by Daka Hermon
“It’s stronger now, it has more power.” He grabs my shoulders and shakes me until the backyard and sky are a messy splash of colors. “You should have stayed away. I didn’t want you to come. I tried to tell her. Why didn’t she listen? I still lost. Now you’re lost, too.”
Suddenly Zee is gone and I can breathe again. I look over and see Lyric wrestling him to the ground. Zee flops and thrashes around like a fish on dry land.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!” Zee yells.
Wide-eyed, I stare at him, trembling all over. He tackled me, now he doesn’t want to be touched?
“You okay?” Nia helps me sit up.
“No.” How can I be? Zee attacked me.
“Justin. Please. Promise you’ll stop it,” Zee pleads, his voice suddenly normal, not as creepy.
I flinch. Promises. I hate promises. They’re stupid. Just future lies wrapped with a big bow of disappointment. Everybody knows that.
“I went up the hill, the hill was muddy, stomped my toe and made it bloody, should I wash it?” Zee robotically chants. He tries to pull free of Lyric.
“Stop it, man. I don’t wanna hurt you.” Lyric sits on Zee’s legs and pins down his arms.
Nia squeezes my hand. “Wh-what happened to him? Why is he acting like this?”
The back door squeaks open and Mrs. Murphy steps outside. “Okay, everybody. Cake time. Come and—”
She gasps when she spots us sprawled on the ground. The chocolate cake falls from her hands and goes splat on the porch.
“Zechariah? Oh no.” She stumbles down the steps, slips on the icing and awkwardly lands near Zee on the ground. She tugs him into her arms, rocking him like a baby. He flinches. “Oh, sweetie. What happened?”
“He totally flipped out.” The words burst out of me all alien-like.
Mrs. Murphy cradles his dirty face in her trembling hands. “Honey, are you okay?”
“Mom?” he moans and buries his head in her chest.
I swallow hard and glance away. The moment hurts.
“The party was a mistake. It was too soon. I’m sorry.” Mrs. Murphy crumbles. The faucet turns on and the trickle of tears becomes a river flooding down her face. “He got so upset when I told him about the party, so angry …” Her voice cracks.
“Did he make that mess in the living room? Break the glass, scratch up the walls?” Nia asks.
Mrs. Murphy nods.
I exhale a shaky breath. Zee said he’s lost. Does that mean he can’t control himself? Maybe he should see my counselor. There has to be some way to help him.
“I just wanted things to go back to normal,” Mrs. Murphy says. “I was hoping if he spent time with his friends, he’d get better faster. That my Zee would come back.” She sniffs. “Are you all okay?”
My cut lip stings. My arms ache from Zee’s grip. You can probably play connect the dots with the bruises on my back, but I can’t hurt Mrs. Murphy. “I’m fine.”
“It’s all good,” Lyric says, though he doesn’t look so confident. “No worries.”
“Yeah.” Nia smiles weakly. “Things just got a little physical … and I almost peed my pants.” She whispers the last part.
“What happened to him?” I ask. “The scars …”
Mrs. Murphy’s face scrunches as if she’s in pain. “I don’t know. When they found him, he—”
Zee lets out a loud moan and squirms out of his mom’s embrace as if he’s attempting to escape.
“I should take him inside. He should lie down,” Mrs. Murphy says. “Shhhhh, baby. It’s okay. I’m here.”
He calms enough for her to get him on his feet. He sways a little. I reach out to steady him, but he jerks away.
His tortured eyes lift until he meets my gaze. “I’m sorry,” he says.
There’s a lot of things he could be apologizing for—hurting his mom, breaking stuff, all the shouting and screaming, chasing his party guests, attacking me—but I have a feeling that isn’t what he’s talking about.
“Why’re you sorry?” I search his eyes, hoping to see my friend.
Tears trail down his dirty cheeks. “Ticktock. Ticktock. Bye-bye, Justin.”
I flinch away from him. “What … what does that mean?”
“He’s just confused,” Mrs. Murphy says. “Let’s go lie down, Zechariah.”
