In the middle of malevolent the doorbell rings.

I’m alone, stretched out on my king-size bed, cards scattered everywhere. I’m making sentences with words “every genius should know,” all neatly typed on my mother’s Vocabulary Flash Cards. Seriously. Like my bedroom in our new condo is obscenely capacious. Melinda is so freaking obsessive when it comes to me.

It’s dark outside ─ February in Pasadena ─ tall skinny palm trees doing the funky skeleton in the wind. Creepy. The weather is ostensibly perfect, but personally, I miss the snow in Rochester.

The bell rings again, this time two pushes, ding-dong ding-dong, what’s taking you so long, open the goddamn door.

I’m not expecting anyone tonight because I don’t know anyone here. We arrived a month ago and Clark and Melinda, the parentals, are at a steak and duck dinner, $1,000 a plate, to benefit Orphans in Africa. Before they left, Melinda prepared a majorly delicious piece of salmon with broccoli and fluffy potatoes for me. Of course she didn’t have to ─ I’m fifteen and perfectly capable of throwing something together myself ─ but Melinda controls my diet in the same way she controls my life. I’m her project ─ homeschooled, of course ─ because “Pammie, you are so beyond anything they could offer at Pasadena High School.” That’s what she tells people, anyway. Not a word about Rochester.

When I open the door a whoosh of cold air sweeps in. The guy on the doorstep looks like he’s sixteen or seventeen tops, with a button-down shirt and tan pants.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he says in a low, polite voice, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I lost my job last week and I haven’t eaten anything for two days. Could you help me out?”

I’m speechless. No one has ever called me ma’am.

“Um, are you asking for money?” I say.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replies, looking down at his shoes, which are scuffed and old.

I have turned on the hallway light, so he can see into our foyer with the hallway table in teak and marble, the clock with no numbers on an onyx base, and the mirror ─ beveled ─ with a brass frame.

My mouth has cotton balls and I clear my throat. “Okay, I’ll get you something.”

I leave the door open and turn around to head into the living space where I’ve stashed my purse behind the sideboard. I know I shouldn’t do this, but I don’t want to shut the door in his face and lock it and then get some money, come back, unlock, open, and shove the bills into his hand as if he were some lowly beggar. I just can’t do it, so I turn around and walk inside and leave him standing on the doorstep.

I fish around in my purse and grab the first bill I find ─ a twenty ─ folding it in my hand. When I go back to the door, I can breathe out because he’s in the exact same spot I left him. I place the money in his palm, close his fingers around it, and say, “I hope your week gets better.”

He looks at me then ─ we go eyeball to eyeball ─ but I can’t read his expression. Inscrutable. He thanks me and pockets the money; then hesitates. As I shut the door and lock it, I realize that he isn’t leaving ─ of course he isn’t ─ he’s going to ring my neighbors’ doorbells.

                                                                                                           ***

 “You did what?” Melinda, who always speaks to me in a loving tone of controlled patience, has lost the plot and is screaming at me like I gave away the clock.

“He was poor, Mom. I gave him some of my allowance ─”

“Your mother’s right,” Clark says, “and I don’t say that often. You realize that we could have been robbed blind.”

“Why?” I say. “Because he’s poor?”

She throws up both her hands. “Pamela, for someone whose IQ is off the charts, you are incredibly obtuse.” The last two words are yelled into my ear.

“Your impulse to help someone less fortunate than you is great,” Clark says. “But you must have some sense of self-preservation. You didn’t know this person. He could have harmed you.”

I bet he’s imagining some pretty embarrassing headlines: INTRUDER DECAPITATES PHILANTHROPIST’S DAUGHTER.

Melinda is still going all psycho-demented. “He probably climbed right over the No Trespassing sign. Our neighbors would go insane if they heard that you encouraged him.”

Why did I tell them? Because I thought they’d be proud of me in a weird kind of way. Like all that homeschooling about values paid off.

I must confess that I’m losing the argument. They’re used to fighting against giants, and I’m just a peon. Yay for me ─ I’ve actually absorbed that word and am applying it in real life.

“What about the Pope?” I say.

We recently heard the Pope on NPR, talking about how to solve the problem of panhandlers. You give money to every single one of them, the Pope says, whether they fit your idea of who should be begging or not, and you must also make some physical connection, touch their hand or look at them ─ make eye contact ─ and wish them a good day. If you do that, the Pope says, your own day will improve, like a gift from heaven.

