. . .

Grammy dropped us off, reminded me once again that I could stay at her house anytime I wanted, and I told her okay. Frick was there, his truck pulled right behind Paige’s, but we didn’t see him or Mom. I walked down the hallway to my room, and I looked at the base of Mom’s door. There was no light. There were no voices.

I got ready for bed, put on my pajamas, and went to Paige’s room. I stood at her open bedroom door, trying to get her attention. She was lying in bed fully clothed still, head propped up with a pillow, reading the local Overtown paper with a cigarette between her fingers, the smoke clinging, rolling off the gray paper up to the ceiling. She moved the paper to the side and looked at me.

“Be-dee-gé, chagooksis,” she said. Come on in, little shit.

I crawled on her small bed, tried to roll over but elbowed her in her side. “Ow! Would you sit still?”

She read. Smoked. Flicked her cigarette. Read some more. Snubbed her cigarette. Lit a new one. Turned the pages, crinkled them. Finally, she lay the paper flat on her stomach, and it looked like a little mound but I knew it was her clothes making that bump, not the baby. Paige blew out an extra-long puff of smoke, and then was quiet.

The fridge in the kitchen hummed, and then it grumbled low like a stomach and clicked off. A pipe in the wall rattled. A minute of silence before the fridge started up again, humming, grumbling. Click. Another pipe. Silence. This went on until a different tapping began, gentle knocks down the dark hallway, over and up the walls. They got louder, closer, and Paige must have felt me grip her arm, because she said it was a pipe, but the knocking got louder, seemed to tap right on her bedroom door, and I knew there were no pipes in that thin hollow plywood.

Paige opened her eyes and looked. The knocking stopped, and I heard the fridge click on again and the floorboard heater ping, but then it all stopped again and the next thing I knew Paige jumped up, which sent me flying off the bed, and she screamed, grabbing her thigh.

Paige’s scream woke Mom and Frick, and Mom came out in her underwear and a long T-shirt, and Frick came out with his big brown belly hanging over his blue boxers, and in the light both Mom and Frick squinted.

“What the hell is the matter?” Mom said.

“Ow, shit!” Paige couldn’t roll up her black pants, so she pulled her pants down, and Frick looked horrified at her doing it, but then his eyes widened. I was grabbing Mom by the wrist, holding on to her, looking at Paige’s thigh. Something had bitten her—itty-bitty teeth marks.

“Move,” Frick said to Mom.

“Could it be the jar, Frick?” she asked.

Frick ignored her, got close to Paige, knelt and looked at the bite mark. Paige told Frick and Mom what we heard, the knocking, and then the silence, and then the pain she felt in her leg. I still gripped Mom’s wrist.