Bobbie can hear him in the kitchen, suddenly and inexplicably swearing at the garbage disposal. “Why are you breaking now?” he yells at it, as if it can answer.

  Now Bobbie is nervous. “Do you think you should do work on me?” She emphasizes the word “work” so he knows what she’s asking.

  “Work? No work. There’s no time!” He runs upstairs.

  They arrive early, right before the sun sets.

  Nancy knocks, again, in that way Bobbie recognizes. It makes Bobbie want to smile, though she doesn’t. She’s too nervous to remember which muscles she has to move.

  She hobbles to the door, but her dad charges in front of her to get to it, first. He’s changed into a collared, light blue shirt, but his buttons are wrong. They aren’t aligned with the right holes.

  “Nancy!” he shouts as he throws open the door.

  Laughter. She actually laughs at Bobbie’s father. “Wow, Rob. Bit too much coffee today?” She reaches forward and pulls him into a hug.

  Bobbie watches. On TV, when a hug is a little too long, that means the people doing the hug are interested in dating each other. How long is a too-long hug in real life?

  “I’m so sorry,” says Nancy, stepping inside, “but Travis can’t come today. He’s decided to be with his father this weekend.” She shrugs out of her camel jacket. Bobbie watches, fascinated, as her father takes it and hangs it up in the closet. He does it like they have guests all the time.

  “That’s good!” Her father stops. “I mean, not good that we won’t see him. Good that he’s with his father.” He pauses again. “It’s good if you think that’s good, I mean.”

  Nancy snickers and smacks her father on the arm, lightly. “I get what you mean. You don’t have to overthink it. And his dad’s fine. We’re still friends and all that. Travis is the one who’s trouble.” She shifts her attention to Bobbie. “Now. How are you?”

  Bobbie nods.

  Behind Nancy, her father motions quickly at his mouth and throat.

  Bobbie realizes she should also probably say something. “I’m fine.”

  “That’s great!” A dimple appears in Nancy’s cheek as she smiles.

  Please like me, Bobbie thinks. I don’t know what you and my dad think about each other, but you have to like me.

  “Let’s sit down,” says her father and begins to walk to the kitchen and the dining room table.

  Nancy doesn’t see him go in that direction. Instead, she sits on the couch. She pats the place next to her and looks at Bobbie. “Why don’t you tell me all about yourself?”

  “Like what?” Bobbie has to remind herself to sit next to Nancy carefully, because one time, she threw herself down on the couch in a dramatic slouch, and one of the legs broke.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Nancy is wearing perfume. Or maybe it’s the smell of her shampoo. Whatever it is, Bobbie thinks it’s better than the way Blow Pops taste or the way sheets feel after you pull them out of the dryer. “Like, are you really named after your father?”

  Bobbie shrugs one shoulder. “I guess.”

  Nancy raises her eyebrow at her father and then turns her attention back to Bobbie. “What do you like to do?”

  “Watch movies.”

  “What are your favorites?”

  Bobbie’s mind goes blank. “Ones with dancing, I think.”

  “Like musicals? Oh, I used to love The Music Man! You’d probably think it was a bit sexist, I guess, but the songs are just so fun.”

  “I’ve seen that.” Bobbie looks at her knees and sings her favorite line from, “Goodnight, My Someone.” She doesn’t look at Nancy, but she makes sure to sing clear and loud, like they do on TV. When she looks up, Nancy’s mouth is open.

  “You can really sing,” she manages. “You have such a nice voice!”

  Bobbie wonders if she’s saying that because that’s what she thinks or if she’s too surprised Bobbie started singing at all to say anything else. She glances over at her dad, standing at the kitchen door.

  His face is carefully blank. “She’s real good. She sings in the shower all the time.”

  “That’s what people do,” says Bobbie, feeling her embarrassment rise like a wave. Then she wonders if that is what people do, because she knows so much on TV isn’t real. So she turns back to Nancy. “Right?”

  Nancy’s eyes crinkle the way her dad does when he smiles. “I do. If people try really hard, they might even sing as well as you just did.”