“One, two, three, four. It came and wants to settle the score. Five, six, seven, eight. Darkness and terror are now your fate. Four hundred is the special number, to release it from its world of slumber,” Zee shouts as his mom tugs him inside the house. The door slams shut.
Lyric inhales loudly. “What the—?”
I’m cold. Now hot. Cold again. I clench my clammy hands into fists and inhale several deep breaths.
“Why was he counting? Settle what score?” Nia asks with wild eyes. “Fate? World of what?”
Lyric pushes his hair off his wide forehead. “I’m kinda freaked out right now. That was messed up. Man, what happened to him while he was gone? I get he’s, like, traumatized and stuff, but the old Zee would never have come at us like that.”
Lyric continues to ramble, but his voice is a buzz of nonsense. The muscles tighten in my chest so it’s hard to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. I reach for my puzzle piece.
What if Zee’s stuck like this?
I grab my hat off the ground and race out of the backyard.
“Hey,” Lyric says. “Wait!”
I speed up, doing that awkward almost-but-not-quite-jogging thing like I’m in a three-legged race. Wish I could move faster, but my body hurts too much.
“Justin!” Nia says. “Slow down.”
One … two … three … Breathe. I can’t get enough air.
I leap off the curb and start across the street.
What if our Zee is gone forever?
“Watch out!” Lyric says.
Gone like my mom.
A large white blur speeds toward me.
Lyric snags me around the waist and jerks me back onto the sidewalk. I fall into his body and only his strong grip keeps me from eating the concrete.
Brakes screech as tires blacken the pavement right where I’d been standing. The smell of burning rubber fills the air. Smoke billows out from the back of a Sweet Dreams ice cream truck.
Whoa. That was close.
First Carla came to the party, then Zee attacked me, now I’m almost roadkill … My mom used to say any day above ground is a good day. Today is proving her wrong.
Nia pushes Lyric away and grabs my arm, giving me a firm shake. “Don’t scare me like that. You could be dead and I’d be soooooo mad at you.”
“Me too,” says Lyric.
Hyde Miller, the neighborhood ice cream guy, jumps out of the open driver’s-side door. His dad owns Sweet Dreams, but he just started to work there this summer.
“Hey.” His mustardy-brown eyes slowly slither over me, from head to toe.
I cringe. A puffy scar zigzags from his right temple down to his chin. One hard tug might unzip his cheek. There are all kinds of stories about what happened—raccoon attack, shaving gone bad, knife fight in an alley, car accident. It’s an unsolved mystery and there’s no right way to ask why someone’s face is jacked up.
Nia plants her hands on her hips. “Did you just get your license? You almost killed Justin.” Her right foot tap, tap, taps a beat on the sidewalk. She’s scary when she’s angry. “Did you know the speed limit in a residential area is fifteen miles per hour?”
“There’s a sign? Where?” Hyde tugs on the sleeves of his untucked shirt. He’s wearing all black. He even has a leather glove on his left hand. He’s dressed for a funeral or covert mission, not to sell ice cream.
“You need to be more careful,” says Nia.
“He shouldn’t run into the street without looking both ways. I could tell his mom,” Hyde shoots back.
I wince.
Lyric’s eyes cut to me and then he steps forward, glaring at Hyde. “Dude, you need to check yourself. What’s up wit
h the tattling threat? It was an accident.” Lyric crosses his arms. “How about I tell your dad you’re out here putting our lives in danger with your bad driving?”
Hyde’s hands clench into fists at his sides. He glances down and mumbles to himself for a moment. Then his slumped shoulders pop back and he clears his throat. When he looks at me again, his eyes are eerily blank. “Sorry about that. Are you okay, kid?”
Kid? He’s not that much older than us. Maybe around nineteen like my sister, Victoria, though he seems younger.
“I’m good.” I wipe the sweat from my clammy forehead. “I shoulda been looking where I was going.”
Nia’s narrowed eyes run over me. I exhale a slow breath to calm my racing heart.
“You really okay?” she whispers.
I nod jerkily. That slight movement causes me to sway. Nia loops her arm through mine to steady me. Must breathe. Inhale. Exhale.
