by Dalya Moon
I point to some neon beer signs high on the wall. With my regular-volume, speaking-voice, I say, “You should get one of those for the basement.”
I keep expecting to hear a toilet flush and for someone to rush out and greet us, but we're still alone.
Julie sniffs the air. “I think I smell something.”
“We're in a pawn shop. You probably smell a lot of things.”
She pushes me toward a dingy gray curtain hanging over a doorway that leads, presumably, to a back room. “You go look.”
I step behind the counter through the opening, which is a segment of counter top that flips up on a hinge. It's in the up position, indicating that perhaps whoever was here exited through the front door and that's why the shop is empty. Or, that someone came in and more than one person is now in the back. What two people are doing in the back of a pawn shop is not something I want to walk in on.
Julie waves me on. “Go, look. Be a man.”
I stop in my tracks. “Wait just a double-standard minute. Be a man? So, because I'm the guy, I have to go? What about being treated equal? Do you get to stay back from danger because of your bobos and tatas?”
Julie's quiet, because she knows I'm right. She's always pointing out any time I don't treat her and James equally, so I'm mildly aware of gender bias now, thanks to her.
“Fine, I'll do it,” she says, but she doesn't move one stiletto-clad foot. The knees inside her fishnet stockings appear to be trembling.
“Gotcha,” I say, laughing, and with that, I yank aside the curtain and step boldly into the murky back of the shop. This area is even darker than the front, and I'd be lying if I said my guts didn't mind.
“Hello?” I palm the wall behind me, searching for a light switch, but encountering only sharp things that bite and poke and scratch my fingers.
I let out an unmanly yipe, and Julie asks me if I'm okay.
“I'm prepared for anything,” I reply, extra-loud. “My karate training is totally kicking in. It's all muscle memory.” This is not a complete lie. My feet are pointed slightly toward each other in the dimness, in sparring position. I feel very stable as I inch forward.
The floor is lit with a rectangle of light just ahead of me, illuminated by a tiny window high on the wall. I am drawn to the tiny, shadowy shapes within the light, and I squat down to find the curled-up body of a bee, and another round object. I pick them both up and drop them in my jacket pocket. The bee weighs almost nothing.
“Hello?” I call again.
I hear a scream behind me.
“Julie?”
Julie yells, “Ow, this wall bit me! Where's the damn light switch?” There's a commotion behind me as she attempts to find the switch, and I should probably help with that, but I'm drawn forward.
My eyes have adjusted, and just beyond the perimeter of the bright rectangle on the floor is a man's shoe, connected to a man's bare leg. The cuff of his pants is pushed up to just below his knee.
“Mister, do you need some help?” I ask. There's something familiar about his trousers.
A light comes on, and Julie says, “Ta da!”
We must both see it at once, because we scream together.
The man is lying in a pool of blood, and he's not moving. For a split-second, I'm a child again, crying out for my mother, who won't stop bleeding and won't wake up.
I blink, and I'm back in the pawn shop again. Julie screams a second time, though I'm silent as I look over the man.
I know him. His name is Newt, and he's one of the two witches who tried to murder me earlier this summer.
“I thought you were dead!” I stammer at the corpse.
“Who?” Julie says, now kneeling next to me. She calmly picks up his hand and checks for a pulse. Seeing her hold his hand gives me a shiver of revulsion.
“I thought I killed him already this summer ...” During the explosion, I would have finished, had I not seen the woman standing in the doorway.
“Freeze! Police!” the woman yells.
Julie drops the hand, which makes a thud on the ground.
The woman's arm moves. I pull Julie behind me to block the bullets with my body.
Chapter Two
Five minutes later, Julie points out that the cop didn't even have her weapon drawn, and clearly I was overreacting, as I often do, though I did earn some points by attempting to save Julie's life.
The police officer, a petite, dark-skinned woman with a big presence and an even bigger voice, takes down our statements as the pawn shop fills with people—detectives and police officers and crime scene people in white coverall-type things.
