Free A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters by Martin H. Greenberg Page B

seat, her shorts riding up and pale sunscreen-drenched legs sticking with a faint tacky sound.
    I shrugged, twisted the key in the ignition. “Doesn’t matter. It’s legal to buy it.”
    “What if he knew? Jesus.” She rolled her window down. It was useless to turn on the air conditioning right away. It would just blow out oven-hot air.
    “He wouldn’t do anything if he knew. He was too busy having little whack-off fantasies about us anyway.” I sounded a little more savage than I felt, and grabbed for the can of Coke in the cupholder. Beads of condensation clung to its sides. We hadn’t been in there very long—I had a List, and I know how to shop. It’s the one useful thing Mom taught me. “One more stop, and then we can go to the pool or something. Or go home for lunch.”
    “What are we going to get now?”
    For a moment I was irritated, but then I popped the parking brake off and reminded myself she was always like this. “Big dowels. Remember? And rope.”
    “Oh yeah.” She grabbed for the Coke; I gave it up. “Becca?”
    I hit the turn signal, checked both ways on Vane, and stamped the accelerator. Hot wind poured through the open windows. “What?”
    “Thank you.” She gulped at the Coke as we bounced out across a few lanes of traffic. “I mean, you know. Yeah.”
    My heart made a funny quivering movement inside me. “No problem, kid.” And I polished her bare knee with my palm.
     
    Kate hung up the phone, her cheeks flour-pale. Checked the fall of sunshine outside the window. “She’s due at work in twenty minutes and she didn’t call in sick, so she must have left.”
    “Good.” I slid the very last thing into my pool bag, checking it twice. “Which means he’s probably there in front of the TV again. Waiting for you to come home.”
    She shivered and rubbed her wrist against her jeans. “Are you sure this is going to work?”
    I wasn’t. But how could I tell her so? “Remember fifth grade, and the Ex-Lax in the teacher’s lounge?”
    That got a faint smile. “Yeah. They never did figure out where that pan of brownies came from.”
    “This is just the same.”
    “It’s not. It’s . . . you know what he is.”
    “I know what he’s going to be.” I zipped up the bag. “Kate, just trust me, okay? You’re gonna be okay.”
    But nothing ever goes exactly according to plan.

    We got there all right, walking through drowsy heat and bands of golden drifting pollen. There were undercurrents and eddies of cooler air, and long breeze-borne stretches of the weird sour odor of old concrete and a type of spiny bush that smells like old-man pee on hot days. Her house looked just the same as it always did, except the grass was a little yellower. Edgar didn’t go out with a sprinkler the way my dad did. Some of Mrs. Cooke’s boyfriends had been into lawn care—but none of them stayed around long enough for it to matter.
    Edgar had already beaten most of them by hanging around for three months.
    The maroon Lincoln Continental crouched, gleaming and poreless. Kate held my hand, bruising-tight. We got up to the front door and she jangled her keys. I gave her a meaningful look, unzipped my bag, and dug out the pepper spray.
    The door opened. “I’m home!” Kate squeaked, and I stepped in.
    “Anyone here?” I peeked around the corner and saw the same thing I’d seen yesterday. Edgar on the couch, arm over his eyes. This time he had a can of beer in his other hand, resting on his taut stomach. He was muscular, in a thick greasy sort of way. You could see why Kate’s mom had brought him home. “Oh, hi, Mr. Black. What’s up?”
    He grunted a little. Kate left the door open and bolted, scrambling, across the living room.
    The dumb bunny. I’d told her to do it casually.
    Edgar jerked into motion, his arm dropping from his eyes and the beer can flying. I dropped the pool bag, inhaling the weird sour-yeasty odor Kate’s house had taken on recently, and brought the pepper spray up. The