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“Kim, Kim, Kimmy!”
She waves to me and comes down the steps, one by one, a blanket dragging behind her. Even from here, across the street, I can tell the Bad Thing is with her. I trot over anyway. I’m not afraid.
“I can’t play today,” Kimmy says. So we sit together on the front steps in the shade.
The Bad Thing smells like those bottles and cans in the back of the garage. Its sharp tang rifles up my nose and makes me snuffle. I try to ignore it. It’s still Kimmy underneath the smell, and she’s my friend.
Kimmy is real quiet today, so I stay quiet too. I can hear the mailman’s truck at the end of the street. And the refrigerator door opening inside the house. Maybe I’ll get a peanut butter sandwich?
It’s a hot day and her little-girl hands feel good and cold on my back. We see a gray squirrel skitter across the sidewalk. I look at her, hoping. But she says, “No, Jake.”
Chasing squirrels used to be our favorite game. Before the Bad Thing came. Once I caught a slow one by the tip of its tail. The fur was thin and I could feel the crunchy bones underneath its skin and Kimmy screamed high and loud, so I let it go.
She’s shivering now, and curling the blanket around her. I scoot closer. It’s the same blanket she draped over the table in the backyard last summer. We hid underneath all day and she gave me half a sandwich. It stuck to the roof of my mouth. She used to tease me, “Want more peanut butter, Jake?”
Kimmy’s whimpering because the Bad Thing is making her hurt again. She lays down on the porch with the blanket. To cheer her up, I poke around the bushes by the steps where we found the baby bunny. She says, “No bunny today, Jake.”
Her mom opens the screen door and I look to see if she has peanut butter. She doesn’t. She tells me, “Go home now, Jake. It’s time for Kim to come inside.” I turn to leave, but Kimmy calls for me. She hugs me a long time, and I can feel the Bad Thing all around her. It feels stronger than she does.
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I haven’t seen Kimmy for a while. I sit on her porch almost every day, but she doesn’t come out, even though I keep calling, “Kim, Kim, Kimmy!”
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Today there are strangers on her porch. They’re dressed in black. They stare at me and whisper my name, but I don’t care. I sit on the steps and wait. Her mom opens the screen door and I ask, “Where’s Kimmy?”
She kneels down next to me so I can see her eyes, and she says the words real slow so I can understand. “Kimmy is gone, Jake. She can’t ever play with you again. Be a good dog and go home.”
“Kim, Kim, Kimmy!”
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