“That is it. No TV next week. None. Maybe some silence and a good book will bleach your brain of that filthy language.” As I started for the next house, the complaining started and didn’t stop as we trudged through the front door of our own house fifteen minutes later. I thought I saw the twitch of a curtain in one of Junior’s windows, but he had no reason to be suspicious. We had the box of cookies. We actually took two orders for the nonexistent sale, and I didn’t ask about Kithser at every house. I also had never seen Junior outside talking to anyone on the street. He didn’t socialize with the neighbors. I’d say that was a bad sign, but except for Cal and me and the old ladies, none of the neighbors wanted to have anything to do with anyone else. It wasn’t that kind of neighborhood. That was good. It meant that word shouldn’t get back to him.
Not that we’d found word of anything suspicious. Either no one had seen Kithser in weeks or didn’t know him at all. To me that meant there was no evidence of a connection between Kithser and Junior. To Cal it meant that Junior was still not killing where he lived but close enough for convenience. But his belief that Kithser’s body was now in Junior’s basement was nothing compared to the lack of television.
“Yes, I know it’s not fair. You’ve said that twenty-two times now. But I’m trying to keep you from saying words that will incite any dates you have in the future to stab you in the eye with a nail file.” I leaned the crutches on the wall and sat on the couch to peel off all the extra socks that had faked an impressive swollen ankle. I then picked up the notebook and looked at the list I’d started before we’d left the house that morning. There were two columns—the For and Against regarding serial killer evidence.
“Maybe I won’t want to date. Girls might not like me. When do we go get the pizza? You promised pizza.” He sprawled in the ugly plaid chair that had come with the house, his legs flopped over one arm and his head and arms over the other. His upside-down gaze was accusing when he mentioned the pizza.
“Why wouldn’t they like you? Once I go to college and we get away from Sophia, we’ll have a normal life,” I said. “And if you stop cursing like a forty-year-old bouncer there’s no reason girls wouldn’t like you.”
There also wouldn’t be any reason that I couldn’t let myself like some girls without our wonderful mother trying to steal their jewelry, wallet, or their hair to sell to a wig maker. That wasn’t advice I wanted to give to anyone I brought home: please keep moving at all times or you’ll wind up penniless and bald. Cal wasn’t the only one that thought it at times. Life did suck. Buddha might not agree or he might agree in much more flowery language, but he had dealt with it much better than I was. I still had so much to learn.
For now I had other things to think about. Tapping the notebook with the pen, I reluctantly put Kithser’s name under both the For and Against columns. They instantly canceled each other out, but I did it anyway. It was part of the plan after all.
“Nik, monsters follow us wherever we go, I’m half freak, and we live next to serial killers. It doesn’t matter if I say bad words or not—we’re never going to be normal.”
Startled, I looked up from the paper at him. His hair was hanging in a dark waterfall toward the stained carpet, his hands were linked across his stomach, sneakers randomly knocking heels with boredom, and his face was as smooth and unaffected as if he’d said the earth revolves around the sun. It was what it was. It wasn’t going to change and thinking differently was not only pointless, but incredibly na?ve on your part.
“Cal, that’s not true.” He’d said two days ago that of course our neighbor was a murderer because that’s the way things were, but I hadn’t thought he’d meant that’s the way things would always be. I didn’t know he didn’t believe that I could change that. Most of my life had been spent thinking of ways to fix it all. Get away from Sophia, be able to fight the Grendels if necessary, obtain an education, raise my brother to be the person I saw in him—strong and proud. To be normal. Something that Cal accepted wasn’t going to happen, wasn’t ever going to happen. Had accepted it a long time ago as offhand as the words had been.
I wasn’t letting that go. He deserved a life. We both did and we were getting one. There was not a thing in this world I wouldn’t do to give us that.
“Besides,” I said firmly, “if our normal is dating only in the daytime to keep the Grendels from watching and moving away from any neighbors who kill spiders in their house much less people, then that normal is good enough for me.” I pointed my pen at him and added, “And if you call yourself a freak again, the next TV you watch will be the one you have when you’re old enough to get a job and buy one yourself.”
That was a threat that hadn’t failed me yet.
Cal’s sneakers smacked together again, the expression on his face thoughtful. “Grendels aren’t much uglier than Mrs. Breckinridge’s husband. Maybe you’re right. It might not be so bad—our own kinda weird normal.”