by Jeff Strand
A few minutes later there was a knock at the door.
"Mommy?" asked Naomi from outside.
Adeline reached over and turned the light back on. "Yes, sweetie? Is everything okay?"
"Gordon got out of his aquarium."
CHAPTER NINE
Boyd sat up. "What the fuck did she say?" he whispered to Adeline.
"Shhh."
"What do you mean he got out of his aquarium?" Boyd called out.
"He's not in there."
Boyd turned on the light and got out of bed. He hurried over to the door and opened it. Naomi stood there in her nightgown, looking worried. Boyd knelt down in front of her.
"Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"How long has he been out?"
"I don't know."
"When was the last time you saw him?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do."
"Before dinner."
"So he could've been on the loose for three hours?"
Naomi didn't respond.
"Go look for him," Boyd said. "I'll be there in a minute to help."
Naomi left. Boyd put on a pair of slippers. Then he decided that the slippers didn't offer sufficient protection, took them off, and began to put on a pair of shoes.
"You don't have to help look," said Adeline.
"Yes, I do. I'm her father."
"The rest of us can look. You can stay here."
"I'm not going to be a chickenshit," said Boyd, tying the laces. "But do you see now that a tarantula is not a viable pet? We've got a goddamn giant spider crawling around our new home. That's not okay. That's really not okay."
"Nobody will think less of you if you don't help search," Adeline insisted.
Boyd wanted to take her up on that offer, but, no, he couldn't let his daughters see his cowardice. They were getting rid of that spider after it was found, though. Pet shop, abandoned deep in the forest...Boyd didn't care, but Gordon's reign of terror in this household was over.
Stupid frickin' spider. Eight-legged piece of crap. It had better hope that Boyd didn't find its ass next to a can of Raid.
Boyd finished tying his shoes, and he and Adeline left the bedroom. As they walked toward Naomi's room, Paige stepped out of her own bedroom.
"What's wrong?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.
"Gordon escaped," Boyd told her.
"Uh-oh."
"Uh-oh is right. So watch where you step."
"I'll help look."
Boyd went into Naomi's bedroom. The lid of the aquarium was open.
"So you left the lid open?" Boyd asked.
"I don't remember."
"Had you opened the lid earlier?"
"Yes. I was feeding him."
"So, even though I've said repeatedly that you are never to leave the lid open when you're not actively watching Gordon, it's possible that you left the lid open when you weren't in your room?"
Naomi looked at the floor. "Yes."
"This is what we can expect from you having your own bedroom, huh? Do we need to move you back in with your sister?"
"No!"
"We'll discuss this after we find the little creep. Start looking."
Boyd hated to play the role of the Angry Dad, but this was exactly why he didn't want her to have a tarantula in the first place. What if they never found it? What if he had to spend the entire next year stressing about when and where it would finally turn up? He wouldn't even be able to take a dump in peace without imagining that the spider was lurking on the underside of the toilet lid.
Naomi looked around the floor. Adeline checked the walls. Boyd got down on his hands and knees and peeked under the dresser.
He couldn't see anything. It was too dark under there.
"Adeline, do you know if we ever unpacked the flashlight?"
"I don't think so."
"Of course not. Do you know which box it's in?"
"There are a few possibilities."
"Well, could you look?" he asked.
"Sure."
"No, wait, I'm sorry." He was being a jerk. Even though there was a big hairy tarantula free in his home, there was no reason to be unpleasant to his family. That was never acceptable. "That tone wasn't appropriate. I apologize."
"I think I know which box it's in," said Adeline. "It's in the basement. Back in a minute."
Adeline left.
"Will Gordon be okay?" Naomi asked.
"It depends who finds him."
Naomi sniffled.
"Gordon will be fine," said Boyd. "Do you remember if you left your door open or not?"
"I'm not sure."
"Think, honey."
"I think..." Naomi furrowed her brow in deep concentration. "...I left it open."
