Glimpse (15 page)

“Hourglass? Wait.” Dad backed away noticeably. “You mean that's a black widow?”

“It is,” Becky said proudly. “And it's my fiftieth specimen, so I have a complete display for camp.”

“Aren't those dangerous?” my dad asked.

Becky beamed. “You bet. Its venom is a powerful neurotoxin.” She looked over at me. “One bite might not kill an adult, but it would sure do a number on a kid.” She tapped the glass. “I'm thinking about training it to attack annoying brothers.”

“Wait, it's alive?” I said. “I thought all your bugs were dead and pinned to a board.” I narrowed my eyes at the jar and saw the little devil leap onto the side of the glass.

“Well, I had to act quickly to catch this one, and I didn't have time to put it right into a kill jar. Obviously, I need to figure out what the best way to move it is.”

“You're going to move it?” I looked at my parents and then back to Becky. “While it's still alive?”

“Dean,” my dad said, “if there's anyone who can handle insects, it's your sister. But Becky, when the time comes to move the little sucker, either Mom or I have to be there.”

“What!?” I sputtered. This was it. This was how it was going to happen. My sister was going to try to move the spider to her kill jar, and it was going to bite her. That's how she was going to die.

“Thank you, Daddy,” Becky said. “But spiders aren't insects. They're arachnids.”

“She's only eleven years old,” I said.

“Why do you care anyway?” Becky glared at me from across the counter. “Half of my specimens were poisonous.”

“I… I don't care, I just—”

“Dean, it's completely normal for you to suddenly feel overprotective of your family right now,” my dad said. “You've been exposed to a series of traumatic incidents, and it's made you hyperaware of threats. This is why it's a good thing you're going to therapy tomorrow.”

“Therapy,” Becky said with a smirk.

When my dad started talking like a therapist, there was no arguing with him. I pursed my lips and nodded. “You're right,” I said. “Sorry, Becky. I'm sure you're going to be careful.” I tugged uncomfortably at my tie. “I'm going to go get changed.”

I walked up the stairs with one thought. That spider was going to bite Becky. I was sure of it. There was only one solution. It had to die.

 

***

 

Killing the spider posed a bigger problem than I expected. Becky didn't let that stupid jar out of her sight the whole night. She even put it on the table while we ate dinner. I couldn't take my eyes off the eight-legged beast. All I wanted to do was lunge across the table, snatch up the jar, and smash it with a sledgehammer. But every time I thought of doing something to it, I remembered Mr. Utlet and how he had still died even though we intervened. I needed to be careful. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that the only way to protect Becky was to put the spider in a kill jar for her. I shivered at the thought. Why did I have to have a sister with such a stupid hobby?

“So what's in a kill jar anyway?” I asked.

Becky looked up from her plate of fried chicken. “You're actually interested?”

“Just curious,” I corrected. My parents looked at me like I was some stranger, so I added, “I'm thinking of making one that's big enough for an eleven-year-old.”

“That's not funny, Dean,” my mom said.

Becky shoved another chunk of chicken into her mouth. “It's just nail polish remover.”

“That's it? Nail polish remover? That's how you kill it?”

“Pretty much. I mean, there's a bit more to it. It's the fumes that actually kill it. But that's mostly it.”

Simple enough. Throw some nail polish remover in a jar, toss in the spider, and presto. Dead spider.

“I was going to do it after dinner,” she added. “I guess you can watch if you want.”

I opened my mouth to object, but my mom cut me off. “Oh no, you're not, young lady.” She picked up the jar and placed it on the ledge behind the sink. “You've killed enough bugs today. The whole place smells like a nail salon. You can do it tomorrow afternoon before we leave—and we'll do it outside.”

Becky shrugged. “Okay. It only takes a couple minutes for them to die, and I still need to make the label for it anyway.”

I smiled. The knot that had been tightening in my stomach ever since the funeral loosened just a smidgen, and I was able to eat a few bites. I couldn't be one hundred percent sure the black widow would kill Becky, but it made the most sense. And now that Becky would have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to kill the spider, it made even more sense. Two twenty-three. I had until then to get rid of that monstrosity. As soon as Becky went to bed, I'd have my chance. Becky would wake up, happy that she didn't have to do the dirty work, and I would be a bit less anxious about everything. It would all work out.

