“It’s not even ten,” Sara huffed as she walked toward her house, turning back to Mike as if to quote him. “Don’t be such a drama queen.”
“Don’t take that tone with me, not after the other night. I have every right to be worried, and you know it.”
She turned back to the rest of the group and smiled glumly, shrugged her shoulders, then entered her house without another word.
“This isn’t a good time to be out and about like this,” her mother continued, even as she closed the door. “I don’t know how you can be so aloof when --”
The door closed, blotting out the light and muffling the sound of her scolding until they couldn’t hear it at all.
Cathy sighed, then started walking again, towing Mike along with one hand.
Xander continued to watch the spot where Sara had disappeared for a moment, then stepped quickly to join them.
“Why do people say it like that?” he asked to no one in particular as they walked across the threshold into his yard. “I mean, we all know what happened. It’ll probably even make the national news tonight. So why is everybody acting like it’s some kind of a secret?”
“Because,” Cathy explained, her silky voice singing through the cold night. “People don’t like to know things like that. So they pretend they don’t. Nobody likes to walk down the street, wondering what’s behind them. But we do. Because if we don’t... well...”
“Well, look what happened to Jamie,” Mike finished, his eyes cast downward.
Xander paused, his head looming downward as he pondered that for a moment, then reluctantly accepted it as fact. He gave a curt wave goodbye to Cathy and Mike when they reached his door, then walked into his house and up the stairs toward his room, not saying a word to wake his parents.
When he got to the top, he got a sharp pain in his right side and nearly fell, but caught himself on the rail. The pain went away as quickly as it had come over him, but even after it was gone there was a steady ache as he entered his room. It reminded him of when people lost their limbs in wars yet said they could still feel them, even though they were gone. Pausing for a second while he leaned on his desk to make sure that it had passed, he shrugged it off, thinking nothing of it beyond the moment. He wasn’t terribly athletic and he had been walking for a while. Usually he’d get online after getting home, but tonight he felt tired. He could barely keep his eyes open, and Cathy had caught him yawning more than once on the walk home. He got to his room and was about to lie down when he thought he heard something off in the corner of his room, and suddenly he got very scared.
It’s just the house settling, he told himself, but still he turned on the light and looked around. He checked under his bed and around the room. He found nothing, but then he heard the sound again behind him. He turned sharply.
The light bulb on his ceiling went out with a sudden flash and he was left in the dark, his eyes seeing spots everywhere.
His heart skipped a beat. He tried to swallow but it got stuck in his throat as sweat began to bead on his brow.
The sound, now that he actually listened, was like a long shuffle. Like someone trying to find something while scuttling about in the dark. There was the slight flicker of paper.
He stopped breathing to listen hard. He couldn’t hear anything now, not even the usual sounds that the house made. He turned on the computer screen to give himself a little light, bathing the room in an eerie green glow. He stopped again to listen hard and heard it a second time, in the corner. He went over, pulled away a box and revealed... an old computer magazine flapping against his air conditioner.
He laughed at himself, breathing a sigh of relief. He walked over to his door and locked it, then got in his bed and slipped into a long, deep sleep.
As Xander Drew slept, Cathy and Mike walked down the street toward her house. They hadn’t said much since leaving Xander’s place. They both knew what was on each other’s mind.
Jamie.
He had been Mike’s friend, not Cathy’s. So it was okay for Cathy to talk about it, but not okay for Mike to hear about it. What resulted was a weird sort of silence that made them both uncomfortable, and yet left them no way to escape from it.
There was a thick mist of fog rolling onto the streets.
Cathy stopped him on the corner by touching his arm and forcing him to face her, then leaned in slowly and kissed him. He kissed her back, only for a moment, and then they resumed walking across the road.
“So can we talk about it now?” she asked, the words coming with a sigh of relief that they had finally found their way free.
He took her hand in his own. “Not yet. It’s still... too early.”
“When then?”
He sighed, thinking ahead a little more than he usually liked to. “Um, how about at Grendel’s party Saturday?”
“Three days?” she whined, pouting her lower lip. She didn’t like holding things in. She was the type of person who said whatever was on her mind whenever she wanted. Not that she was a flake. Actually, she was the exact opposite. Those who knew her knew that she took responsibility for everything. She probably even blamed herself for Jamie’s death in some way.
She leaned in to kiss him again, but they were interrupted by a sound behind them. Cathy jumped into Mike’s arms and he laughed at