"Well, sure, that's the answer I expected." Boyd closed his eyes and took a deep, calming breath. "We'll just search room by room, and we'll close off each room after we're done. We know he's still in the house. We'll find him."
"Promise?" Naomi asked, looking up at him with her big eyes, her lips trembling as she fought back tears.
This could be a promise that blew up in his face, since for all Boyd knew a book had fallen off a shelf and crushed the damn thing. And if he promised Naomi that they'd find her beloved pet unharmed, it would make things more difficult when he told her she had to get rid of it. Naomi was only eight years old. He didn't want to say, "You may be personally responsible for Gordon's untimely death."
"Just keep looking," he said, hoping Naomi wouldn't insist on a promise. "He's not on the walls and he's not on the floor that we can see." Boyd looked up, half expecting the tarantula to drop from the ceiling, land on his face, and scurry into his open mouth. "He's not on the ceiling. Check your blankets to make sure he didn't crawl under them."
Whether they found the spider or not, Boyd was going to have nightmares about tarantulas squirming under his blankets.
Adeline stepped into the bedroom, holding the flashlight. "Found it in the first box I checked."
"Thanks," said Boyd, taking the flashlight from her. He got back down on the floor and shined the beam underneath Naomi's dresser. Somehow there were already a couple of dirty socks under there. No tarantula that he could see. Though he couldn't see everything, and there were some corners where it could hide...
Boyd stood up. "I don't think it's under there," he told Naomi, "but I can't see the front edges. Just sweep your hand on each side. Carefully, so you don't squish him if he's under there."
Naomi shook her head.
"What's wrong?" Boyd asked.
"I'm scared."
"Of what?"
"Gordon."
"What do you mean, you're scared of him? He's your pet! I've seen you reach into the aquarium and touch him lots of times!"
"I can see him then."
Boyd supposed he could see her point. He certainly wasn't going to stand there and try to convince his daughter that she shouldn't be scared to reach into the darkness where a tarantula might lurk.
"Adeline?" he asked.
"Nope. No way."
"Well, I will let that thing starve to death before I so much as stick a pinky finger under that dresser. I guess we'll worry about that after we check under the bed." He should have checked under the bed before he got up off the floor in the first place, but his arachnophobia was impairing his decision making process.
Boyd crouched back down and aimed the flashlight beam under the bed.
"Seriously, Naomi, why is there so much junk under here? We just moved here! Shouldn't this stuff accumulate instead of being thrown under there all at once?"
"Do you see Gordon?" Naomi asked, ignoring his question.
"There are a million places for him to hide. I'm not reaching under there to move anything." He sat up. "We'll lift up your mattress and see if we can find him. If we can't, we'll have to use a stick or something to get this garbage out of the way. But I mean it, Naomi, this mess is ridiculous."
"I don't like things
clean. It makes my room less fun."
Boyd picked up one end of the mattress and Adeline took the other. They lifted it off the box springs.
"Is he there?" Adeline asked Naomi.
Naomi looked for a few moments. "Ummm..."
"Take your time," said Boyd, who knew he shouldn't be sarcastic toward his young daughter.
"Move your head," said Adeline. "We need to put the mattress down, quick."
"Are your arms giving out?" Boyd asked.
"No, can't you hear Paige crying?"
Boyd listened. Yes, Paige was crying in another room. They set the mattress down and hurried out of Naomi's room and down the hallway. Paige stood in the bathroom, staring in the mirror, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"What's wrong?" asked Adeline.
"I was putting in my contacts so I could help look for Gordon," said Paige, stuttering and sniffling. "It went back up in my eye. I can't find it."
Adeline put her hands on Paige's shoulders and peered at her. "Open your eyes wider. Good. So you're sure it's still in there?"
Paige nodded. "I can feel it."
Adeline moved her face closer to Paige's. "I don't see it. Boyd, do you still have the flashlight?"
"No, I'll be back." Boyd returned to Naomi's room and picked up the flashlight.
"Is Paige okay?" Naomi asked.
"Yeah, she's fine. Don't worry. Keep looking for Gordon."