Hyde points a gloved finger toward Zee’s house. “Y’all coming from there?”
“Pfft. If you were paying attention, you’d know where we were coming from,” Nia says.
She’s still not over it.
Hyde rolls his eyes. “I didn’t get to meet Zee when I dropped off the cart. He’s been in the news. I was hoping—”
“What?” Nia’s eyes narrow. She looks Hyde up and down.
A muscle ticks in his jaw. His eyes are locked on Zee’s house.
“Look, it was cool of you to deliver that ice cream, but Zee doesn’t need any more drama,” Lyric says. “He’s been through a lot already and—”
“Stop being so nosey,” Nia says while glaring at Hyde.
He holds up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I heard some stuff and … Forget it. I wasn’t gonna bother him.”
My head is spinning. I tug my arm away from Nia and ease down onto the curb. I glance across the street. Two dogs and a cat stand side by side, staring in our direction. They’re so still it’s like they’re not even real. They slowly back away. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. What the—?
Nia peeks over her shoulder to check on me. I smile weakly. It’s cool she tries to look out for me, but there’s no hiding this is not my best moment. I glance back toward the weird animals and they’re gone.
“So, is the party officially over? I’m not supposed to pick up my ice cream cart until six, but I can grab it now,” says Hyde.
“Zee wasn’t feelin’ too good, so we rolled out a little early,” says Lyric. “We had to stop mid-game. You might wanna wait and come back tomorrow to pick up your stuff.”
Hyde’s head jerks around so fast I hear his neck crack. “Game? You played a game?” he asks, his voice going from fake deep to high-pitched.
“Well …” Lyric rocks back on his heels. “We tried to play Hide and Seek, but—”
Hyde gasps. His face is a flipbook of emotions, changing so rapidly it’s hard to keep track—excitement, fear, sadness, concern—all with that writhing scar. It’s alarming.
The sky rumbles and a loud clap of thunder makes me jump.
“Dude, you okay?” Lyric takes a slow step away from Hyde.
Hyde shifts from foot to foot. His long, untied shoestrings dance across the ground. “I’m …” He stops as if he can’t find the right words.
Dark clouds crawl across the sky. A sudden cool breeze chills my hot body.
“I gotta go.” His haunted gaze travels from Lyric, Nia, then to me. He spins on his heels and jumps inside the ice cream truck. It takes him a couple of attempts before he gets it running. The truck jerks forward and glides away as a creepy jingle crackles to life. High-pitched kid voices cheerfully sing, “Eat ice cream and play. Eat ice cream and play. I scream, you scream. Eat ice cream and play.” Then the kids scream and the song repeats.
“That’s new music. I definitely would have remembered something that disturbing,” says Nia.
“What just happened?” Lyric’s dark freckles are the only color on his pale face.
“Today went from weird to weirder,” says Nia.
I stand on wobbly legs. Time for me to roll out. “I’ll catch y’all later.” I need space. Not outdoor space, but the space of my small, safe room. I never shoulda left the house anyway, but I couldn’t let Mrs. Murphy and Zee down. And look how that turned out.
“Wait, we need to talk about Zee,” says Nia.
No, we don’t. My head hurts just thinking about him.
“Yeah, what about all that stuff he said?” Lyric asks. “It sounded important. He was really scared. It was almost like he was trying to warn us.”
“He’s … he’s …” What is he? Sick? Confused? Traumatized? All three. “It was probably nothing. Mrs. Murphy said he hasn’t been sleeping good and—”
Lyric groans. “Aww, dude, don’t turn around.”
Of course, I have to look. A white van with Tennessee Water and Electric branding on the side is parked in front of my house. A woman with a clipboard stands on my front porch. I watch as she knocks repeatedly on the door. When no one answers, she peeks inside a window.
“Bill collector,” says Lyric.
My eyes widen. “How do you know?”
“I recognize the signs,” he says. “They’re always rolling up to my house. Different companies, but there’s always a white van and someone with a clipboard. I recognize that lady, too. She’s stopped by my place a few times.”
“That’s not right,” says Nia.
