“I want to do something dangerous,” Dani said. “I’m so bored, it’s giving me an all-over body ache.” As she talked, Dani clipped fur off an old stuffed elephant with toenail clippers. Fluff drifted around the basement. She started with the belly and worked up to the head. It looked like a dog after it’s been neutered.
If I’d told her about the ears, maybe she’d of felt that was danger enough. But I hadn’t. So I just asked her what she had in mind—rob a convenience store?
“It’d be better than sitting around down here in the damn bat cave.” She got tired of the elephant’s belly and began giving the end of its trunk a circumcision.
We kicked around a few other ideas. Skinny-dipping in Water Oak pond, going bowling in Statesboro. At last I suggested the barn.
Dani tossed me the elephant and sat down at the computer. “I thought you hated going out to Wayne Keegan’s barn.”
“It was just a suggestion.” I picked up the elephant and stroked its sad, bare belly. “They’re probably not even out there.”
“No, they’re out there,” she said. Then she made a sharp little squeak. “We already got mail.” She turned and screwed up her mouth.
“We only made the new Game e-mail address the other day. Only us and Wynn and Logan know about it. Is it from him?”
Dani shook her head.
I leaned over her shoulder. Sure enough, there were two e-mails 2in the inbox. Both were from someone called angryeyeball@bazooka.com. The first had a message line that said nothing. The second said, “The angry eyeball has you in its sight.”
“You open them?” I asked.
Dani shook her head again.
I clicked open the first message. It was a single sentence in a weird font.
Your days of torturing men are over
“It’s impossible. Wynn said people can’t track you down like this, remember? I asked him about that guy who said he saw us through the webcam and he told me it was B.S. Are you pranking me, Dani?”
“No,” she said, “I swear.” From the quaver in her voice, I knew she wasn’t lying. “Do you think it’s from the …” She stopped, but I knew who she meant.
“Professor Carrot? No, and I don’t think he was any professor either. Probably works the deep fryer at Krystal’s.”
“He might not be that far away from us. He said he meant to drive from Chicago to Florida. The man could be here already.” She winced at me and squeezed her lips together with both hands like she was fixing to eat them.
“If he had a fast car,” I said, trying to calm her some with a bad joke.
It didn’t go over.
“Shit,” she said, “shit, shit, shit.”
I turned back to the computer and opened the next message. It read:
I know your face. I know your house. I know what you do.
Today you wore a yellow shirt. Tomorrow you’ll wear a frown.
Dani let out a shriek. I covered her mouth with a hand and looked up at the ceiling, where her mom had been pacing across the kitchen talking on the phone. When she made that noise, the pacing stopped. Dani wore a blue T-shirt with a Spam label printed on the front. Nothing yellow about it. I shook her sleeve.
“See, this ain’t yellow, Dani. I didn’t wear yellow today. Whoever this is doesn’t know shit. They’re just trying to scare us.” I smiled, feeling a bit relieved.
“No, no,” Dani said in a high-pitched whisper, “I wore a yellow shirt this morning when I went jogging.”
“I’ll send the fucker a message he won’t forget.” As I leaned across her lap to type, Dani grabbed my hand.
“No, Lynn, that’ll just get him wound up even more. That’s what he wants. To get a rise out of us.”
I tried to soothe Dani’s nerves by helping her pick out an outfit. She always said she didn’t know how she felt until she knew what she’d wear. Once she’d calmed down, we decided on telling Wynn about the eyeball messages tomorrow. For tonight, Dani decided, we’d go to Wayne Keegan’s barn.
“So wait,” I said, now regretting the hell out of my suggestion, “how do you even know those boys’ll be out there?”
“I saw Jared today at the Piggly Wiggly. Anyway, they’re always out there. He told me Wayne’s brother was going to buy them some beer.” Dani hefted a breast in each hand and jiggled them. “I think they’re getting bigger. God, I hope so.”
“What else is there to do?” I said, actually hoping she’d have another idea.
Dani made a circle with her hands and looked at me through it.