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19.
When Jimmy Mendez awoke, his mouth tasted terrible. He was thirsty, and had a headache. He didn't know where he was, but that wasn't the worst of it. He just couldn't quite remember what the worst of it was.
As he sat up, squinting in foggy dawnlight, he remembered this much: scared to death, he'd gotten his blanket, his bear, and a box of cookies, and locked himself in mom's car. In the middle of the night he'd woken up, afraid to go into the house, and crawled along the little sidewalk to the garden faucet. There he'd let water drip quietly into his cupped palms, and he'd drunk from that. The water had tasted flat, but cold and fresh.
Now he just wanted to be with mom. He sprinted from the car, down the gravel walk, and up the concrete side stairs. The door was unlocked, and he pushed into the house. It wasn't like he'd expected. Usually in the mornings, mom had the radio on, and the house smelled of toast and coffee while she hustled about cleaning and humming to herself. Now there was this gloomy silence. It was as if nobody were alive in the house.
Could they still be sleeping? Of course. It was early. He sprinted down the carpeted hallway, falling over some slippers in the dark, but quickly getting up unhurt. He burst into the bedroom and just then he remembered—
But the bed was empty. There was a long dark-brown thing by the baseboard, about as long as a small adult. It looked like a long wooden plank all rotten and full of holes,and frazzled at the ends. Its sides weren't smooth, but wavy, with some powder on them. Actually, it was like a board made out of layers, like thin sheets in one of those crumbly layer pies that mom sometimes made. Looking closer, he thought he could see a long curve in this thing. That was it. It the faintest curve to it, as if it was somehow female. He stared closer, wide-eyed. It smelled like mushrooms, and when he touched it with one tentative fingertip, it was dry but kind of springy or squishy like soggy newspaper…
"Jimmy?"
He whirled.
"We have things to do today."
Mom stood in the doorway. Or rather, the person standing there looked exactly like mom, except her eyes were totally lacking in love. He could sense the cold about her, like at the bottom of the sea where no sunlight ever penetrates. If he let her, she would suck the life out of him. He somehow sensed it; he knew this deep down. And dad? Maybe—he looked at the fungus thing, then at mom, and at the dusty stain on the carpet beside the fungus thing—somehow, the thing that had taken dad's soul away now had taken mom away too.
The person who wasn't mom stepped into the room and said in a perfectly normal voice, but one that had no love in it—it didn't even seem to recognize him as her son—"Jimmy, what would you like to eat?"
He waited until it cleared the doorway. Pretending to approach it, he broke suddenly and ran out the door, down the hall, and out into the street bawling, blinded by tears.
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