The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,4

had been adventuring in some of the old Usher outbuildings, where a kid could find all kinds of great stuff—old bottles, scraps of metal; once, we even tripped over a tombstone out on the back acre, collapsed into the ground and wiped smooth from a century of rain and wind, a long-dead Usher underneath us as we ran, laughing above them.

The Usher property was our playground, until Ribbit and I went over an old fence that wasn’t ready for our weight. It gave out underneath him, the rusty barbed wire still sharp, digging in deep and tearing his leg open as he went down. My mom said I couldn’t play at my cousin’s anymore, said her older sister didn’t do a good job keeping the property safe for kids. But Mom was gone not long after that, and Cecil couldn’t have cared less if I was safe or not, as long as I came home in time to do the chores.

“Attraction for the youth,” I repeat with a snort, thinking of the old Allan house, as dilapidated as the Usher property, if not more. “That’s not news, not to anybody. Half our parents partied out there.”

“And it’s where half of us were conceived,” Ribbit adds, for which I give him a shove. He takes my blow easily, swaying with the push and ending back where he was, upright, beside me, our shoulders touching.

The Allan house. We’ve all spent time there, frightened our feet will punch through rotting floors, or a beam come down on our heads. I’ve put my hands on the walls, plaster coming loose, even at the lightest touch, and wondered if I might feel something. A deeper call, or a beating heart. Cecil is an Allan, which means I am, too, twice diluted, but still . . . it’s there.

My mom would’ve been an Allan, if Grandma hadn’t been the last of the Ushers. She’d refused to marry, saying she’d rather see the Usher blood die than have it walk around in a body that didn’t carry the name. Cecil, the youngest of the Allan brothers, had taken her up on the offer, his own ancestral home already a crumbled ruin. When both his brothers died in Vietnam their name went the same way as the house is about to: something to nothing.

“They talked about the animals again,” Ribbit says.

I sigh, the exhalation going all the way down to my feet and scattering the fish that had gathered there.

“Cecil’s got permits for all of them.”

Ribbit stretches, his long arms curling back behind his red hair, shaggy and in need of a cut. “I don’t think it’s the permits that are the problem. People just don’t like knowing there’s a crocodile nearby.”

“It’s an alligator,” I tell him.

“Whatever. Next time a kid gets bit, you know Cecil’s going down.”

I pull my feet out of the water, toes dripping, one finger in Ribbit’s face. “First of all, he didn’t get bit—he was scratched by the orangutan, and second, he was inside the line.”

I repaint the lines every Sunday, a yellow stripe in the ground to mark what’s safe and what’s not. Some mom wanted a better shot of her kid with Rue, and our waiver is worded the way it is for a reason.

“People are stupid,” I say, putting my feet back in the water, letting the coolness slip up my legs as I sink into the pond, wishing it could touch the heat in my chest.

“People are,” he agrees. “Dill Riley coughed at the township meeting, and everybody about lost their shit.”

“Old Dill or Young Dill?” I ask, even though Young Dill probably has a least thirty years on both of us.

“Old Dill.”

“Flu?” I ask, but Ribbit only shrugs. There’s been a nasty strain running through the county, tearing up guts and leaving people wilted and pale in its wake. They gave out flu shots for free at the clinic last week, urging the very young and very old to get vaccinated. I guess that’s how death works, clipping us off at both ends.

“Doesn’t matter if Dill had it or not,” Ribbit says. “We all treated him like he did. He could’ve swung a dead cat with a long tail and not hit anybody. People got far away, fast.”

“Hmm . . . ,” I say, trying to remember if any of our zoo visitors have been coughing, and wondering if they could pass it to the animals. Last thing we need to be is the Amontillado Dead Animal Attractions.