“Panhandlers are scam artists,” Clark says. “You can’t spend your life being conned by every sob story that comes your way.”

Meanwhile, back at the condo, Melinda is still going on at me. “What you should have done is shut the door immediately, locked it, and dialed 911,” she says.

“Yeah, come and arrest the trailer trash.” God, I hate her.

Of course it didn’t happen quite that way. They got the abbreviated version.

Rewind.

It’s late, but I know they’ll be gone for at least a few hours. I poke around in Melinda’s night table and find her vaping pen, one of the first things she bought in Los Angeles. I’ve just taken a tiny hit to get me through 450 flash cards, when the doorbell rings. Oh, man, who’s that?

I pat down my hair, which looks like a mattress explosion, kick off my Donald Duck slippers and slide into the suede ones. Melinda’s voice floats in my head: Now remember, Pammie … deep breath …only good thoughts.

Things spin as I hurry to the far end of the condo. The lock groans. When I open the door, he is standing there, luminous under the night light. Smiling. Teeth as white as the whites of his eyes. Hair as wild and uncontrollable as mine.

He is my age. The first person I’ve seen in Pasadena who’s my age.

“Hi,” I say, putting out my hand to shake his.

But he seems shy and doesn’t take it. He runs his palms down the sides of his pants then mumbles his story about the lost job and no food for two days.

“Why don’t you come inside?” I say. “We have tons of food.”

He thinks for a moment then says, “I don’t want to disturb you, but I sure could use some money.”

“I’m studying vocabulary words for the SAT,” I say. “It’s hell on wheels. You’d be helping me.”

He stands there for a while, like maybe he’ll do me a favor and come inside. I wish he’d make up his mind because it’s cold out here and I’m shivering in my thin T-shirt. Eventually he condescends to enter and crosses the threshold. There’s no going back for him. I push the door shut and lock it.

Even people who aren’t asking for food and money do a double take when they first come into the condo. “Holy shit,” he says.

Melinda has gone all out with the decorating ─ turquoise bamboo curtains, pink and white orchids, and smooth wax candles shaped like Brancusi sculptures. The Museum of the Earth, right here in Pasadena.

He looks around the room, taking it all in, then kneels at the coffee table and runs his hand over the sleek chrome and glass surface. “Cool,” he says. “It’s like a river of silver.”

“Hey, do you want some food?”

“Sure. What you got?”

I set out two place mats on the dining room table and go behind the giant quartz island to the fridge. “Beef stroganoff or chicken curry? Leftovers. My mom is, like, this world-class chef.”

He slouches at the table with really aggressively bad posture and says, “Do you have hot dogs and toast?”

So basically I go all out for him ─ a whole package of Organic Uncured Grass-fed Beef Hot Dogs, which I serve with ketchup, Grey Poupon, and scrambled eggs. It’s awesome to cook for a guest, especially someone who’s ravenous. Unfortunately I burn the toast, but he doesn’t seem to mind, because he scarfs it all down without even looking. He’s starving. I don’t need homeschooling or any other kind of schooling to tell me that.

I’m impressed by how he throws back his head and pours a gazillion gallons of orange juice down the chute. I think he’s telling the truth about not eating for two days.

He wipes some ketchup off his chin with a paper napkin and says, “Okay. Now show me your flash cards.”

“You’re kidding me. We can talk about anything in the world, and you want to see my vocabulary flash cards?”

He leans back in his chair. “Yeah. I wanna see how many words I can get. I used to be good at English.”

“Why aren’t you good at English anymore?”

He laughs. “Oh no, I didn’t mean that. It’s just ─” His voice kind of cracks, and to my horror he is suddenly crying ─ for real ─ tears on his cheeks, snuffling and blowing his nose on his napkin. “Oh, shit, don’t look at me ─”

But of course I do, and like a mirror-image, tears wash all over my eyeballs too and spill down my face. We are a Disney cartoon, fat tears splashing everywhere.

“Oh my God, why are we crying?” I say.

“You tell me,” he says, his voice gruff with snot. “I don’t see anything in this place to make you cry.”

“I’m a prisoner here ─” I sob, blowing hard into a tissue.

“You’re not a prisoner! You could just open the door like you did for me and go for a run around the block.”

