“The h-honey?” I stuttered. I had never seen someone so freaked out by something so benign. “I found it.”
He pinched the black ribbon between his fingers, rubbing it. “Where?”
I shrugged. “Someone left it at the diner. I found it when I was closing up.”
The color drained from his face, turning his usually red-tinged cheeks an eerie paper white. “If you find one of these again, I want you to leave it where it is and call me immediately.”
“Jack, it’s just honey,” I pointed out.
Why was everyone acting so strangely lately? I had already tasted it and lived to tell the tale, so it’s not like it was poisoned.
“Just do it,” he said quietly. “OK?”
“I thought you said you didn’t have a phone,” I reminded him.
“I’ll call you when I get a new one.”
“Jack?” In all the strangeness, I had forgotten my mother was still there. “I think you should go now. You’re acting erratically and it’s making me very uncomfortable. Sophie probably wants to go to bed.”
I opened my mouth to protest — I wasn’t tired — but then I stopped myself. My mother was right.
“OK.” Jack looked at the ground, shaking his head. “Sorry, Sophie. I’ve had a very long day.”
“It’s fine.” I offered him an encouraging smile. Between managing the diner and taking care of his investments in the city, Jack always worked himself into the ground, but lately he had been more unlike himself than ever; he was exhausted and jittery, and now that Luis had died, his behavior was stranger than ever.
“Good night, Sophie.”
“Night,” I returned.
Honey still in hand, Jack trudged toward the back door.
A half second later, the motion sensor in our backyard flickered to life, illuminating my uncle’s shadow as it faced away from us, staring at the broken patio squares and the overgrown grass.
“What on earth is he — ”
The rest of my mother’s question was drowned out by an earsplitting crash. I pressed my nose up to the window, but Jack was already disappearing from view. I looked down, where the light was winking off a hundred shards of shattered glass.
“That man!” my mother shrieked, coming to stand beside me at the window. “This is exactly why I don’t want him around. Your uncle’s behavior is completely irrational. He’s been drinking again, and if he doesn’t stop, he’s going to wind up doing something he’ll really regret …” She trailed off and started to rub my arm. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” I lied, pinning my hand against the window to stop it from shaking.
“I wish your father were here to keep him in line.”
“I think if Dad were here Uncle Jack wouldn’t be out of line,” I said quietly.
My mother sighed. “I’ll have to wait until morning to clean up that mess.”
“I’ll help you.”
We lingered at the window together, and watched as honey oozed into the pavement cracks like dark gold blood.
Millie had an outfit for everything, so when she showed up at the riverside courts on Saturday, I was unsurprised to find her wearing a tiny pair of shorts and the tightest basketball jersey I had ever seen. She pushed her way through pockets of other teenagers, waltzing toward me in an explosion of black and red.
“I didn’t know you were a Bulls fan.”
“Oh, didn’t you?” She smirked and plonked herself down beside me on the bottom bench of the courtside bleachers.
“Let me rephrase that,” I said as she began to wind her hair into a ponytail. “I didn’t even know you were a basketball fan.”
“I guess you could say I’m more of a boys fan.” She snapped the hair elastic into place. “The top belongs to Alex. It shrunk in the wash.” She grinned unashamedly.
I looked down at myself: my mother’s three-quarter-length jogging pants, a plain gray tank top, and an old pair of Asics with bright green stripes. My hair was tied high on my head, falling down between my shoulder blades in a straight ponytail. Already I could tell the sun was bleaching the stray baby hairs that were too wispy to be tied back with the rest.
Millie ran her gaze along my outfit, scrunching her nose.
“You look …” she began uncertainly.
“… normcore?” I finished.
Exercise wasn’t exactly my calling in life, but I was grateful to have something to distract me from my uncle’s recent behavior. He had been gone for several days since his whole honeypot-patio freak-out and still hadn’t tried to contact me. Ursula was in charge of the diner in his absence. She had reacted the worst to the death of Luis, and had resolved never to take a bath again, just in case she drowned herself. Millie and I were slightly less dramatic about it, but we were still glad to be free of her morbid rants, at least just for the day.