Free Everybody Sees the Ants by A. S. King Page B

him to see someone.”
    “I’m sitting right here,” I say. “I can hear you.”
    “Good. Maybe you’ll stop scaring your mother with talk of suicide.”
    I laugh. I laugh because what else is there to do? I can’t keep up with Aunt Jodi’s freaky mood swings. I don’t know when I’m allowed to joke or be sarcastic. Okay, well, no. I know today I am not allowed. To joke. About being eaten by a tiger.
    Too late.
    Jodi looks horrified that I’m laughing.
    “Lucky, stop laughing,” Mom says, monotone.
    I stop laughing and go back to frowning. I reach up and press on my scab where it itches the most. The urge to pick it is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Mom tells me that I will probably have a scar anyway but that if I pick, half of my face will look blotchy, and I decide I’m weird enough already without being blotchy.
    “I thought it was a funny joke, Luck,” Uncle Dave says.
    Jodi shoots him a look.
    “What? A kid can’t joke? One minute you tell him to be happy, and the minute he does, you say it’s a sign that he’s nuts? Sheesh. Make up your mind,” he says. The ants form a rotating halo above his head. They sing that high-pitched note that angels sing.
    I take my first Arizona night walk after dinner. The temperature is bearable. I couldn’t convince Mom to come with me, but I’m glad. She was happy enough reading her book, and I need time alone after that dinner conversation from hell.
    Everything street-side in this development is well lit. The only shadows exist close to homes, under cars and around the occasional tree or cactus display. I walk until I feel I’ve gone around too many corners, then turn back so I won’t get lost, and then explore a different direction. I do this until I have walked three cul-de-sacs, and decide that I am too boring to live. The ants say:
You really are a mama’s boy, Linderman
. I check my watch, and it’s only been fifteen minutes.
    I decide to be more exciting, and I walk without caring if I get lost. After another fifteen minutes, I am back on the road behind Jodi and Dave’s house.
    That’s where I see the ninja.
    She’s nearly invisible, all in black, moving through the pebbled back-lawn areas parallel to me, from one little shadow to another, stopping occasionally to look behind her to check if she’s being followed. When she turns her head, hair—so long and straight that it touches the asphalt when she’s crouched down—flares out like a skirt would if she were spinning.
    I slow my pace so I can see her next move. She darts from behind a parked SUV to the corner of the next house and then disappears behind it.
    I slow more. I stop. I wait for her to appear again on the other side of the house, but she is gone.

RESCUE MISSION #104—JUNGLE NINJAS
     
    I am in the dark jungle, hiding behind a tree. I have a dozen burning-hot, greasy chicken nuggets in my pockets. I can feelthe grease burning my thighs. Granddad is sitting under a small lean-to inside the camp perimeter. The gate is open.
    After I’ve been there a few minutes, Granddad whispers, “You can come out now, Lucky. Frankie is sleeping.”
    I sit on the muddy ground with him and offer him the nuggets. I don’t tell him that they are probably made out of chicken’s assholes. I watch him eat them slowly—not at all like you’d think a starving man would eat. I put one in my mouth and chew it about a hundred times before my throat opens enough to swallow it.
    In the jungle outside this little camp, there is movement. There always is. Birds moving at night. Snakes. Rats. Predators. Prey.
    “Don’t worry about them,” he says. “They’re probably running food or water or ammo. Probably digging tunnels right here under us. They’re like ninjas.”
    Doesn’t he know the war is over?
    I hand him another chicken nugget and he eats it. “I hope you’re eating better than this at home, Luck.”
    I want to tell him about how Nader beat me up again. I want to tell him about how