The way the police officer shouts at me makes me want to confess, even though I haven't done anything wrong today except stare at girls' legs.
“WHAT BUSINESS did you have in a pawn shop in the first place?” she demands.
“Just curiosity,” I say.
The woman gives me a squinty-eyed look similar to the one my grandmother makes when she suspects I'm lying.
Julie says, “Tell her about the bee.”
“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “The truth is, I could have sworn I saw a bee fly through the glass window, and I was curious to see if it was inside the store. I know it's ridiculous, but today is Halloween. Weird things happen on Halloween.”
The officer scribbles down notes in a strange handwriting style. “This magical bee. Was it a bumble bee, honey bee, or a wasp?” Her demeanor is serious, showing no sign she's pulling my leg.
“Bumble bee,” Julie offers. “One of those fat, bumbly ones. It went buzz-uzz-zz.”
“How fast was the bee going when it went through the window?”
“Fast, for a bee,” I say.
The woman looks directly at my left hand, which is in front of my jacket pocket. My pocket contains the dead bee and the other thing I picked up. I hold my breath, wondering if she's reading my body language and knows I'm hiding something, though I can't imagine how the bee is relevant. The bee didn't shoot bullet holes in the victim's chest. Thinking fast, I move my hand down further and adjust my crotchberries.
There, I wasn't hiding anything but a little jock itch. Look away, officer, look away.
She flips shut her notepad. “If you happen to remember anything else, give me a call.” She hands business cards to me and Julie: Detective Wrong.
“Not a typo,” Detective Wrong says, answering our unspoken question. “Detective Wrong, always in the right place at the wrong time.”
I'm wondering exactly how wrong her timing is. Did she hear me blurt about how I thought I'd killed Newt? People must say strange things when they see their first dead body. For me, it was actually my third dead body, if you count my parents, who died in a murder-suicide when I was small. My father was very angry with my mother, and when he killed her, he performed the magic ritual that gave me my magic power. He wanted to protect me from ever being betrayed by a woman.
I get sad when I think about my parents, so I try not to think about them often, and I stay away from drinking, because booze makes me unable to block the memories. My life's not so bad. I was lucky my grandparents took me in, because Gran loves me. She's going to be some upset when she finds out I witnessed a crime today. She might even cry. Come to think of it, maybe I'd better not tell her.
“Do you like being a cop?” Julie asks Detective Wrong.
“YES I DO,” asserts Detective Wrong with her big voice. “Every day is different, though I wish we didn't have to deal with homicides.”
“It might have been a suicide,” I offer, a little too cheerfully.
Detective Wrong raises her eyebrows. “Suicides don't shoot themselves repeatedly. Once usually does the job.” She pulls a phone out of her pocket and looks at the screen. “Off with you two, and stay out of trouble. Stay away from bees.” She has the smallest hint of a smile when she mentions the bees.
I did sound like an idiot with my reason for being in the pawn shop. At least she assured us Julie and I were not prime suspect
s, as someone phoned in the gunshots a few minutes before she showed up to investigate, and to her we appeared to be “just kids in the wrong place.”
Julie grabs my arm and we hustle away. “You and your errands,” she says as we walk down the street, though the crowd that's gathered at the outside edge of the yellow police tape. “I so did not want to see a dead person, whatsoever.”
I look over my shoulder at the scene, feeling a tinge of sadness we're no longer at the center of the action.
“I'm sorry somebody got murdered and delayed your pre-party plans,” I say to Julie.
She hasn't asked what I meant when I said I thought I'd killed Newt already. She hasn't put together the fact that the dead man back there was the same one who tried to steal my magic power just a few months ago. If he was alive until recently, that means his partner in crime, Heidi, also escaped the basement of the house before it exploded. Which may mean it's only a matter of time before she's kidnapping me again, raising her ceremonial dagger over my chest.
“Bus!” Julie yells. We start running to catch the bus. Running feels good, after all the buildup of adrenaline from the crime scene, the police, and the crowd. I could run for miles.