  And Bobbie knows she’s telling the truth. If there was any danger of Nancy not liking her, it’s evaporated. On the inside, she feels light, like there’s air where her bones should be.

  There’s another knock at the door. It’s louder, this time, and rather than wait for someone to answer the door, the person on the other side opens it and wobbles in. It’s already unlocked, after all.

  The person who comes in is shorter and younger than her father but recognizably a man. He’s also thinner, his cheekbones poking out of his hungry face. Handsome. He has a lazy smile. When he sees Nancy, the smiles stretches wider. “Mom,” he says and stumbles forward, landing on the carpeted floor in a kneel. For a moment, he reminds Bobbie of Robin Hood about to be knighted in the Disney movie before he’s revealed to be a fraud, but no one’s holding a sword and he doesn’t get up from the ground.

  Nancy inhales sharply and stands. “Travis.”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” he says, trying to get up. He falls down, instead, and giggles. “I made it. I told you I’d make it.”

  Teenage boys are strange and wild and violent. That’s what the news says, anyway. She didn’t realize how heartbreakingly cool and gorgeous they were, too.

  “Travis,” Nancy says again, but lower. “Can you come outside with me for a moment?”

  But Travis’s attention is elsewhere. He’s looking at Bobbie’s father. He rolls onto his knees and finally stands up. “Hey! Hey. Rob, right? You’re Rob. Are you, like, trying to fuck my mom?”

  The silence that sits over the living room is uncomfortable, but Bobbie is also deeply relieved. It’s difficult to worry about acting just right when you’re not the one distracting everyone.

  “We’re co-workers,” says Nancy, tightly.

  “Yeah, but you text, like, all the time.” Travis tilts forward but doesn’t fall. “Right?”

  For a moment, Bobbie thinks he might have legs that are different lengths, like she does. It would be a relief if he did. She stands to get a better look.

  Travis reels back when he finally looks at her. “Whoa! Nice mask.” Then he stares a moment longer and his smiles drops. “Oh shit. Whoops. Sorry.”

  “Travis!” Nancy takes his arm and pushes him down on the chair. “Sit here. Right now,” she snarls. “You don’t move until you can stand straight. I’m calling your father.”

  Travis grins. “Tell him I say, ‘Hi.’”

  “This isn’t funny.” Nancy’s face is a remarkable red. She turns to Bobbie and then her father, her chin trembling. “I’m so sorry about this. Both of you—no, especially Bobbie. I’m so sorry.”

  Bobbie’s father clears his throat. When Bobbie looks at him, she sees something like a smile trying to inch its way across his mouth. “I was young once, too. I promise. I used to sneak beers as young as twelve! I was just awful and I think I turned out okay. And Bobbie—Bobbie, you know he’s just drunk, right? He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

  Bobbie thinks this over. The unsteady gaze, the failure to walk in a straight line, all of it, she’s sees renditions of this before in comedies. In real life, it’s stranger, more awkward, like he’s an extra who’s stumbled onto a film set. She looks at Travis again, fascinated, noting the redness in the whites of his eyes, the same pointed nose as his mother, and the greased spikes in his black hair. Somehow, he’s even more gorgeous than before. “I’ve never seen someone drunk,” she says.

  Travis looks at her and giggles. “Aww! That’s real cute. It’s fun! Except when your parents are going to yell at you.”

  Nancy interrupts. “I’m calling your father and I’m going to take you home. Right now.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Bobbie’s father says. The look on his face, she realizes, is something like relief, too. Nancy is so busy with Travis, she has no time to notice the stains on the shower curtain that hangs in the bathroom or anything else her father was worried about. “Why don’t you both stay here?”

  Nancy grimaces. “I need to call Ted.” She looks at Bobbie’s father as she slips her phone from her pocket, goes to the door, and walks outside. “Please excuse me.”

  “Wait. Nancy! Hey!” Bobbie’s father follows her out.

  And Bobbie is alone, for the very first time in her life, with a man who is not her father. She is now more aware than ever of how much space she takes up. She squeezes in on herself.

  Travis regards her in the half shadow of the living room. When he smiles, his eyes flatten. He looks her up and down. “Did you know one of your legs is longer than the other?”