“They don’t let me go to school. They think the standards in the public schools are too low ─”

He wipes away his tears and unexpectedly laughs. “Dude. Lots of private schools in Pasadena.”

“They think it’s a waste of money, and ─” I say this with great irony ─ “there’s not enough diversity at private school. It doesn’t fit their image of themselves.”

He shakes his head like I’m just too much to take, but he’s listening, so I just keep on spilling it out, even though I won’t get any sympathy. “I don’t have any friends here. I’m, like, really lonely.” And I feel my eyes watering again. It’s crazy. I swat the tears away. Why am I even telling him this? I hardly know him. He could be an ax murderer.

For all he knows, I could be one too.

“My mom ran away from us, and left just me and my dad,” he says.

“What does your dad do?” I ask lamely.

He looks at his plate. “He doesn’t do anything. He’s got emphysema. And he drives me insane, man, he still smokes. He uses our money to buy cigarettes.”

 “Oh, God, smoking in the house ─”

“My dad can’t work, and made me leave school. He says I’m ‘able-bodied’ so I’ve gotta support us.”

All I can do is shake my head. He’s like this alien who fell off another planet.

 “We lost our apartment after my mom left,” he says. “Couldn’t pay the rent. We live in a homeless shelter. Sleep on two-level bunks. Dad sleeps on top because he has claustrophobia, but one time, he fell out and got a concussion. Freaked me out.”

“That totally sucks,” I say.

“Some nights it smells so bad in there I want to puke.”

That sucks too. I want to tell him that he smells nice ─ wood smoke and Head & Shoulders.

“My dad makes me go out and beg at night.” He waves in the direction of the front door. “He says there are rich people all along this street. That it’ll be low-hanging fruit.”

“So I’m the fruit that you picked?”

He shifts in his chair and concentrates on peeling the fluted paper off a frosted coconut cupcake I gave him, from Katie’s Bakery. He finishes it off in two bites.

When he stands up and stretches, his shirt comes up out of his pants, giving me an eyeful of polished abs. “Let’s go take a look at those flash cards,” he says.

Did I mention they’re in my bedroom? But the room is huge like a hotel suite, so he probably won’t get the wrong impression.

When I flick on the light, he whistles. “Hey, girl, if you’re in prison, this sure is some jail cell.”

How can I impress him if my life story can’t compete with his? I start at the science table where I’m a wiz, throw together a few wires and a switch, and in a minute there’s a drone buzzing around the room. Then I press another switch that turns on a light bulb and sets off a loud, shrill siren. He jumps about a hundred feet back and shrieks, “Shit!”

Ha. Revenge of the low-hanging fruit.

I jiggle the control so that the drone slows down and hovers in front of him then swoops into a soft landing on the table.

“Yowza!” he yells, laughing. “You could stand on my street downtown and make a million bucks with those tricks.”

Yeah, and I could take him out with the drone ─ just a flick of my finger ─ but I don’t tell him that.

My room leads onto a patio that stretches around the whole condo. I never open it because we’re on the ground floor; but now that I have company, I feel safer. The handle is stiff, however, and won’t budge.

“Here, let me help you, I’m good at this shit,” he says. Our hands get tangled together on the door handle, and it jolts me because he’s definitely hot, and there we are in Melinda’s worst nightmare ─ a totally inappropriate guy in my bedroom, holding my hand and no chaperones for miles around.

He’s taller than me and rests his head on my head. Head to head.

It’s not like I’m experienced at relationships. I’m probably the only 15-year-old on Earth who’s a virgin. Not because I have high moral principles. Only because none of the guys in Rochester dared to come near me. Not that I didn’t experiment a bit, I know what’s what, but who am I kidding? Not really.

“This is super weird,” he says.

He’s right. What am I doing? I jerk my hand away and run to the small sofa. Meanwhile he muscles the door open, and cold air fills the bedroom, giving me the shivers. “You should go,” I say. “If my parents find us here like this they’ll kill me.”

“More likely they’ll kill me,” he says.

I walk him to the front door, press twenty dollars into his hand, then stand on my toes and kiss him on his cheek.

“By the way, tell me your name,” he says.

Melinda is all over me at breakfast the next morning. “Eat something, Pammie. Why so glum?”

The doorbell rings.

No one moves, but of course I’m the one who’s sent.

