Suddenly, I wanted one, too. I stood and said, “Follow me.”
Chapter Four
We were in my back yard, smoking.
We sat side by side on the broken cement stairs that led from the kitchen down into my back yard. Despite being broken, the stairs sported a coat of gray paint. That had been Danny’s answer to all of our home improvement needs: paint the crap out of it.
One of us was smoking because she had an addiction. The other was smoking because she still had a need to feel normal. There was a chance I was the latter. Of course, the entity inside me wanted nothing to do with normal.
The entity inside me could go to hell.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” said Nancy, aka Sugar.
I inhaled, peering through the smoke rising before me, obscuring the neon Pep Boys’ sign that itself rose above my backyard fence. Yes, I shared a backyard fence with the Pep Boys’ parking lot. Handy for when I needed an emergency fuel filter. Danny did get one thing right: he got us a big back yard, which had proved to be kinda fun, back when we were a real family.
We’re still a family, I thought, just minus the Danny part.
Of course, Danny still came around, just minus the body part. In fact, he came around more in death than he did when alive. Funny how being dead made him a more attentive father. Better late than never.
“Did you say something?” asked Nancy.
Oops. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, my thoughts leaked out, especially when I was bonding with someone.
Oh, bloody hell, I thought. Please don’t tell me I’m bonding with her.
“I’m not that bad,” said Nancy, inhaling and looking around. “And who are you talking to?”
“Sorry,” I said, inhaling deeply on my own cig. “I do that sometimes.”
“Do what?”
“Think out loud.”
She giggled. “So do I!”
Great.
I sighed and looked at her and exhaled a plume of smoke in her direction. I had been tempted to do so in her face, but realized the longer I was with her, the more my hate for her was quickly ebbing. Above, a seagull squawked. I was fifteen miles from the sea. This time, I kept my thoughts purposely open.
“Maybe it’s lost,” said Nancy. “Wait a second...your lips didn’t move.”
“No.”
“But I heard you...”
“Oh?”
She thought about that. “Actually, I heard you directly in my head. Just inside my ear.”
“How cool is that?”
“I...I’m not sure it’s cool. How come you aren’t blinking?”
“I don’t need to blink,” I said.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“He might have blinked,” I said. “But then again, I’m not an historian.”