When I grabbed at her hand to keep her from going again, a tiny tip of her pointer finger came off. I clasped it tightly as she ran in velvet high heels down 42nd Street, almost tripping over her hair. It was still warm against my palm, and I could almost feel a rhythm, like a tiny fleshy drum—a hint of heartbeat. I pocketed it and forgot it was there until I picked up the slacks from the cleaners two weeks later. I discovered it when I slipped my wallet inside the neatly pressed pocket on my way out the door to work. I pulled it out, studied it. It was a bit gray in color but it was odorless and the fingernail polish was still a bright orange. I threw it into the cheap china dish on the small round table by my front door where I kept the neighbor from 4A’s spare keys. I forgot about it there, crooked edged and solitary, until I managed to get the rest of the finger.

She didn’t even notice the sound of her hair anymore, but I heard it. The clattering of lost change in it, bits of lint and dust balling at the ends.

I wasn’t expecting to run into her again, not since the way she split the last time I called out her name from across 42nd, standing outside a small doughnut shop, a bit of powdered sugar speckling my chin. Her hair was dragging on the floor then, sweeping the streets, grabbing up old newspapers and empty water bottles with its tentacle-like ends. She didn’t even notice the sound of her hair anymore, but I heard it. The clattering of lost change in it, bits of lint and dust balling at the ends. Her eyes were so white that I lifted my hand to block the light of them. That’s when I yelled out her name, dropping my doughnut and falling into a sprint to catch up to her, just to speak to her one more time.

But then there I was, just a few weeks later, at the DMV when I heard a familiar clattering, a clinkering, a jingling, and I knew it was her hair. This time, I didn’t call out her name. I didn’t even breathe. I stayed as invisible as possible until she slowly clambered past me, a bit of her hair sweeping across my face, locking itself into a trembling eye lash. That’s when I grabbed her hand. She recoiled, immediately recognizing the touch of my skin, but I held on to it fast. She didn’t say a word, just yanked her hand backwards, and that’s when the entire finger came right off. This time, we both noticed immediately. She stared at her finger, alive and pulsating in my hand and held her four fingered hand to her chest. I didn’t mean to, I started, but she turned, wounded and afraid, her hair running after her.

When I got home, I tried to glue the tip back to the finger, but they no longer fit together as one whole piece. They were two parts now, and I had to accept that. So I kept them together in the cheap china dish and checked on them each day before and after work to be sure they were both still there. Until once, in middle of the night, when I was tossing and turning, imagining her hair rolling me up into a blonde cocoon; I heard the finger tapping, but it was a blunted sound without the tip of the finger. It tapped out a tune on the edge of the china bowl, and I found myself waking hours later from a dreamless sleep. After that night, I moved the bowl to my night stand.

I hugged the end of that braid like a life saver and she felt me on her. She started to run through the streets, her braid trailing, dragging me against the pavement, over the potholes and the sewers.

A year went by before I saw her again, and this time her hair was in a braid: one very giant and lengthy braid. It was a whip of fine hair that slapped any innocent passerby in the face if she turned her head too excitedly to get a glimpse of a store front or quickly-moving advertisement on the side of a bus. When it hit me, the wind from my chest blew off the leaves of the tree next to us. It knocked me to the ground, and I saw stars in the sky, but I grabbed on fast. I hugged the end of that braid like a lifesaver and she felt me on her. She started to run through the streets, her braid trailing, dragging me against the pavement, over the potholes and the sewers. I felt myself bleeding, felt scrapes gaping and widening, but I climbed up that braid and grabbed on to her shoulder, resting my lips close to her ears. Please. I was losing breath and holding on too tightly. The next thing I knew, I was in the middle of an intersection, trucks screeching to a halt, engines burning, horns blaring, with the length of her arm from the socket of her shoulder to the tips of her four remaining fingers, tightly clasped against my chest.

The fingers on the arm twitched the whole walk home. At one point, I thought, they were trying to pick-pocket me, but then I realized that was someone else. I came home and used the third arm to slam the door shut. I tossed the arm on the couch and went to address the cuts and bruises in the bathroom. By the time I was done with the shower and ordered and devoured a whole pile of Thai food from up the block, I noticed that the fingers were no longer twitching, but had managed to ball themselves up into a fist. I took out the other finger and tried to glue it back on, but it stubbornly refused to curl like the other so now I had three parts of her: the tip of her index finger, the whole of her index finger and the entirety of her left arm. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted her.

My luck was running dry. Two years passed since I secured her left arm. Since then I have stored it beneath my kitchen sink, right behind the water pipe. Sometimes weeks go by and I forget it’s there and when I open the cabinet to pull out another sponge or some Windex, I jump back as it falls forward to shake my hand. But then I laugh, remembering it was only her arm and tuck it back behind the pipe and continue on with the dishes.

It was my thirty-third birthday when I saw her next. I almost didn’t recognize her with one arm less and her hair now gathered up and balancing on her head like a magnificent golden beehive. It was a karaoke bar and I was already four drinks in. The Led Zeppelin song I was singing with my friend was milky and sweet and drifting when I spotted her in the crowd, holding her glass of purple wine with her right hand. Two eyes peered out from the center of her hair and I noticed a baby bird had gotten itself trapped in her locks.

I stepped down from the stage, beer still in hand, and walked towards her. She must have forgotten me momentarily because she spread those licorice lips of hers, thin and ropey and red, and smiled. I’ve been waiting a long time for you, I smiled back, and blushed because I forgot what it felt like not to be chasing her. But then her smile dropped and her eyes sunk and she remembered. Please don’t go. She tried to run but the bar was thick with the breath of alcohol and sticky with the sweat of swaying bodies. I fell to my knees to beg. I grabbed hold of her leg, and she tried to shake me like a disease, and I clung, from so much practice, from so much want, I clung to her. She pulled at the bodies next to her, trying to swim her way out, but I wouldn’t let go. At first she moved slowly, stretching forward like taffy, but then she began to rush like water, and I was left with her silver boot and her entire right leg with it.

I didn’t know what to do with the leg. There was no way I could attach a right leg to a left arm. So I hung it up in the coat closet next to the ski jacket I never wear. For a few nights, the leg kicked at the door. The noise was louder than the tapping finger, so by the end of the week I had to remove the closet door completely and was forced to look at a gaping closet stuffed with winter wear, broken umbrellas, beach chairs and lopsided cardboard boxes filled with forgotten junk. I didn’t like the naked closet, but I disliked the kicking more. It didn’t take long to realize the leg was lonely, and so was I.

The day after I got engaged to a sweet girl who sat at the front desk at work, I saw her again, feeding the birds at Central Park. This time, I watched her a little while. Her hair was loose and in the breeze it would lift upwards and ripple like water. I had an intense urge to sit and brush it with nothing but a plastic comb. Instead I ran my hands through my own short hair and bit nervously at my fingernails. A gentleman passed her and the birds, commented on the weather, and she stood up to embrace him. That was enough to get me to move from my hiding place behind a tree. I ran to her and tackled her. My shoelaces got tangled with some of her hair and we rolled over the leaves making a pulpy mess of fall. This time I didn’t say anything. I wanted to hear her speak. It was time for an explanation.

I grabbed at her mouth, and with barely a scratch of my nail, her lips came off. If she wouldn’t speak, I’d have her listen. I clawed at her ears, and they slipped off like clip-on earrings. No, I yelled. We rocked and rolled and tumbled, and the earth was melting beneath us. The dirt turning sodden and runny, like a child’s nose, and her right arm draped across me. I wasn’t sure if she was embracing me or choking me, but with one swipe of my hand the arm rolled off into the distance, the birds fluttering towards the palm, hoping for more food. Now I didn’t know what to grab at, she was coming undone. Her leg was kicking at me and I remembered those kicks, remembered the sound against my coat closet door those nights, and I was driven mad by the memory of that lonely sound, and I grabbed at the leg to reunite it with the other. By the time we were through, there was nothing left whole except those long weeds of hair.