The man standing there fills the whole doorway, like his neck alone could be the trunk of an old oak tree. I’m jumpy today and I shrink against the door. His skin is so black it shines purple in the morning light. “Howdy,” he says, flashing a silver badge. “I’m Detective Bass.”

You’d expect a great sonic boom to come out of him, but instead, his voice is mellow, like honey. “May I come in?”

I blink and then nod. No escape from him.

Melinda throws me a worried look, then morphs into total charm offensive. “Please come in, Detective. What can we do for you?”

He turns to me and says, “What’s your name?” I’m freaking out and it’s like I have amnesia. I clam up. He says again, very gently, “Can you tell me your name?”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Melinda snaps. “It’s Pamela Johnson.”

He hesitates. “I have some bad news for you, Pamela. Someone you know ─ maybe even a friend of yours ─ has passed away.”

I sense Melinda twitching on the couch beside me. “But Pamela doesn’t have any friends yet. We’re new in town.”

Like a magician he pulls a small Ziploc bag from his pocket, and says, “Is this your card, Pamela?”

I don’t even need to give it more than one glance to know it’s mine, the little silver-edged card that I designed myself, with my name and contact information. But my parents jump forward to peer at it.

“Where did you get this?” Melinda demands, glaring at him. She has picked up on my fear, and I think it’s dawned on her that this visit is personal, and her baby ─ the late little lamb born when she was forty; the traumatized sickly one ─ may be in trouble.

Detective Bass sighs. “This card was in the pocket of the deceased young man. We’re trying to identify him. His body has just been discovered on the grounds outside.”

He waves vaguely toward the front door. “One of the residents found him early this morning.”

“He’s dead?” I cry. Of course it’s him. He’s the only person I gave my card to.

Detective Bass’s face scrunches with sympathy. “Pamela, this is very important. We have a crew investigating the scene. Perhaps you could come with me and help us identify the young man.”

“Pamela doesn’t know any young men in Pasadena,” Clark says.

“That may be the case,” the detective says super smoothly, “but I sure would appreciate it if Pamela could come outside and see if she recognizes him.”

Our condo lies smack-bang in the middle of the Garden of Eden, where Eve probably met the serpent among the flowers and trees and gurgling stream that gushes down over the rocks. As we walk down from the apartment, Detective Bass angles his huge bulk very carefully, to avoid slipping. The gradient is super-steep, and I turn to walk sideways as I step over the moss-covered, widely spaced stone steps.

Old trees stretch their branches over us, blotting out the sun, and my arms prickle with goose bumps. Yellow tape surrounds the “scene,” like they’re filming a cop show. We are given blue paper booties and asked to step under the tape. Two people on their knees are inspecting a young man, lying on his side very still, as if he’s sleeping. They’re brushing leaves off his face. There’s blood on his head. His body is there but I see straight away that his spirit has gone and the technicians are touching an empty shell. Where do people go when they die? Would he even have known where to go? He was only seventeen.

The mountain of a detective lowers himself to the ground and waves at me to sit next to him. But I don’t want to, because I can’t breathe and because I’ve never seen a dead person up close before, and because it’s definitely him.

 “How do you know he’s dead?” I whisper. But of course he’s dead ─ he’s lying at a strange angle with no life in him.

A small crowd has gathered around the tape, and I recognize several of our neighbors.

“This is the man who came begging at our front door last night,” Jane Carter says. “I’m afraid I shooed him away.” I know Jane because she’s on the home owners’ committee, fighting for our rights.

“We will take statements from all the residents,” Detective Bass says. “But for now, please move away and give us some breathing room.”

The technicians are scraping dirt or blood off his head and taking little samples with ice-cream sticks. My legs go weak and I sink to the ground. I want to go back inside where it’s safe.

“Do you know his name?” the detective says quietly to me, so no one can hear. But Melinda has stuck to me like glue and says, “Do we need a lawyer, Detective?” ─ then turns to me ─ “Don’t answer any questions, darling, until we know what’s going on.”

Detective Bass will need a crane to get himself up off the ground, but amazingly he does really well, bouncing on the balls of his feet and launching himself up like a rocket.

                                                             #

In the condo, we are all on the couch, with the detective sitting opposite us. He turns to me in a very calm, relaxed way, and says, “Pamela, will you help me shed some light on what happened to the young man?”

“Yes.” It comes out as a dorky squeak and I clear my throat.

