pasta pomodoro, Noella was excited that dinner was just her and Josie. All three of them had gone to Red Lobster the previous evening for her belated birthday, but it was only to satisfy Randy. Noella wasn’t especially hungry, and all the stress had sat in her stomach like a gallon of seawater. Though she was just as stressed-out tonight, Noella was hungry enough to eat everything on the menu, and with Aunt Josie in an equally “let’s pig out” mood, she just might give it a try.
Josie told Noella to order whatever she wanted, so she did, starting with fried zucchini for their appetizer. All the appetizers at Anthony’s were great, and normally Noella wouldn’t have ordered something as TGI Fridays as fried zucchini, but Anthony’s used oversized zucchinis and cut them in flat panels instead of the usual spears. The breading was amazing, and they added a hint of lemon to the ranch dressing. Yummy.
“You decide yet?”
Noella said, “You bet!” then told Josie her choices in an excited cloud of words, gestures, and fingers on the menu: fried zucchini to start, pasta pomodoro for dinner, and a raspberry truffle for dessert. Josie suggested they order bruschetta, in addition to the zucchini, and that maybe they should try the DIY Cannolis since they came with a carousel of fillings and that sounded like fun.
Josie seemed desperate to catch up, and though Noella wanted to talk, too, it was nearly impossible to keep her mind on the conversation with the morning’s video projecting itself in an endless loop on the screen of her mind.
Josie stayed cool, steering the conversation away from the video, Detective Avery, and Randy. Instead, she asked how Mako was doing.
Noella said that Mako had played the best violin of her life, and recently placed fourth in the entire state in a competition. Mako wanted to celebrate, but her parents said that parties were for first place, and maybe second and third. Never for fourth.
Noella answered every one of Josie’s questions, and even managed a few of her own, but she was mostly running on cruise control, swimming inside her mind, turning over the truth she saw in the video and wondering if she was completely insane.
What really happened?
Did I imagine everything?
Did I kill Mets Hat? If so, how?
How did I see Katie’s murder?
There were too many weird things happening, and what happened in the coffee shop was too similar to the incident two years ago.
The incident that nobody would let Noella forget, and which graduated her from standard-issue dork to special-edition freak show, had started with an episode in class when Noella was in the darkroom with a few of the girls in her graphic design class.
Noella was working on the photos she’d taken of the school’s West Side Story production, when her world suddenly collapsed.
The switch was instant, like a sudden scent snaking through the air. The dark room was already under a blanket of black and red, but the inky walls around Noella started blurring, almost oozing.
The room turned icy cold. The equipment, and the girls around her, disappeared. The walls collapsed and endless stretches of nothing took their place on either side. Noella listened to the rise and fall of her breath, as she tried to find her way through the darkness. This was the first time she’d had a hallucination in school. And it was far more terrifying than the ones she’d had a few times during the years.
She put her hands out, searching for the door to the darkroom, hoping it was still there, when her hand touched someone. Or, judging from what she heard next, something.
A loud, high-pitched shriek filled the darkroom, something neither animal nor human. The single screeching turned to many, and suddenly, all at once, dozens of eyes lit up in the darkness, like small yellow lights, surrounding her.
They closed in on all sides, all at once, their bodies brushing and bumping into hers as their hands grabbed her, trying to force her down to
Josie told Noella to order whatever she wanted, so she did, starting with fried zucchini for their appetizer. All the appetizers at Anthony’s were great, and normally Noella wouldn’t have ordered something as TGI Fridays as fried zucchini, but Anthony’s used oversized zucchinis and cut them in flat panels instead of the usual spears. The breading was amazing, and they added a hint of lemon to the ranch dressing. Yummy.
“You decide yet?”
Noella said, “You bet!” then told Josie her choices in an excited cloud of words, gestures, and fingers on the menu: fried zucchini to start, pasta pomodoro for dinner, and a raspberry truffle for dessert. Josie suggested they order bruschetta, in addition to the zucchini, and that maybe they should try the DIY Cannolis since they came with a carousel of fillings and that sounded like fun.
Josie seemed desperate to catch up, and though Noella wanted to talk, too, it was nearly impossible to keep her mind on the conversation with the morning’s video projecting itself in an endless loop on the screen of her mind.
Josie stayed cool, steering the conversation away from the video, Detective Avery, and Randy. Instead, she asked how Mako was doing.
Noella said that Mako had played the best violin of her life, and recently placed fourth in the entire state in a competition. Mako wanted to celebrate, but her parents said that parties were for first place, and maybe second and third. Never for fourth.
Noella answered every one of Josie’s questions, and even managed a few of her own, but she was mostly running on cruise control, swimming inside her mind, turning over the truth she saw in the video and wondering if she was completely insane.
What really happened?
Did I imagine everything?
Did I kill Mets Hat? If so, how?
How did I see Katie’s murder?
There were too many weird things happening, and what happened in the coffee shop was too similar to the incident two years ago.
The incident that nobody would let Noella forget, and which graduated her from standard-issue dork to special-edition freak show, had started with an episode in class when Noella was in the darkroom with a few of the girls in her graphic design class.
Noella was working on the photos she’d taken of the school’s West Side Story production, when her world suddenly collapsed.
The switch was instant, like a sudden scent snaking through the air. The dark room was already under a blanket of black and red, but the inky walls around Noella started blurring, almost oozing.
The room turned icy cold. The equipment, and the girls around her, disappeared. The walls collapsed and endless stretches of nothing took their place on either side. Noella listened to the rise and fall of her breath, as she tried to find her way through the darkness. This was the first time she’d had a hallucination in school. And it was far more terrifying than the ones she’d had a few times during the years.
She put her hands out, searching for the door to the darkroom, hoping it was still there, when her hand touched someone. Or, judging from what she heard next, something.
A loud, high-pitched shriek filled the darkroom, something neither animal nor human. The single screeching turned to many, and suddenly, all at once, dozens of eyes lit up in the darkness, like small yellow lights, surrounding her.
They closed in on all sides, all at once, their bodies brushing and bumping into hers as their hands grabbed her, trying to force her down to
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