That was the plan anyway.

 

It was after midnight when I finally heard my parents go to bed. But I waited another hour before I crept across my room, grabbed the bottle of nail polish remover that I had taken from my mom's bathroom earlier, and inched into the corridor. I could hear my dad's heavy breathing from behind the door at the end of the hall and decided it was safe to proceed. The floor just outside my room groaned under my weight, and I froze, certain someone would wake up and come to investigate. No one did.

I moved down the carpeted staircase and through the living room into the kitchen. Moonlight filtered through the window above the sink and lit up a newly constructed web inside the glass jar.
It's probably asleep. This is going to be easy
. I grabbed a spare jar from under the sink, plucked up the one the black widow called home, and placed them gently on the kitchen counter.

I dumped half the bottle of nail polish remover into the empty jar. The fumes stung my nose and eyes, and I stood back and listened for noises from upstairs. Nothing.
So far so good
. I turned to the jar with the spider and whispered, “Your turn, you little murderer.” I twisted the lid but kept it pressed firmly in place. The spider hovered on its web, not moving despite being jostled.

I slowly slid the lid off and turned the jar upside down over the kill jar. I'm not entirely sure if the spider just happened to wake up when I tilted its home, or if it had been lying in wait for me to do something stupid… like remove the lid. I'm thinking it was probably lying in wait. Either way, one second it was perched on a strand of webbing, and the next it was on the edge of the jar, inches from my hand, about to escape. I didn't react at first. I just stood there staring dumbly at the little beast—I imagined it staring back, eyeing me as if it were trying to decide where best to sink its fangs. I could almost see the venom dripping from its mouth. I held my breath, placed the kill jar on the counter, and reached my free hand for the lid so I could at least knock it back into its original jar. But when I moved, the spider moved too.

I panicked and fumbled the jar like some butterfingered quarterback. It would have crashed to the floor if I hadn't found my grip at the last second. I snatched the lid from the counter and slapped it back into place. I realized two things when I leaned toward the glass jar to make sure I still had the spider trapped. First, I didn't have the spider—the jar was empty—and second, something was tickling the tip of my ear. I jumped and swatted the side of my head like a flea-infested dog, sending the bottle cap-sized arachnid bouncing across the kitchen table.

A shiver raked up my spine, and I reached for the closest weapon I could find: a fork sitting beside the sink. The spider dodged left, and I lunged. The metal prongs found their mark, impaling the spider's bulbous backside and pinning it to the counter. It twitched twice and then stopped.

Interesting fact: spiders don't go limp when they die. They look pretty much exactly the same as they do when they're alive. So I stood there for a few minutes, half expecting the widow to somehow dislodge the fork from the table and walk away. When I was sure it was dead, I picked up the spider with the fork, used the lip of the jar to pull the monster off, and then replaced the lid. I wiped up the mess I'd made, poured the nail polish remover back into the bottle, and cleaned up the kill jar, which I hadn't needed after all. When I was finished, I returned the jar with the spider-corpse to the ledge behind the sink.

Hopefully, Becky wouldn't see the fork holes. If she did, I thought I could convince her that they'd always been there. Who knows? Maybe some species of spider breathe through their backs like whales or dolphins.

When I was confident the kitchen was in pretty much the same state I had found it in, I snuck back to my room and crawled into bed. Even though it felt as though spiders were crawling all over me, I felt pretty good about myself. The whole kill-the-spider thing hadn't gone entirely as planned, but I'd successfully saved my sister's life. Not that she would ever know it. Just to be safe, I'd stick to her side like a fat kid on a cookie, at least until 2:23. But she definitely would
not
have a death by spider bite.

I closed my eyes and drifted off.

I woke up to a shriek rattling the rafters.