Talya Jankovits, a Los Angeles native, holds her MFA from Antioch University. She has been published in The Citron Review, Recovering the Self, 52/250 and other literary magzines. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters, where she balances motherhood, a full-time job and writing. Currently she is seeking representation for her novel.

The drumbeat of his brain, a cave dweller sonata; birch branches pounded on scorched log; the curvature of myelin sheaths, the upper elevations of intelligence, the emergence of the bipedal stranger in the dark night gazing at the moon like the flat face of the clock that reads 4:07.That has read 4:07 for the past two hours. Here in the office where he’s been told to wait. To wait for Mr. Sheldon, who never comes. Who may not exist. Who may be a ploy to subvert him. No place to go. No place at all. And he waits on the slimmest of hope. The possibilities wire thin, like the silver lines routing from his ears into some secret location in his pants where he keeps his iPod.

He slouches. In loose clothing looking like a large Hefty someone’s tossed onto a chair and forgotten. He taps his fingers. Eyes are always scanning movement, wary of danger, sharp for survival. If only he could tell the difference.

He twirls the metal stem of a paperclip in his mouth. Eyes focus in on the doorway. Ms. Ginger’s voice comes around the corner. He groans to attract her attention. She stops at the opening. Files piled on an arm. Car keys bunched in hand. “J.?” She looks surprised. “Doing all right?”

He removes the metal from his mouth and works it back into his ear. “When is my court date?”

“Who’s your worker?”

“Mr. Sheldon.”

“You have to ask him.”

“He said you could tell me when my court date was.”

“I’m not your worker any more. You have to ask him.”

“He took off.”

“You’ll have to wait.”

“Why do I have to be here? I’m bored.”

She motions, come, come with me. He offers to take files, but she declines. She angles around the corner with J. straggling along. A large marker board on the wall is divided into sections. The names of the workers in the foster care unit are written in green, the gridlines dividing the names are red, and the magnetic dots beneath IN and OUT are black.

“Where’s Mr. Sheldon’s name?” J. asks.

Ms. Ginger stares at the board. Dentist occupies her destination column. She erases the word and checks her box IN. “I’m not sure,” she says. “He must not’ve put his name up yet. It should be there.”

Others who are IN are really OUT and vice versa. J. smiles when seeing Ms. Upton’s name. Her dot is between IN and OUT. He feels hopeful when he sees the dot is more IN than OUT. She could help him find Mr. Sheldon. Or maybe a place herself.

Ms. Ginger asks the receptionist if she knows where Mr. Sheldon has gone. She says he had court in the morning and then errands to run and then home visits afterward.

“Did he say when he’ll be back?”

She sneaks a look at the open magazine flat on her desk and shakes her head. “He didn’t say.” Ms. Ginger looms over. The receptionist lifts her eyes. “Do you want me to page him?”

J. stares at the marker board. He rubs out the k from Martha Penesk.

“If you don’t mind.”

While the receptionist is brightly mumbling, “Not at all,” Ms. Ginger turns to J. and motions, calm down. “You’ll have to wait here till Mr. Sheldon comes back.”

“Can’t I come with you?”

“Got things to do. You’ll have to wait.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Mr. Sheldon’ll get lunch when we find him. Go back to the office and wait.”

“But what if you can’t find him?”

“Go back and wait.”

“Did he tell you what happened at the foster home? Do you know why I can’t go back? Mr. Wert was cool. Think I can go back? What do you think? About going to Mr. Wert?”

“I have to go. Wait for Mr. Sheldon. He’ll deal with it.”

“What about lunch?”

J. stretches out on a chair in the empty office. Feet propped on boxes that fill the room. Some boxes hold diapers foster care workers take to families. Some contain child restraint seats. Toys overflow others.

J. stretches out on a chair in the empty office. Feet propped on boxes that fill the room. Some boxes hold diapers foster care workers take to families. Some contain child restraint seats. Toys overflow others.

“Why aren’t you in school, buster?”

J. removes the ear-buds and twists onto his hip and stares up the double chin of Ms. Sandy. “Have you come to get me?”

Children roost on her hips. Elephantine legs lunge from green shorts. “Where’d you get a fool idea like that?”

J. spins around. Feet drop on the floor. “They won’t let me stay anywhere, unless you take me, you could tell them.”

One of the children raises a runner of hair and peers into a globular ear. She sputters like a blown tire. “Oh, don’t give me that.”

“Go ask if you don’t believe me.” He boxes himself forward, dangling wires around his neck. “You could do it.”

“Give me a hug.” Her voice booms. The children fall from her hips like paratroopers. She sweeps forward and smothers him. He falls on her, face moonwalking on her breasts.

“Who’s your worker?” she says. “Mr. Franks?”

She wedges a hand, creates space.

“No. Mr. Franks was last year. Then Ms. Burns and then Ms. Upton, and then I think

Ms. Hollis after that and then Ms. Ginger and—Mr. Sheldon’s my worker now. Have you seen him? He was supposed to find a placement for me. I want some lunch, too. You got anything to eat?”

The children hide behind her legs. Pink hands are over knee knots. “I wish I could take you in, honey,” she says. “I’m full now. Anyway I thought you were with—what’s that man’s name?”

“Mr. Wert.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“I want to go back and live with him. But they won’t let me. Will you tell them for me, talk to someone?”

“What happened?”

“I ran away.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“I wanted a cigarette.”

“Honey, you have to do better.” She scoops up the children and backs like a truck into the hallway.

“Hey, don’t go. Will you look at something? I drew some stuff.”

“I’ll look next time.”

“Tell them I’m hungry, OK? Come back and see me when you’re done?”

“Sure, honey. I’ll see you soon.”

The child on the left strokes Ms. Sandy’s face as if it’s a balloon. She wheels around and disappears.

J. wanders into a counselor’s windowless office; navigates a passage between the sled-based guest chairs; beneath bleary slim-line lamps. He plays with small cartoon characters standing on a shelf filled with glossy textbooks. Lavender and baby powder float in the air. He spies on the desk a picture of Ms. Upton. Three beaming children surround her on a jungle gym. He eases open a cabinet and thumbs through files. He goofballs at himself in the wall mirror.

“What’re you doing in here?” Ms. Upton drops heavy files on the desk.

“Looking in the mirror.”

“You aren’t supposed to be in here.”

“Your mirror’s dirty. All covered with dust.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “No one looks in it. Where should you be?”

“Water and paper towels clean pretty good. Want me to get some?”

Ms. Upton closes the file drawer. “What were you doing in my files?”

“Looking for mine.”

“You aren’t supposed to be in here looking for anything.”

J. smiles and sinks into a guest chair. “Remember when we went to Disney together?” His hands slide up and down the molded oak frame. “A long time ago? Remember? And we had a good time?”

She crosses her arms, stares down at him. “I don’t know who you are.”

She scans the room, appears to itemize office details. She crosses behind the desk and rearranges the cartoon characters.

“You were my caseworker for over a year,” he says. “Com’on. You know who I am.”

She shakes her head. “I’m certain I don’t. I have hundreds of cases every year. I don’t remember anything unless the case file is open on my desk and I’m looking right at it. And even then I’m distracted by other things I need to do. You need to leave this office. Now.”

The receptionist brings pizza on a paper plate. Three slices curl like lava over the sides. She hands the plate to J. and sets a soda on the desk. She asks if it’s enough.

“I’m good,” he says and eats quickly.

She’s barely gone when he runs to the doorway. “Can I get another soda?”

“In a bit.” She’s shrinking toward an exit sign.

“Mr. Sheldon call?”

She shakes her head without looking back.

He steps into the hall and then around the corner. Posters stapled every few feet down the corridor. He pokes the large eyes of the child on one that reads, “I’M NOT A BURDEN. I’M A CHILD.”

