"Did it? Make life more diverting," Doug reminded him.
Stephin didn’t answer. Doug glanced around at the small room, at the books and newspapers and dry furniture. There was a bell jar with a pocket watch inside. There was a small tin globe of the moon next to a cast-iron bank shaped like a slave holding a slice of watermelon. There was a picture frame on the floor, leaning against the wall. Behind the glass was something like a bouquet of dried flowers but fashioned from loops and braids of a fine brown thread.
"It’s made from human hair," said Stephin. Doug frowned and leaned closer, and Stephin added, "It seemed like a good idea in the nineteenth century. So. You’ve told a friend about your affliction. Jay, was it?"
Doug flinched. His stomach lurched. Had he mentioned Jay? He had. What happened now? Did they fight? Did Doug have to fight to protect his friend?
"I frankly consider such complications unavoidable," said Stephin. "Of course you’ve told someone — How can one bear this half life alone? For your sake I hope you’ve chosen well. Would you like to try some peyote?"
"The rest of the hour went a lot like that," Doug reported to Jay afterward. The two boys sat heavily on Jay’s backyard swing set, not swinging. "Less like school than like a school dream — you know: hazy, difficult to follow, full of weird surprises and wardrobe choices." When Doug had finally emerged, blinking, into the West Philadelphia afternoon, it had been like waking, and the memories of Stephin David faded in the sun. They’d agreed to meet again on Monday.
"Did you ask any of our questions?" said Jay. "Did you ask how to turn into a bat?"
"Sort of. He said if I really wanted all that kind of stuff to happen, it would probably just happen. It would happen when I needed it to."
"Like, by instinct," Jay offered.
"Yeah. He said I’d change whether I wanted to or not."
Doug squinted up at the deck, where Jay’s sister, Pamela, had just emerged from the kitchen door holding a watering can. She squinted down at the swings.
"Shouldn’t one of you be pushing the other?" she called out. "That’s how it always is with you young lovers, isn’t it?"
On their best days Pam approached Doug as if he were a kind of hereditary illness — just something unpleasant she had to deal with because of family, like eczema. On their worst days, they had a sort of troll-hobbit relationship.
"I can come push you off the deck if you like," Doug answered.
Jay sighed. "Can you guys maybe not fight?"
Pamela was six feet tall and curly haired and now, in light of Friday night’s movie, looked a little like Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Doug tried not to imagine her in fishnets, but you can’t really try not to imagine somebody in fishnets. And now Doug’s imagination was a slideshow of pornographic images starring himself and Pamela. The harder he tried to swap her out with a swimsuit model or something, the more his sweaty boy mind insisted on Pamela. Is this what being a teenager meant, that his fantasy life wasn’t even his own? Pamela did have one thing going for her — a big rack. Maybe that was two things. Okay, three — he supposed she was smart.
A year or two ago Doug and his friend Stuart got into a debate over whether Pamela was hot. Stuart said she was because of her tits, and Doug said that’s sexist, you can’t think a girl’s hot just because of bra size if she’s otherwise ugly, and then Jay overheard and shouted, "HOW IS IT NOT SEXIST TO CALL HER UGLY AND, BESIDES, SHE’S NOT UGLY," and then he started crying. It had been a really fantastic afternoon.
The secret key to their relationship was that Pamela had once kissed Doug while their mothers played tennis. When he was six and she seven. Neither of them ever referred to it directly, though when cornered, she still occasionally blamed him for giving her lice.
Now she stepped down into the yard with her watering can, the potted plants apparently forgotten, and silently studied Doug like his face was a chessboard. "You need more sun, you know," she said.
As if, thought Doug.
"You’re never going to grow any taller, hiding under that poncho all the time. Here, I’ll water you."
She tipped the can over his ponchoed head. His ears filled with the spatter of water on plastic. It didn’t get him very wet, but in his haste to escape he fell backward over the rubber swing.
"Gah — dammit!"
Pamela howled. Beside them, Jay said quietly, "Pam, Doug is my guest."
"Yeah!" said Doug once he was back on his feet. His eyes burned. He hoped Pam could feel the intensity of his stare, the conviction behind his hatred. "Jay’s guest! So why don’t you show a little hospitality, huh?"
Pamela wore an odd look.
"Just…fuckin’…fix me a lemonade and leave us alone," he told her.
She held his gaze for a moment, then walked off without a word.
"Well…good. Whatever," said Doug as he watched Pam climb back onto the deck. The swing set creaked as he settled again in the seat next to Jay.
Jay said, "Sorry."
"Forget about it," Doug answered. "So what are you doing for the rest of today?"
"I dunno. I thought Cat might call about changing her operating system."
"Yeah. Like that’s really gonna happen."
The kitchen door opened again. Pamela stepped through it, crossed the deck, came down the stairs, and handed Doug a glass of lemonade. She looked pained. Then she walked off again and reentered the house.
Doug frowned at his lemonade. Jay frowned at Doug.
"Did you just hypnotize my sister?"
"HELLO?"
"Hi, is this…Mike Storch?"
"Speaking."
"Oh, hi. My name’s Chris Spears, I’m a marketing assistant with Warner Brothers. I work with DC Comics, mostly, and I—"
"Oh! Great, thank you for calling me. Did you…"
"Yeah, I had a look at that police sketch of the kid you faxed to our offices. Someone put it up in the break room."
"I should stop you right there, Chris, and say that it’s not actually a police sketch. It was done by a police sketch artist, but I am not with any law enforcement organization."
"Oh. Well, is this kid in trouble or something?"
"No, probably not. Some people are looking for him, is all. Did you see him at the San Diego Con?"
"Yeah, I’m certain of it. I moderated this DC editors panel, and we gave away a couple prizes before the show. The kid tried to win the prizes, made a real ass of himself, if you ask me."
"Okay. That’s something. You’re sure it was him?"
"Pretty sure. He looked like the sketch, and the height and clothes are right, and…you say something here about strange behavior? Aversion to sunlight?"
"Yeah."