  She blushes, uncomfortable but also weirdly flattered. It’s nice to be looked at. “That’s how they are. That’s how I was made.”

  He giggles again. “Made.” He jumps up, springing quickly. “I got to take a leak. Where’s the bathroom?”

  Bobbie doesn’t want their conversation to end yet. She has to ask him more things or say something clever so he’ll be impressed. “I don’t want you to use the bathroom.”

  “Wow.” He takes a step back but he doesn’t stop smiling. “What, you want me to pee right here? Kinky,” he says, then brushes past her, purposely sliding his shoulder by hers.

  She feels his warmth, an electric pulse that makes her heart beat faster.

  “Man, you got that muscle.” He pretends to flex with his arms as he hustles out of the kitchen and toward the backdoor. “You pump zeh iron?” he says in a fake, German accent.

  “Yes,” she says as she follows, desperate to keep his attention. “I’m strong.”

  He opens the backdoor and turns, grinning. “How strong?”

  She thinks of Nancy playfully smacking her father. Maybe that was flirting. Maybe she should try that. Is that what you’re supposed to do with boys?

  Bobbie gently pushes him outside.

  Travis falls back into the long grass, catching himself with his hands. He looks up at her, squints, and then chokes. He cradles one of his hands with the other and gives out a howl. “Ow! You hurt me!”

  The way his face twists gives her a terrible pang of guilt. “Sorry. I’ll help you.”

  She stares down at the grass. Just carpet, she tells herself. Maybe the invisible germs in it are real small, you know? Like, they won’t hurt her.

  Bobbie steps onto it, toward Travis. First one foot, then the other. She can feel the individual blades hiss along her skin. It’s a surprise. She didn’t think they would do that.

  Travis abruptly stops yelling. He looks up at her and grins. “God, that was so fake! Did you really fall for that?”

  Bobbie feels an ache in the hollow of her chest. Heartbreak. The rebellious, gorgeous boy thinks she’s stupid. “Why did you lie?” she whispers.

  “Because eventually, you’re gonna hate me,” he says. “You might as well start now.”

  Bobbie feels embarrassment and then anger as his callousness. It’s like that night in the garage when her father told her about the germs, but so much worse. She takes his arm. The rage moves through her like fire. She doesn’t think. If he wants her to hate him, she will.

  “Ow,” he says again, this time softer.

  Bobbie thinks of her legs, the wrong sizes, and the way her knees sometimes don’t work right. Her nose bleeding when she doesn’t want it to and the smell of iron that always accompanies it. She thinks of her father, piecing her together, making a whole human, and lying to her about what she could do with that human body.

  “Oh God,” says Travis, much more clearly. He falls to his knees again.

  Carefully, she braces herself against him, placing her foot on his free hand. Then she pulls and twists. There’s a great, wet sound, muscle tearing away from bone and skin breaking away from itself.

  Travis shrieks. A real scream. “Fuck. Oh, fuck.” He pulls back and Bobbie, watching him remotely, bored, stays perfectly still.

  She doesn’t release her grip, even when she pulls his arm away. The end is a greasy, red, uneven stump, however cleanly it came out of the socket. It’s the same color as her blood, she realizes.

  Something about that reminds her that, yes, Travis is Nancy’s son. And she has hurt him. By extension, she has hurt Nancy. She has hurt her father.

  Blood jets out of his empty army socket and onto the grass. He howls, pants, and howls again. He looks between his arm and his empty shoulder with wide, glassy eyes, full of tears.

  It’s so much worse than the time she killed the bird in the attic because she held it too tight.

  “Sorry. I didn’t think,” she whispers, but Travis can’t hear her above his scream. She clears her throat and says, “I can fix this,” with more confidence than she actually feels.

  “Travis?” Nancy calls, a wavering voice on the air. She’s probably in front of the house. “Honey, is that you? Are you alright? Did you fall and hit your head?”

  Bobbie picks Travis up in her arms, one hand under his knees. For a moment, he goes absolutely quiet. He stares as she reshuffles him and his arm, letting the limb sit on his chest where it quickly soaks the front of his shirt in red. He stares at this in wonder. Then he closes his eyes and passes out.

