Let down but not surprised at the lack of Grape Crush, I closed the door on the semi-cool air drifting out. I checked the kitchen window again. Except for the streaks and cloudbursts of age, the glass was empty. He was gone. I didn’t get excited over it.
With my luck, he’d be back. That was a sure thing. I hadn’t told Nik about him yet and I wouldn’t. Nik had worries enough. Supporting us with two jobs, keeping social services away when Sophia ended up in jail, earning a 4.0 GPA to get a scholarship for college, the hours of practice in the dojos—protecting us, him and me. Always ready to protect and from worse than the man in the park. Much worse.
This time, I’d do the protecting.
Mr. Invisible would stay Mr. Invisible.
Purple Pony
He kept following me home.
He always started as I passed the park, which made sense. That was where he’d met Mel for the first time and that’s where he’d met me. That had been the second time for us both. I’d thought he hadn’t noticed me the first time, with all his attention on Melanie, but he had. Mr. Invisible with the “boogety-man’s” radar for prey and possible witnesses, too. He’d been excited at the sight of me. I’d been able to smell his adrenaline. I hadn’t wanted to be too obvious and had walked past to the gas station down the street for a candy bar and came back to meander around the weedy stretch, kicking at rocks. A half hour later, he’d finally decided I hadn’t told anyone or noticed him. After all, who ever did? But oblivious or not, I was right there, wasn’t I?
Niko said waste not, want not. He was like a seventeen-year-old grandma with his sayings. But the boogety-man definitely had believed in that one as much as my brother.
He had finally made that pathetic move of his I remembered with a huge dose of contempt and a small voice in the back of my mind that whispered to me for the first time, Humans. They don’t know how to play. I could’ve done it a hundred times better and bloodier.
I could have, but that wasn’t the point. It had been about Melanie. And, no, there’d been no carefully chosen if slightly ratty pony for me. He’d waved a six-pack of beer at me before smiling the same smile he’d given Mels and disappearing behind those scraggly bushes that blocked the view from the street to block you in close to the empty dog food plant. I’d been almost insulted by how little effort he put into it, but that hadn’t stopped me from trailing after him. Nothing to see here but a stupid kid with a stupid thirst for alcohol and no common sense. He’d thought he was smart. I’d been so simple to trap.
And then I’d introduced him to the protection I carried.
We didn’t just keep knives under our mattresses, Niko and me, or one in every room wherever we lived. I took one in my backpack to school with me, too. Shadows are everywhere and so can be Grendels hiding in them. This school had metal detectors and Nik had spent a shitload of money, I knew, to get me a ceramic knife every bit as sharp as a steel one. He’d told me they were the type of knives spies carried and I was practically James Bond or Jason Bourne. I didn’t give a shit about spies and had fallen asleep during any kind of spy movie I tried to watch. If your monster was human, it shouldn’t take a spy to handle that. I liked the knife, though; it was cool, and it made it past the metal detectors with no problem. It kept me safe.
I’d shown Mr. Invisible just how safe that could be. I’d shown him a move Niko had taught me, and I’d taught him why he should never touch a kid again. How there would not be another Mels. I’d made it very fucking clear.
Or so I’d thought.
I’d been wrong, I thought on yet another day of him tagging after me like a pedophiliac puppy. He didn’t look excited anymore, though, not as he had when he’d held up the beer behind the bushes. Now he looked pissed and pained as he kept a constant hand pressed to his stomach, where I’d given him Mel’s regards, without love. I hoped it hadn’t stopped hurting. I hope it hurt forever.
I smirked at him and rubbed my own stomach. “Try some Pepto,” I called down the street. Now he scowled, more murderous and pissy than ever. I didn’t know what he wanted or what he thought he could get from me, as he only followed, didn’t try to catch up. Revenge? Getting rid of a witness? He could give it a shot, I guessed dubiously, but I didn’t see him getting any further than the last time he’d tried. A lot less further, if anything.