The Traveling Vampire Show

“What’re we gonna do?” Rusty asked.

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe we’d found ourselves in such a predicament.

“Clean it up?” Rusty asked.

“I don’t think we can. That perfume ... we’ll never get the smell out of the carpet. The minute someone comes upstairs, they’re gonna know something’s wrong.”

“Not to mention,” said Rusty, “we can’t exactly unbreak the glass.”

“Whatever we do, we’d better do it fast and get out of here.”

“Wanta just leave?” Rusty asked.

“I want to make it all go away!”

“Rotsa ruck.”

“Okay,” I muttered, sort of thinking out loud. “We can’t make it go away. And it’d probably take us fifteen minutes just to clean up all the glass. Then the place’ll still smell like a perfume factory. And in the meantime, we might get caught up here.”

Rusty nodded, then said, “If we just go away—leave everything exactly the way it is right now—they might not even realize anyone was here. I mean, if shutting a drawer too hard’ll knock that vase over, anything will. They’ll think it was just an accident.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“C’mon, man. A lot of stuff could’ve knocked the thing over. Like even the front door slamming.”

“Maybe so.”

“So let’s haul ass.”

We walked backward away from our mess, watching it as if to make sure it wouldn’t pursue us. On the other side of the doorway, we whirled around and ran for the stairs. When we were a block away from Slim’s house, we looked at each other, shook our heads and sighed.

“I feel like such a rat,” I said.

“Accidents happen,” Rusty said. “Thing is, we got away with it. Long as nobody blabs....”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Lying to Slim...”

“You’d rather have her find out we went sneaking through her house? That’d go over big.”

“If we explain why ...”

“And what were we doing in her mother’s bedroom^?”

“I just went in to look for you.”

“Oh, so you wanta tell Slim what I was doing in her mom’s room?”

I shook my head. I sure couldn’t tell Slim the truth about that.

“You’d better not.”

“Why’d you have to do that?”

“Felt like it,” he muttered. “Anyway, you would’ve done the same thing if you had the guts.”

“Would not.”

“Only you would’ve gone through Slim’s drawers.” Grinning, he raised his eyebrows. “What were you doing by yourself in Slim’s room, huh?”

“Looking at her books.”

“Oh, sure.”

“I didn’t even know you were gone.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

“Go to hell.”

Laughing, he patted me on the back.

“Hands off,” I said.

He took his hand away. His smile sliding sideways, he said, “Seriously, you’re not gonna tell Slim about any of this, right?”

“I guess not,” I said.

“You guess not? C’mon, man! I’ve never told on you.”

“I know,” I said, and went a little sick inside at the reminder of all the things Rusty knew about me. “I won’t tell. I promise.”