Zac woke up once because he was cold, half-lucidly pulling the blanket draped over the back of the couch over himself and burrowing beneath it. The second time he opened his eyes, his heart was pounding and he was sweating. It was a few moments more before he remembered where he was, and even longer before he remembered that if he ran into his parents� room, they wouldn�t be there.
He�d had this dream that there were these two ugly little demons that kind of looked like troll dolls, and they were running around killing people. He was the only person who knew about it, and he felt like he had to stop them, but they kept laughing at him. . . these horrible, high-pitched little laughs that terrified him even more than the demons� terrible antics. At first he kept trying to reason with them, to tell them it was bad to do the things that they were doing. Then they killed a guy right in front of him. . . they popped his head off and threw it in the street, even though he kept telling them the guy was innocent and didn�t deserve to be killed. So he knew he had to fight them. And as soon as he started trying to kill them, they turned into babies. He knew they were demons and he couldn�t let them fool him, but he didn�t think he could hurt them while they were in the shape of babies. But he had to.
And the worst part was, even if he got rid of these demons, there were more coming. Worse ones. And everybody would be mad at him for not stopping them, but there was nothing he could do. No one would understand that, though, and they would all hate him. And then he would be left alone with the demons, who would kill everybody but him. And everybody would die hating him.
It was one of those dreams that jolted through his body and left him unsteady for a long time after he woke up. This was one of those dreams which would definitely prompt him to turn the light on and maybe send him running into his parents� room, or Taylor�s room, even. He could drag a blanket and pillow into Taylor�s room and sleep on the floor without waking his brother up, and the next morning Taylor wouldn�t say anything to him about being too old to sleep in other people�s rooms. Isaac wouldn�t get mad at Zac for doing that, exactly, but he�d probably roll his eyes and say something like �Come on, Zac, quit being a baby.� And if Zac went into his parents� room, his mother, reflexes honed by years of being on call, would always wake up and ask him what he�d been dreaming about, and if it was particularly terrible, they�d go downstairs and have a glass of milk or some hot chocolate or something before going back to sleep, which was always nice. But sometimes he just wanted to be in a room where somebody else was and listen to them breathing and just know that they were there, without anybody making a big deal out of it.
Now, alone in the house, he drew his legs up to his chest and listened to the wind whistling outside. And there were no lights. And there were no people. And he was by himself.
�I am stuck on a Band-Aid, and a Band-Aid�s stuck on-� Dan realized he was singing a commercial jingle and forced himself to stop. He wasn�t stuck on a Band-Aid, he was stuck on the highway, and he had been for about the past four hours. They weren�t letting any traffic go through, because the snow was still falling so heavily. He was really very bored.
Still, the Band-Aid song was better than the Qik-Joe song. He could never remember the entire Qik Joe song. He had a vague idea that it went something like �You better get the Qik Joe so you don�t fall on your-� but that was all he could ever recall. Despite, or perhaps because of his limited recollection, the exact Qik Joe song lyrics had been a source of torment ever since Dan left the house that morning.
The source of this torment was Zac, naturally. Zac sang the song at the while taking a shower, getting ready for school and going out the door that morning. He sang it when he came back in the afternoon and presumably while he was at school, as well. He sang it in public places and when he was by himself and frequently incorporated all or part of it into daily conversation. When confronted with a particular problem for which there was no immediate solution, Zac was likely to respond �better get the Qik Joe,� often in a tone of considerable gravity. Every few weeks, Zac would forget about the Qik Joe song for awhile, but then something would cause him to remember it and he�d start singing it all over again.
And that was what caused Dan to be annoyed. He heard the song a thousand times a day; one would expect to be able to remember the lyrics. But he couldn�t. And it was annoying.
Dan sighed, thinking enviously of his wife and children. They were home, not stuck on the highway.
�I told you, I thought the roads wouldn�t be as bad if we came this way,� Nora told Taylor. �I was wrong, obviously.�
�Maybe it was even worse the other way,� Taylor suggested. He was trying to be optimistic, but it had been his mother�s idea to get on the highway instead of taking the normal way home.