He shrugs. “People want their money. I hate when they just pop up, though. It’s so much easier to dodge phone calls. Late afternoon and early evening are prime bill collection time. They expect people to be home. And it’s Friday. She’s trying to handle her business before the weekend.”
I massage the back of my stiff neck. Lyric and Nia know things have been hard since my mom died, but I haven’t shared all the bad financial stuff. I glance around to see if any neighbors are outside watching. Everyone will know our problems.
Lyric crosses his arms. “How do you want to play this? I’ll back you up.”
“There are options?” asks Nia.
“Oh yeah. We could hit her van with some water balloons. I have my slingshot. It’s worked for me—”
“It’s fine,” I say quickly. “I’ll handle it.” Might as well deal with it now. She’s only gonna come back another time. And I’m tired. I want to go home. I’ve had enough of running and hiding today.
I make a mental note to tell my counselor about this decision. She’ll be happy I’m choosing to confront rather than avoid. This has to be progress.
Lyric and Nia exchange a glance, then she nudges me with her shoulder. “Sooo … call me later if you wanna talk or something.”
I nod. I won’t call.
She starts to say something, then stops herself.
Nia knows when to back off. It’s one of the things I like best about her.
She turns to Lyric. “We’re having spaghetti for dinner. There’s plenty if you want to come over. Unless you have to get home?”
“Nawww.” Lyric rocks back and forth on his heels. “My mom’s kinda busy doing stuff tonight. I could work with noodles and sauce.”
Lyric’s mom works late, when she works at all. Since his folks aren’t around, Nia and her parents make sure he has a place to eat and hang out.
“I just have to be home before dark,” he says.
“Did you know there are more than six hundred shapes of pasta?” Nia asks.
Lyric turns to me, his eyebrows arched. I shrug. He’s on his own now.
“I did not know that,” he says as they walk away. “You’re not gonna, uh, list them all, are you?”
She tugs him down the street.
He peeks over his shoulder. “Hey, we’re still on for the mall tomorrow, right?”
I totally forgot about that. All I want to do is hide out in my house, but a while ago Lyric asked me to go check out instruments with him. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Cool. And we can talk more about Zee,” he yells back
as they cut across an overgrown lawn and disappear around the tall oak trees lining the street.
The sky spits out raindrops, but I stay on the cracked sidewalk until my shirt becomes so damp it clings to my body. With one last look at Zee’s hauntingly still house, I force myself to move.
As I walk down the sidewalk, a police car drives by again. They shoulda been patrolling when Zee went missing. I glare, but not openly, because that would be dumb.
I stop next to my tilted mailbox. If there was a contest for the most neglected house on the block, mine would win. The color is a dingy white, and the black shutters hang off the windows. Since Mom died, my sister, Victoria, and I have kinda let things go. Mom wouldn’t like it, but it’s not really home anymore. Not without her.
The utilities woman turns and freezes when she sees me in the driveway. Exhaling a deep breath, I walk toward her. She flicks her long, blond braid over her shoulder as she marches down the steps. Her face is red from the heat and the color matches the shirt tucked inside her dark jeans. Her clothing is casual, but her expression is all business.
She holds up the clipboard and there is a large sweat stain under her arm.
“You live here?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Are your parents around?”
My jaw tightens. “I don’t have any parents.” My dad left a long time ago. He has a new wife and new kids. A new life. And my mom is dead.
The woman’s eyes narrow. “So, you live here by yourself? There’s no adult—”
“My older sister,” I say quickly. The last thing I need is for her to file a report with some child agency saying I’m an unsupervised minor. “She’s either at school or work. She’ll be home later.”
“Well …” She studies the papers on her clipboard. “I need to speak to an adult about some billing concerns.”
I swallow hard and remain silent. I’m clearly not an adult so I don’t know what to tell her. Maybe she’ll just leave so Victoria and I can come up with a plan to deal with this.
The woman sighs. “Look, I’m not supposed to do this since you’re unsupervised, but it’s Friday and I want to go home and I have to turn in my weekly report.”
She tugs some papers off her clipboard. “This is your bill.” She hands them to me.