* * *
As Julie hangs the Halloween party decorations around the basement, she's unusually quiet, doing all the work herself without giving me and James heck for not helping or helping but hanging things crookedly.
The twins' mother redecorated the basement in September to have a beach theme. It used to be Moroccan, and some of the star-shaped lanterns remain, but now the walls are each different colors: white, blue, green, and sand. I'm relieved the wood paneling from the walls is gone, and with it the splinters. The new carpet is brown with flecks, and it does have a bit of a beach feel, especially with the striped yellow and white canvas stretched across the ceiling in an homage to cabanas.
“This place couldn't look less like Halloween,” James says.
Julie has put up orange streamers and some paper pumpkins, but they're reading more autumn celebration than fright night.
“Everything pales in comparison to your hideousness,” I say to him.
“At least I'm not black Hitler.”
“I'm Charlie Chaplin!”
“Sure you are. Mwah-hah-hah.”
I imagine his cheeks dripping and melting when he talks, but I still can't look at his horrible, horrible face.
“You're eating eggs now?” I ask. James used to be vegan up until the summer, when he ate a steak to help heal his black eyes.
“I'll eat eggs on occasion,” he says. “But the floodgates are not open. This body is a temple.”
Julie steps down off her ladder and points her finger at me. “Zan! I just remembered. Did you say you knew that guy at the pawn shop?”
James swoops in, smelling like the pickled duck eggs he has strung together on a cord around his neck. The eggs have very realistic irises painted on them, which are—strangely enough—even more disturbing than the dead body we saw today. “You knew the murder victim?” James asks.
I feel something in my chest: relief, like when you wake up from a bad dream and assure yourself you didn't kill people. For months, I've been living with the guilt that when I made my escape from Heidi and Newt, they were trapped in the basement of an exploding house. They'd been locked in by me, so I was responsible for what happened to them, even though you could say it was in self-defense.
I wasn't thinking too clearly at the time. I'd been heartbroken, because the girl I'd just met and fallen for, Austin, was dying from a brain tumor. The two witches, Heidi and Newt, offered to take away my magic power—the ability to see a girl's secrets when she pokes my belly button—as well as my memories of meeting Austin. They tricked me into drinking some tea that caused me to astrally project, with my soul walking around the world outside of my body. I had this goofy idea I'd go see my girlfriend, Austin, who was in a coma after her brain surgery. Actually, that idea wasn't so goofy, because it worked, and I did visit her, inside her own mind. She, along with the ghost of my mother, convinced me to keep fighting and not give up on my life, so I found the strength to escape from Heidi and Newt before they could kill me. When I last saw them, they were locked in the basement of a house that blew up as I drove away in their car, which I borrowed.
I never told anyone but James, Julie, and Austin that I'd been at that house, and I never thought I'd see either of the witches again until I found Newt on the ground in the pawn shop. In a pool of blood. After having been murdered by someone. Murdered! My fleeting sense of relief is replaced by the painful grip of dread.
“Maybe he had an identical twin,” James says.
I had not considered that. What if the dead body was a man named Edward or Roger or Frank? But would Newt's normal-named twin have the same bad fashion sense? Newt had worn funny, old-fashioned suits, cut too short on the legs.
James and Julie both have their phones out. “You guys, this is serious,” I say.
In unison, they say, “Newt Steadfast, owner of All U Can Pawn.” Then the twins bicker over who got the answer first. Everything's a contest with those two.
I don't weigh in on their argument, because I'm troubled by a fear-inducing thought looping through my mind. If Newt wasn't killed in the house explosion, Heidi wasn't either. She seemed to be the more powerful of the two, or at the very least, the smartest. When she held my hand for a palm reading, she'd pulled me into her own vision, which was something I'd never experienced before. When I read girls, they don't notice anything happening, and I have very little control over my visions. I shiver at the thought of being touched by Heidi's power, and her dagger.
Heidi also hinted she was connected to the crows that had seemed to be spying on me for weeks during the summer. I haven't been seeing many crows around lately, so I assumed I wasn't in any danger, but the crows have been on my mind, and I catch myself drawing them frequently.
