left arm. It was so itchy. She kept scratching it and scratching it, but it wouldn’t stop. Like bugs on her skin. She got out of bed and walked to her door. She moved the chair from under the doorknob. Then, she walked down the stairs to the kitchen. She got a knife out of the drawer. She scratched the itch a little with it and walked past Scott’s room. For a moment, she thought about plunging the knife into Scott’s neck. That thought made the itching stop for a little while. She went back to her bedroom and put the knife under her pillow. In case Scott came into her room as he had the night before. He talked about her pajama bottoms being too short as he threw them in the corner. They were “floods, floods.”
The clock read 2:17 a.m.
Matt sat up in bed and scratched his arm. He should have been happy about the news, but he wasn’t. After school, he had gone to the eye doctor with his mothers. They were angry that he and Mike got in a fight, but when Mike explained that they were only protecting Christopher, their moms laid off a little bit. He went to see the eye doctor about his lazy eye, and the doctor told him the good news. It should have taken his eye patch until the summer to make his eye stop being so lazy, but somehow, it was already fixed. “It’s a miracle,” the doctor said. Matt should have done cartwheels knowing that Jenny Hertzog couldn’t call him “Pirate Parrot” anymore. But something was wrong. Matt thought about Christopher grabbing his arm. How the heat soaked through his arm and tickled its way up to his eye. He would never tell the guys this out loud. They would think he was crazy. But as he scratched his arm, he couldn’t help but think that Christopher fixed his eye somehow. This thought scared him. Because he knew that if anyone found out, then someone might try to kill Christopher. So, he promised himself that he would keep wearing the eye patch at school, so no one would suspect. He would listen to Jenny Hertzog call him “Pirate Parrot” forever to keep his friend safe. He just had to keep Christopher alive. He felt like the whole world depended on it.
The clock read 2:17 a.m.
Mike sat in his bed. The itching was driving him crazy. He got up and went into the bathroom looking for that pink lotion his mothers used on him when he and Matt both had chicken pox. But he couldn’t find any. All he saw were his one mother’s vitamins. The ones that made her happy. He left the bathroom and went to the basement, where no one could hear him. He turned on the television and put on his favorite movie, The Avengers. Anything to take his mind off the itching. He was really enjoying the movie, and the itching almost went away, but then something happened. In the middle of the movie, Thor stopped and talked to Mike. They stayed up all night. Thor was so nice. Thor said Brady Collins was dangerous and that Jenny Hertzog was about to do something very scary. Thor told him to protect Special Ed and Matt. But especially Christopher. Because Mike was the strong one. And the war was coming. And the good guys had to win the war this time. Or the bad people would take over the world. Mike woke up on the couch. He didn’t know if it had been a dream.
The clock read 2:17 a.m.
Ms. Lasko sat at the bar in Mt. Lebanon. The bar closed at 2:00 a.m., but Ms. Lasko knew the owner very well, and she begged him to let her stay. She just couldn’t go home. She scratched her arm, and for a moment, she reminded herself of her own mother back when they lived in the city. Her mother would scratch herself all the time until she got her medicine. Ms. Lasko thought of it as “Mommy’s itch medicine.” Because the minute she put it into her arm, she stopped itching. She hadn’t thought of that for years. Ms. Lasko looked at all the empty bottles and glasses in front of her. She counted seventeen, which would normally send her home in a taxi with a blackout. But all night, it didn’t matter how much she drank. Bottle after bottle. Shot after shot. She could not