No one came to help me. Who would have? We were behind the house, with trees and a fence between us and the nearest neighbors. I doubt anyone even heard me screaming. If they did, they probably figured it was a bunch of kids laughing, having fun, doing whatever it was that kids were supposed to do.

I ran out of the backyard, naked and ant-bit all over, my clothes in a ball under my arm. I sprinted nude through the neighborhood, crying the whole way, wailing like some shitty little kid.

Later that day when Murphy found out, she snuck into Kent Knoll’s house and dumped a bag of Skittles into his fish tank, killing every last one of those expensive imported pets. Word was Kent was real upset about it.

“I did it for you, brother,” she said, and socked me in the arm.

It was a hollow victory. I was feverish, sore, and on Benadryl. I nearly called an ambulance on myself.

You know what Mom did when she came home from wherever she was? It was nightfall when she hopped out of some stranger’s car, lit cigarette in one hand, an open Bud Light bottle in the other. Mom was barefoot, her shoes lost to time or some field somewhere, and she stumbled up the porch steps. The door swung open, and Mom burst into the room, laughing.

Then she saw me on the couch, all swollen up and moaning.

“What the hell happened to you?” she said.

I told her. Mom sucked her cigarette and shook, she was so angry.

“I ought to go over and kick those kids’ asses right now,” she said. “And kick their parents’ asses too.”

I’d never seen Mom so mad before. I wondered if she actually would go over there and start throwing punches. Yeah, like that would help me make friends.

“It’s not their fault,” I said. “I had a vision that this would happen, and I went anyway.”

Mom whirled around, glaring at me.

“What did you just say?”

I sat there in silence, looking back at her, praying that this time she’d finally believe me.

“You want the real truth, Lee?” said Mom. She got right down in my face, her breath all cigarette-stained and beery, and stared me dead in the eyes. “If you let somebody do something like that to you, then you probably deserved it.”

She sauntered off to her room and slammed the door shut.

I gave up trying to make friends after that. I also spent my days afterward taking my visions pretty damn seriously. Even if they didn’t come true every time, the kind of misery that happened when I didn’t obey them was too much to bear. I still didn’t know whether my visions came from God or my own psychotic brain or if there were aliens beaming them directly into my skull.

But I couldn’t ignore them anymore.

Chapter 19