Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift Read Free Page A

planned on making use of it as long as I could.
    I hid the brooch in the drawer after I saw Gramma turning it over in her hands, mumbling something, when I came home from the grocery store with my mom a couple of days ago. If she lost it, it would be gone forever so I hid it in a place where not just anyone would be able to pick it up and touch it.
    I looked at the phone sitting on the nightstand and wanted to call Aunt Lou, but weighed the consequences. My parents would not be happy with the long-distance phone charges all just to say that I was scared of a thunderstorm.
    It wouldn’t take long for them to come back with the pizza. Maybe thirty minutes? The room already was getting stuffy from the humidity of the storm. I’d have to turn on the fan in the main room. So, I had a thirty-minute problem. Just wait this out. I pinned the brooch to my pajama shirt and looked down it. It was so heavy that it sagged and pulled the shirt down a little. I ran my fingers along its ridges. This was the most I could get from Aunt Lou for now.
    I went back to the living room.
    “You’re fine with me, Mouse,” Gramma said as I went back into the room. She had moved and she was facing toward me.
    I kept my mouth shut but shied away from her, edging around the room against the ridges of the wood paneling toward the windows. Mom liked the windows and the front side of the house was full of them. Gramma wanted to be able to look out from the La-Z-Boy recliner that sat off near the side right in arm’s length of the bookcase. The sofa was butted up right against the windows. I never did understand why she wanted to look out over the asphalt or see the occasional drunk staggering toward his car.
    “Come sit here,” Gramma said. “We can make the time go faster until your parents get back.”
    But I hung back. You know that kindly grandmother that folks talk about? I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my grandmother. My hand went over my brooch and then sat down next to her, her scent of Ben Gay and convenience store rose lotion stifling my nose.
    “Can I open a window?” I asked
    “It’s windy and gusty out there. You don’t want the water to get in the house.”
    “Just a little bit?”
    “OK,” she said and then she patted me on the head. My hair was still in French braids one on each side so my mom didn’t have to do my hair that much, just once every two or three days. “but be careful.”
    I nodded and then reached behind us, opened the latch and shoved the window open. A bedraggled soul was walking along the sidewalk in front of the house. Probably someone from the bar up the street. It was hard to tell with the sheets of rain pouring down.
    The air circulated in the room. “That is better,” she said.
    That guy on the sidewalk. There was just something about him I didn’t like. “Gramma, can we turn off the porch lights?”
    “Keep them on,” she said. The game show “Tic Tac Dough” was on. I glanced at the clock. Just twenty-five minutes left.
    The cool air came into the room, but with it also came the pin drops of rain against my neck. Gramma hugged me to her shoulders. She might have been fluffy, but she was brittle and held me lightly. I pulled away as much as I could so that I could breathe.
    The doorbell rang. I looked out and saw it was that same soaked soul I’d seen walking on the sidewalk, now standing on our porch. Which meant that he had gotten from the street to the porch and walked up the steps. I could see him clearly now underneath the porch lights. His bald head contained beads of rain. His white t-shirt was soaked, pressed against his skin. The studded leather jacket and the scuffed combat boots labeled him as a regular to the neighborhood, but the type of person I hadn’t gotten used to seeing yet. My old world had been full of plaid shirts and denim overalls.
    Gramma released my shoulders, pulling herself up with her cane.
    “Don’t answer it,” I said.
    “It’s OK,” she