Fangboy by Jeff Strand Page B

quizzes are important, too. You need your sleep.”
    She drank up the rest of the wine but made no move to leave.
    “Penny…?”
    “It’s odd that you call me Penny, isn’t it? From now on you should call me Aunt Penny. Would you like that?”
    “Yes.”
    “Or mother. Would it really be so wrong to call me mother?”
    “No.”
    “You won’t leave me, will you, Nathan?”
    “I won’t leave you.”
    “Not ever, right?”
    Nathan didn’t know what to say. He was torn between wanting to give her a great big hug and wanting to pull the blanket up over his head.
    “I should adopt you. Properly adopt you. I don’t know why I haven’t.”
    She looked out at the moon for a few more moments, then patted his leg.
    “I’m going to let you get back to sleep,” said Penny. “You need your sleep.”
    And then she was gone.
    * * *
    Nathan thought about this all day at school, which meant that he had trouble concentrating on what Mrs. Calmon was saying, which meant that he was sent to the corner twice. He had trouble concentrating there, too. Jamison tried to talk to him about the Halloween party, but Nathan wasn’t interested in discussing it.
    It was Mary’s turn to pick him up from school, and when she did, he decided to be blunt. “Are you leaving us?”
    “Nathan,” said Mary, “it is considered polite to ask somebody how their day was before jumping into a question like that.”
    “How was your day?”
    “It was tiring but otherwise not too bad. How was yours?”
    “Awful. Are you moving away?”
    “This may be difficult for a boy your age to understand, but sometimes people feel a certain way about each other and they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Loving one person that way doesn’t mean you love other people any less. Sharon’s perfect, don’t you think?”
    “I wouldn’t say that she’s perfect. ”
    “Don’t be a rascal. I think she’s perfect. Just like I think you’re perfect.”
    “But are you moving away?”
    “Yes.”
    “Penny doesn’t want you to leave.”
    “I know that.”
    “I don’t want you to leave, either.”
    “You should. You’ll have a bigger room.”
    “Will I ever see you again?”
    “What? Of course you…” She let out a loud, sharp laugh. “Nathan, I’m only moving out of the house. Sharon and I are buying a small home in the valley. We’ll be twenty minutes away. You can visit whenever you want.”
    “Really? Then…then why is Penny so sad?”
    “It can still be a sad thing. But I’ll always take care of you. You’ll just have to help take care of Penny.”
    “I can do that. I promise.”
    * * *
    Nathan decided to go to the Halloween party as the Pied Piper of Hamelin, He carried Mary’s flute and dragged along a long line of rats he’d made out of brown paper and fur that had been shed by a dog in the neighborhood. Jamison had insisted that this wasn’t a scary costume, but Nathan argued that the Pied Piper had lured an entire village worth of children to their demise and was in fact a figure of great terror and evil. Jamison went as a wolfman.
    The first thing they did was bob for apples. Nathan felt that there were many downsides to his teeth and very few upsides, but one positive aspect is that they made him extremely adept at bobbing for apples. He came up with an apple on his very first try, and the other children applauded, except for one boy, Will, who just sat there, looking annoyed and angry. He was in Nathan’s class, but they’d never spoken except once when Will had tried to copy his homework.
    Then Ronald turned out the lights, shone a flashlight on his face, and told them a story about a killer with a metal hook for a hand. The killer snuck up on some unsuspecting kids who were listening to music in their car, and just as he was about to open their door the kids started the engine and drove away, popping the hook-hand right off. The killer ran around screaming and bleeding from his hand, and just when it seemed