Speed Demon by ERIN LYNN

boyfriend.” Whimper. “He’s a friend of the family.” Is that what we were calling him? “And he’s living here while his parents get divorced and hurl plates at each other.”
    “Oh, that sucks for him.”
    More like it sucked for me. “Yeah.”
    “So you want to go out sometime? Like maybe Friday night?”
    I had a feeling he was going to get there eventually, but Mike didn’t waste any time. I paused, thinking of all the people my dating Mike would set off. Parents, Levi, Adam, Isabella, Amber Jansen—the list was as long as my arm. Figuring I was in enough trouble, and given that Mike didn’t really do it for me anyway, I shook my head. “I can’t. I’m grounded. I did this, you know.” I gestured to the wall his family business was responsible for fixing.
    His eyebrows shot up as he looked at me from the floor. “How did you do that?”
    “Drove the minivan through the wall,” I said, taking another bite of Pop-Tart. “Bad scene, trust me.”
    He laughed. “Guess so. Don’t think I’ll be getting in a car with you behind the wheel.”
    “No one will. I can’t drive until I’m eighteen.” Ugh. It sounded even worse out loud.
    “Mike! Get over here,” his dad yelled from the garage.
    Rolling his eyes at me, Mike slowly rose to his feet. “Guess I’ll catch you later, Kenzie,” he said with a smile.
    “Sure.” I sat there for a minute and thought about how I closed the water portal by taking out the plumbing in the wall with the van. This was an air portal, right? How did you kill an air source? Taking away air wasn’t exactly an easy thing to do. Did you suck it? Vacuum it?
    I sat up straighter. Vacuum. That might work.
     
     
    Which is how I found myself industriously vacuuming up the sawdust from the construction that night after dinner. Without explaining what I was doing, I had just gone to the closet, pulled out the vacuum, and cleaned up the mess on the floor. I then dragged it into the garage, sucked every speck of dust up, and undid the hose. Staring at the spot where the apple peel had been, I wondered what had happened to it. Maybe Levi had cleaned it up or maybe it had just evaporated. There was no telling.
    My mother stuck her head out the garage door. “Wow, thanks, Kenzie. I appreciate you cleaning up. All that dust is hard to deal with.”
    “Sure, Mom.” Good daughter, that was me. Cleaning the house and closing demon portals.
    I was taking the hose and just sucking at the air in and around the hole when Levi appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing?” he asked.
    “Vacuuming.”
    “The air?”
    “Yes. Go away.” He wasn’t going to tell me anything, I wasn’t going to tell him anything.
    He just stood there. “We need to talk.”
    I glanced at his cat-scratched face. “No, we don’t.” The vacuum sucked in some of the plastic and I winced as I ripped it back out. I had nothing to say to Levi.
    The cat streaked past Levi’s legs.
    “Marshmallow Pants!” Zoe screamed, darting around Levi too in pursuit of her new pet.
    I turned off the vacuum. “Is that cat wearing a dress?”
    Levi started laughing. “Yes. Pink with flowers. That’s hilarious.”
    Shaking my head, I watched the cat run under the van and stare at us with black eyes. I wasn’t a cat person. They always seemed like they were secretly plotting the destruction of the human race. And despite the cutesy name Zoe had given it, this one struck me as slightly evil.
    “Levi, you have to get him for me!” Zoe pleaded.
    I didn’t see what the big deal was. The garage door to the driveway was closed, so it wasn’t like the cat could go anywhere. But the tears of a cute five-year-old blonde always resulted in action. Before I could say Marshmallow Pants, Levi was crawling on the ground attempting to coax the cat forward so he could grab her. Him. Whatever it was. I wasn’t sure we had even bothered to officially determine the cat’s gender. I think my mother was secretly hoping the cat