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She put the basket down and began to sort the whites from the coloreds when she heard a low whining sound. She turned to see Matty, poised . . . |
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Still nothing. He was frozen in that weird position on the floor, his eyes wide and fixed someplace under the table. |
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She squatted beside him. "Matty, damn it, answer me." |
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Suddenly from underneath, the cat made a loud hiss, then bolted out from the back and ran under Calvin's SolarFlex bench. Her tail was fat, her ears back and her eyes wide. She hunched under the easel, looking at Matty and making a loud, lugubrious groan. The next moment she had shot up the stairs. |
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"What's her problem?" Terry began, but stopped short. |
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Matty's eyes were trained on the top of the stairs, his mouth slightly open. He looked . . . what? Entranced? At first she thought he was playacting, doing one of his movie-creeps impressions. But then she noticed his eyes. They were large and glassy, his light brown irises all pupils. He was breathing out of his mouthno, more like panting. |
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At that same moment she heard the screen door slap shut as Daisy pushed her way out. And the spell was broken. |
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Matty got to his feet and ran up the stairs. In a moment, the back door slammed again and he was gone, leaving Terry in the cellar trembling in the realization that her twelve-year-old son looked stoned. |
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For the rest of the morning Terry wondered grimly if Matty had used the cat as a pretext to go down and take something. But that didn't explain Daisy's strange fright . . . |
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By ten o'clock she was so distraught that she called Mrs. De-Laura, Matty's teacher, to ask if he seemed all right. Her first comment was on the faint purple mark under his eye, no doubt speculating on child abuse. Terry told her about the fight, the reason, in |
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