It was dust. No matter how closely we looked, we couldn’t distinguish what used to be eyeball or wing or snout or foot. It was just chunky dust.
Ellie acted out what Jasmine had done.
“ ‘What the hell is this?’ ” she said in an annoying-Jasmine voice, while shaking the jar, disintegrating Max Black. “She just kept shaking it and yelling,” she said. “She’s such a freak. It’s just a bat. Like, who cares?”
“It wasn’t just a bat,” I said.
“I know,” Ellie said. “It was God.”
“Your mom killed God, dude,” I said. I was trying to get a laugh, but Ellie didn’t laugh.
She unscrewed the lid to the jar and she looked in at the dust.
I think that’s when she got the idea, but she didn’t say anything until we met later—after dark—to give our God, Max Black, a proper journey into the next bat world by scattering his dust.
Once we met, jar in hand, skinny waxing moon high in the sky, that’s not what we did at all.
Ellie said, “I need you to get that lice stuff for me.”
“Okay.” My scalp itched the minute she said it. “Bummer. I know how much you hate those combs.” Last time Ellie had lice, she had to chop a foot off her hair so she could get the nit comb through it.
“They moved,” she said.
“Who?”
“The lice.”
“But,” I said. “Head lice only live on heads.”
“They—you know—moved.” She pointed to the zipper on her jeans.
“El, that’s an entirely different thing. They didn’t spread. Those are different ones.”
“You thought they jumped until last week. What do you know?”
“I know.”
“Oh.”
“So, your head is okay?”
“Yeah. It’s fine,” she said. “Hold on. So I have a different kind now?” she asked.
“Sounds like it.”
“Where the fuck did they come from?”
I stayed quiet.
“That’s how they spread, I guess,” I said.
“Then where’d he get them?”
I didn’t say anything.
“We’ve been dating for three months.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Is this the shit we caught off gorillas?”
“I think there are a lot of different species. But yeah. Pretty much, I think,” I said. “Do you want me to get enough stuff for both of you?”
“No fucking thank you.”
“Does this mean it’s over with Rick?”
“Yes fucking please.”
That was going to be complicated.
But we soon forgot about it when she went into the shed and produced the jar, the dust of the god Max Black, and a six-pack of beer.