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  “You like Kenny, don’t you?” Monique asked Tammy.

  “I guess so.”

  Monique and Gretchen looked at each other. Tammy couldn’t tell if they were giving each other a look or if they were just looking at each other.

  Gretchen went on and on about how to French-kiss. She also said that during sex, when a man sticks his penis inside a woman’s vagina, he pees a little bit inside, except it’s not exactly pee. She also said that once they went over to Heather’s house because Heather had developed big boobs already and Kenny and Josh wanted to feel her up.

  “And do you know what we found?” Gretchen said with her smirky smile growing bigger.

  “What?”

  “In her parents’ room, in a drawer in the dresser, we found a dildo.”

  Tammy didn’t say anything. Tammy didn’t know what a dildo was, but from the way Gretchen said it, Tammy felt that she should.

  “You know what a dildo is, right?” Monique asked.

  “Yeah,” Tammy said, trying to play it cool until she figured it out.

  “Heather didn’t know what it was,” Gretchen went on. “You can tell what it is from the way it looks, but she didn’t know exactly what it was or why her mother had one. So Kenny yells out, ‘Your mom has a dildo!’ and Heather says, ‘What’s a dildo?’ and Kenny goes, ‘You use it to practice having sex!’”

  There it was and Tammy didn’t have to do anything.

  “Did you use it?” Tammy asked.

  “Eww! Gross!” Monique shrieked.

  “No,” Gretchen said and she gave Tammy a weird look. “That would be gross.”

  “I meant Heather,” Tammy said, trying to cover her tracks. “What did she do with it?”

  “She didn’t even touch it. We just put it back in the drawer.”

  Gretchen was always doing this. She was always digging traps for Tammy to fall into. And Tammy would always fall into them.

  That night was Nick’s actual birthday. They had London broil for dinner and carrot cake for dessert. Tammy only ate the icing. They had dinner early because her mother and Nick were going out to see a band. Nick got his favorite dinner, a cake, and he got to go out, which was the same as having a party.

  Even with their mother and Nick out of the house for the evening, the kids were still forbidden to watch TV in the adults-only living room. They decided it was too risky to do it anyway because one time their mother and Nick came home early and they almost got caught. If their mother and Nick didn’t like the band, they would sometimes leave early. So Tammy, Steffi, and Hugh sat in their dingy kids’ TV room. It was messy and full of junk: old toys they never played with anymore, old furniture they didn’t have a place for, old clothes in garbage bags they were going to give to the Vietnam vets charity.

  They were watching Diff’rent Strokes, which was okay. Tammy had wanted to watch Barney Miller, but Steffi voted against it and she wooed Hugh to vote with her. She was good at doing that. Steffi said she didn’t like police shows, even though Barney Miller was a comedy. Steffi thought police shows were boring. She got her way and they were watching her show. That’s why she made Tammy answer the phone.

  In the kitchen, the brick-red phone hung on the wall by the shit-green refrigerator. It had a long cord that always got tangled up. The other phone was in their mother’s and Nick’s bedroom. This was the only phone the kids were allowed to use.

  “Hello?”

  “Tammy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Monique.”

  “Hi. What’s up?”

  “Are your parents there?”

  “No, they went out.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Um, it’s about Kirin.”

  Monique lived down the street from Kirin and Gretchen.

  “What about her?”

  “Well . . . she’s dead.”

  “Come on!”

  “No, she is. She’s dead.”

  Tammy could tell this had Gretchen written all over it. It was some big joke. Monique could always be counted on for a joke.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, she is. I’m serious.”

  Tammy just had to play it cool and prove she wasn’t falling for it.

  “Oh, come on. Stop joking.”

  “I’m not joking. I wanted to call you because I know your sister is best friends with her.” Someone was talking in the background at her house. “Wait . . . my dad wants to talk to you.”

