The Traveling Vampire Show

“Slim isn’t with us,” I explained.

“Why not?”

Rusty and I spent a little too long thinking about that one.

Bitsy suddenly looked worried. “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Rusty said.

“No she’s not,” Bitsy said. Her eyes turned to me. “Something happened to her, didn’t it?”

Considering Bitsy’s crush on me, you might’ve expected her to be jealous of Slim. But it didn’t work that way. Instead of hating Slim, she idolized her. I’m pretty sure she wished she could be Slim: cute and slender and athletic and smart and funny, and hanging out with me almost every day.

“Where is she?” Bitsy asked.

I shrugged.

“She had to stay home and do the laundry,” Rusty said.

Bitsy’s eyes stayed on me. Clearly, she didn’t believe Rusty’s explanation. She wanted to hear it from me.

“Why don’t you go ahead and get us the shirts?” I said, a gentleness in my voice that surprised me. “Just two shirts. We’ll wait in the backyard, okay? And I’ll tell you about Slim.”

“Okay.”

When Bitsy shoved open the door, the noise of the bridge ladies swelled. The door swung shut, coming half- open again on our side and fanning in a few gray rags of smoke.

Rusty muttered, “Shit.”

Then he cut off another thick slab of Velveeta cheese, folded the end of the wrapper, and returned the cheese to the refrigerator. While he still held the door open, he asked, “Another dog?”

I shook my head.

He shut the door. Both of us holding what was left of our wieners and cheese, we hurried outside and down the stairs to the backyard. Over near a comer of the house, we stopped to wait for Bitsy and finish eating.

“Jush wha’ we nee’,” Rusty muttered, his words mushy from a mouthful of partly-chewed lunch.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

He swallowed and said, “Why’d you have to go and tell her about Janks Field?”

I shrugged. “I have a hard time lying sometimes.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Sorry. But look, she’ll be all right.”

“Easy for you to say, she isn’t your sister.”

The screen door swung open. Bitsy rushed out and bounded down the stairs. Her hands were empty. I figured something must’ve gone wrong. As she hurried toward us, though, I saw that the front of her T-shirt bulged more than usual.

“Got ’em,” she said. Stopping in front of us, Bitsy patted her bulge. Her T-shirt was so thin I could see the wrinkled bunch of fabric underneath it.

Rusty put out his hand and snapped his fingers. “Give,” he said.

Fixing her eyes on me, Bitsy asked, “Where’s Slim, really? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“You have to promise not to tell,” I said.

Rusty groaned.

“I promise.”

“She’ll tell.”

“No, I won’t.” She raised her right hand. “I swear.”

“First time something doesn’t go her way....”

She threw a glare at him. “I will not.”

I said, “We’re going to look for Slim right now. She was still at Janks Field last time we saw her. So that’s where we’re going.”

“How come you went off without her?”

I gave Rusty a look, then faced Bitsy and said, “She wanted to stay behind.”

“How come?”

“To look at some stuff,” I said. “Anyway, we have to get back and find her.”

Bobbing her head slightly as if she now understood, Bitsy reached with both hands under the bottom of her T- shirt and dragged out a couple of shirts. They were both wrinkled, but looked clean.

“This one’s for you,” she said, and handed me a checkered, short-sleeved shirt.

“Thanks,” I said.