  She runs to the garage, more quickly than she has ever run anywhere. In movies, big people struggle to run quickly and heave and pant. She doesn’t. She’s flying the way she never could before.

  Travis’s eyes, when closed, have long, graceful lashes. All at once, he’s gorgeous again.

  Bobbie locks the door to the garage behind her. She puts him down on the table and cranks it upward. “If you wake up, just look at the sky,” she says, even as she feels his skin grow cold.

  Now that he’s still, the blood has slowed to nothing. It must have been the same blood that was in his face, because he’s awfully pale.

  Bobbie puts on her father’s paper mask. She washes her hands, the way her father does, but more quickly. It has something to do with germs, though she’s not sure what. “I’ll take care of you. I did this and I’ll make it better.” She pulls on the green, latex gloves from the box beneath the sink. Then she takes out clamps, a needle, and thread. First, she has to stop the bleeding. She rolls his sleeve into a bunched clump of damp, red fabric above where the rest of his arm should be.

  Travis croaks with pain when she puts the clamps onto the exposed tendons. He remains still, like a stone angel.

  She begins to stitch, needle in, needle out. At first, he stirs and makes small, aching groans that taper out into jagged breaths and then stillness. On her gloves, his red blood becomes a sticky, light brown.

  Outside, Bobbie hears Nancy. “Where did they go?”

  “We’ll find them,” says her father, but it sounds shaky. “Oh, don’t worry about the garage. It’s locked. I’m sure they’re not in there.”

  Their voices move away. Soon, they’ll be back. Nancy, if she sees Travis laid out on the table and Bobbie over him, when she sees them, Nancy will scream. It will be horrible. Nancy will never like her, now.

  In her mind, Bobbie walls herself away. She continues to sew, even though the stitches are jagged and ugly. Even though Travis, under her fingers, feels cool when he should be warm.

  Time passes. Bobbie hears their voices outside, again. The door to the garage shakes with a knock, but doesn’t open. Not yet.

  “Tell me where the keys are, Rob,” Nancy says to her father.

  Her father doesn’t reply.

  The doorknob jiggles.

  Bobbie keeps her breath even. It’s more important that she make things right, as best as she can. Then, when she’s done, she’ll wait for Travis to move.

  Again, the doorknob shakes. Nancy pushes hard against the lock.

  If Travis doesn’t move, well, she may not remember the first moments of waking up, but she’s been there from the beginning, right? She’s her father’s daughter and there’s work to be done.

  Gillian Daniels writes, works, and haunts the streets in Boston, MA. Since attending the 2011 Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop, her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others. She currently reviews for The New England Theatre Geek. She can be found at your house party, petting your cat.

  Painted Wolves

  by Ray Cluley

  I’ve seen things few other people in the world have ever seen. And it’s a pretty big world, you know. The expression ‘small world’ is a bullshit expression used to explain coincidence, if you believe in that sort of thing. I know you don’t, Jenny. “Everything happens for a reason,” you said once. As if it’s part of some plan. But whose? I don’t know. I believe in Darwin. If there’s a God, and if He has a plan, then He not only works in mysterious ways but cruel ones too. I’ve travelled a lot of the world in this business, and it’s a bloody big world, and it’s beautiful, absolutely beautiful, but it’s fucking brutal. We’re all part of that.

  When the sun came up today I was thinking about how lucky I was to see the things I see. We were looking down at those zebras. You were drinking from a bottle of water. Tony and Eddie were prepping their cameras. The sky was lightening into shades of red and you said, “red sky at night”, which didn’t make much sense at the time because it was morning. Later you told me the rest of it: red sky at night, shepherd’s delight, red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning. You didn’t know what it meant, though. Anyway, I was watching the sun rise and I was glad to see it, and I was watching you, and I was glad for that as well, and all around us Africa woke up. The rising sun brought the volume up with it, wildlife waking in a rich medley of calls and caterwauls. You didn’t have to be a sound technician to appreciate it.

  “Beautiful,” you said.

 

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