living room, she wondered if Sally Montgomery would come back and get the help she needed, or if she would insist on bearing her problems alone until the day came, as it inevitably would, when those problems would close in on her, and destroy her.
Jason Montgomery sat on the floor of his room, watching as his guinea pig happily darted from corner to corner, enjoying its respite from the confines of its cage. From downstairs Jason could hear the sound of the television droning on as the sitter dozed in front of it. He’d gone down a few minutes ago, but when he’d found her asleep, he’d decided not to wake her up. She wasn’t like some of the sitters he’d had, who were always baking cookies or willing to play games. She was too old, he’d decided long ago, and all she wanted was to be left alone. And if she wasn’t, sometimes she got crabby. So Jason had stood at the door for a minute, watching her, then gone back upstairs to play with Fred.
His parents, he knew, had gone to some meeting, but he wasn’t sure what it was about Something to do with his sister and getting used to the fact that she was dead. But Jason didn’t understand why his parents had to go to a meeting. Hadn’t there already been a funeral? He’d thought that’s what the funeral was for, but now he guessed he’d been wrong.
He decided it was one more thing he’d talk to Randy Corliss about the next time he saw him.
Except that this afternoon Joey Connors had told him that Randy had run away, and most of the kids thought that even if he came back, he’d probably be sent to Juvenile Hall, where he’d be punished.
Fred moved across the floor, his tiny nose snuffling at the carpet, then crept into Jason’s lap to be petted. Jason began scratching the rodent behind the ears and talking quietly to it.
“Is that what’ll happen to me?” he asked. “But I didn’t really do anything to Julie. All I did was put the blanket on her face for a minute.” He stared down at the guinea pig, wondering for the hundredth time if he could really have hurt Julie by putting the blanket over her head. He was almost sure he hadn’t.
Almost.
But what if he had? How would he ever know?
He picked up the guinea pig, pulled his extra blanket off his bed, then knelt down on the floor once again.
“Now, you pretend like you’re Julie,” he said. He put Fred on the floor, and rolled him over on his back. The guinea pig struggled for a moment, then, as Jason began tickling its stomach, lay still.
“There,” Jason said. “Doesn’t that feel good?” Then he stopped tickling his pet and waited. The tiny animal lay still, waiting for the petting to resume.
Carefully, Jason wrapped the blanket around the guinea pig and held it firm. He began counting.
Fred wriggled and squirmed in the woolen folds, and Jason could feel him trying to bite, but it was no use.
By the time Jason had counted to one hundred, there was no more movement within the blanket.
He tried to remember—had Julie stopped struggling? He thought she hadn’t, and he was almost sure he’d held the blanket over her face for much longer than he’d kept Fred wrapped in it.
Almost sure.
Carefully, he lifted the blanket, sure that Fred, suddenly freed, would scurry under the bed.
The guinea pig lay still. Even when Jason prodded it with his finger, it didn’t move.
Maybe, he decided, he had done something to Julie. But if he had, he hadn’t meant to. No more than he’d meant to kill Fred.
He picked the guinea pig’s body up and cradled it in his hands for a minute, wondering what to do.
Maybe, he decided, guinea pigs were like babies.
Maybe they just died sometimes.
He put Fred back in his cage, then went to bed, and by the time his parents came home, he was fast asleep.
It was Sally who found the guinea pig.
While Steve drove the baby-sitter home, she slipped into Jason’s room to make sure he was all right. She bent over him, listened to him breathe for a moment, then gently kissed him on the forehead. She was about to leave his room, when she realized something was wrong.
The scuffling noises that Fred made whenever his sleep was disturbed were missing. Sally switched on the lamp next to Jason’s bed and went to the cage in