“May I record your answers” ─ he puts his cell phone on the coffee table ─ “so I don’t need to write stuff down? My memory isn’t so good.” He smiles with all his teeth, a regular guy.

“Really ─ I think we should call Anthony,” Clark says, giving Melinda a meaningful look. “Get a bead on this.”

“No, Dad, it’s okay.” I want to vaporize them when they micro-manage me, pulling my strings like I’m a puppet.

“Thank you, Pamela, I appreciate that.” Detective Bass leans forward. “Did you know the deceased?”

“Darren del Vecchio,” I say, and spell the last name, as he did for me.

“Could you start at the beginning, Pamela?” the detective says. “How you met Darren and what happened here.”

I tell him about the hot dogs, eggs, orange juice, burnt toast, twenty dollars and vocabulary words in my bedroom.

“You took him to the bedroom!” Clark thunders.

I don’t tell him about the patio door, the sweet ketchup-y kiss, and the way his hands squeezed the band’s name on my T-shirt.

“I showed him my electricity experiment,” I say. “He was so amazing. He changed the circuit and switches to add a spinner when the siren went off. He said he was sad because they didn’t offer physics at his school.”

“Did you hook up with him, Pamela?” Detective Bass asks, as if it’s just ho-hum, another day, another question.

“Oh, give me a break!” Melinda says.

“No,” I whisper. I don’t tell the detective that I’m sad, because I wanted to and now I never will.

“Okay. Go on with what happened,” he says.

After I’d shown Darren my poetry books and en suite bathroom, he said, “Hey, let’s go outside and explore.”

“I’m not allowed to leave the condo ─”

“C’mon, it’s a clear night,” he said. “You could bring your telescope and we could watch the stars ─”

So I grabbed the small telescope and out we went.

“Shut your eyes,” I commanded, while I tapped the keypad to lock the condo door.

Then we were out in the grounds, lit with pale spooky globes everywhere and the stream glittering in the moonlight. He grabbed my free hand, and we started running in a zigzag downhill, past the orange Birds of Paradise and the dark swaying succulents, and it was an incredibly wild and beautiful ride, and for the first time since being in Pasadena, I thought, This is unbelievable that we could be outdoors in February, hearing the stream bubbling down the stones and the wind shushing through the trees. It was just this totally amazing gift he gave me, the idea of roaming free, without permission.

“Your recklessness and lack of judgment ─” Clark says. “It’s always something with you.”

“Please, Mr. Johnson,” Detective Bass says, shutting him down with a look. “Okay, Pamela, you’re doing great. What happened next?”

I wish I could change the story.

The stone steps on the grounds were slick from the spray of the stream; but we were immortal ─ like superheroes ─ charging down the hill and shrieking at the top of our lungs.  The path suddenly turned sharply to the right and I stumbled, causing the telescope to fly from my hand. I jumped forward to catch it, jerking away from him.

My sudden move knocked him off balance and he fell.

I was helpless as he tumbled down, down, down, on the stone steps, banging his head as he went, and then disappearing off the edge, like falling off a precipice into a black hole. I screamed his name again and again, but he must have been unconscious because there was only silence.

“Did you go find him?” the detective asks.

“I tried,” I whisper. “I didn’t have a flashlight.”

Terrified and alone in the black night. Paralyzed.

“So what did you do?” His voice isn’t judging, just probing, and maybe he sees the agony in my face, because he says, very softly, “Go on, Pamela.”

“I went back up the hill and into the condo,” I say. “My phone had no charge … and my parents were out … so I couldn’t dial 911.”

“How about the neighbors?” he says. “Did you try them?”

I can barely talk. “Yes,” I say, “but no one came to the door.”

The truth is I’ve blanked it out, and all I remember is creeping back into our condo and barricading myself deep in my bed, too scared, too cowardly to venture out.

If this were a movie, a really brave superheroine would have plunged out of the complex and into the traffic, screaming and waving her arms, causing the world to screech to a halt and go get help.

But it was only me. All the vocabulary words in the world can’t explain how events got away from me and I just couldn’t cope.

I am weeping now, and he squeezes my arm. “I killed him,” I sob. “I let go of his hand and made him fall. And then, when someone could have saved him, I wasn’t brave enough to go out in the night to get help.”

                                                    #

Detective Bass returns to the condo the following week. He asks very politely if I’ll make him a cup of tea.