J. opens his eyes. 4:07. He rubs the cuticle he took too much skin from earlier. He removes ear-buds and puts them in his pocket and stands. Turning one way and then the other like a goldfish in a bowl, he floats across the confines of the office. He steps into the hall and then around the corner. Posters stapled every few feet down the corridor. He pokes the large eyes of the child on one that reads, “I’M NOT A BURDEN. I’M A CHILD.” Workers glance as he passes their doorways. A gray-haired woman facing a computer screen.

“Ms. Tern?”

The woman spins in her chair. “J.,” she says and smiles. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m waiting for Mr. Sheldon. I can’t find him. He’s supposed to find me a placement.”

“Did you ask the receptionist?”

“She says she called him but that was hours ago. Can I sit here a minute?”

She wears a black sweater that makes her look small and deformed. A faint citrus odor wafts from her skin. “Of course. What happened with the Werts?”

J. arranges pens on her desk, sorts them by color and then by length. “They wouldn’t let me go with my sister.”

“You ran away, didn’t you?”

“Who told you that?”

Ms. Tern clasps her hands. “I know everything about you, J.”

J. laughs. “Like a guardian angel.”

“Like an adoptions worker,” she says and taps an index finger on the desk, an indication for him to put the paper he’s just lifted back down. Then she says, “You have to help yourself, J. Remember the Bobbles?”

“My forever family in Naples.”

“That’s right. You were there six months before you blew placement.”

Randy Bobbles was an engineer for a company that contracted with the military. His wife stayed at home and cared for their three-year-old daughter. They had a Manx. They lived in a gated community.

“I didn’t kill the cat,” J. says

“J.,” she says, narrowing an eyebrow, a tone like pulling teeth.

“I get blamed for everything, Ms. Tern,” he says. “That’s why no one wants me.”

“And what happened to the Flextowers’ dog? Nothing to do with that?”

J. shakes his head, shoulder to shoulder. “I can’t remember. He was hit by a car or something.”

Ms. Tern eases back into her chair. The AC grumbles and blows dusty streams of air over their faces. “The dog’s head was crushed. You know something about it.”

His lip curves a little. Then his face assumes a pale mannequin expression. “I can’t remember.”

Ms. Tern folds her arms. “The Flextowers really wanted you, J. They were crushed. You didn’t give them a chance.”

“They had too many rules,” he says. He removes the paperclip from his ear. “And their dog was mean.”

“J., it’s no canyon jump.” Her lips are like orange slices in a baking sun. “No one’s trying to hurt you anymore. Stop fighting.”

J. reinserts the paperclip. His head toddles and a grin forms. “I won’t do that when I find Mr. Sheldon. You’ll see.”

“He may not show up.”

J. sticks his hand up. Air from the vent blows cold over his skin. “Mr. Wert would let me come back. He trusts me.”

How’d he get here? J. lived with the Werts for nearly eight months, the longest placement he’d kept since entering foster care. Ms. Ginger was his worker but she was replaced halfway through by Mr. Sheldon who never came to visit. Very few visited the rural location. The Werts lived in a trailer slowly being converted into a house. Walls were cut, rooms added to accommodate more boys. Four others lived there with J. Half the roof was topped with shingles, the rest with tin. The side of the hill caused the floors to slant. A portion of their land was swamp, feeding a large lake, around which stood several homes.

He lived fine there. Fishing from the shore; exploring the swamp; shooting bottle rockets over the lake; taking an ax to a tree just to watch it come apart; hauling wood for bonfires. He fought with the other boys, but Mr. Wert set things to right, holding them to the wall and threatening to beat the shit out of them if they ever went at it again.

One day J. received a call from his sister in Idaho. The last time they lived together was with their mother and step-father in a trailer with a large hole in the bathroom floor.

“It is so good to hear from you,” she said for the third time.

“You should come here and get me,” he said. “There’s a lake and everything. You could live here.”

“I wish I could see you.”

“They won’t mind. There’s an empty room.”

“Maybe you can come here, you know, when you turn eighteen.”

“Maybe now, maybe you could send a ticket.”

“We have snow.”

“I can get them to pay for it. When can you come?”

“It’s almost time for me to go to work. I love you, J. Call me again, OK?”

“But I can come there, right?”

“Of course,” she said. “Sure. Let’s talk about it next time, OK? Got to go.”

His “love you” died against the device. He folded the phone. He found Mr. Wert in the kitchen. “My sister says she wants me to visit.”

Mr. Wert popped the microwave oven door. “That’s great. Tell the boys to get in the truck.”

“I’ll be staying in Idaho.”

He set the plate on the counter. “Right now we’re going to the market. Get ready.”

“Where’s Idaho?”

Mr. Wert closed his lips over an apple pastry, consuming it in three chomps.

J. leaned against the jamb. “Near Arkansas?”

Bustling up, Mr. Wert bellowed. “Ya’ll come on. We’re going for some fish.”

Five boys piled into the truck bed.

Coming back from the market, Mr. Wert saw Mr. Simmel closing the hardware store for the night and swerved the truck filled with boys and fish into the sandy parking lot and jumped out. “You said one twenty five.”

“That machine’s worth two twenty five and that’s what I told the wife.”

“That ain’t what she said. Now I give the money and I want the machine.”

“Until I see two twenty five it stays in the store.”

During the scuffle J. lifted fifty dollars from an envelope in the cab of the truck and ran for the bus station. Past yellow painted curbs, up concrete steps protected by slick red guardrails, and over the crosswalk to the park. He watched under cover of fat hornbeams. Someone whistled, and cowboys hollered across the street. His hand covered wet knees, panting out full dreams. Idaho near Arkansas dreams mashing his skull. Not long at all now. Dizzy elation down to tingling fingers clutching green bills. He saw the tumbleweed brick building, and figured out his lines, calm exposition. Sure speech. Feet burning like hot crayons. Moving across the lawn; carrying him inside.

An hour later a deputy arrested him and he spent the night in detention. Ms. Burns picked him up in the morning.

“You’re not my worker,” J. said.

“Mr. Sheldon had things to do,” she said. “You’ve blown placement. He’ll be back later and find you a place to stay.”

“Can’t I go back to Mr. Wert?”

“No.”

“I’ll apologize.”

“Mr. Wert said under no circumstance. He can’t abide a thief. That’s what he said.”

J. saw the black Hefty in the back seat. “You got my iPod?”

“Everything,” Ms. Burns said. “All of your clothes and your iPod. Sit back and relax. It’s a long drive.”

She found a vacant office and left him there. When he glanced at the clock it read 4:07.

Ms. Tern walks J. to the staff kitchen and buys him a soft drink. He tries out a lounger, feels his way over the cool vinyl. “Can I sit here a bit?” he says. She nods. “You’ll tell me if you see Mr. Sheldon, OK?” She pulls the loose ends of her sweater together and nods again. He sinks into the cushion. Ear-buds empty Butthole Surfers into Heschl’s gyrus. He examines the ends of his sneakers down long stretched legs. Gray matter climbing over the white rubber toes of his Chucks. He works on the cuticle. A smile spreads. His chest heaves with soft laughter. Mr. Sheldon is just like me: a real good joke. They probably made him up while figuring out what to do. He’s not on the board. Not on the phone. Can’t find him nowhere: a real good joke. Forty minutes later Ms. Tern comes in. A crushed soda can rests by his feet. He rises quickly. “Bet you haven’t found him.”

“I really haven’t looked, J.”

“I don’t think he’s coming.”

She sits and crosses her legs. “Court can take hours. Some other child might need immediate attention. Traffic. A hundred other reasons he’s running late. He hasn’t forgotten you, J. He’ll be here.”

“No, he forgot me,” J. says. “He went home or something and forgot me. He could call. At least he could do that. He could call and tell me where I’m staying tonight. I’d be better off with my sister. I’m hungry. Do you have anything to eat?”

