Page 12 of The Boo Next Door

"I'm keeping it as damages." She marches inside, cat over her shoulder, and Beetlejuice watches me the whole way in, and I swear to God the animal looks smug.

Thursday I walk into the station for shift and the bay has been redecorated.

There's a stuffed cat zip-tied to the ladder truck. Black. Someone has fashioned it a tiny scarf. On the whiteboard where the duty roster goes, somebody with real artistic range has drawn a maple tree, a stick figure with my haircut, and a speech bubble that says IT'S NOT PERSONAL. The probie can't even look at me. He's vibrating.

"Okay," I say.

"Engine Two responded at eighteen forty-two," Ravi announces from the kitchen doorway, reading off his phone like a citation at a banquet, "to reports of heavy smoke on Foxglove Lane. Upon arrival, crews discovered no fire, but did locate one off-duty member of this department at elevation, wearing what the caller described as a live fur garment."

"The caller did not say that."

"Denise said that. Denise photographs everything, brother. You're the group chat's whole week." He turns his phone around. There I am, halfway down the maple in the fog, lit by streetlight, Beetlejuice draped across my neck like a czar's collar, and — I take the phone and look closer, because I don't remember this part — I'm grinning. Not the polite one. The real one, the one that shows up about four times a year.

Below the photo, ninety-one messages. I hand the phone back.

"You want to talk about it?" Ravi asks, in the voice that means he's already made up his mind about what it is.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Man goes up a tree for a cat that hates men, comes down smiling like it's Christmas, nothing to talk about. Sure." He pockets the phone, and then, because Ravi knows where every load-bearing wall in me is located, he stops kidding. "You did the math yet? On what happens if she wins?"

"She's not going to win. Have you seen the dragon?"

"I've seen the dragon. I've also seen you check her porch light every night like it's a gauge." He picks up the stuffed cat, straightens its little scarf, sets it on my locker. "All I'm saying is, the town cut that budget line once already. The town can vote on it like grown-ups if it comes to that. It was never supposed to be your spine holding it up forever, no matter what the letter says."

"It says what it says."

"It says keep it alive, Grady. It doesn't say keep it alive alone." He heads for the engine. "Check the manifold on Three. And take your cat. He watches me when I open my locker and I don't like it."

Thursday evening, the doorbell rings, and it's the government.

Dottie Pruitt stands on my porch flanked by Ruth from the registration table and Behrens, who is holding a clipboard like it's the nuclear football. Committee business, then. Full delegation. Somebody's in trouble, and I own the porch they picked.

"Grady." Dottie doesn't come in. This is a doorstep matter, ceremonially. "Lovely evening. This is a formal call."

"I figured, when Behrens brought the good clipboard."

"Item one." Ruth reads it off. "Monday. A projector operated by entrant thirteen Foxglove was redirected onto the Henderson property, generating," she squints, "eleven phone calls, one of which was from Mrs. Henderson's mother in Arizona, who saw it on the group chat and thought the house was haunted."

"That wasn't my⁠—"

"Item two. Tuesday. Skeletal remains on the Merriweather lawn were arranged to spell a discouraging message. We have photographs. The G, Grady." Ruth looks at me over the paper, and there's forty years of Sunday school in it. "The G."

"Item three," Dottie says, taking over, and her voice loses the fun it never officially had. "Yesterday. A fog discharge from this property set off interior alarms at a neighboring residence, resulted in a cat in a tree, and — this is the part you'll care about — was visible from Route Nine, where two cars pulled over because they thought Foxglove Lane was on fire. One of them called it in. Your own station, Grady. Your own people ran the truck two blocks to find you up a maple wearing a cat."

Silence. Down the street, faintly, the Hendersons' reaper sighs.

"The committee met this afternoon," Dottie says. "Founders' Fright has run for forty-one years on one principle: the town against the dark, together. Not the town against each other. So here's the ruling, and it's unanimous, and Behrens will read it because he typed it and he's proud of it."

Behrens clears his throat. "Entrants Ellis and Merriweather are hereby issued a joint formal warning. Any further incident involving either property, either entrant, or," he checks the page, "any decorative equipment, projected imagery, skeletal staging, or atmospheric discharge crossing either property line, will result in the immediate disqualification of both entries."

"Both," I say.

"Both," Dottie confirms, and she watches me take that in with her glasses down her nose, because she knows exactly what she's built. She's chained us together at the ankle. I can't take a swing at her without hitting the Fright's own funding, and the girl can't take a swing at me without shooting her own roof. "Marvelous system, isn't it. Behrens is delivering her copy now."

I look across the fence. Porch lights on. Somewhere over there, Behrens is reading the same paragraph off the same clipboard to a woman in a paint shirt, and I'd pay real money for the audio.

"There's one more item," Dottie says, "but it's not on the clipboard." She waves Ruth and Behrens toward the car, waits until they're out of range, and turns back to me, and for a second the committee chair is gone and it's just Dottie, who sat with Bee every Thursday at the end, who knows where the deposits go. "That was the most alive that girl has looked since the funeral, tonight, on that lawn. I could hear her laughing from the corner." She pats my arm, once, like tamping soil. "I don't know what you're doing, Grady. Neither do you. Try not to do it through the fire department."