�Maybe.� Nora sighed. �I just hope your father managed to get home.�
�Zac probably went over to the neighbors� or something, if Dad didn�t show up,� Taylor pointed out, trying to be reassuring. He didn�t feel very reassured himself, though.
Nora bit her lip. �I really wish we could at least call home and make sure.�
�Maybe I could get out and go to that 7-11 by the mall,� Taylor suggested. �And then I could try calling him and you could meet me when traffic got moving.� Both he and Nora looked out the window at the thickly falling snow. �I mean, it�s really not far. . .�
�No, I don�t think that�s a good idea,� Nora told him. Which was kind of what Taylor had been hoping she�d say.
Something occured to him. �Where do you think Ike is?�
Nora blinked, startled that she�d taken the answer to this question so much for granted that she hadn�t even bothered to wonder if she might be wrong. �He�s at Jamal�s,� she said. �I think.�
�Seven inches, and the snow is still falling! I�m Pauline Sherman, and this is the eleven o�clock news on your news source, WKRP!� The reporter smiled cheerily. Her shiny red hair did not move in the raging wind. �I�m here live outside our downtown studios, bringing you the latest update on what our meterologist suspects might be the biggest snowstorm of the winter!� The picture onscreen was framed in a blue border emblazoned with snowflakes and the names of schools that had already closed. Isaac and Jamal were paying careful attention to those names.
�Why does it have to be �s�?� Jamal whispered. �Why can�t it start with some earlier letter of the alphabet?�
�Shh!� Isaac bit his lip. �It�s coming.�
�The decisive moment,� Jamal agreed.
�St. Abigail�s Girls Academy: closed,� flashed across the screen, followed by �St. Benjamin School: closed. St. Catherine�s: closed.�
�Why do there have to be so many saints?� Isaac wailed. �Couldn�t they just name schools after bad people?�
�Shut up!� Jamal hissed. �If you make me miss it I�ll kill you!�
�That�s extreme,� Isaac commented.
And then, there it was. �St. Igantius Loyola High School: closed.�
�Yes!� Jamal and Isaac went into full victory mode. They did not have school tomorrow, which was the catalyst for much rejoicing.
�Honestly!� Dr. Lincoln, Jamal�s mother, yelled from the living room. �They cancelled school an hour and a half ago! Why are both of you still screaming every time the name appears onscreen?�
There was a moment of silence. �It is kind of pathetic,� Jamal remarked, sadly.
�Yeah,� Isaac agreed, �but in two years we�ll be in college and we might never have a snow day again.�
�True.� Jamal paused. �That�s really kind of sad.�
�Forty-six bottles of beer on the wall, forty-six bottles of beer-� Zac, in lieu of human companionship, had decided that it was time to be his own best friend. Sitting alone in a silent house gave him the creeps; worse than the deafening lack of noise was his unshakable suspicion that if he was not talking, he�d hear voices in other parts of the house or something. Not very long ago, he was looking through a book of poems by Robert Frost when he was doing a poetry assignment for school. One of the poems in the book had been about a lady who had a skeleton in her attic; the skeleton had originally been in the basement and had come up the stairs one day. The headboard of the lady�s bed was up against the attic door, and the door was nailed shut. Sometimes at night, though, the skeleton would come down the attic stairs and try to get out, running his fingers over the door and scratching his bare skull. The whole entire time he was reading the poem, Zac had wanted to stop reading it, but he hadn�t been able to. It was like those books that had been around when he was a little kid; his brothers used to read them. There was the book of scary stories with the scary pictures and the books of even scarier stories with the really scary pictures. The first book had been Taylor�s favorite book for a long time; it was one of the first books Taylor had ever been able to read aloud and he continued reading it aloud even after he was able to read other books. There were a few different stories in it. One was about a dark, dark room that had a box with a ghost in it, and another was about a lady who always wore a string around her neck and nobody knew why. When she was about to die, she let her husband untie the string and her head fell off.
