“Forget it, kid,” Red said, ruffling his hair. “Most days I can hardly pull myself along.”
The fourth house they entered stank of decomposing things, and they backed out of it without ever going past the foyer.
Finally Red decided that breaking a window was going to be necessary. She chose a low white bungalow-type house, only one story. It had black shutters on the front windows and the shutters were pulled closed. There was a short driveway but no garage and no car. Red assumed the owners had fled long before.
“Why that one?” Sam asked. “It looks poor compared to all the other houses.”
She gestured at all of the two-stories with their wooden decks and aboveground pools and play sets in the yards.
Red nodded. “Right, and because it looks poor no one has gone near it. People just assume there’s nothing inside.”
“Our great-aunt Livia has a house like this,” Riley offered. “But all she has inside is crocheted stuff and like, one million cats.”
“She has three cats,” Sam said. “That’s not even close to a million. Everything is covered in crochet, though. That’s pretty much all she does—watch TV and crochet.”
“And she only watches boring TV,” Riley said, rolling his eyes. “Like the most boring TV ever—people baking cakes or making pasta or whatever or shows where a bunch of people sit around a table and talk.”
“It would be so much better if there were explosions and stuff on every TV show,” Red said.
“Yeah!” Riley said. “I like shows with superheroes and villains, but I hate it when the heroes are always like, kissing girls or thinking about kissing girls or moping around because they can’t kiss the girl they want to kiss. That’s lame.”
“It’s not lame,” Sam said. “Lots of people like to kiss each other. It’s normal.”
“I don’t want to kiss anybody,” Riley said, sticking out his tongue in disgust. “It just looks messy.”
Red thought this was pretty rich from a kid who didn’t seem to care at all about his personal hygiene.
“People like it, and someday you might, too. Red, do you have a boyfriend?” Sam asked. She looked like she was hoping Red would back her up and say kissing was not lame.
“No,” Red said. “I used to have a girlfriend, though.”
“Oh,” Sam said. Red could see her reshuffling her worldview. “That’s cool, though.”
“Thanks,” Red said.
“But you liked to kiss your girlfriend, right?” Sam asked.
“Sure,” Red said. “When people are in love they like to kiss each other.”
Riley made gagging noises. “Love, gross.”
They could have gone on arguing, Red supposed, except that Sam finally seemed to recognize that Riley was too young for this conversation and rolled her eyes.
The truth was that Red was attracted to men and women but hadn’t dated much. Most people were frankly not interesting enough for her to bother with, and it was hard to find people in her little town—or even from the college—who liked the things that she liked. She’d often thought she might care more about dating if she lived in a city and her pool of potential mates was larger.
Besides, it was hard for her to lower her guard around other people enough to form any kind of real intimacy. She was always on the lookout for someone who might see her as a prize or use her as a fetish because of her prosthetic leg.
They circled around the back of the bungalow. There was a large window covered with a white sheet just above a dryer exhaust.
A good place to break into, Red thought. A little glass wouldn’t hurt the laundry room. She always tried to be polite when entering other people’s houses—there was a possibility that they might come back to them one day, after all—and she disliked the idea of accidentally breaking some precious heirloom as she stepped through the window frame.