  In that instant, when she heard the adult voice of Monique’s dad in the distance and the untangling of phone cords several blocks away, the water in Tammy’s mouth dried up and her hand holding the red phone went numb. All the blood in her veins and arteries and capillaries drained down toward the floor like pee does when you wet your pants. Monique’s dad wouldn’t be part of the joke. Monique wasn’t joking. She was being serious.

  “Wait—what happened? How did she die?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t think I can tell you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know if I can, if I’m allowed to say.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Tell me.”

  Tammy could tell Monique was cupping her hand around the mouthpiece so that no one else could hear what she was saying.

  “It was her mother,” she whispered in a low voice. When Monique whispered she sounded like a woman on a TV commercial selling Chanel Number Five perfume. She always sounded more grown up when she whispered.

  Tammy couldn’t believe what Monique was saying. What she was saying didn’t sound real. Tammy couldn’t believe her. She wanted to go back to the joke and say, “Oh, come on! Give me a break!” But she only managed to push out a shaky voice.

  “What?”

  “It was her mother. Her mother killed her.”

  “What?”

  “Her mother. Her mother killed her. She shot her.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I think it was an accident. Then she tried to shoot herself.”

  “What?”

  “Her mother. First she shot Kirin, then she tried to shoot herself, but she missed. They’re taking her to the hospital.”

  Tammy could hear Monique jangle the phone. Someone had caught her.

  “My dad wants to talk to you.”

  A lump was growing in Tammy’s throat, like a piece of hard candy she had accidentally swallowed whole. Monique’s dad got on the phone and said something to Tammy, but she couldn’t tell what. Monique’s dad had come to their school once to talk about careers. He was a professor.

  “Tammy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where are your parents? Are they there?”

  “No.”

  “Where are they? Is there a baby-sitter?”

  “No.”

  “You’re by yourself?”

  “Yeah.” It was getting harder and harder to talk. Tammy wanted to get off the phone. She didn’t want to be talking to someone else’s dad.

  “I want you to tell your mother to call me as soon as she gets home. Do you know when they’re getting home?”

  “Ten thirty or eleven.”

  “Okay, they can call me whatever time they get home. Doesn’t matter how late.”

  “Okay.” The lump in her throat was hurting now. She suddenly had a bad sore throat when even swallowing hurts. Each sound coming out of her mouth ripped off another layer of skin.

  “Okay. You can call me back if you need to.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay,” he said and hung up the phone.

  Tammy put the red phone back on the hook. As soon as it clicked into place, she started screaming.

  It wasn’t far from the kitchen to the kids’ TV room. It was probably less than five steps, but to Tammy, it felt like forever. It felt like she was running through a tunnel in slow motion, or really super fast on fast-forward, but with the tunnel having no end. Sh
e could never reach the other side. She kept running and running and the lights and stuff on the walls whizzed by her like laser beams. There is always a part like this in a scary movie when the person knows someone is coming after them. Someone is attacking them from all over and they can’t see who it is.

  Tammy ran into the kids’ TV room like this—screaming and crying and out of control. Like an airplane making a crash landing.

  The TV program had changed to Gimme a Break!

  Tammy was screaming so loudly that Steffi and Hugh jumped out of their seats and onto to the linoleum floor as if the house had suddenly been hit by an earthquake.

  Steffi and Hugh started crying. They didn’t know what was going on. They were scared because Tammy was screaming and crying so much. They were asking Tammy, “What, what, what is it, tell us?” but she couldn’t speak. Tammy couldn’t keep her voice from wailing. In between heavy sobs, she managed to push out a question, the last possible possibility that this was some huge joke she had fallen for.

  “Was Kirin at school today?” she asked Steffi’s pink teary face.

  Steffi’s saucer eyes searched Tammy’s face with an “I don’t get it” look.

  “No,” Steffi said, dragging out the O part so it sounded like a question.

  This made Tammy cry even more. It was true. It was all true.

