“Sexy.”
“She’s my
“So what?”
“Sometimes I wonder about you, Roy.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“Hopeless.”
“I thought we were talking about the bat.”
“So what happened to the bat?”
“My dad got a broom and knocked it out of the air. He kept hitting it until it stopped squealing. Boy, you should have heard it squeal.” Colin shuddered. “It was awful.”
“Blood?”
“Huh?”
“Was there a lot of blood?”
“No.”
Roy looked at the sea again. He didn’t seem impressed by the story about the bat.
The warm breeze stirred Roy’s hair. He had the kind of thick golden hair and the wholesome freckled face that you saw in television commercials. He was a sturdy boy, strong for his age, a good athlete.
Colin wished he looked like Roy.
Someday, when I’m rich, Colin thought, I’ll walk into a plastic surgeon’s office with maybe a million bucks in cash and a picture of Roy. I’ll get myself totally remade. Totally transformed. The surgeon will change my brown hair to com yellow. He’ll say,
Still studying the progress of the ship on the sea, Roy said, “Killed bigger things, too.”
“Bigger than mice?”
“Sure.”
“Like what?”
“A cat.”
“You killed a cat?”
“That’s what I said, didn’t I?
“Why’d you do that?”
“I was bored.”
“That’s no reason.”
“It was something to do.”
“Jeez.”
Roy turned away from the sea.
“What a crock,” Colin said.
Roy hunkered in front of Colin, locked eyes with him. “It was a popper, a really terrific popper.”
“A popper? Fun? Why would killing a cat be fun?”
“Why
Colin was skeptical. “How’d you kill it?”
“First I put it in a cage.”
“What kind of cage?”
“A big old birdcage, about three feet square.”
“Where’d you get a thing like that?”
“It was in our basement. A long time ago my mother owned a parrot. When it died she didn’t get a new bird, but she didn’t throw away the cage either.”
“Was it your cat?”
“Nah. Belonged to some people down the street.”
“What was its name?”
Roy shrugged.
“If there’d really been a cat, you’d remember its name,” Colin said.
“Fluffy. Its name was Fluffy.”
“Sounds likely.”
“It’s true. I put it in the cage and worked on it with my mother’s knitting needles.”
“Worked on it?”
“I poked at it through the bars. Christ, you should have heard it!”
“No thanks.”
“That was one damned mad cat. It spat and screamed and tried to claw me.”
“So you killed it with the knitting needles.”
“Nah. The needles just made it angry.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“Later I got a long, two-pronged meat fork from the kitchen and killed it with that.”
“Where were your folks during all this?”
“Both of them at work. I buried the cat and cleaned up all the blood before they got home.”
Colin shook his head and sighed. “What a great big load of bull.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“You never killed any cat.”
“Why would I make up a story like that?”
“You’re trying to see if you can gross me out. You’re trying to make me sick.”
Roy grinned. “Are you sick?”
“Of course not.”
“You look kinda pale.”
“You can’t make me sick because I know it didn’t happen. There wasn’t any cat.”
Roy’s eyes were sharp and demanding. Colin imagined he could feel them probing like the points of that meat fork.
“How long have you known me?” Roy asked.
“Since the day after Mom and I moved here.”
“How long’s that?”
“You know. Since the first of June. A month.”
“In all that time, have I ever lied to you? No. Because you’re my friend. I wouldn’t lie to a friend.”
“You’re not lying exactly. just sort of playing a game.”
“I don’t like games,” Roy said.
“But you like to joke around a lot.”
“I’m not joking now.”
“Sure you are. You’re setting me up. As soon as I say I believe about the cat, you’ll laugh at me. I won’t fall for it.”
“Well,” Roy said, “I tried.”
“Hah! You were setting me up!”
“If that’s what you want to think, it’s okay with me.”
Roy walked away. He stopped twenty feet from Colin and faced the sea again. He stared at the hazy horizon as if he were in a trance. To Colin, who was a science-fiction buff, Roy appeared to be in telepathic communication with something that hid far out in the deep, dark, rolling water.
“Roy? You