If Newt was alive, up until today, does that mean Heidi is out there somewhere, plotting to trap me again and take my power?
I tell James and Julie my fears, and they listen, but they don't seem concerned. They weren't there when I was kidnapped, and I usually detect some eye-rolling whenever I talk about it. James and Julie often accuse me of overreacting, and exaggerating my stories.
“That guy was killed by a gun,” Julie says as she pats down the dark curls pressed to her forehead and cheek. “Not magic. But maybe you should go to the police and tell them the whole story. Like how you drank the magical tea.” She giggles. “Oh, and then the big, bad witches tied you to a hospital gurney in someone's basement to do a magical ritual.”
“Julie, that's exactly what happened!”
She pulls at her glued-on false eyelashes. “Yeah, yeah,” she says.
“I believe you, man,” James says. “But you shouldn't tell anyone else but us. I imagine it's not so much fun to be in a mental institution. Less fun even than high school.”
“Good thing you're taking karate,” Julie says. “You go ahead and karate chop them if they come for you again.”
“I've been taking karate for two whole months!” I say. “I'm not Neo in The Matrix! You can't just download karate into your brain.”
Julie pats me on the hand in a motherly way. “It's still muscle memory, like my dancing. Don't worry about that old lady, but if you do see her again, call Officer Weirdo.”
James puffs out his chest. “Call me first, dude.”
Sarcastically, I say, “Thanks guys.”
“I could loan you my bear spray,” Julie offers.
James grins. “I think I have a lucky rabbit's foot.”
I mumble, “You guys'll be sorry when I'm dead and you don't have anyone to make fun of.”
Double eye-rolls.
I apologize for being overly dramatic. “Low blood sugar. I'm hungry,” I say, grabbing for a bowl of chips.
* * *
The party is a bust. Some people come, music is played, and there's even some
dancing, but the guy Julie likes doesn't show up, and she won't leave my side, with her sad, sad face.
I'm grouchy about the text I got from my girlfriend, but trying not to show it.
James won't take off the eyeballs and the disgusting special effects gore on his face to play Mr. Pumpkin for my photo booth, so all I get to do with my camera is take pictures of people standing in front of the sand-brown wall or the green wall. Some of the costumes are good, but my heart's not into partying because Austin's not here. She's not coming, which is giving me a sad face to match Julie's. Austin texted an hour after she was supposed to be here, saying she was feeling tired and going to bed early.
Shad and Rosemary win the vote for the best costume, with him as the fisherman and her as the lovely mermaid on his hook. Shad's a very tall guy and tiny Rosemary looks like a minnow next to him. Normally, I'd get more creative in directing the poses, but tonight I just snap them off like mugshots.
It's not even midnight when I pack away my tripod and camera to go home.
* * *
Outside, the night is punctuated by weak, almost-apologetic firecrackers. I expect to get used to them going off every few minutes, but every time one crackles, I get an irritating jab in my brain. Last year, I was one of the snotty-nosed kids lighting firecrackers up in alleys from inside my robot costume, and this year I'm a world-weary adult who wants to pound the crap out of those little brats.
Orange faces leer out at me from the jack-o-lanterns on every porch. The carving styles vary, but they are unified in their intent, their wicks drowning, their flames struggling. Watchful eyes.
A snow-white cat darts across my path.
Something at the edge of my vision moves and I turn to see jaggedly-carved faces staggered up the steps of what could only be the home of artists. The house itself is covered in white cottony spiderwebs, but the monster on the front lawn takes my breath away. A sculpture looms before me, made of appliances and scrap metal. One leg is a car's bumper and the other is a stack of toasters. The figure's head is an old television with two dials and a tangle of antennas. The screen flashes on. Static fades in and out while a man with cropped black hair soundlessly preaches, his mouth never stopping, his dark eyes never blinking, never looking away from the camera lens. No sound comes from the old television, but if I stare at his mouth long enough, I feel like I could read the words.
