The World Ends at Five & Other Stories by M Pepper Langlinais Page B

thing, hardly speaking except to exchange sharp words with him. It was like being stuck in a bad marriage, or so the author imagined. His personal experience in that area was limited.
    “But you can imagine it, can’t you,” Melinda said dully.
    “You want a divorce?” the author asked in a brittle attempt at humor.
    “I think your brother and sister should come for another visit.”
    The author sighed. Both his older brother and sister phoned regularly, neither of them able to disguise the growing concern in their voices. They invited him for holidays—he always refused—and then conspired once to both come and spend a week with him. The author had only seen Melinda once or twice the whole time.
    “Where did you go that week?” he asked Melinda.
    She shrugged. “It was better, wasn’t it? They were here and everything seemed normal, didn’t it?”
    A pang of guilt shot through the author. He didn’t want Melinda to feel worthless, he realized, and he didn’t want to consign her to the void by forgetting about her. She’d been with him so long now.
    But it had been getting more and more difficult to live with her.
    “Maybe I want a divorce,” the author mused. Which was stupid, of course, because Melinda was only . . . Sneaking a look at her, he decided she had to be sixteen or seventeen now. She was taller, and her red hair had grown longer so that it came halfway down her back. Did imaginary people age?
    “I’m whatever you picture me as, remember?” she asked, turning. He hated that she could read his mind. “A minute ago I was wearing jeans, now I’m in slacks,” she pointing out.
    He started. It was true. She wore a powder blue sweater and wool slacks in pale grey. And now she was easily twenty.
    “More like a daughter,” he muttered. “You should move out, start a life of your own. Except you can’t, can you?”
    “You know what I want?” Melinda said suddenly, facing him now as she leaned against the windowsill. “I want to go somewhere. Somewhere you’re not.”
    The minute she said it, a bright light flashed behind the author’s eyes; it felt like he’d been struck by lightning. He pressed his thumb between his eyebrows, where a headache had been born. It was radiating out to his ears now; they burned as he squinted against the brightness that refused to go away.
     
    “He’s coming around.”
    The author jerked involuntarily and found his arms and legs restrained. “Melinda? Where’s Melinda?”
    The face of his older sister Anne appeared over him, her lipstick too red and her hair dyed an improbable blonde. “Who?”
    “Melinda! You know, the girl!”
    Terri’s face appeared next, along with a glimpse of that ugly lavender suit jacket. She still owned that thing? “Dan . . .”
    “What are you doing here?” he asked. “You dropped me after that book signing.”
    The women exchanged glances over him. “Okay, Dan,” Terri said. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
    “I was at home, writing. Trying to, anyway. And Melinda, she said—”
    “Dan, you collapsed at a book signing. They think you may have had a minor stroke, so just—”
    “I haven’t done a book signing in over a year!” he insisted. “Not since that night. Remember? The burrito?”
    “You did have a burrito,” Terri agreed.
    “And you were so mad that I kept—”
    “No one’s mad at you, Dan. We’re just worried,” Anne said. “Keith is coming, and Mom and Dad.”
    “Dad died last year! You and Keith came to take me to the funeral because you thought I wouldn’t go otherwise.”
    His sister’s face went pale, despite her heavy makeup. “Dan, Dad is fine. He and Mom are on their way.”
    “But Melinda—”
    “Who’s Melinda?” Terri asked.
    “The girl! The one in all the interviews. The one that doesn’t exist!”
    Anne nodded in false understanding. “Okay.”
    “She really did leave me, didn’t she?” the author asked, looking between Terri and Anne. “She said she