by C.L. Bevill
* * *
Two days later, Zach was still grumpy. He spent a lot of time outside during the day keeping an eye on what was happening. I don’t think he wanted to stare at me anymore.
“He thinks it’s his fault that you died,” Kara explained to me one day while I was sitting in a chair working on a new notebook. Zach had found a nearly new one in a house a mile away. He’d presented it to me with a gruff, “Here.” Then he’d tossed a pile of sharpened pencils in my lap. While I was looking down, he escaped like devil was at his heels.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said shortly.
“He thinks he should have noticed that you were bleeding,” Kara continued blithely.
“It was nearly pitch-black and he was a little occupied.”
“Well, yeah,” Kara agreed. “You should have told us.”
“Uh, excuse me. Nutcase leaving skulls on grills and lighting motel fires? It seemed a little more important to leave than to worry about me bleeding.” I bit my tongue and cursed. I should have told them. I had been worried that the man would catch up to us and do far worse things to us than the bleeding of my wounded shoulder.
“Us or you?” Kara said astutely. Her kind blue eyes considered me for a long moment that made me want to squirm. “Zach said you wanted us to leave you there because you couldn’t ride a bicycle.”
“We could have all burned up in the motel,” I said coldly. “Or even worse. He could have used our bones for soup.”
“Heck no, you’re not a marshmallow,” Kara said loudly. “Glad, too. I hate a milquetoast. Should make for an interesting experience. I’m certainly more entertained than I thought I was going to be. It’s almost better than soaps.” She made a little noise and added, “Not that I ever watched them.”
I didn’t understand and I didn’t ask.
Kara looked over my shoulder and said wonderingly, “You saw a Loch Ness Monster?”
“Fernie,” I said. “The name of the reservoir where she was at. She had two babies. They were eating fish. I think the drawing is close. The mommy was about forty feet long.”
Kara reached over my shoulder and idly flipped through the pages. She saw the gryphon, the firefly pixies, and the unicorns, too. “Oh my,” she muttered. “It’s a whole different ball of wax now, isn’t it?”