  Tammy wrapped her arms around her head and hid her face in the crooks of her elbows. She crouched over and rubbed her arms down her body like she was trying to push something off of her. She was like the guy at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark who starts scratching everywhere as though he has a million bugs crawling on him. That’s what Tammy felt like. Like there were bugs crawling all over her and she had to get out. She had to get out of her skin. She had to get out of her body. She had to get out of this house. Nothing good had ever happened to her since they moved here. She had thought before that maybe this house was haunted and now she knew it was. She knew there were ghosts all around her and they weren’t very nice.

  Steffi and Hugh were looking at Tammy like she was crazy. Steffi kept asking, “What’s wrong?” but Tammy had already gone. She was still in the kids’ TV room on the linoleum floor, which was still sticky from a Kool-Aid spill that happened last week. Steffi and Hugh were there, but Steffi’s voice sounded very far away and when Tammy tried to open her eyes, Steffi and Hugh were underwater and Tammy was floating away. She was leaving this world that she always knew was imaginary. She knew these weren’t her real parents and this wasn’t her real house. When they first moved here she used to think that if she stood in a patch of sunlight on the floor long enough, she would be magically transported back to their old house, Dad would come back and live with them, and everything would be okay again.

  Right now it was nighttime. It was dark outside and there were no sun patches.

  “Please tell us,” Steffi said with a sad and concerned look on her face that under any other circumstances Tammy would have brushed off as phony. But tonight it was real. Tammy knew that she was scaring Steffi and Hugh, and she knew she would have to scare them even more. She would have to tell them.

  Tammy looked away from Steffi’s pink face with the blue pencil dot still in her cheek. She looked at the sticky cold floor and felt every muscle in her body twist and clench and try to hang on to her bones. She was all alone here. There were no grown-ups. There was no one to come in at the last minute and say, it’s okay. It’s all right. Mommy’s here. There was no one to save her from having to tell Steffi.

  Finally Tammy blurted it out.

  “She died! She’s dead!”

  “Who?”

  “Kirin! She’s dead!”

  At the moment when Steffi should have started to cry, she stopped.

  “What?”

  “Call Monique if you don’t believe me! Call Monique’s dad!”

  Steffi still didn’t cry. Or, she didn’t cry a mess of snot like Tammy did. Her eyes became watery and little streams of baby-doll tears drizzled down her cheeks.

  “But . . . what—?”

  “Her mother! Her mother killed her! She shot her with a gun!”

  Now Steffi’s pink body stiffened. The tears stopped in their slick tracks like tiny, slow-moving slugs.

  “Come on!” Tammy said and whipped around, heading back to the kitchen. She picked up the phone and dialed Monique’s number. Steffi followed her, not saying anything and not really crying out loud. Hugh followed a few steps behind Steffi.

  Tammy got Monique and told her Steffi didn’t believe it. Tammy held the phone out to Steffi and the long curly cord bounced between them. Steffi carefully took the phone and sat down on one of the dinner table chairs in a perfect little girl position. She didn’t say anything to Monique other than a “yes” or an “okay.” She nodded a few times and drizzled more tears. Then without saying good-bye to Monique, she gave the phone back to Tammy.

  “Hello?” Tammy said into the phone.

  “Yeah, I told her,” Monique said.

  “Yeah.”

  “My dad wants to know if your parents are home yet.”

  “No.”

  “What?” she said to someone at her house. “I gotta go,” she said back to Tammy.

  Tammy hung up the phone. Steffi had gone up to her room. Hugh was standing there staring at Tammy like he was waiting for someone to tell him what to do.

  “Do I have to go to bed now?” Hugh asked.

  “YES!” Tammy yelled. It made Hugh jump back. Tammy didn’t want to be mean to him personally, but she was mad and upset and she had to yell at somebody.

  Hugh skirted by her, probably afraid that she was going to yell at him again, and ran up the stairs. Tammy sat down on the shit-brown couch in the off-limits living room and didn’t follow him.