“I’ll check on food before I leave,” she says, rising.

He stares at the leather bag on her arm.

“Who’s staying with me? Are you staying? I thought you were staying.”

“Ms. Burns and Ms. Penesk are working late. I have families to see. I’ll check on you tomorrow.”

People trickle out of the building and cleaning crews empty the trash and mop the floors and pick up the crumpled can. Ms. Penesk brings J. half a sandwich she’d ordered at lunch but couldn’t finish. He chews the brown bread and listens, hooking to every footfall, every door swing, every sucking vacuum, every buffer rotation, every emptied plastic container. There’s swish of fabric. He rushes to the doorway. Frowns as housekeepers in union blue pass by with gray trash bins sporting push brooms and dusters raised high. Waving like battlefield colors. The ingredients soak into the bread, damp and cold on his teeth. The kitchen is quiet. A noise startles him. The AC blows overhead. Then he sees past it; past the chrome fixtures; past the laminates and particle board. The eerie drainage of time on the savannah. The sound of caves just before black blooded meat is dragged inside. A cerebral cortex smell rising from the crusty midden. The brooding silhouette of loneliness on a distant hill. A deep terrifying breath. There’s J. running over the field. A despairing rabbit with no hole to drop into.

D. E. Lee’s work appears or is forthcoming in Emerald Coast Review, Alligator Juniper, Conclave: A Journal of Character, Broad River Review, Mixed Fruit, and Prick of the Spindle

I’d never seen a cat in a cardigan before. I liked the alliteration of it, though. It made some sort of sense that a cat would wear something buttoned rather than, say, a turtleneck. Plus, the soft turquoise really did accent the orange striped fur nicely, and I’m normally not one for mixing cool and warm colors.

“I’m a cat psychic,” the man behind the animal said. I hadn’t even noticed a man sitting there before, in a matching turquoise sweater. They were on a stoop－I learned that word shortly after moving to New York City. People don’t have porches here; they have stoops, cement steps you sit on when the humidity spikes or when you just want to people watch while enjoying a nice breeze. The cat was on the bottom step, the man two up, but his legs reached down to the feline. Besides the sweater, the man was wearing cut-off jean shorts with ragged threads hanging down, a pearl necklace, and flip-flops that matched the sweater. He had a nice pedicure. I learned long ago not to talk to strangers, but the stranger the person the more I wanted to talk to them. Call it a character flaw.

“Meaning you’re a cat that’s psychic or a psychic that specializes in cats?” I said. The cat sneezed, shaking its head in the process.

“I can tell you what your cat is thinking,” the man said. The cat was cleaning its whiskers. Licking its paw and then wiping them over its face, flattening its pert ears and pulling white whiskers down, squinting as it did so.

 

My boyfriend, Nathan, has taken to speaking only in Post-it notes. He leaves them all around the house. I go to the fridge and see, “Don’t cry over spilt milk, try water with your cereal,” and, “Why must you insist on bacon?”

My boyfriend, Nathan, has taken to speaking only in Post-it notes. He leaves them all around the house. I go to the fridge and see, “Don’t cry over spilt milk, try water with your cereal,” and, “Why must you insist on bacon?” On the table there is a note saying that chartreuse is an overlooked color and on the empty coffee pot a reminder that it just upsets my reflux anyway. There’s even a Post-it flaking off the cat saying she needs to be brushed, meaning can I pick up a brush later. On my underwear is a reminder of our anniversary and on the mirror a note that I should love myself as much as he loves me. I’m beginning to think that note is not as encouraging as he means it to be. He stopped talking a few weeks ago, saying it would improve our non-verbal relationship. I blamed it on his brother’s death. That meant my boyfriend was the last survivor of his immediate family, and I thought his nightmares would finally stop.

I met Nathan at Coney Island. I was there with someone else—an accident. I taught night classes at City College and one night, not wanting to be alone, I asked the secretary if he’d like to go to Coney Island with me. I hadn’t been there yet. He immediately said yes. I thought we were friends, but on the subway ride down he told me how his dreams had come true. I’m not what you call a stunner, so didn’t think he would have fantasized about me; I guess he had low expectations when it came to women. The night went from awkward to even more so when he put his arms around me while playing mini-golf, even though I was winning. Nathan was the freak in the “shoot the freak” game, and the secretary was a bad shot. I, however, was not. The secretary’s infatuation with me made me bold. I picked up a rock and wrote my number on it—I always carried a Sharpie. I threw it and it hit Nathan in the head, drawing blood. The secretary and I ran and then my cell rang. I walked the secretary to the subway, apologizing for the confusion and insisting he was a nice guy, and met Nathan for dinner at Nathan’s—he was corny like that.

 

My cat doesn’t need a psychic. That’s what I thought when I heard the man speak. She’s perfectly happy, purrfectly if I want to be corny. Nathan dotes on her, and she, on him. She follows him through his morning routine–bed, bathroom, shower, breakfast, and then he puts her on his shoulder while he reads the paper. He still does that, reads an actual paper newspaper. She rubs against his cheek, his head, stretches her paws out to push the paper away, and hangs her tail in front of his face, and the whole time she’s just all purrs. I don’t get in the way of Nathan-Rowein time. Sometimes she stares at me when he kisses me goodbye—he leaves first because it’s a long train ride from Inwood to Coney Island. But the minute he’s gone she snakes through my legs, purrs, waits for me to feed her, and then leads me to the litter box and waits for me to clean it before begging for a scratch. Then I leave for the day job and shut the door on her sweet, innocent face. She’s a cream point ragdoll or something, just a soft white with peach on her face and ears, all fluffy and blue-eyed feline. If Hitler had championed Aryan cats, she would have been his ideal.

 

“Your cat is not happy,” the psychic said. The cardiganed animal looked up from its cleaning, as if acknowledging my presence for the first time. It smirked and then curled its tail around the front of its body. I saw the tip moving back and forth, up and down. “I can tell you this now, she is conflicted about you.”

The old man got the gender right, but that’s a fifty-fifty guess. I wondered how he could tell me anything about Rowein, anyway. Did he read cat fur like tea leaves? Did the way it fell across the cuff of my jeans show frustration and jealousy?

“There has been an upheaval in your life,” he continued. Another easy guess. I knew about cold reading and was getting tired of just standing there.

“You got room on your stoop for one more?” I asked. He scooted over and I sat down next to him. The breeze was pretty good there. This was my first time actually sitting on a stoop. I had decided to take the day and walk through Harlem, never having been there before. I was supposed to meet Nathan for dinner at Coney Island. That’s what a Post-it asked at least. Dinners weren’t as fun without him telling me about his day. I began to miss his stories. They weren’t the same boiled down to messages that fit on little slips of paper. Being a freak wasn’t exactly fun and games. He dealt with a lot of assholes, but to me it was still enthralling.

The man’s cat curled around my feet. I reached down and scratched between his ears.

“You’ve got something stuck to you,” the man said, reaching over. He pulled off a Post-it note.

 

Nathan’s story was an episode of Law and Order; hell, it was an entire season’s arc. Except the cops never came. He covered those childhood scars with tattoos to try and reclaim his pain. In that he was like another story, the way he wore his life on his skin. I had never meant to fall in love with him. I was the straight-laced college graduate that owned suits and shirts with buttons. The most I’d ever rebelled was when I left to go to New York in the first place, ignoring my father’s pleas that I work in his office, and forged my own life instead. Not that I talked to them anymore, suburban angst is an easy road to hatred.

Nathan was estranged from his family with extreme prejudice, but through the joys of the Internet he kept tabs on them. They kept sending him letters and reminders that whatever happened to him, they owned him body, mind, and soul. Well, his father did at least.

