The Slither Sisters

TWO





Then the door opened.

And everything changed.

No Glenn. No principal. No frog monster.

Just Mrs. Arthur, Robert’s mother, dressed in her nurse’s scrubs, standing in the doorway of his bedroom with one hand on the light switch.

“Sweetie?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

Robert sat up in bed. He’d been having a nightmare. Just the latest in a long string of nightmares since he’d arrived at Lovecraft Middle School six weeks ago.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just a bad dream.”

“Go back to sleep.”

His mother turned off the light and closed the door. Robert glanced over at his clock radio. It was still early, not even six o’clock, but he knew he wouldn’t fall back asleep.

He walked downstairs to the kitchen, where his mother was eating a bowl of cornflakes and clipping coupons from the newspaper. Mrs. Arthur worked the early shift at Dunwich Memorial Hospital; most mornings, she was out the door before Robert woke up.

“You want me to fix you some eggs?”

“No, thanks.”

“You’re sure? I’ve got time.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Mrs. Arthur frowned. “What was your dream about?”

Robert wished he could tell his mother the truth, but he didn’t want her to worry. She already had enough problems, between doing all the cooking and all the cleaning and earning enough money to support them. She didn’t need to know that his school was full of portals to an alternate dimension.

“I don’t remember,” he finally said.

She could tell he was lying. “You can talk to me,” she assured him. “What’s going on?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure how to explain it.”

Mrs. Arthur abruptly stood up and left the kitchen. She returned moments later with a brown cardboard shoe box. “I was going to save this for your birthday, but I want you to have it now.”

“What is it?”

“Open it,” she said. “Go on.”

Robert pulled off the lid. Inside he found a hairbrush, two sticks of roll-on deodorant, a pack of disposable razors, and a can of shaving cream.

“It’s a Puberty Kit,” his mother explained.

“A what?”

“Your body’s changing, Robert. It’s a very stressful time. These are the tools you’ll need as you grow into a man.”

Robert already knew all about puberty. At school, they’d been warning him about puberty since the fourth grade.

“This is a confusing time to be a boy, and it’s normal to have worries,” his mother continued. “I just wish you had a father to answer your personal questions.”

Robert sifted through the contents of the Puberty Kit. At the bottom of the box was a paperback book called Help! My Body Is Changing! On the cover was an illustration of a nervous-looking twelve-year-old boy with question marks exploding from his head.

“If you have something you don’t feel comfortable asking me,” his mother explained, “you might find the answer inside this book. Remember, you can’t trust what you read on the Internet.”

“I know,” Robert said. “Thank you.”

After his mother left for work, he read the book’s table of contents. It consisted of one hundred short cries for help:

Help! My Voice Is Changing!

Help! My Armpits Are Stinky!

Help! I’m Getting Pimples!

Robert closed the book and sighed.

The truth—and he’d rather die than admit the truth to anyone—was that he didn’t have any of these problems. His voice wasn’t changing. His armpits weren’t stinky. He’d almost had a pimple, but it turned out to be a mosquito bite.

Meanwhile, all the other kids in his grade were growing up fast. Glenn was just three months older than Robert, but he’d already been shaving for a year. The other boys in their class were getting taller and stronger and faster and louder; compared to them Robert still looked and felt like a little kid.

He scanned the page looking for an entry that read “Help! I’m Almost Thirteen Years Old and I Still Have the Muscles of a Third-Grader!” but apparently Robert’s condition was so freakish and rare, the authors of the book didn’t even bother to include it.

Pip and Squeak climbed onto his shoulder and nuzzled his neck, hungry for their breakfast. Robert scratched them behind the ears. “Well,” he said, “it’s a good thing we have more important things to worry about.”