Hoarder by Armando D. Muñoz

and hoped that Missy couldn’t hear it. It sounded as loud as a toilet flush to his ears. The tall mirror shielding Keith bowed toward him as pressure was applied on the other side. He pressed himself into the skanky cushions he was leaning against. The mirror pushed in further until it pressed against the side of Keith’s face. He closed his eyes, hoping he wasn’t about to suffer the same fate as Will and get a shard shoved into his skull.
    When the mirror broke against Keith’s left cheek, the sound in his ear was sharp and like a lance to his brain. Over a dozen cracks in the mirror extended like a web around his head. Despite cracking, the mirror did not shatter or reveal Keith’s whereabouts to the hoardowner leaning against the other side.
    Keith and Dani silenced their breathing while they heard Missy’s breathing loud and clear, heavy from the exertion of climbing her hoard. Then they heard rustling from a plastic shopping bag, followed by the crinkling of foil or cellophane packaging. There was a moment where Missy and her movements went completely silent. Even her horse-heavy breathing seemed to stop.
    POP! The sound of the potato chip bag being slapped open was unmistakable, and severely startling to the hidden kids.
    Keith flinched hard from the sudden sound. His head hit the cracked mirror next to his face, making it bounce out an inch. The sheet shrouding Dani jerked, but made no sound.
    Missy was surprised at the sudden movement beside her.
    Keith’s eyes opened wide in fear and locked with one of Dani’s, as she peeked out from the side of her sheet.
    The cracked mirror was pulled away and Keith was revealed, cowering in Missy’s nest. He didn’t move from his spot, instead he cringed back against the cushions, in the hope he might be absorbed into them like a stain. Missy set the mirror aside with the broken side facing the center of the pit. She did not notice the cracks in the mirror. All of her attention, and surprise, was on her strange guest.
    As Missy leaned down over Keith, he noticed her face was spotted with bright red sores, at least a dozen, and many of them were seeping. These were the kind of sores that he would expect on a crack head, or somebody living a seriously toxic and unhealthy lifestyle. Will had been right about her horrid complexion, and its possible source. Crack had nothing to do with it. Cockroach shit did.
    Keith could not mask the fear that flushed his face. He did not know whether to reason with her, run from her, or attack her. He did know it was imperative to keep the attention on himself, and away from Dani, at all costs.
    Keith wasn’t prepared for Missy’s reaction. As her face hovered down over him, he was repulsed to recognize the camera cap on her head, and he felt a stab of pain in his heart that Will would never wear it again. He also saw that Missy wasn’t just smiling, she was ecstatic.

Chapter Eleven
    The first thing Missy thought when she saw the boy behind her mirror was What a cutie-patootie! And it was a patootie she was familiar with, she just wasn’t sure where from. But she would remember soon. She never forgot a face, or a patootie! She didn’t see faces very often, unless she was shopping (her porch stealing she saw as nothing more than shopping outside of a store), so every face left an impression. And his was the kind of face you just wanted to eat up, if you had a taste for sweets.
    “Oooo! A playmate! Who are you?”
    “I… I’m Steve,” Keith lied on the spot.
    “What are you doing in my hidey-hole?”
    In ordinary circumstances, Missy’s phrase hidey-hole would have brought Keith to laughter. He wasn’t laughing now. He was trying to formulate a plan that would save his sweating skin.
    “I… my cat got loose. I chased him in here through a window. I have to find him.”
    Dani peeked carefully around her shrouding sheet, watching the exchange between delighted Missy and desperate Keith with one eye. Dani took the shallowest