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“That’s a pretty expensive work.” I don’t want to tell her I’ve thought about it, that my whole family thought about it so much they even had a secret meeting to discuss the possibility. “Plus, I lived. That makes it less likely.”
“You should ask your granddad,” she says softly.
If you’re so smart, you tell me what’s going on.
I nod, barely noticing as she puts the papers back into her purse. Then she hugs me lightly. My hands rest on the small of her back and I can feel her warm breath against my neck. With her, I could learn to be normal. Every time she touches me, I feel the heady promise of becoming an average guy.
“You better go,” I say, before I do something stupid.
At the door, as she leaves, I turn to look at my grandfather’s face. He’s twisting a screwdriver into the stove to pop off a crusted burner, without any apparent concern that the entire Zacharov family might be after me. He’s worked for them, so it’s not like he doesn’t know what they’re capable of—he knows better than I do.
Maybe that’s why he’s here.
To protect me.
The thought makes me need to lean against the sink from a combination of horror, guilt, and gratitude.
* * *
That night, in my old room with the ratty Magritte posters taped to the ceiling and bookshelves stuffed with robots and Hardy Boys novels, I dream of being lost in a rainstorm.
Even though it’s a dream, and I’m pretty sure it’s a dream, the rain feels cold against my skin and I can barely see with the water in my eyes. I hunch over and run for the only visible light, shading my face with one hand.
I come to the worn door of the barn behind the house. Ducking through the doorway, however, I decide I was mistaken about it being our barn. Instead of the old tools and discarded furniture, there’s only a long hallway, lit by torches. As I get closer, I realize that the torches are held by hands too real to be plaster. One hand shifts its grip on a metal shaft, and I leap back from it. Then, stepping closer, I see how the wrist of each has been severed and stuck on the wall. I can see the uneven slice of the flesh.
“Hello,” I call, like I did from the roof. This time, no one answers.
I glance back. The barn door is still open, sheets of rain forming puddles on the wooden planks. Because it’s a dream, I don’t bother to go back and close the door. I just head down the hall. After what seems like a disproportionately long time walking, I come to a shabby door with a handle made from the foot of a stag. The coarse fur tickles my palm as I pull it.
Inside sits a futon from Barron’s dorm room and a dresser I’m sure I recall Mom buying off of eBay, intending to paint it apple green for the guest room. I open the drawers and find several pairs of Philip’s old jeans. They’re dry, and the top pair fits me perfectly when I pull them on. There’s a white shirt that was Dad’s hanging on the back of the door; I remember the cigarillo burn just below the elbow and the smell of my father’s aftershave.
Since I know I’m dreaming, I’m not frightened, just puzzled, when I walk back into the hall and this time find steps going up to a painted white door with a hanging crystal pull. The pull looks like the kind that summons servants in grand houses on PBS shows, but this one is made from glittering parts of an old chandelier. When I pull it, a series of bells rings loudly, echoing through the space. The door opens.
An old picnic table and two lawn chairs rest in the middle of a large gray room. Maybe I’m still in the barn after all, because the spaces between the planks in the walls are wide enough that I can see rain against a storm-bright sky.
The table is draped with some kind of embroidered silk cloth and topped with silver candlesticks, two silver chargers, and gilt-edged plates, the center of each covered by a silver dome. Cut glass goblets stand at each place setting.
Out of the gloom, cats come, tabbies and calicos, marmalade cats and butterscotch cats and cats so black I can barely tell them from their shadows. They creep toward me, hundreds of them, swarming over one another to get close.
I jump up onto one of the chairs, snatching a candlestick, not sure what sick thing my brain is about to conjure next when a small, veiled creature walks into the room. It’s wearing a tiny gown, like the kind that expensive dolls wear. Lila had a whole row of dolls in dresses like that; her mother would yell at her if she touched them. We played with the dolls anyway when her mother wasn’t looking. We dragged the princess one through Grandad’s backyard pretending she was being held captive by one of my Power Rangers, with a broken Tamagotchi as an interstellar map—until its dress was streaked with grass stains and torn along the hem. This dress is torn too.
The veil slips and falls. Underneath is a cat’s face. A cat, standing on two legs, her triangle head tilted to one side, almost like her neck’s been broken, her body covered in the dress.
I can’t help it, I laugh.
“I need your help,” says the tiny figure. Her voice is sad and soft and sounds like Lila’s, but with an odd accent that might just be how cats sound when they talk.
“Okay,” I say. What else can I say?
“A curse was placed on me,” the Lila cat says. “A curse that only you can break.”
The other cats watch us, tails flicking, whiskers twitching. Still silent.
“Who cursed you?” I ask, trying to smother my laughter.
“You did,” says the white cat.
At that my smile becomes more of a grimace. Lila’s dead and cats shouldn’t stand, shouldn’t press their paws together in supplication, shouldn’t talk.
