Chapter 18
Felix and I crouch behind a thick bush across from Sutter's house, waiting for him to open his window.
By the time anything happens, we'll probably be half eaten by mosquitoes.
But I'm salivating at the thought of Mr. Aw-Shucks-No-Homo climbing into Sutter's window, getting a beautiful shiner in both his eyes, and having to explain to everybody at school what he was doing.
Felix pulls a travel-sized can of repellant out of his pocket and aims at his arm, but accidentally sprays it into his face.
“Yow!” He drops the can and rubs his fists into eyes. I shush him as I reach for the fallen can, but I find a piece of junk mail that probably fell from the mailbox next to the front door. I swipe it out of the way so I can get Felix's can. He grabs hold of it and giggles when he reads it.
“What?” I ask.
He turns the mail over and shows me. It's addressed to Rosalyn Wetherly.
We are in Rosferatu's lair. I had no idea she lived across from Sutter. I thought she lived in a cabin in the woods where she baked children in her oven.
Curiously, we stand up and peek through a window with the blinds drawn up.
She's there in the living room watching a Clint Eastwood movie with her husband, both of them holding ice cream cones.
She's got a robe on, surrounded by a crowd of Yorkies licking her bare toes.
She bends down and lets them slather their tongues on her scoop of ice cream before taking a bite out of it herself.
“Fucking ewwww,” Felix and I cry in unison.
Headlights flash around the bend in the road and we drop behind the bushes again. A Prius slowly makes its way toward us and parks on our side of the street.
Roland gets out of the car. He's got on a tight-fitting shirt and linen shorts that expose his muscular thighs. I can smell the floral mating scent of his cologne this far away. He must have sprayed a gallon. It's actually kind of good. He DMs me.
Here
I'm so horny right now lol
Rosferatu's garage door opens. Roland freezes where he is. Rosferatu rolls out a recycling bin to the street, looking like a midnight banshee in her shiny white robe. She immediately notices him.
“Roland? What are you doing over there?”
He looks shell-shocked. “I was, uh, just seeing my friend.”
“This late?”
Stupid fucking Rosferatu. Always ruining everything.
“Get yourself home now before I call your parents, young man,” she orders.
He starts back for his car.
Him:
I have to go
Me:
NO. My window is wide open!
Him:Mrs. Wetherly is here, she's calling my parents
Me:I got to see yours. You don't want to see mine?
He stops where he is, his hand nervously covering his head.
“Get home now,” Rosferatu shouts.
The front door opens near us, and we duck our heads behind the bushes.
“Rosalyn, honey, the doggies poo-pooed on the carpet again. I told you to stop giving them that ice cream!” her husband yells.
“Heavens to Betsy, Paul,” Rosferatu says impatiently, then marches back into the house. When the door shuts behind her, I continue the conversation.
Me:
She's gone! Come on in! Quick!
Him:
I think I should go home
Me:You've come all this way. Don't chicken out now!
Roland wavers by his car, looking at the side of the house like it's a dark alley.
Me:Whatever. Leave then. I'll just block you.
He sees the text and grows even more antsy. He takes one last furtive look around him to survey the environment, then books it back to the side of the house.
Me:Take your clothes off before you come in lol
“Oh my god, he went in,” I say. Felix watches with trepidation. I ask him if I should be recording this, and he shakes his head vehemently.
Screams break out in the house, and then a loud pop. I clench my hands around Felix.
“Was that a gun?” he asks.
The front door of the Breedloves' house opens wide and Roland runs out in his underwear, his face in mortal panic. Behind him are Sutter and his dad, carrying a pistol. Sra. Breedlove runs out in her nightgown, screaming for somebody to call the cops.
As soon as Roland gets to the middle of the road, a beam of light illuminates his whole body. He looks toward the light in panic. Time stops and everything freezes in that second.
Roland is in the air.
I remember when I was five, my dad took me to a place that has those water fountains that shoot high into the air, and he held me up so I could soak in the returning water.
Roland looks like that, reaching the stars with his nude, muscular body and forming a chaotic parabola as he falls back down to earth.
He hits the pavement on his back. A resounding crunch.
He doesn't move.
The car screeches to a halt. The crickets have gone quiet. Silence falls over the whole street until the car door opens. The driver leaps out and runs over to Roland.
“ROLAND?”
The streetlamp reveals, of all people, Aubrey Lam.
She covers her mouth with her hands and sobs, her eyes fixed on her boyfriend lying there in the street.
“Oh god, is he dying? Please tell me no,” she pleads.
“I can't feel my legs,” Roland says weakly.
“I'm calling an ambulance,” Sra. Breedlove shouts as she runs back into the house.
“Run now.” Felix grabs me and leads the way. I trip and fall over myself, my mind blanking on me as the adrenaline moves my legs. We flee the area undetected while everybody comes out of their homes to investigate the commotion.
“Did we kill him?” I ask Felix as he drives.
“Don't say we. I didn't say we should send him into Sutter Breedlove's house.”
“You were the one who egged me on!”
“Only to spy on him!” Felix says. “Look, he was still alive after he landed. Maybe he'll be okay.”
I press my face against the window. “He said he couldn't feel his legs.”
No matter how hard I try to think of something else, the image of him splayed out on the concrete won't leave my mind.
(You're my little champ)
I can't breathe. I fan myself with both hands and kick the floorboard.
Felix pulls over and asks me what's happening, but I can't speak.
I rip myself out of the car and walk in circles, hyperventilating.
Felix chases after me until he grabs hold of me and throws his arms around me, securing me with a hug that feels more like a blanket.
“Breathe, okay?” he says. It takes me several minutes to breathe normally and get back into the car.
“I'm going to take you home, and we're not going to do or say anything until we know what happened to him. Okay?” Felix says. I nod.
He starts to fumble with the radio. “I wonder if it's on the news already,” he says, then accidentally switches to a station that blasts an energetic version of “La Cucaracha” with an accordion.
I think of what Felix said about the song and the cockroach losing its legs, and I scream at the top of my lungs.
___________
In bed, I replay the image of Roland on the street over and over again in my head until I conk out.
It's a deep, restful sleep, until I find myself in a house as white as chlorine tablets.
No furniture, no decorations, nothing. Like nobody has moved in.
No doors or closets either. There's only a grand staircase that takes me up to a large window.
That's when I see the black funnel cloud swirling toward me.
It doesn't make any noise. I run downstairs, but there's nowhere to hide.
I run out to the front lawn, and there my mom and dad stare at the tornado.
Their bodies stiff, their eyes fixed on the twister.
No amount of voiceless screaming and shaking moves them as the monster gets closer.
I fall to the grass and start digging like a dog, catching weeds and chunks of soil that feel like chocolate cake between my fingers.
When I look back at the tornado, it's right in front of my parents.
The wind starts to hit them, and blows the flesh off their bodies until only their skeletons remain.
I dig faster and hit something in the soil.
I look below me, and it's Roland's dead face.
I fall out of bed, my heart pumping, drenched in sweat, fear, and shame.