The first to die was his father, followed swiftly by his mother. The letters used to come like clockwork–each month on the twelfth–even after he moved in with me and everything was in my name. Then the letters were addressed to both of us, and I was pretty freaked. After four months of no-letter bliss, or anxiety waiting for something worse than a letter to come, a quick Google search showed they had passed.

 

Rowein was a giant tattoo on Nathan’s back. He found her meowing on the boardwalk one night after work, a couple of years before we met. He insists she was his first savior, showing up like that all bedraggled and in need of care at a time when he thought he couldn’t care about anything anymore. He took her in for shots, grooming, spayed her, and then brought her to his little hole-in-the-wall place he called home. She gave him something to do besides mope—he could throw little wadded-up balls of paper and watch her roll around batting them. He played tag with her, and still does, running around the apartment like it’s bigger than a glorified studio. She took up the last place of real estate on his back, some thin slice scars blending into her cream fur. A burn mark makes up the pupil of one of her giant blue eyes, staring back at me when I massage him.

 

“I like your pearls,” I told the man. He reached up and fingered them.

“They were my grandmother’s,” he said. The cat had fallen asleep on my shoes. I resisted the urge to move, although whenever I’m immobile, I suddenly have to go to the bathroom. “My grandfather gave them to her instead of an engagement ring.”

“Well, they suit you,” I replied.

He smiled and I saw that his teeth were perfectly straight, the perfection that comes with veneers–with no spaces between his teeth and just a tad too big for his face.

“What does your cat think of me?” I said, reaching down to scratch it once more. It rolled over, soft belly exposed where a button was undone, and batted at me with one sleepy paw.

“You bite your nails, it shows signs of stress and makes for uneven scratching. Also, his name is Roscoe.”

“And you are?” I asked.

“I’m Ferdinand,” he said, reaching out a hand. “And it’s nice to meet you, Jenny.” I shook his hand before realizing I hadn’t told him my name.

 

I wanted there to be more humor in the way Nathan’s father died. I wanted him to be able to laugh at it, to see it as fitting. But he died from a blister. Nathan found the story in a newspaper. His father had decided he needed to atone for his sins and so started walking. Just walking. His feet blistered and bled and he kept going, the blood crusting and cracking and crusting over again and still he walked on, not stopping for water or food or even to go to the bathroom. His pants were pure filth and waste and his skin desiccated, but his toes, they were moist with maggots and disease, the ultimate cause of his death. It was a story the newspapers loved. They spoke to his bereaved widow, the one son they could find, and sent out a plea that his estranged son forgive him.

The cat shifted positions again, pushing the top of his head into my ankle.

“Is he saying something?” I asked, now reading into every movement Roscoe made instead of enjoying the warm fuzz against my leg.

“You’re a good person,” Ferdinand said. “You’re sitting here on a stoop talking to a lonely old man and his cat.”

It was the worst thing that bastard could have done to Nathan, have others ask for his forgiveness without knowing the story of his life, only of the old man’s death. They judged Nathan for not giving his father peace; they never judged his father for what he had done to his children.

 

“My boyfriend has this tattoo,” I told Ferdinand, contented cardiganed cat sighs cascading up from Roscoe while I spoke. “It’s on his calf. He tends to be literal, so on one calf he has this sad calf, all huge doe eyes like those old paintings, but that’s not the one I’m talking about. I’m told it hurts a lot to tattoo on the calf because of the muscle. Anyway, he has this one tattoo that always makes me cry. And I don’t know why. It’s sunflowers, Van Gogh’s sunflowers right there on his calf and they’re so vivid, so bright I cry. The painting doesn’t do it to me, but there on his leg the artist did a really good job.”

The cat shifted positions again, pushing the top of his head into my ankle.

“Is he saying something?” I asked, now reading into every movement Roscoe made instead of enjoying the warm fuzz against my leg.

“You’re a good person,” Ferdinand said. “You’re sitting here on a stoop talking to a lonely old man and his cat.”

 

Nathan’s mother’s death was too kind for her. I held more anger in my heart for Nathan’s parents than he seemed to. Heart attack in her sleep. She already had diabetes, but she never suffered. She hadn’t lost any toes or fingers. She hadn’t slipped into a coma and been raped by the nursing staff of some third-rate hospital. She lay in her bed, alone because her husband had died, and then simply passed on.

 

“Why do you love me?” was a note Nathan had left on the fridge. I turned around and he was there, waiting. I didn’t know what to say immediately which, in the movies, is a bad move. In the real world he understood I didn’t like being caught off guard, especially when it came to how I felt. I yelled when confronted with emotions because they confused me. I usually settled down quickly. This time I felt the tears come.

“I don’t think I ever said I did,” I replied and he embraced me. He loved me for my honesty, at least that’s what he said, so that’s what I believed. I seldom gave him answers to his questions, even when I really wanted to.

 

“I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend for dinner,” I told Ferdinand. Roscoe had moved his way up into my lap where he seemed asleep, but the minute I stopped petting him would nudge me until I started again. We each had some fresh ice tea by our sides, we being Ferdinand and I. He had reapplied his lipstick, a soft coral pink with a hint of orange. It smudged on his glass and I wanted to pick it up, to see if perhaps I could read the man from the lipstick stain, to see if the creases and folds told his story.

“But you’re unsure,” he said. Again an easy read. I was sitting on a stoop with a strange guy and cat rather than heading home to change for our anniversary. Dating, not marriage.

“His brother died,” I said instead. Avoidance is always on my menu.

Roscoe looked up at me and meowed.

 

Rowein watches us sleep. She’ll sit between us and just stare, never blinking. It freaks me out. Every night, me not being the best sleeper—especially beside a guy who thrashes when his past attacks—I’ll turn over and breathe in a pile of fur, and she’ll be there, watching over Nathan but turning to eye me for disturbing her.

It’s worse when we try to have sex. I can’t take the staring so put her out and close the door. She’ll just scratch and scratch the whole time. She never meows, never lets out any sound except for her paws at the door. In fact, save for when she purrs, she never speaks and now, here I am with a mute love. And I do love him.

 

Nathan has tattoos covering everything but his face and the soles of his feet, and that’s only because the ones on his feet wore out. Where he doesn’t have tattoos some scars are visible, although light. The ones on the bottom of his feet are tough for me to see, thin white lines of past pain. There are pox marks on his nose and forehead. His pinkies were broken and healed wrong. I can even feel scars over his heart when I lay my head on his chest and listen to him, even with Rowein watching us both, one eye judging me, the other loving him. He’s a seven-year-old boy at the same time he’s fifteen, twenty-two, forty-seven. I forget his ‘real age’, the one on his driver’s license. He wants to see the world through innocent eyes and is wizened at the same time. When we go walking he points out manhole covers.

“They’re the museum of the street,” he says, telling me the history.

He cooks vegetarian meals and makes me realize I will never like okra or brussels sprouts but do in fact like beet greens. He takes me on late night jogs through the park and knows the names of all the wildlife we see. We go on salad hikes through Central Park, and I never imagined anything in New York could be edible. He has a scar I kiss every night and have since the first day we met. The one just on the edge of his hairline where the rock hit.

—

When we got the news via certified letter that Nathan’s brother had died I yelled. He knew I would.

“Stop crying, you should be so fucking happy,” I screamed. “You’re free now! There’s no one left,” I yelled. “What the hell! It’s over, you pitiful ass,” I said in what was several decibels above anyone’s speaking voice. And he just sat there head in hands. He cried himself to sleep that night with me right there, berating him, trying to understand in the loudest way possible.

 

“Rowein is a conflicted soul,” Ferdinand said. He was still playing with his pearls.

“She’s my boyfriend’s guardian,” I replied, “and he hers.”

“There’s more to it than that,” he said, sipping his tea.

“How did you become a psychic?” I asked.

“Oh, I had no choice,” he said. “It’s who I am.”

“So who am I?” I asked.