  Tammy decided this was an emergency and she could call her mother and Nick at the number they had left. Her mother and Nick would write the number of where they were going on the dry-marker board next to the refrigerator. Tammy looked over at the board. Nothing was there except for squiggly lines that someone had partially erased. A blue marker was balanced on the edge of the frame like a piece of chalk.

  Nothing ever worked when Tammy needed it to.

  It didn’t matter because Tammy knew the name of the music place. She got the Washington Post from the shit-green coffee table, opened up the Style section, and looked at the ads. She saw the name of the music place and called the tiny number that was printed in white against the black background. It was in Alexandria, just across the border in Virginia, and she had to dial a one.

  The guy who answered the phone said there weren’t assigned seats, people sat wherever they wanted, so he wouldn’t know where to look for her mother. He said there were a lot of people and he couldn’t go around to all the tables and ask if anyone sitting there was her mother. Tammy tried to describe what she looked like. She said her mother had long brown hair in a ponytail and glasses, and that she was five feet five inches tall. He said it was dark and he couldn’t really see anyone from where he was sitting. He said the only thing he could do was make an announcement at intermission. Tammy asked when that would be. He said probably in half an hour.

  Tammy hung up. She tried to call Gretchen, but her line was busy.

  She went upstairs. She didn’t want to be downstairs by herself.

  Tammy could hear Steffi crying in her room. Hugh had turned out his light and gone to sleep. Tammy didn’t want to go into her room, so she walked down the hall and into her mom and Nick’s room. It was usually off-limits, but she figured tonight was an exception.

  She tried Gretchen again on the phone in her mother’s room, but it was still busy. She decided to call Heather instead. When Heather came to the phone, Tammy told her matter-of-factly what had happened. Tammy wasn’t crying anymore. She told Heather like it was no big deal. It was just something that had happened. Kirin’s mother had shot her and she was dead. Her mother had also shot herself, but she wasn’t dead. She was going to the hos
pital. Heather seemed shocked but she didn’t cry. She reminded Tammy that it was quite possible her mother could die too. Sometimes people got shot and went to the hospital and then they died a couple days later.

  Heather asked Tammy if she was sure Kirin was dead or if she was going to the hospital too. Tammy said that, yes, Kirin was definitely dead. That she had died right away. She didn’t know this for sure, she just assumed. Heather asked Tammy how many times Kirin was shot. Tammy said, probably five or six if she died right away.

  Heather said she would call Monique to see if there was anything new and then she would call back. Tammy said she would try Gretchen again. And then Tammy started to like calling. It was like telling a secret, as if someone had gotten in trouble at school, or someone liked a boy. She liked calling her friends and talking about the fact that Kirin was dead.

  A half hour later, she called the music place in Alexandria again and spoke to the same guy. He said he had made an announcement at intermission but no one had responded. He had called out twice over the PA but no one had come up to him. He said maybe her mother had gone to the bathroom during intermission and didn’t hear the announcement. Or maybe she had stepped outside. Or maybe she had left early and would be home soon. Tammy asked him if he could make one more announcement and he said no, he couldn’t. He said the band had started playing again and the lights were dark. He couldn’t talk on the PA while the band was playing, only in between. Like on the radio, he said. Tammy asked him one more time and she said it was important. He said he couldn’t. He could get in trouble. He could lose his job.

  Tammy hung up.

  She lay down on the double bed. The bedspread was white with a skinny rainbow that arched where your head goes. There were two rainbow stripes on the flat bed part and the pillowcases made the circle part that connected them, except her mother had made the bed wrong and the circle parts didn’t match up. They were switched. They looked like pieces of a puzzle that didn’t fit, or broken-off bits of donut.

  Tammy fell asleep.

  She woke up twenty minutes later. Her mother and Nick still weren’t home. She wrote them a note.

  Dear Mom and Nick,

  Kirin is dead. Her mom shot her. Then her mom tried to shoot herself. Her mom is not dead. She went to the hospital. Monique’s dad said to call him when you got home. I tried to call you and have someone make an announcement, but you didn’t hear it. I went to bed.