'Maybe,' he said to the swirling colors on the screen. Always before,
responding to this entity, he had said 'no.' The 'maybe' alarmed
Heather.
'Could be, maybe,' he said.
She took the earphones off him, and he finally looked up at her.
'What're you doing, Toby?'
'Talking,' he said in a half-drugged voice.
'What were you saying 'maybe' to?'
'To the Giver,' he explained.
She remembered that name from her dream, the hateful thing's attempt to
portray itself as the source of great relief, peace, and pleasure.
'It's not a giver. That's a lie. It's a taker. You keep saying 'no'
to it.'
Toby stared up at her.
She was shaking. 'You understand me, honey?'
He nodded.
She was still not sure he was listening to her. 'You keep saying 'no,'
nothing but 'no.''
'All right.'
She threw the Game Boy in the waste can. After a hesitation, she took
it out, placed it on the floor, and stomped it under her boot, once,
twice. She rammed her heel down on it a third time, although the
device was well crunched after two stomps, then once more for good
measure, then again just for the hell of it, until she realized she was
out of control, taking excess measures against the Game Boy because she
couldn't get at the Giver, which was the thing she really wanted to
stomp.
For a few seconds she stood there, breathing hard, staring at the
plastic debris. She started to stoop to gather up the pieces, then
decided to hell with it. She kicked the larger chunks against the
wall.
Falstaff had become interested enough to get to his feet. When Heather
returned to the window at the sink, the retriever regarded her
curiously, then went to the trashed Game Boy and sniffed it as if
trying to determine why it had elicited such fury from her.
Beyond the window, nothing had changed. A winddriven avalanche of snow
obscured the day almost as thoroughly as a fog rolling off the Pacific
could obscure the streets of a California beach town.
She looked at Toby. 'You okay?'
'Yeah.'
'Don't let it in.'
'I don't want to.'
'Then don't. Be tough. You can do it.'
On the counter under the microwave, the radio powered up of its own
accord, as if it incorporated an alarm clock set to provide five
minutes of music prior to a wake-up buzzer. It was a big
multiple-spectrum receiver, the size of two giant-economy-size boxes of
cereal, and it pulled in six bands, including domestic AM and FM,
however, it was not a clock and could not be programmed to switch
