and nose and chin, and glued the clothes to my skin. I felt as if a cry of terror was ready to explode from my chest.
But we found no one.
“I want to finish changing,” Slim said when our search was done.
“We’ll go with you,” I told her.
If Rusty had said that, she would’ve answered with a crack. “In your dreams,” maybe. But I’d said it, so she knew I wasn’t being a wiseguy.
“Okay.”
We followed her upstairs. In her bedroom, she dropped her bow and arrow onto her bed. Facing us, she said, “You guys can wait in the hall.” Then she took off her quiver. Not paying much attention to what she was doing, she dragged the leather strap up against her left breast. It snagged the underside of her bikini and lifted the fabric. As the rising strap pushed at her breast, she realized what was happening, saw us watching, and quickly turned her back.
“In the hall,” she reminded us. “Okay?”
“We’re going, we’re going,” Rusty said.
I said, “I’ll leave the door open a crack.”
“Fine.”
We hurried out of her room and I pulled the door almost shut.
Rusty quietly mouthed, “Did you see that?”
I gave him a dirty look.
He mouthed, “Oh, like you didn’t look.”
Speaking in a normal voice, I said, “Why don’t you go to the bathroom and wash your blood off? I’ll start cleaning up the glass.”
He shook his head. “I’ll help.”
“You’ll get blood on stuff.”
He inspected his hands. They looked as if they’d been smeared with rust-colored paint. Palms up, he closed and opened his fingers. The stickiness made crackling sounds. “Maybe I better,” he admitted. “But you’ve gotta come, too.”
“You’re not scared, are you?”
“Up yours,” he said. He gave me the finger, then turned his back on me, marched to the bathroom at the end of the hall, and vanished through its doorway. A moment later, the door bumped shut. I heard a soft, ringing thump as Rusty locked it. Soon, water began running through the pipes.
I stood alone in the hallway.
And didn’t like it.
Even though we had searched the house, we weren’t necessarily safe. Separated like this, we could be picked off one at a time.
“Slim?” I asked.
“Yeah?” she said from inside her room.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You almost... ?”
She swung the door open so quickly it startled me. She grinned.
She now wore a clean white T-shirt and cut-off jeans and a pair of old tennis shoes that must’ve been white on a distant summer when she’d been Dagny or Phoebe or Zock. Through the thin cotton T-shirt, I could see her bikini top.
Stepping out of her room, she looked down the hall. “Rusty in the john?” she asked.
The water still ran.
“Yeah. He’s washing up.”
She nodded. “Thought so.” Then she looked me in the eyes and said, “I’m sure glad you guys are here. This stuff would’ve scared me silly if I’d been by myself.”
“Are you kidding? Nothing scares you.”
“Yeah, sure. You’re the bravest person I know.”
A smile broke across her face. “That’s what
The door remained shut. The water still ran.
Tilting her head back slightly, she stared into my eyes.
Slim’s eyes, pale blue in sunlight, were dark blue in the dimness of the hallway—the color of the summer sky at
