Page 72 of Serial Killer Games

After-School Special

Jake

“Are you kidnapping me? Youcan tell me the truth,” Cat says, blowing her hair out of her face and righting herself in her seat as I peel out of the loading zone.

“I’m not kidnapping you.”

“Oh.” She sounds disappointed, but she rallies bravely. She punches buttons at random on the dash and console. Classical music whines from the car speakers, and my seat starts to massage my lower back.

There’s an unsettling fearlessness here that needs to be addressed. “You shouldn’t be getting in a car with someone if you think they’re kidnapping you.” I slap at the illuminated buttons until my seat settles on the more manageable vibrate setting. “You shouldn’t be going off with strangers.”

She looks at me.

“I’m not a stranger,” I say quickly.

A curt know-it-all nod. “You’re my stepdad.” My stomach whomps again at that word. She clicks another button, butunfortunately it’s not the James Bond emergency ejection button. Her window glides up.

I’m ready for a subject change. “Who was that kid who meowed at you?”

“That was Charlotte. She has a mom and a dad and a sister and a baby brother and a big house and a pet bunny.” I can tell from her tone these facts make Charlotte vile. “I hate her. I hate her so much.”

She has a funny, husky little voice. A frog voice. It suits her. It’s weird, and not what you expect when you look at her. She snoops in the glove compartment and finds a pair of sunglasses. She puts them on.

“Do you hate anyone?”

I think of Andrew. “Yes.”

She sighs happily and leans back in her seat next to me. She’s absurdly small. Her little legs stick out straight in front of her. It occurs to me that she should be in some sort of restraint system, in the back seat.

“A booster?” she says when I try to verbalize this. “I don’t use a booster anymore,” she lies smoothly. “Where are we going?”

“Home?”

“I’m hungry.”

I remember the depleted fridge and the empty milk carton, and when I spot a grocery store, I swerve into the parking lot. Another car blares its horn at us.

Inside, Cat hops on the end of my grocery cart and hitches a ride like this is routine.

“Mom lets me have chocolate milk,” she says when I pick up a carton of two percent.

I ignore her.

“Mom gets the chocolate ones,” she says when I grab the exact same box of oat granola bars off the shelf that Dodi had on her counter.

I ignore her.

“I don’t like you,” she says.

I ignore her.

An elderly shopper dodges to one side to let us pass and smiles—a full-on, eye-crinkling smile. I glance behind me, but no one’s there. This is alarming. No one ever smiles at me like this. “Such a good dad,” she coos. “Giving Mom a break?”

Cat shoots her a disgusted look and I hang a sharp right into the deserted bulk section. When we emerge into the meat section, the sight of disarticulated cow and pig and chicken made tidy and presentable in plastic packaging prompts a question.

“What’s your mom cooking for dinner?”

Nose in the air, eyes on the far distance, Cat ignores me from her perch at the end of the cart. She’s learned from the best.

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