic shopping bag he had taken from the kitchen pantry. The clothes were clean and neatly folded and he had to make sure that none of the dust under the bed tainted them. The Romans had been very careful to always wear clean clothes (or togas) on Saturday because the gods found soiled garments displeasing. It was important not to anger the gods, the writer of the book (Jack Carter) had warned. When gods were offended and then got angry, horrible things happened. The baby’s death had been a horrible thing, at least for Mom and Dad, but maybe they had done something to anger the gods, and in response the gods had taken a sacrifice.
Brendan knew death was a terrible thing, but he also knew it was part of life. He had learned that three years ago when the family dog Dasher had gotten sick and couldn’t walk anymore. They had taken him to the vet where the doctor injected the dog with something that made him sleep forever. Delaney cried. Brendan asked why Dasher had to die, couldn’t the doctor help him? Mom explained that all things died and it was okay to be sad but it was a natural part of life and we should be happy for all the memories we have of Dasher.
By the time the baby died, Brendan had read maybe 100 pages of the book. After the death, after the funeral with the tiny coffin, Brendan read the next fifty pages or so in a two-night sprint. The Romans believed in immortals. They knew that some people lived forever, if that person pleased the gods. A family that didn’t show the proper respect to the gods could be punished and punished repeatedly. And severely. None of his family had observed the sanctity of Saturday. Everyone slept late and then went off to do their own thing. Tyler drove somewhere, Delaney texted friends, his parents watched TV and cleaned the house, and even he went bowling in the youth league and then played arcade games with his friends. They enjoyed themselves because they thought it was the weekend, but they were wrong and the gods had made them suffer. Dasher had been a warning so many years ago. The baby was punishment. Brendan hadn’t wanted a little brother, but he also didn’t want his mother sleeping all day and staring into space like her brain was turned off when she occasionally managed to get up.
In light of the baby’s death, Brendan rose early on Saturdays, showered, put on clean clothes, and planned the sacrifices. Chapter two of
