Dani
looked back into the tunnel, took a single step, and stopped. “Thanks for this.”
“Not a problem,” Mary said, “I hate
hearing about how your parents treat you like some secondhand kid all the
time.”
“They’re not my parents, and I’m
totally a secondhand kid, but
thanks,” Dani said. She kept walking forward.
“No,” Mary said, “You’re not a
second hand kid. Sorry that you feel that way, but it’s highly irresponsible of
you to think wrong thoughts and I will not have it.”
Dani chuckled, and it echoed ahead
of them. She kept walking. It was practically a stroll. Mary had to pick up her
own pace to continue. “You don’t know,” Dani said, “But I appreciate the
sympathy.”
“At least you appreciate something,” Mary said, paused, and added
“That came out wrong.”
“Your dad’s laid back about
everything,” Dani said, “Does he even care we’re out here? Shouldn’t he be
worried about you gettin’ abducted by the enemies of the Freemasons, or
whatever?”
“My dad is not a Freemason. He’s a
Strifepalm. And anyway, you’re not supposed to know that, so shush. But he doesn’t care. He knows I’m
already a worrywart.”
“Worrywart,” Dani said.
“Yeah, that’s a word. If you typed
it into a computer, it wouldn’t put a red squiggly line under it or anything,”
Mary said.
“Ok,” Dani said, “I wasn’t debating
whether or not it is, like, actually a word, just FYI, or whatever.”
“And plus, you may not have noticed
while we were there, but he’s at a meeting and so not home,” Mary said, “And, also, should we think of turning
around? We are… pretty far into this tunnel?”
“It’s a long fuckin’ tunnel,” Dani
said, “So long, you’d think that most girls don’t really go walking inside for
a long time. They probably turn back early. Because... of monsters, or, like,
frisky hobos.”
“You are making a really good
argument for turning around there,” Mary said.
“It’s an awful argument and you know it. Anyway, that was my point. The only
argument for turning around is waaah
waaah I’m afraid of things that aren’t real, or do you not see what I’m
saying?”
“But I am afraid of things that aren’t real. I mean, just because
something isn’t real doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be afraid of it.”
“Whaaaat?”
“Look, just, look at these walls.
They are pretty much spotless. Completely smooth, mostly. But have you been
noticing what I have been noticing?” Mary stopped and pointed her flashlight at
an abrasion on the surface of the wall.
“Yeah, someone’s keyed up the place,
so what?” Dani said, “I keyed up some guy’s car once. He was double-parked in a
flashy red convertible. What a reprehensible bastard.”
“Uh, I did not know that, but whatever,” Mary said, “These don’t really look
like marks made by keys to me. They look more like… claw marks.”
Dani chuckled again, “Next, we’re
going to hear a stupid roaring noise, and something raucously tearing down the
hall towards us. Seriously, what is it that makes you so goddamn afraid of
everything?”
“Well,” Mary said, intending to
describe what makes her so goddamn afraid of everything.
“You didn’t want to go over to
David’s that one night, even when he said he’d keep it sober. You didn’t want
to go to the library on my birthday, and then
you didn’t want to go to the bookstore, and while admittedly they’re both in
sketchy parts of town and it was night, that doesn’t mean we’re going to run
into hooligans at places occupied primarily by books.”
“Hey there could be bibliophilic
scoundrels around; you don’t know for sure that there aren’t. That’d be a good
reason for avoiding bookstores.”
“Reeeeally?”
“Yeah, and whatever, let’s keep
going,” Mary said. She paused to look back at the obsidian-ness, wanting to
notice a change in her environment, but detected nothing. Everything was as it
had been before, except Mary felt a pain in her chest that she felt every time
Dani acted contentious for the sake of acting contentious.
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