“I know cats,” he said and I sighed, taking another sip of tea. Ferdinand lived in a good neighborhood for people watching. It’s amazing just how many people populate every part of New York. That’s part of why I liked where we lived–it was still slightly wooded. There were as many birds as people in Inwood, and not all the birds were pigeons.

“There’s this other tattoo,” I said, wishing I could find meaning somewhere. “It’s just hash marks. Four lines and then the fifth crossing them out. The inside of both wrists. He won’t tell me what they are, not like he’s talking now anyway. I think it’s the number of times he wanted to kill himself. There are a lot of hash marks there. They scare me, yet the pattern is really nice–like a basket or something woven there on his skin.”

“Rowein wants to trust you,” the man said. “It’s hard, she’s all knots inside. Fear and worry and love and a shred of indeterminate hatred, like all cats have. She wants you to have a reason for being there but you’re loud. You can be so very loud.”

Roscoe shifted then and stood up on my lap, yawning. He reached a paw up to my face and touched my chin, lightly. My eyes met his deep orange ones and I saw them, Rowein and Nathan, fighting for a place in the world together and yet alone.

 

Nathan’s brother was a suicide. That’s what really worried me when he stopped talking. He was a gunshot, loud and abrupt and final, with his kid–Nathan didn’t know he was an uncle until the letter arrived–a two-year old sitting in a truck at the gas station. When Nathan’s brother walked in with a gun, I bet people thought it was a hold-up. I bet they thought, “Shit, some redneck is going to shoot us all just to take some smokes and booze.” I bet they thought nothing about him and then he screamed for attention, had people come up around him, kneel down, and shot himself spraying them all. Performance art. Post-modern robbery, where you leave your brains all over everyone instead of taking their wallets. He just wanted to matter, I’m sure, and having a child wasn’t enough.

 

“I have a gift for you,” Ferdinand said. He went inside. Roscoe climbed off my lap and began to clean himself. He nudged me a few times in the process, just pushes with his body. I wondered if he needed his cardigan unbuttoned, but didn’t feel I knew him well enough to take off his sweater. He continued to nudge me, so I stood and he shook his head. I wondered if I did the wrong thing. I picked up the ice tea glasses and went through the open door. I met up with Ferdinand in the hallway, which was good because I didn’t know which apartment he was in. He handed me a cat brush and took the glasses.

“Brush Rowein,” he said. “Brush her, only you, not your boyfriend. And talk quietly. Tell her the truth. And wait right here.” He walked up the stairs and out of sight. Roscoe curled through my legs–a weird sensation–sweater mixed with the familiar soft of fur.

He came back and handed me a stack of Post-it notes. “Speak to Nathan on his terms,” he said. “And only write answers.”

I dug out my Sharpie and wrote “Meow” on a slip of yellow paper, showing it to Roscoe. He meowed back and swatted at it. I figured it worked, and tonight would be one interesting dinner, our table covered with yellow squares of paper. Maybe they would be an answer, or at least help us find ours.

Victorya Chase currently teaches surgeons to write fiction and poetry under the theory that it helps them connect both to themselves and to their patients. Her works have previously appeared in ASIM, The Mothman Files Anthology, and A Cappella Zoo, among other places. She is currently working on a novel about Nathan, Jenny, and Rowein.

Grandpa started having headaches the summer the tree fell on our house. Missy likes to joke that it was the tree that caused the headaches: that it somehow knocked loose something in his mind. I think part of her believes it. She certainly believed it back then.

He came to live with us when Grandma died. Grandpa took her death in stride.

He didn’t move in because he was wracked with grief or because he was feeble. I’m sure he was upset, because he was a kind man, but he’d always been something of an optimist. And he certainly wasn’t weak of body. I’m sure part of the reason Mother brought him in with us was because she could use the extra help around the house. Our father’s alimony checks provided some financial support, but they couldn’t fix a leaky faucet.

I was twelve that summer, my sister seven. When Grandpa moved in, we were forced to share a room. I hated it—she loved it—which meant our extremes cancelled each other out, and we got along fairly well. The tree came down in the middle of the night, during a strong windstorm; people would later say it was a tornado, though the sirens never sounded and no sightings were confirmed.

I remember being sound asleep, probably lost in a dream about Joanna Sanderson—truth be told, I still occasionally dream about her—and then suddenly awake, out of bed and screaming before I even know why. Missy was right there with me, and our mother was at our door about three seconds later. Only Grandpa took his time, and when he found us, he started laughing. There I was thinking our house was falling apart, or there’d been an earthquake, my sister seeing monsters and ghosts, my mother perhaps imagining the Second Coming, and Grandpa was bent over, laughing so hard he broke into a hacking cough. Only when it subsided did he tell us what’d happened.

Mother joked a few times that in old age Grandpa was suddenly starting to care about the world. He would smile and say he didn’t care about anything except a good night’s rest and maybe a cold beer…

That was the first time, you see. Grandpa had no way of knowing for sure, he’d had no time to go outside, and it’s not like the tree broke any windows. It struck the back of the house where there weren’t any bedrooms, just our father’s old study, which our mother had converted into a makeshift library. He couldn’t possibly have known, Missy would tell me. No way, José.

Of course, there were a hundred explanations—common sense being the most prominent. But I couldn’t convince Missy of that, and I have to admit that I was somewhat skeptical myself. Not right then, of course. None of us really thought about Grandpa’s deduction much until a couple months later, after a few other occasions presented themselves. But yes, for a time there, I wondered myself how he could have known. I don’t now, at least not during the day. Sometimes, when I’m in that nether region between sleep and consciousness…but then, the mind does tend to wander, doesn’t it?

We got the house patched up—not much damage, considering the size of the oak that struck us—and summer resumed. Missy spent her days at daycare,  doing chores and hanging with friends when I was done. Mother worked, and Grandpa lurked around the house, doing odds and ends, reading, watching soap operas. Occasionally he’d go to a movie—I went with him a few times—or just drive around. I never joined him during the latter. Grandpa’s stories were occasionally interesting, but never after the third or fourth time. His younger self couldn’t create new stories, so he just recycled the old ones. I think he even told them in the same order.

A few weeks after the tree came down, our dog went missing. Sparkles—blame my sister—was an unfortunately-named Yorkshire terrier, a cunning little bastard who liked to piss in shoes and chew on the drapes, no matter how much discipline he received. We all loved him. Some dogs have that way about them—mischievous brutes, but they give you one look and your heart melts. Sparkles could chew through the electrical wiring and burn the house down, and we’d still keep him.

One morning he was there, and in the afternoon he was gone. We had a doggie door leading into the fenced backyard, but the gate was always closed. No holes dug under the fence, and no way could Sparkles jump over it. He simply vanished while Missy was at day care. I was smoking a cigarette beneath a bridge on the edge of town, and Grandpa was fast asleep in front of Maury Povich.

“He was kidnapped,” Missy said later, when her tears had stopped.

“Dognapped,” I corrected her.

“No one would want Sparkles,” Mother said. “He’s such a handful.”

The three of us were at the kitchen table hovering over a tray of cookies Mother had baked to ease our grief. Sugar helped back then. Not much helps now. Kids have it right: growing old sucks.

“He slipped under the fence,” Grandpa said. “Like someone rubbed him with butter. Whoosh and he was gone—took off after a rabbit that was bigger than him.”

His voice was so confident that all of us looked up. He was in the living room, feet propped up in the recliner, rubbing his temple like he had been doing lately. His eyes were glued to the evening news. He’d started doing that recently, too. Every evening he’d watch the national, then local, news programs. During the day, I’d occasionally find CNN on, sometimes even Fox News or MSNBC. Mother joked a few times that in old age Grandpa was suddenly starting to care about the world. He would smile and say he didn’t care about anything except a good night’s rest and maybe a cold beer, but he’d watch the news intently, as though he were waiting for something to happen.