Boyd went back to the bathroom and gave Adeline the flashlight. She shone the beam directly into Paige's right eye. "I still don't see it."
"It's in there."
"Push up your eyelid."
Paige did so. Boyd was no fan of eye-related stuff, but since everybody in the house knew of his fear of spiders, he wasn't going to admit to cringing here.
"I still can't see it," said Adeline. "It must be way back there."
"It's okay, honey," Boyd assured Paige. "It can't get lost."
He hoped that was true. Could a contact slip so far back onto your eye that you couldn't get it out? He'd never heard of such a thing, but he was also not an inexhaustible resource of horrific anecdotes from contact lens wearers. "Contact lens goes all the way to the back of your eyeball" seemed like something that would be an urban legend, not a legitimate risk.
"Could you get me a tissue?" Adeline asked Boyd.
He unrolled some toilet paper and handed it to her. Adeline wiped snot off Paige's face, and then handed the gooey tissue back to Boyd.
"Breathe, sweetie," said Adeline. "I promise you we'll get it out. I need you to stay calm and still, okay?"
Paige nodded.
"So you can feel it on your eye, but you can't feel it with your fingers, right?"
"Right."
"Okay. I'm going to see if I can feel it. I'll be gentle. Close your eyes."
Paige closed her eyes. Adeline placed her index and middle finger on Paige's eyelid and slid her fingers around.
"Anything?" asked Boyd.
"No."
"Should we take her to the emergency room?"
"Not yet."
"What if it—?" Boyd was going to ask, "What if it gets imbedded in her eye?" but he didn't want to ask that question in front of a scared little girl.
"It's going to be totally fine," Adeline assured her. "There's absolutely nothing for you to worry about. I'll get it out for you."
"Okay," said Paige, not sounding convinced.
"You're sure it's at the top, right?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to lift your eyelid. If it hurts, let me know and I'll stop, all right?"
"What's wrong with Paige?" asked Naomi, stepping into the doorway.
"Shhhh," said Boyd. "She's fine. Let Mom take care of her."
Adeline handed the flashlight to Boyd. "Can you point this at her eye for me?"
"Sure." Boyd aimed the beam. Adeline pushed Paige's eyelid back, then used her thumb to lift it a bit.
Paige whimpered.
"Try not to blink," Adeline told her.
Boyd wanted to look away, and then felt like a terrible father for that thought. It was uncomfortable to watch, but it wasn't like open-heart surgery. He could handle being a bit creeped out.
"Not seeing it yet," said Adeline.
Boyd wished he had a better understanding of eye anatomy. He couldn't imagine that a contact lens sliding up on somebody's eye could require surgery to remove, but...
He needed to stop thinking of scenarios like that. Adeline would get it out, no problem.
Adeline lifted Paige's eyelid a bit more. "Angle the light better so I can see underneath it," she told Boyd. He adjusted the flashlight beam. "Yeah, just like that...okay, I think I see it..."
Naomi stepped forward for a closer look. Boyd tugged on the collar of her nightgown to pull her back.
Adeline removed her fingers from Paige's eyelid. "I saw the edge of it. I can't go sticking my finger into your eye, and I'm definitely not going to use tweezers or anything. All we're going to do is very gently massage your eyelid and see if we can work it down far enough that I can get it out."
"Should you be rubbing her eyes?" asked Boyd. "Can't that cause damage?"
"Do you have a better idea?"
"Naomi, go get my phone. It's on the stand on my side of the bed."
Naomi rushed off, visibly pleased to have a mission.
"I'm going to look it up," he said. "That's what the Internet is for." When Naomi returned, Boyd did a quick search for Contact lens lost in eye and read the first article that popped up. "So, first of all, it can't get permanently lost," he reported. "There's a membrane around your eye to keep that from happening. What we're going to do is give you some eye drops, and then you're going to look down and keep blinking."
Adeline held Paige's eye open while she applied the wetting drops, a process that Paige did not enjoy.