When we’re sitting at the counter, he says, “I wanted to let you know that Darren’s death has been ruled accidental. His head took lots of hits from the fall.”

A space opens up in my chest.

“I wish I had tried harder,” I say, the waterworks starting up. “I feel like a total murderer.”

“Yes, you should have pounded on some doors,” he says. “No question about that. But sometimes we’re all too human and let ourselves down.” He blows on the tea and takes a sip. “Let me tell you something, Pamela, while you’re alone here. Most of the folks in the condos turned Darren away. You’re a kind person, and the world needs more people like you.”

My sixteenth birthday is around the corner and Melinda is making all kinds of celebratory plans for the three of us, like I’m a rock star or something. She has recovered from the “terrible incident” at the condo, and we’ve calmly discussed my ineptitude and gullibility.

Whatever.

I tell them there’s just one thing I want for my birthday: to be enrolled at Pasadena High School. I need to quit being their little hothouse genius and go to a regular high school.

Melinda goes all Tiger Mom. “You know you can’t go to a regular school.”

“Mo-om. It’s not like I’m going to trash the science table or burn your freaking poetry books.” For once, I’m totally adamant.

Grow up and escape from her. It’s the least I can do for Darren. Before I can give myself a zillion reasons not to do it, I get up my courage, install Uber on my phone, and venture out of my safe world.

There aren’t too many homeless shelters in Pasadena, so I find him pretty quickly.

His name is Shawn del Vecchio and he’s much older than I pictured, with a thin fuzz of gray hair and a stooped back. He’s very sad and frail, and coughs a lot. He shows absolutely no surprise at seeing me.

We sit in a kind of common room with a giant garbage can and a TV.

 “Darren was smart and funny and we were friends,” I say. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

His rheumy eyes cover over with tears. “It makes no difference if you sorry or not. I warned him not to go begging in the rich people areas. It’s not safe, I said, someone there’s gonna kill you …” And he’s crying some more with great gulping sobs.

I don’t know what to say because I’m not smooth like my mother and don’t know how to do the whole charity thing. I just shove the envelope into his hand, and say, “It’s a donation in Darren’s name.” My hands are shaking and some of the purple sparkles of my nail polish have come off onto it, so it looks like a party favor.

He stares at it like it’s a snake.

My stomach clenches and the great Hallmark Channel tear factory comes rolling in again. “Please…”

It’s my birthday present, five hundred dollars in twenties. Melinda and Clark would go ballistic ─ but it’s not their money any more.

He sits still for a while then stuffs the envelope into his pocket. “What you say your name was?” he asks.

                                                               #

Rewind. The absolutely last time, cross my heart and hope to die.

So. There he was, on our doorstep, smiling.

Will you walk into my parlor? said the spider to the fly.

O no no, said the little fly. But in he came anyway and stuffed his face like it was the Last Supper. All the while, Pammie kept the Malevolent One tucked away and out of sight, pret-ty much under control. Good luck with that. He was mine.

Pathetic little Pammie of the frizzy hair and chipmunk cheeks, leading him into the bedroom and showing him her techie toys. Sweet sixteen and never been kissed. I opened my mouth and sucked him in and felt his delicious man-thing, but then Pammie smacked me away and said, No, never again. We don’t do that anymore.

Party pooper.

It was a perfect starry night ─ total Van Gogh. Time for our romp in the garden.

Pammie trying to pull us back because she knows the night belongs to me.

Down the hill we fly, over the stones, faster! faster! with his hand tightly in my grip. I’m like this witch on a broomstick, ayeeeee! ayeeeee! free! scree! ─ until he goes ape shit and bursts the bubble. Why do they always do that?

“Ow! Let go! Why you acting so weird?”

He won’t play!

Pulling away, snapping his arm up and down, kicking and twisting to throw me off, going all National Geographic like a deer in the jaws of a hyena.

And everyone’s, like, “Play nicely, Pamela,” but no one to stop me this time, no teachers on the playground, and Pammie, sweet Pammie, shriveling away in the shadows.

The red dot in my brain explodes and I shake him loose, and as he stumbles I smash the base of the telescope into his skull and down and away he goes, crashing into the rocks.

Such a shame he wouldn’t play. We really liked him.

Back in the condo, Pammie is sleeping, and I snuggle back into her. Safe in her nighttime dreams. She won’t remember a thing.