“Well, Grandpa,” Mother said. “If you saw him take off, why didn’t you stop him?”

He shrugged. “‘Cause I wasn’t sure it’d happen. Can’t know something’s gonna happen until it happens, can you?”

Missy and I tuned out, but Mother watched him for a few more seconds, a half-eaten cookie in her hand. Whatever she’d been thinking, it must not have made sense, because she shrugged and finished eating. We went out to dinner that night, a rare treat. Sparkles never came back.

Don’t let the Surgeon General fool you: when you’re a teenager and you smoke, you look cool, just not by grown-up standards.

A few weeks later, I finished cleaning the bathroom—easily my least-favorite chore—and went to the garage to get my old bike. I was meeting my friends Rory and Jake at the skate park. None of us skated, but there were a few cute girls—yes, Joanna Sanderson among them—who did, and they didn’t wear much except helmets and safety pads when they did so. Even at twelve, you’re old enough to know the best things in life are free. We’d smoke a cigarette and watch the girls, thinking we looked cool. Hell, we did look cool. Don’t let the Surgeon General fool you: when you’re a teenager and you smoke, you look cool, just not by grown-up standards.

Grandpa was waiting for me in the garage. I knew he was waiting, because he was standing next to my bike, arms crossed, not doing anything but watching the door. His appearance was so surprising I almost missed the stair and fell flat on my face. “Listen, Devin,” he said, and put a hand on my shoulder. The other hand was massaging a spot just behind his left ear. “I want you to do me a favor today.”

“Yes, Grandpa?”

“Don’t go to that damned park.”

I wasn’t aware that he’d been following me or how he knew where I was going that day. When even I hadn’t known until half an hour before, when Rory called. Had Grandpa been listening in?

“Let’s see a movie,” he said. “There’s an old Steven Seagal showing at the theater. I can get you in. The girls there love feisty old men.” He winked.

“Sorry, Grandpa,” I said. “Rory’s got a book he wants to loan me.” In reality, it was the latest issue of Playboy, and the only way I’d ever get to peruse it was with Rory standing right beside me.

He smirked a little, as though he knew what I really meant, and then nodded. “Guess it was a fool’s hope. Foolishness comes with age, Devin. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Kids are way smarter.” His face became serious. “But do me a favor and avoid Grant. Come home a different way. Beg your friends if you must. Just avoid Grant. And blue pickups.”

“Blue pickups?”

“Blue pickups. It’s a terrible color for a truck.”

It wasn’t the strangest thing he’d ever said, so once I was on my way I shrugged it off.

Joanna Sanderson wasn’t at the park that day, only two girls were, and they were from the community college, and when they caught us watching them, they cursed us until we went away. But Rory had the Playboy, so we spent a while going over it, and then we went for frozen yogurt. Afterwards, Rory wanted to go back to his house, which was on Hayes—one block south of Grant.

The conversation with my grandfather had entirely slipped my mind. And, if you want to know the whole truth, which is all you’ll get from me, even if I’d remembered the warning, I wouldn’t have paid it any heed. Why would I? It was nonsense.

The truck that hit me was baby blue, the worst kind. The driver looked away for a split second, like they always do, and his bumper caught my front tire. I remember falling in slow motion, thinking, Christ, why didn’t I wear pads? Mother always tells me to wear pads, even though she’d stopped such chiding years before. I had an entire conversation in my head, the kind that would take almost half an hour in real time. And then my left arm struck the pavement, there was a flash of pain, and the world went black.

“I just knew,” Grandpa said, when I asked him afterwards. “Wasn’t a vision or anything fancy. I just knew it, like I knew what’d happen to your dog, except of course I didn’t know because it hadn’t happened yet. The dog running away, that’s no big deal, right or wrong, the world keeps spinning. You getting run over, that’s something worth worrying about.”

I didn’t tell anyone about my conversation with Grandpa that day. Not until later, when Mother and Missy were both in on it. I had the feeling Grandpa wanted to keep it a secret, a childish thought, but Grandpa didn’t care if the whole world knew. It just wasn’t a big deal to him.

Over the next few weeks, Grandpa began to mutter while he watched the news, fingers almost always kneading his forehead. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what he was doing. Grandpa was seeing things, like he’d seen me getting hit by the truck, and was watching the news to see if any of them came true. I would’ve given anything to know what he saw in visions—he protested to the word, but I couldn’t think of any other term for it—especially the ones that made him watch the national news. When there was a school shooting in Sacramento in September, I watched Grandpa’s face, to see if he’d predicted it, but his eyes held nothing but the normal level of sorrow and surprise. Maybe his visions didn’t extend to outside of Chelmsford or maybe Illinois in general. Maybe he couldn’t see anything west of the Mississippi. I don’t think I would’ve understood it even if Grandpa had explained it to me.

Mother and Missy found out about it on Halloween. Mother had taken notice of Grandpa’s headaches by then, and encouraged him to see a doctor—which was basically like trying to get an elephant to cross a road by swatting it with a piece of string. He wouldn’t even laugh about it. “Hell no,” he’d say, “just give me another Tylenol and be done with it.”

On October 31, Grandpa woke up at five in the morning screaming. Mother and I raced to his room; Missy, thank God, slept right through it. We found Grandpa upright and pale, sweating. He looked at me, and I knew what’d happened. I also knew it was much worse than the blue truck.

“I don’t know his name,” Grandpa was saying, distinctly but quietly, not talking to us, but to himself. His eyes settled on me and he said, “Not you, it’s not you, thank God,” then he went right back to his mantra. “I don’t know his name, I don’t know his name.”

Mother got him a warm cloth and put him back to bed. I couldn’t go to sleep, so I went downstairs and watched infomercials. Never understood why anyone would want to buy that crap. Even now I don’t. But I watched, because it was mindless entertainment, and I didn’t want to have to think about anything.

When Grandpa came down to breakfast at the normal time, he was still pale. Missy joined us, and she immediately noticed Grandpa’s condition. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Mother said.

“I don’t know his name,” Grandpa said.

“Damned if I know,” I summed up. Mother didn’t even scold me.

We went to school, Mother went to work, and Grandpa probably sat in his recliner all day glued to the news, repeating that single sentence. He had stopped by the time school let out, thank God, but dinner was far from normal. Grandpa didn’t say a word, except grunt occasionally when Missy or Mother said something to him. I knew better. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, but if he noticed my observation, he gave no sign. Instead he just stared at the table, taking small bites of casserole.

I took Missy trick-or-treating that night. It was a school night, so the city imposed an early curfew. I half-expected Grandpa to bar the door and keep us inside; instead, he just gave us a wary glance. I remembered what he’d said—It’s not you—but took little comfort in it.

The next morning we found out. The local news wouldn’t be on until nine, so Grandpa turned on the radio. We had to listen to four country songs before the news bulletin came on.

“Police are reporting the disappearance of a Chelmsford child. Last night, between six and eight o’clock, Gregory Clemens vanished. He was last seen on Harrison Street, in the company of his older sister, who stopped to talk with a group of friends. Gregory was last seen wearing an all-black ninja costume. Anyone with information regarding Gregory’s location or this situation is urged to contact the Chelmsford police immediately.”

Mother and I turned to stare at Grandpa, who slowly turned the radio off. He looked up, and his eyes met mine. I saw guilt in them. I don’t know his name.

“Grandpa,” Mother said. She spoke as though each word were forced from her lips. “Can you tell us what is going on?”

He swallowed. “Not in front of the kids, Miranda.”

“Devin, take your sister upstairs.”

“I’m not done yet,” Missy said.

I took her hand. “Come on, kiddo. I’ll give you a Twinkie.”

We went upstairs. Mother never called us back. We wandered back downstairs when it was time to leave. She and Grandpa were huddled over the radio. Mother looked up at us, and I swear for a moment she didn’t even know we were there. Her eyes were distant, tearful. I quickly turned Missy away so she wouldn’t see.

