Zac came straight home after school. He locked the front door and he locked the back door. He even checked to see if the door in the dining room that led out to the front porch was locked, even though it almost always was, in the winter. He looked at the stove, but he didn�t touch it. �I am not allowed to use you,� he told it, because there was nobody else to talk to.
During the day, the sky had darkened with heavy gray clouds; the temperature had dropped and every kid in Zac�s class had been saying it was going to snow. Except Zac. He was trying to be mature now that he had an adult responsibility. He wasn�t going to get all excited about babyish things, like snow. Anyway, it wasn�t going to snow. It just looked like it was going to snow so that he�d get his hopes up that the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he�d left for the snow gods might be working. He�d put it in a plastic bag so that it wouldn�t get all hard and gross by the end of the day.
Feeling very dutiful, he sat at the table and began to do his homework. Spelling words. Every time he turned around, there were more and more spelling words. And when he looked up at the window? He didn�t look up at the window. It was no use prolonging the torture. He might wish for snow, but it would not come.
It was getting dark already, though. He should probably turn the light on. In fact, yeah he would. And he would get a glass of milk, too. And. . . wait.
Wait.
Wait!
Snow?
No way!
But it was true. It was snowing. For real.
It was snowing, and the snow was actually sticking, and in the half an hour it had taken him to do his spelling words, the entire ground had been blanketed in white. Snow!
His first impulse was to run outside and dance around the backyard, his arms outstretched and his face lifted toward the heavens. It was snow and it was sticking and. . . God had heard his pleas!
Only maybe, though. Maybe it would have snowed anyway. Zac had to admit that he had some doubt in his ability to control the weather.
But even if he couldn�t control the weather, he could still celebrate if it did something he liked. And snow was pretty much his favorite kind of weather. Even though it wasn�t really as much fun when you had to play in it all by yourself.
Oh, well. There wasn�t really that much snow yet. Which was why he could take a snow shovel out of the garage and push it through the yard, so the letters of his name showed as patches of grass surrounded by snow. He wondered how long it would take for his handiwork to be covered up. By the looks of things, not very long.
He went back into the house and glanced at the clock over the stove. It was only 4:00, not time for anybody to be home yet. But the bad thing was. . .
Uh-oh. The one bad thing about snow was that the roads got really icy and slippery. Zac hoped the rest of his family would get home before that happened. Because it really wasn�t good for people to drive in that. Hopefully, his father had already gotten out of New York.
Oh, well. He wouldn�t think about that, for the time being. Instead, he�d just watch TV and hope that everyone would be okay.
It would, he thought to himself. It would.
Then the lights went out and the TV switched off. All by themselves. Zac swallowed. This was not good. He ran into the living room and looked out the window at the house across the street. No lights were on out there, either, and the streetlight was off, too. There was no power anywhere.
Zac swallowed again, wondering what to do next. Page his mother, probably. Even if she couldn�t leave work right away, she would know he was sitting here in the dark. And at least somebody else would know that he was alone in pitch black darkness. He stood up and crept into the kitchen, gently lifting the phone off the hook. It was dead.
Zac stood there for a moment with the phone in his hand. He was here, by himself, in the dark. And no one knew. It wasn�t a good feeling.
He thought about old fashioned people for a minute. Hadn�t he read that they used to tie ropes around themselves when there was a big snowstorm and they had to go out to the barn to milk the cows? Couldn�t he tie a rope around himself and go over to a neighbors� house or something?
Instantly, the rational part of his mind told him that he couldn�t. And the irrational part of his mind remembered that he didn�t have any rope. Anyway, he had four fish. And he didn�t want to abandon them.
Okay, Zac admitted to himself. It wasn�t really that dark yet. . . dark enough to have lights on, but light enough so that everything was gray and shadowy. It was still light enough to run upstairs without feeling scared that something was going to jump out of a closet at you. He could still get his flashlights.
Nobody knew about Zac�s flashlights, because he had never told anybody about them. He had two reasons for doing this. The first was because, in the Conway house, a working flashlight was a rare commodity and would probably be stolen the first time somebody wanted to play flashlight tag or read under the covers or something. That was Zac�s practical reason for hiding his flashlights. But the other reason really wasn�t practical.
Because Zac didn�t tell many people this, although naturally his family knew it. But he slept with the closet light on. Probably most kids in fifth grade didn�t do that any more. But he did. A few times, embarassed that he couldn�t sleep unless the light was on, he�d tried turning it off. But then he�d lie in bed, feeling increasingly terrified, until he worked up the courage to stick one arm out from under the covers and switch the bedside light on. Then he�d have to ease out from where he�d been hiding beneath the blankets, prepared for something to jump on top of him, even though the light was on. And then he�d have to check beneath the bed to make sure there was nothing hiding there before he could put his feet on the floor. He�d take a deep breath before opening the closet door, because, for all he knew, there could be something in the closet. And then, when he finally opened the closet door and turned the light on, he�d dash back across the room as fast as he could and leap under the covers. Even when he managed to get the closet light on after trying to sleep with it off, a lot of times Zac ended up sleeping with the bedside light on, too.
