I don’t even think I’d ever mentioned Suzie to Laura, because I’m not really into talking about girls to girls—I mean telling them about other girls I had liked—because I don’t know what the benefit would be, unless I just wanted to make them jealous, and I’m not a big proponent of doing that, and I don’t think I’d do it even if a girl asked and was curious about other girls I’d been into. I didn’t even know Laura when I had hung out with Suzie, because I hadn’t even met her yet.
Still, there seemed to be some sort of connection between them in my mind, some sort of very close connection, which I know sounds crazy, and I really thought it was, so I just sort of stopped my mind from thinking, really just told it to shut up for a little while, and I leaned up on the dog bed and listened.
There wasn’t any sound upstairs.
No footsteps or noises.
I didn’t even hear Dobey up there, which sort of surprised me, because dogs are usually pretty good at sniffing out intruders.
All I could think about was how I wanted to get the hell out of there.
I got up very quietly and went over to where I’d stood the night before, right in front of the sink. I looked around. Certainly nothing had changed; there was no special evidence that anyone other than Jack had come downstairs during the night or anything.
I raised my leg over the sink and very carefully climbed up on it until I was on my knees. I held on to the faucet for balance. It had two spigots attached to it, on one of which was the attachment fixture for the hose that had been strung out the window, but that Jack had disconnected the night before.
I looked outside. All I could see was a green glow under the still sort of bluish morning light, and a bit of the yard through the bushes I’d hidden behind last night before I climbed in.
Kneeling there like that I realized I was pretty hungry. And I had to pee. But not too badly, thank god, because if I did I’d have to do it in the sink and then I’d have to turn the faucet on, and it would make noise all throughout the house.
And really, what if somebody upstairs just happened to come downstairs and caught me peeing in their sink?
So I sort of gave up on the idea of relieving myself—at least until the coast was clear.
The window was locked. I saw the lock, just a little plastic lever shaped like an L. No key or anything. I could open it, for sure. It would of course set off the alarm. But this time I might just make it. Climbing out in the daylight would be easier. I’d be able to make it to the back alley fast, and from there I could just hide somewhere; that would be extremely easy for me. They might not catch me, and because there was no evidence I’d been inside, there was even a possibility they might just think it was a system malfunction or something, and never even realize I’d been there.
I thought about doing it for a second. It sort of made me smile. Even Jack wouldn’t be fast enough to catch me—he’d have to get dressed, for one thing, or at least put his pants on. I think it was imagining him rushing to get into his pants that made me smile.
But I just couldn’t see waking them up that way. It’d be too much of a shock for them to have to bolt out of bed thinking there were intruders in the house. Anyways, I didn’t even have my shoes on.
I climbed down and got my shoes out from behind the curtain. I checked to see how wet they were; they were still a bit damp. Dirty, too, even though I’d wiped a lot of the mud off. I couldn’t put them back on without leaving tracks, I was sure.
I really didn’t know what to do, and right then, like a very distant chime, I heard an alarm clock go off.
Oh boy, I thought.
As fast as I could, I crept under the curtain and lay back on the bed.
I can’t tell you how badly I needed to pee. It was like that alarm clock had sort of activated it.
I lay there listening, and in no time the upstairs was full of noises. Not that the floor creaked or anything like it would have at my house, because back there if you were down in the basement—or cellar, really, because I don’t want to, like, ennoble my house to make it sound anything like Laura’s—you’d have heard, like, the whole floor creaking and shrieking like an earthquake was on its way.
All I heard were the little thumps of footsteps, and it was pretty easy to distinguish, by what you could call almost the weight of the sound of the footsteps, who was walking around up there, which was obviously Laura’s dad and her brother, Jack, because they had, you know, more thump to them, and then Laura’s mom, with a little less thump, but I must admit certainly some thump, and then last of all Laura, who of course had almost no thump at all, because she’s actually quite graceful.
“I used to study gymnastics,” she had told me one night when she was baby-sitting. We lay piled on the sofa in the game room, taking a break from making out. “Since I was five. I guess I’m okay at it.”
That’s all she ever told me about it, and