The other books of scary stories were the ones Isaac read when he was about Zac�s age, and Taylor had liked them too. Some of Zac�s friends were reading them now; they all thought they were the greatest books ever written. Zac still couldn�t even bring himself to look at the pictures, though, even though he wouldn�t have admitted that to anybody, except maybe Taylor. Those were the books that had the gory black and white pictures, the ones that looked as if they had blood on them and all the people were dead. Zac had never even gotten so far as to wonder what the stories were about; the pictures were too terrifying.
And then there was the story about the goblin. It was in an otherwise innocuous book, one of those stories about the little bear who was friends with the little girl and the little duck and lived in the woods with his parents. He usually did things like going to the beach and seeing mermaids, but one time the little bear visited his grandparents and the grandfather told him an incredibly freaky story about a goblin who heard a bump when he was walking in the woods one day, and he got really scared and started running away. And the whole entire time he was running away he head these footsteps behind him, �pit pat, pit pat, pit pat.� And the goblin got more and more scared, until the sound turned out to be his own shoes, which he�d jumped out of when he heard the first noise and had been trying to catch up to him. Zac, at one point in his life, had been horribly fascinated by the story; he used to make his parents read it to him every night. Every time he heard it, he prepared himself for the goblin to be eaten by a monster or something. Even though the story was always the same, he was never reassured when the goblin put his shoes back on and laughed as he skipped away. Zac found the idea of demonic shoes that chased you through the woods just about as scary as blood-thirsty monsters or ghosts in boxes in dark dark rooms. Anyway, it wasn�t the shoes that were scary as much as the initial bump, which was never explained. How did anybody know that the goblin wasn�t being chased by some big monster that was going to eat him up right after the story ended?
Okay; he wasn�t going to think about that now. He couldn�t remember how many bottles of beer he�d been on when he stopped singing the song, and he wasn�t going to go back to singing about ninety-nine again, but he had to do something different. He didn�t know what, though.
He was thinking about those experiments they did with people, the ones where they locked them up alone in a room for as long as they could stand to be by themselves. He couldn�t remember how long the person who stayed in there the longest had managed to stay in. It was eight days or four days or something. Zac was beginning to suspect that he would not be very good at that kind of isolation.
It wasn�t that he was bored. He was almost never bored when left to his own devices, because he was always thinking about something. That was the problem, though. By himself, without anything to do, he couldn�t stop himself from thinking about all the things he could usually distract himself from thinking about. Which was worse than being bored. He had to do something before he went crazy.
�Hello, Zac,� he said to himself.
�Hello,� he replied. �Hello. Hello, everyone.�
�What are your plans for tonight?� he inquired, pleasantly.
�I was thinking that I might spend a quiet evening at home,� he confessed. �You know, I really didn�t want to make any plans because the weather was supposed to be bad.�
�And how are your dear parents and darling brothers?� he inquired.
�They appear to have abandoned me,� Zac observed, sighing sadly.
�Ha ha,� he laughed. �Sucks to be you.�
�It does suck,� Zac agreed. �You think they�d at least call or something.�
�I know!� he exclaimed. �What unfeeling animals!�
�Then again,� Zac pointed out, �The phone isn�t working.�
�That is a point,� Zac agreed.
Dan was somewhere beyond bored and was beginning to be melodramatic. He took out his wallet and studied the pictures of his family. Who, perhaps, he might never see again. Maybe he�d be stuck out here forever. Maybe they�d have to come visit him, every now and again, paying respects to their �dear father� who�d become trapped on the highway back in 1997 and was now stuck in his car, waiting for the traffic to move. At first, they might come quite often, every day or two, until their visits dwindled to twice a week, then once a week, then once a month, and finally they�d only come to see him on holidays, maybe a few days after. Finally, the kids would grow up, and Nora would remarry and . . .
Ever so slightly, the car ahead of Dan began creeping forward.
�I got a busy signal.� Nora hung up the pay phone receiver and shook her head. �The phone line must be out. It has to be.�
�Maybe he�s on the phone,� Taylor suggested.