"Just blink," said Boyd. "It'll come out. Don't worry."
Paige wiped tears from her cheeks and stood there, looking down and blinking.
After about a minute, Adeline asked, "Does it feel any different?"
"Not really."
"Put in some more drops," Boyd said.
"I can do it," said Paige, taking the tiny plastic bottle from Adeline. She tilted her head back, held her eye open with her left hand, and put in the drops with her right, flinching each time a drop hit her eyeball. She looked down and resumed the blinking process.
Everybody stood there, trying to wait patiently for the eye drops to do the trick.
"Did it come out?" asked Paige.
"I didn't see it," Adeline told her.
"I can't feel it anymore."
"I didn't see it come out, either," said Boyd.
Paige rubbed her eyelid. "Maybe it didn't."
"But it feels okay now?" asked Adeline.
"Yeah. I could feel it in there before but now I can't."
"I hope it didn't slide so far back that you can't feel it," said Adeline.
"There's no reason it would have moved further back," said Boyd. "Maybe it did drop out." He crouched down and shined the flashlight on the tile floor by her feet. No sign of the contact lens.
"Did it fall under your nightgown?" asked Adeline.
"I'm not going to check with you guys standing here."
"Fine," said Boyd. "See if you can find it." He was pretty sure that he, Adeline, and Naomi wouldn't have missed a contact lens falling out of her eye, but there were a lot of tears and the lens was transparent, so he supposed that it was possible.
Paige closed the bathroom door as everybody else stepped out into the hallway.
"Well, that was exciting," said Adeline.
"Yeah, a fun-filled roller coaster."
"I think we can postpone the Gordon search until tomorrow."
"You're kidding, right?" Boyd asked.
"Don't you think you should get some sleep? You've got work in the morning. We'll find him."
"No, no, no, no, no, no. There is no way in hell I'm going to bed until that
thing is accounted for. I'm not going to wake up to that thing crawling on my toes."
"Our bedroom door will be shut."
"What if it's already in there?"
"I'm sure it's not."
"That's not good enough. I'm sorry, but when it comes to tarantulas on my toes, I don't take any chances. Just no."
The bathroom door opened. "I can't find it anywhere," said Paige.
"You don't think it could still be in your eye?" asked Boyd.
Paige shrugged. "It could be. I don't think it is. Before I felt it every time I blinked, and I don't anymore."
"It wouldn't just disappear, though." Boyd had an image of the contact lens burrowing into her eye. An absurd image, of course, but one that was kind of unsettling.
"Should we take her to the hospital?" asked Adeline.
Boyd sighed. "I don't know. It doesn't seem like that should be necessary, but I also don't want to wake up tomorrow and find out that she scratched her cornea."
"I don't want to scratch my cornea," said Paige.
"I'll take her in," said Boyd. "You and Naomi keep looking for that stupid spider."
CHAPTER TEN
Paige seemed fairly relaxed as Boyd sat with her in the hospital waiting room. More relaxed than he would be if he had a contact lens possibly lost deep in his eyeball socket. He was pretty sure this was just a precautionary measure, but better to be safe than to discover that the lens was indeed sliding around in there doing damage.
And, though he'd never admit this to anybody, he'd rather be at a hospital than at home searching for that goddamn tarantula.
"If you want to go back to glasses, that's all right," Boyd told her. "Your mom and I won't be mad."
"It's only one bad experience," Paige said, her tone of voice indicating that he was a silly father who was unaware of his daughter's high maturity level. "I'm sure I just put them in wrong."
"Fair enough. I wanted to make it clear that just because we paid for new contacts doesn't mean you have to wear them." That actually sounded kind of passive-aggressive. As he had many times in the past while having conversations with his daughters, Boyd decided to let it drop.
* * *
Adeline was not particularly frightened of Gordon. Unlike Boyd, she didn't mind having the spider in the house. She didn't think there was anything wrong with Naomi having him for a pet. She would've been able to get a good night's sleep knowing that he was out of his aquarium.
