Hannah shook her head, still staring at the upper floor, clearly expecting the big black dog to come back at any moment.
Kaitlyn thought for a moment. “What if they put the dog outside?” The words had barely come out of her mouth before she realized that it wasn’t an option. She wouldn’t put even the worst dog in the world out there with those things. “Or in another room or something?” she quickly added.
Hannah said nothing, but she also didn’t shake her head. Kaitlyn took that as progress.
“I’ll go see if we can do that,” she said and turned to go up the stairs. Hannah held firmly onto her hand and pulled her back down. “Okay. No. I’ll stay here.”
This was getting them nowhere.
“Excuse me?” she yelled up the stairs. “Excuse me?” When no one replied, she called up, “Hey!”
The boy from outside—Alex, she remembered—popped his head around the corner, though she barely recognized him without his helmet or cushions. “What?”
“Do you have a dog up there?” she asked, figuring it was a decent enough place to start the conversation. After all, she hadn’t actually seen it. Maybe it was just a large cat.
“Yup,” Alex said with a smile. “She’s real nice.” He looked past Kaitlyn at Hannah. His face lit up with realization “She’s really, really nice,” he said directly to Hannah. “You should come meet her! She really likes—”
Kaitlyn cut him off. “Is there anywhere you could put him?” Realization or not, she wanted to get upstairs as soon as possible.
“What?”
“Can you put your dog somewhere else? Hannah is afraid of him.”
Alex looked shocked. “No, I can’t put MY dog somewhere else,” he said, more than a hint of frustration in his voice. “What do you want me to do? Put her outside?”
“No, no,” Kaitlyn said. “Just, I dunno, lock him in a room or something?”
“Her! She’s a girl!”
“Sorry.”
“And no! I can’t lock her in a room! She can go wherever she wants!” He stopped for a moment; he seemed genuinely angry. Obviously, she had touched a nerve. “You can go wherever you want, too!” he added, pointing toward the front door.
“We can’t go back out there!” Kaitlyn yelled at him. “You just saw—”
“Yeah, I saw!” Alex yelled, his face reddening. Kaitlyn knew this was going to be a fight she did not have the energy for. Hopefully she could reason with him. “I saw a bunch of mudmen that you guys brought here with all your screaming!”
“What?” Was this jerky boy actually blaming her and Hannah for bringing those things to them? Forget reason. “We were screaming because they were already there!”
“Yeah, but that was probably only, like, a few! Your screaming made more come and they almost killed me and my friends!”
“There was a lot more than a few!”
“Probably not! You probably got scared of the dark or something!”
“I did not! They were coming in through the window!”
“Well why did you leave the window open?” Alex laughed, cruelly. “What are you, stupid or something?”
“No! The window got smashed!”
“And then you started screaming and then they all started coming and then—”
“SHUT UP!”
The yell from above silenced them both. Nicole stood at the top of the stairs, her face red and her nostrils flared. “Both of you shut up. Your argument about screaming is bringing them here BY SCREAMING! Are you both complete idiots?”
“I wasn’t—” Alex started.
“Shut. Up.” Nicole said, though her glare would have done the trick. “Everyone come upstairs and keep quiet. The dog is in a room at the end of the hall and the door is closed, okay?”
Kaitlyn and Hannah both nodded, stunned by the power of this girl.
Alex looked about to argue more, but was stopped by Nicole’s stare before he could even take a breath. He waited on the stairs as Kaitlyn came near enough to whisper, “I’m letting her out, you know. As soon as I get up there!”
“Whatever!” Kaitlyn whispered back, “If you wanna be a jerk and scare a little girl, you do that!”
ALEX
Alex heard Shadow scratching at the door at the end of the hall. “I’m not a jerk!” he called after Kaitlyn, forgetting the threat that Nicole had made. “I just saved your stupid life!”
Kaitlyn simply turned around and narrowed her eyes at him. She led Hannah into the bedroom. HIS bedroom.
“They have to sleep in a different room,” he said to himself. “A girl room and a boy room.”
“You are such a loser,” Nicole said as she walked past him.
He wasn’t sure how much she had heard, but he hoped she’d somehow missed the continued fighting. He waited in the hall for a moment, working up the courage to suggest separate bedrooms. When he walked in, he saw David sitting in the corner, panting, still in his coat and gloves from outside. Nicole and the girl he was just fighting with stood in the middle of the room, looking at Ryan’s mat-fort. The littler girl’s feet stuck out from the fort.
“Leave Ryan alone!” Alex yelled, trying to yank Hannah out. She cried out before Kaitlyn ran up behind him and pushed him away.
“What are you doing?”
“That’s Ryan’s ... thing,” he said, pointing at the fort.
“So?”
“So ...” He tried to think of an answer. “So, Ryan doesn’t like people, so she can’t go in there. Neither can you, so get away from it.”
She looked into the fort. “They seem to be okay.” She smirked at him.
“Well, whatever,” he said as he grabbed Hannah’s ankle and pulled her out, wiggling and crying. “You can’t go in there!” he shouted at her.
“Don’t yell at her!” Kaitlyn said, shoving him again.
“Stop yelling!” Nicole yelled over the two of them.
“We’re not yelling!” Alex yelled back.
“Let go of her!”
“Stop! Yelling!”
“Hey!”
They all stopped at the sound of David’s voice.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the little girl lying on the floor.
Nicole just stared at him. “It’s a girl, moron.”
David shook his head and sighed. “I know that. What is she holding?”
All three looked down at the