 

I knew the difference between a scared shriek and an angry one, and the one that had woken me definitely sounded angry. Still, my heart was pounding as I rushed downstairs. When I ran to the kitchen and saw Becky, flanked by Mom and Dad, gaping at the dead spider in Becky's palm, I wished I had taken my time.

“
He
did it!” Becky's pale finger pointed at me. “I know he did!”

“Dean?” my dad said, repositioning the glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Do you have any idea how Becky's spider was… er—”

“Murdered!” Becky seethed.

I reviewed the scene calmly. Dad looked at ease, Mom looked horrified, and Becky looked as though she were about to blow up. My eyes landed on the spider sitting on Becky's palm. The holes on its back glared accusingly.

There was no point lying. “Look,” I said. “I was trying to help.”

“See!” Becky jumped up from the table. “I told you he did it.”

“I didn't want you to get bitten, so I tried to make that kill jar thing.”

“You tried to make a kill jar?” Her free hand balled into a fist at her side. “With what? Nails? Argh.” She grabbed a small jar from the counter and shoved it in my face. A wad of cotton sat on the bottom and a disk of cardboard hovered midway, dividing the jar in half. “This is a kill jar! This! You soak the cotton, divide the jar, and the fumes kill the bug. The fumes!” She pointed at me again. “You did it on purpose. You knew I needed fifty specimens, and you made it so I can't use this one.”

“Why can't you use it?” I asked. “Can't you just pin it to the board like that?”

Becky put one hand on her hip. “Hmmm, Ms. Curse,” she squeaked, “you have an interesting specimen. May I ask what method you used to kill it?” She shifted her hands so they were clasped innocently at her waist. “Oh, sure, Mrs. Randson, well, for most of them I used a kill jar, but for that one, I decided that a nail was the best way to go.”

“It was a fork,” I corrected.

“A fork!” She looked at my dad. “He stabbed my spider with a fork! Tell me that's enough to have him committed.” She looked back at me. “You're sick, you know that? Really sick.”

I shrugged helplessly. “It was about to get away.” I looked at my parents. My mom's mouth was hanging open so low I swear the spider would have fit inside easily. But my dad looked as unsurprised as before. “It's not uncommon for kids to take out their aggression on animals or insects, Dean. But it really isn't the best way to deal with the emotions you're having. And it's certainly not fair to the animal.”

“I didn't
want
to stab it,” I protested. “It was going to escape and probably kill someone. I had to stop it from getting away.” I rolled my eyes and looked up at the ceiling. “It's just a stupid spider. Jeez.”

“It's nine, Dean,” my dad said, pointing to the clock. “You should get ready. We don't want to be late for your session.”

“I don't need therapy, Dad. I really think it would be best if I just stayed home today.”

Dad raised an eyebrow. He wasn't buying it. I wondered if I should just tell him. Come clean and everything. He might believe me if I kept it straight to the point:
Dad, I am having visions of people twenty-four hours before they die
.

It only took me a second to imagine that conversation and another second to imagine the scene that would follow while he chased me around the house with restraints. And I would be no good to Becky locked up in the loony bin. Honesty was the best policy most of the time, but not all the time. Not now.

My dad cleared his throat. “I suspect you'll find it a slightly better outlet for your feelings than forking spiders in the middle of the night, son.” I opened my mouth to explain again that it hadn't been my plan to stab the spider, but he held up his hand. “Get ready. We'll leave in half an hour.”

 

***

 

A circle of chairs greeted Colin, Lisa, and me when we walked into the counseling room. Eric Feldman sat beside Rodney and three other kids I knew from school. Eric's head was bowed and he had his arms folded across his chest. Rodney was doing the same. I had a pretty good idea why they were here: fake how badly they were handling the incident, and score some sympathy. It's not like either of them had witnessed their neighbor get shot by the police or gotten caught in some back alley fight. I wanted to kick them both in the head. The others were chattering away to each other as if they were at the mall rather than at grief therapy.

The doctor stood up to greet us when we walked in. He was a rail of a man with thin gray hair and an unnaturally dark beard that made him look as though he actually dyed his facial hair rather than the hair on his head.