The flashlights he kept as insurance, in case the power went off or something. And if he had to get up to go to the bathroom, he�d take a flashlight with him. If it were up to Zac, he would keep the hallway and bathroom lights on, but that didn�t work past a certain hour of the night. That was because everybody else in his family could only go to sleep in the dark. And because they all went to bed later, he was already asleep when they turned the lights off. Therefore, he had to compromise. That was why he had flashlights.
He had two flashlights hidden between his headboard and the wall, two on the top shelf of his closet and three in his sock drawer, hidden in one of his socks. The ones in the drawer were just little penlights; the kind the drug companies gave his mother and she used for shining in people�s eyes and looking in their mouths and stuff. They had little clips so you could wear them on your shirt. The ones behind the bed were the bigger plastic kind; one was purple and one was blue. They were the ones he used when he had to walk around in the dark; they gave you just enough light to see where you were going, but they wouldn�t disturb anyone.
The flashlights in the closet were another story; they were mega flashlights. Well, the one was, anyway. It was so heavy that Zac had to wrap his arm around it and clutch it to his chest in order to carry it downstairs with the other flashlights. That one was from Taylor. He�d gotten it for Zac on his brother�s tenth birthday, and Zac knew why.
It was because Taylor was the biggest flashlight-stealer in the house. If Taylor knew you had a flashlight, sooner or later it would disappear. That was because Taylor was the one who mostly read under the covers at night when he was supposed to be asleep. He was also the kind of person who was well-aquainted with what everybody else had in their rooms. He didn�t usually notice if people took his stuff; and it didn�t entirely occur to him that anybody else would mind if he borrowed something of theirs without asking.
And mostly, Zac probably wouldn�t have minded that much. After all, he did borrow Taylor�s stuff all the time, and he almost never asked. But he did mind when Taylor stole his flashlight. Because back then, he�d only been nine, and he�d only had three flashlights. And two of them were the little tiny ones that weren�t very good. And Taylor took his big one, which wasn�t very big, but was still the biggest.
So that was why Zac had gotten mad when he couldn�t find his flashlight. And he knew Taylor was the one who�d taken it. And he�d gotten really, really mad. Mad enough that it was impressive and Taylor actually paid attention to him.
�Why do you care so much about a flashlight?� Taylor had wanted to know.
�Because,� Zac said, �I need it!�
And then Taylor had looked at him for a minute, as if he were about to ask why and then thought better of it. �Okay,� he said, finally. And then he�d given Zac the flashlight back and neither of them had said anything about flashlights anymore. But on Zac�s birthday, Taylor had given him the biggest flashlight he could afford. It was one of the biggest flashlights Home Depot sold. It was massive and huge, and Zac had even given it a name. He called it Big Flashlight.
Now, sitting in semi darkness, Zac thanked Taylor all over again for the gift of Big Flashlight. Then something else occured to him. If the power was out, the heat was off. So if it got too cold, he and the fish might all freeze to death.
Zac didn�t think he was supposed to light a fire if his parents weren�t home. But he also didn�t think his parents would be happy if he froze to death. And so Zac decided he would have to build a fire in the fireplace. It was his only chance for survival.
Zac had a blazing fire going in the fireplace and was roasting a hot dog over it, feeling very resourceful indeed. There was only one problem with all this self-sufficiency, and this was that none of his family was around to see how very, very capable he was. Because he was the youngest, not much was generally required of him. A lot of the time, people did things for him even if he didn�t want them to do them. Therefore, no one in his family was really able to appreciate the fact that he was a fully functioning human being. He could make his own fire and cook his own dinner. . . hey, almost like he was a caveman! But if he were a caveman, he�d probably have slaughtered the animal the hot dog came from first, and made himself an outfit out of it�s skin. And he would be living in a cave, too. And cavemen wouldn�t have goldfish.
Zac had four goldfish. They swam in a big bowl, with rocks on the bottom and some wavy green plastic plants stuck in it. He�d had four goldfish ever since he was five; whenever one died, he�d replace it with a new one. All of the goldfish he�d ever owned had had the same names; he was never really sure which one was which. Their names were Fluffy, Sophie, Blitzen and Schoepenhaur. He�d called them that because those were the names of Oscar the Grouch�s elephants that lived with him on Sesame Street. Schoepenhauer was Zac�s favorite name. He�d taken their bowl downstairs so that they wouldn�t freeze to death or anything upstairs. He was careful, however, not to set them so close to the fire that they got hot. He had a lot of responsibility, taking care of his fish. And he was good at it. Everybody else�s goldfish only lived for a couple of weeks, and his always lived much longer.
It was hard to tell how much time was going by. By now, it was pitch black outside and no one in his family had gotten home yet. What if they never came back? He kept trying not to think about that, but the thought was never far from his mind. If that happened, his goldfish would have to be his family, he decided. But goldfish were no substitute for real people.
Okay. He wouldn�t worry anymore. If he got started thinking about his life as an abandoned orphan without any brothers, he would start half-believing that everyone in his family was dead somewhere and then he�d feel all upset before he even knew whether or not he had anything to be upset about. And that wouldn�t be constructive.
He lay on the couch and stared into the fire for awhile. It was better than sitting at the window and looking out to see how deep the snow was getting, which was his other option. The heat of the fire made him feel tired, though. He tried not to fall asleep, but it was a useless struggle.