Hidebehind

Seven

I didn't tell Penny or Great Grandma about Grandpa trying to run off. I just didn't have the heart for it. What good would it do, anyhow? It'd just cause Great Grandma to get upset and probably yell at him again, and Penny wouldn't really have anything intelligent to say about it. So I kept it to myself, everything he'd said about something getting someone and nobody believing him about it. Not like I really believed any of what he said—Grandpa was crazy. There was no telling what his brain was making up and what it was remembering.

Once, when Penny and I were still with our mom and dad, my mom told me about Grandpa. "His memory is totally out of whack," mom had explained, and it hadn't meant much to me at the time, because we hardly ever saw him. "Some days, he's fine. Other days, he thinks he's a young man again, and he thinks your Grandma is still alive. Sometimes, he doesn't know who he is at all and gets scared. And sometimes, he just stares off into space, and nobody knows where his brain goes. You see, every person really has a bunch of people living inside him. Every age that each of us lives is inside of us. Most people let those old lives stay in the past, but Grandpa has lost track of time, and so all the old ages think that they're in the present. They keep popping up in Grandpa like they're still the one he's living. He doesn't know which one is the right one for this time."

I had paid half-attention to what she was saying, because it all sounded like a riddle about a far-away person to me. But as I lay in bed the night after my run-in with the running-away teenaged Grandpa, I thought back to her words. It was hard to wrap my brain around the whole "time" thing. Grandpa had always been old, to me. But obviously he had had a life before I knew him; he'd been young. He had a whole lot of past lives, if what my mom said was true. So what I'd seen had been some part of Grandpa's past—the teenaged-him thinking it was his time, when really it wasn't.

Lying in bed that night, I couldn't sleep, because all of it was on my mind. I listened to Penny breathing. She didn't snore or anything; she just breathed loudly. I wondered about her. She was my little sister, after all. I had to keep her safe until mom and dad came back for us. My stomach sank. Why hadn't they come? I didn't want to start school. I wanted to be home, with my friends. With Chris and Andrew and Evan. Even Jason, who annoyed me half the time. I hated this sick joke. Hated it all. I just wanted everything to be the same as it was.

A hard, angry knot formed in my stomach, but it was then that I had a really weird feeling. A feeling as if something were watching me and Penny.

I sat up in bed. The entire house was quiet; the room was dark except for a little night-light glowing on the dresser across from our beds. The night-light was a ceramic owl with holes in its belly, and the light inside came out of the holes, making weird little polka-dot marks on whatever was nearest it. I could see everything, but it was all dim shadows, so something could easily be hiding pretty much anywhere. But then I caught my train of thought. Why would something be watching us? My imagination was running wild. I hadn't been afraid of ghosts or closet-monsters in years. So why did I have this weird feeling?

My breath was louder than Penny's now, as I sat there scanning the room for any movements. There was nothing. No shadows were moving. No blots of darker darkness shifted in the corners of the room. I must've sat there breathing for about five solid minutes while nothing moved, but I didn't feel convinced in my gut. I couldn't help but think we weren't alone, and the thought made my arms shake a little. Staring at the door on the other side of Penny's bed, I pulled my blanket up under my chin, and at that moment, I was certain I caught a movement out of the corner of my right eye.

My head turned so fast I was surprised it didn't snap off my neck, and I found myself focusing on the window next to my bed. If I had seen something move off to my right, it would have gone over there, maybe into the corner, or out the window, which was cracked a bit to let the cool night air in. I was too scared to get out of bed, and yet I made myself do it. It was stupid to be scared . . . just stupid.

I hurried to the window—hurried due to the irrational fear that something might grab me from under the bed—and pulled back the long drapes. There was nothing out there. Just a dark sky above an even darker tree line. The trees on Great Grandma's property, around the edges of the farm, looked thick and numerous in the dark. They forested probably miles around in every direction, except where the driveway led into town. What had Grandpa wanted to go to, out there?

My eyes began to play tricks so that I saw the trees moving, and I turned away to avoid letting my fear balloon. But the minute I turned, a huge black shape lunged up over the foot of my bed, startling me so much I choked on my spit and started coughing.

Turned out, to my sincere relief, that it was just the cat.

Penny rolled over and stared at me, her eyes blinking tiredly. "What's the matter?" she mumbled.

"Nothing!" I barked, calming my coughs. "Just this stupid cat."

I got back under my covers, more happy than I let on that the animal was there. It rubbed all up against my shoulder and purred in spite of my frustration. I softened a smidge and scratched him behind his fluffy head, but I didn't smile at him.

I realized Penny was only half awake when she added, "Tell mom to let me keep Whiskers in our room," and went back to sleep.

I stared at her for a few minutes in the darkness. Her words hit me somewhere down in my guts. Whiskers was a kitten she'd found a long time ago, wandering our old neighborhood. We'd brought it into the house because it was raining and we felt sorry for the animal. We'd tried to keep it hidden, but mom and dad had found out pretty quickly, and we'd gotten to keep it only for a week before mom made us find a new home for it. She didn't like animals. Penny had named it Whiskers, because it was a cat, and she'd lacked imagination.

"I'll tell her when they come back and get us out of here," I muttered, even though I knew Penny was sleeping again. Great Grandma's cat was still rubbing all over me, but I was suddenly grumpy and shoved it off the bed with a "Bug off!"

Then I buried myself in my blankets and shut my eyes tight, hoping to blot out any other tricks the shadows might try to play.