Nora blinked. She paused. �No,� she decided. �No.�
�He could be,� Taylor pointed out.
�Who could he be on the phone with?� Nora asked, hoping Taylor would know.
Taylor shrugged. �Obviously,� he said, �I�m not home. Obviously, I don�t know.� He was starving. If his mother didn�t buy him food within the next few minutes he was going to collapse from hunger here on the floor and then she�d be sorry. �Maybe it�s a pedophile,� Taylor predicted, darkly.
Nora shook her head. �My God, I hope your father is home.�
Zac was huddled in a blanket in the corner of the couch, hiding. If you didn�t know he was there, you couldn�t see him.
But what if somebody knew he was there? What if someone was lurking behind the couch, waiting to jump on him and-
Suddenly, the lights were on.
Zac blinked.
He waited a moment. Maybe he�d finally driven himself crazy. Maybe all he had done was convince himself the lights were on, even though they weren�t.
The lights stayed on.
He smiled.
�Is that what you wanted?� Nora asked Taylor. They were sitting in the car outside the 7-11 and she was a bit too stunned to drive.
He nodded. �Yep. Why?�
�It�s . . .� Nora shook her head. �Ice cream.�
�I got hot chocolate, too,� Taylor pointed out.
�Look at all the snow!� Nora exclaimed. �Ice cream?�
Taylor studied his container of Ben and Jerry�s ice cream. It was the kind with brownies in it. Why did his mother think it was strange to eat ice cream when it was snowing?
�You want some?� he asked.
Nora laughed, rolling her eyes. �Sure, why not?�
�I started out in this business as an unknown kid,� Zac proclaimed to an invisible audience. �I owe my success entirely to the wonderful director who took a chance and cast me in his film.�
This was Zac�s Oscar acceptance speech. He also had a used car dealer of the year acceptance speech, a Nobel peace prize acceptance speech, and a speech he planned to give were he ever nominated for president of the United States. Zac had even more speeches; he felt that it was good to have a few on hand in case he ever had to employ them.
Now, he decided to give his eulogy. It wasn�t a eulogy for himself, it was the eulogy he planned to give were he ever called upon to give a eulogy. Personally, he found it very moving.
�We are gathered here today in memory of a very special individual,� Zac began. �A person who has touched all of our lives in innumerable ways. . . touched, yes, and forever changed the people we are.�
There came the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. Zac jumped off the couch, where he had been standing, and ran to unlock the back door.
He paused before he did it, though. Maybe he should be mad that his entire family had forgotten about him. He did have every right to be mad. Unless something terrible had happened, and he still wasn�t allowing himself to believe that.
But, no. Here was his father opening the back door, so he had at least one surviving parent. And then the phone rang.
�So your mother is on her way home.� Dan sat at the kitchen table eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was the same one Zac had left out for the snow gods that morning. �And Ike didn�t call?�
Zac rolled his eyes. �He�s fine. I�m the one you guys left here in the dark.� He was deeply relieved not to be alone in the dark anymore, but he wasn�t going to let his parents off the hook that easily.
�Sorry,� Dan apologized.
�You were stuck on the highway that long?� Zac asked.
�Indeed I was,� Dan confirmed. �Alone,� he added, grinning. �In the dark.�
Zac thought about this. �It isn�t that bad,� he admitted.
�Were you scared?� Dan inquired.
�Of course not!� Zac shook his head, firmly. What did his family think he was, a baby? Of course he hadn�t been scared. He�d told his mother and father and Taylor that already.
�You were too,� Isaac scoffed.
�Was not.� Zac folded his arms across his chest, scowling. �Was not!�
�Yeah, okay,� Isaac agreed. Hazily, he started up the stairs to his bedroom. He and Jamal, free from school, had somehow ended up watching an entire Poltergeist marathon on TV last night. Aside from the fact that he now wanted to get his braces off for reasons that were more than just cosmetic, he also intended to go to sleep for a very long time. And even though Zac was lying, there was no use arguing with him.
Zac stamped his foot on the floor. �Was not!