On the bus ride to school, I briefly explained the situation to Missy. I didn’t go into specifics—except with the blue truck; I figured that wouldn’t be too dramatic—but she immediately picked up on it.

“He dreamed about that boy, didn’t he?”

I didn’t know if his visions-that-weren’t-visions came in dreams or not, but I nodded. “Yeah, he did.”

Missy was matter-of-fact. “He’s dead, isn’t he? That boy. Otherwise Grandpa wouldn’t be so sad.”

I don’t know if they ever found the boy’s body. I moved away from Chelmsford when I went to college. But I know, in the six years that followed, nothing ever turned up. Not one eyewitness, not one fingerprint or scrap of clothing. The boy had simply vanished. Grandpa never told anyone, except maybe Mother, what he saw. I doubt he knew who had taken the kid. He would’ve spoken up about that. The theory I’ve come up with is that Grandpa knew what’d happened, but not who’d done it. And that half-knowledge haunted him.

The headaches got worse. Mother eventually forced him to see a doctor, who found nothing wrong. “Stress,” the doctor said, but didn’t even prescribe any medication. He just told Grandpa to take it easy. As if he could.

There were more visions. He told them to me, occasionally. Most of them weren’t bad. One of them was actually good. He told me one of my classmates who had cancer would go into remission; a week later, she did. He predicted a fire at the abandoned shoe factory—”Arson, but don’t ask me which brats are gonna do it”—and plenty of snow for winter. For Thanksgiving, he told me our father wouldn’t be able to make it, but he never said why (turned out, Dad was involved in a minor motorcycle accident, which, Mother said with a relieved smile, was just what he got for riding a motorcycle in November). Several of Grandpa’s predictions didn’t come true; he didn’t tell me everything, but he told me enough so that I understood that they were random. A hurricane in Florida; an earthquake in Oregon; a gunman at a Dallas Wal-Mart. He said he knew the winning lottery numbers, but that only a thief would buy a ticket. He also predicted that I would grow up to be a successful doctor, which he only said because I got queasy around blood.

Missy became fascinated. Whenever Grandpa started rubbing his temple, she’d get him a Tylenol and a glass of water. She stayed by his side, asking him constant questions. I could tell he was sometimes annoyed, but he did his best to put on a good face. I doubt he ever told her anything truthful, at least as far as the negative predictions went. “I see a little girl who won’t get presents on Christmas if she doesn’t go to bed soon,” he said a couple of times, but Missy would laugh and say that Grandpa was no match for Santa Claus.

Christmas came and went—Missy got plenty of presents—and then the New Year. Grandpa appeared a little weaker, but he always had during the winter. “Ice and old bones don’t mix,” he’d say, using it as an excuse not to leave the house. There was one night where he woke up screaming again, and stayed glued to the news for an entire week. He never explained, not even to Mother, what he’d seen, but after seven days had passed without any major story breaking out, he seemed to relax a little.

Spring Break came, and normally we’d take a short trip somewhere, just two or three days, but Grandpa’s headaches had been occurring more frequently, so Mother thought it best to stay home. “Sounds great,” Grandpa said. “We’d probably just go see that old son-in-law of mine anyways, and I’d have to listen about his damned fishing trips. How interesting can bass be?”

I spent the week hanging with Jake, because Rory’s family went to Ohio for some reason. We didn’t have a whole lot to do without Rory prodding us along, so we basically played video games at Jake’s house. Grandpa watched Missy, and without much complaint; lately she’d taken to simply sitting beside him, waiting for him to have one of his predictions. I guess she’d figured out that constant yammering didn’t help any. Nor, of course, did her silence, but no one saw any reason to tell her that.

I came home about three o’clock that Thursday. I usually waited until four when Mother got home, because being alone in the house with Grandpa and Missy, him in his recliner and her in a child-sized folding chair beside him, was kind of creepy. But Jake had beaten me pretty bad at Call of Duty, and I was in a sour mood. So I took my bike home—still avoiding Grant, I remembered the pain of my arm breaking all too well—and put it safely away in the garage. Then I went out to the mailbox, grabbed the mail, and went in through the front door.

Grandpa was in his recliner, of course, back to me. Missy, instead of beside him, was sitting Indian-style on the floor in front of him, looking up at his face. I was so surprised to see this change of scenery that I stopped in the doorway. A gust of wind came in from behind me and tore the mail from my hand. It fell to the floor and scattered with a hiss.

Missy glanced up. “Hey, Devin,” she said.

“Hey, Missy.”

“He had another vision. I’m waiting for him to tell me what it was.”

“Just tell her, Grandpa,” I said. “She won’t leave you alone until you do.”

“Shut up,” she said.

Grandpa made no response, and Missy went back to watching him. And I knew. It’s not the kind of knowledge you act on, of course. Because even though you know, you don’t want to admit it. It goes against instinct. Can’t ever know something’s gonna happen until it happens, Grandpa had said, which applied to most people, if not himself. He could easily have said, Can’t know something’s happened until you already know it’s happened. But that last one wasn’t always true.

I walked to the recliner slowly, keeping my eyes on Missy. She was smiling sweetly up at Grandpa, such a charming smile, and for a moment I thought, Come on, look how happy she is, can you really be thinking what you’re thinking when she’s that happy? But I could, and I was, and I wasn’t wrong.

Grandpa’s eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing the TV. He wasn’t seeing anything. I stood over him for a few seconds, fighting the urge to poke his arm and try and wake him up. Come on, Grandpa, you’re scaring Missy. Get up, dammit, wake up, have one of your headaches, start screaming, just do something you old man.

Instead, I took Missy by the arm and hauled her up a little too roughly. She protested, trying to twist out of my grip, but I tightened my hand and said, “Go upstairs. Right now.”

“No.”

“Yes. Do it. You can take one of my Twinkies.”

“I don’t want—”

I shoved her towards the stairs. “Now, Missy.”

She knew better than to argue with me.

I called 911 first. Then I called Mother. I don’t know which conversation was the hardest; the 911 call was the longest, and I had to describe the situation in more detail. The call to Mother was short, straight to the point: Get home. Right now. It’s Grandpa. But those six words didn’t come easy, because by then my throat was pretty much dry, and when I hung up I began heaving. Nothing came up except a couple flecks of blood.

There was an autopsy. No discernible cause. “Which isn’t as rare as you may think,” we were told. “It happens to people his age. Rest assured, his death was in all likelihood quick and painless. He may not have even known it was happening.”

I didn’t buy that. I couldn’t help but think that, one way or the other way, his other way, he’d seen it coming.

By unspoken agreement, Mother and I stopped talking about Grandpa’s visions. It didn’t seem right with him gone. Missy learned not to talk to Mother about them—two quick bouts of tears, followed by a half-hearted spanking, provided a good lesson—but she’d still occasionally mention them to me late at night after we’d gone to bed. I wouldn’t say anything, just let her talk. I think that’s all she needed.

Like I said, part of Missy still believes it was the tree, even though it came down on the opposite side of the house. The place she shares now with her husband has no trees around it. There was one when they moved in, but Missy refused to sleep there until it was taken down. The last time I visited, her son lamented how wonderful it would be to have a tire swing. “But you need a tree for that,” he said to me, “and Mom hates trees.”

There’s a tree next to my house. In fact, it’s right outside my window. We had a strong storm pass through last week, and the branches shook, scraping against the window. My wife and I woke up in the middle of the night, and she said, “We need to take that tree down, Devin. One day it’s going to fall on us.”

I nodded. She was probably right. The only thing I didn’t know for sure was…whether or not I wanted the tree to fall.

Daniel Davis was born and raised in Central Illinois. He is the Nonfiction Editor for The Prompt Literary Magazine. You can find him at www.dumpsterchickenmusic.blogspot.com or on Facebook.