Reaper's Fall

Jess was going to give me so much shit over this, I just knew it, because the instructions were so fucking simple that any idiot should be able to follow them. Crap. I dropped the paintbrush, walking into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. In the distance I heard a faint knocking sound outside followed by a weird, serial killer–esque wheeze from the fridge. I spun around, convinced I was about to be murdered.

Nothing.

I tiptoed slowly back into the dining room, where the corpses of my botched ladybugs waited in accusing silence.

Then I heard the knock again, more clearly this time. Someone was at the door . . . Of course I was here by myself, because Jessica would be out visiting Taz when I needed her most, leaving me to be murdered. The same Taz who—after not calling all week—suddenly had urgent “shit to deal with” at the Armory. Shit so easy to deal with that it only took about an hour, giving him plenty of time to take Jess out for the night. Right. I didn’t buy that for an instant, and I told her so. Obviously he was up to something. But she insisted that she was a big girl, and that she knew what she was doing.

I walked over to the door, wishing for the thousandth time that we had a peephole. Instead we had to peer through the window to see people outside, which Jess had helpfully pointed out gave them an easy target if they wanted to shoot us or bash us with a hockey stick. Bracing myself, I twitched the curtain to the side to see him.

Painter.

For an instant I got stupidly excited, then I remembered that I’d stopped liking him this past week. We might not be a couple, but we were good enough friends that I thought I deserved at least some acknowledgement or contact. Were his fingers broken, that he couldn’t return a friendly text message?

“What’s up?” I asked coldly, opening the door.

He stared at me, eyes tracing my face in silence long enough to be uncomfortable. A part of me wanted to babble nervously, fill the air, but I managed to shut it down—from now on, I set the rules.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch,” he said.

“Seems to be a pattern with you,” I pointed out, trying to act tough. “I know we’re just friends, but you dropped off the face of the earth. What gives?”

He shrugged and then offered a smile so sweet and charming it almost got me. Almost. But not quite.

“My phone broke,” he said. “I was off on club business, so I just picked up a burner to use. Didn’t even have real texting, and I didn’t have your number anyway.”

Ah . . . See, he had a good explanation! The stupidest, most gullible part of my brain was totally ready to fall for his excuses. No. No no no no.

“Don’t you have Picnic’s number?” I asked reasonably. “He knows how to get in touch with me.”

Painter’s smile grew sheepish. “He wouldn’t give it to me—said I’m a bad influence and I should stay away from you.”

Well, I could certainly see that. Painter was a bad influence. Here he was at my door after nearly a week of radio silence, and in under a minute he was already eroding my sense of self-preservation.

“C’mon in,” I said, giving in to the inevitable. “I still think you suck for blowing me off, but here’s your chance to make up for it. I’ve got to figure out how to paint small animals on children by tomorrow.”

“What?” he asked, staring blankly.

“Jessica’s got a carnival thing going on at her work tomorrow morning,” I explained. “She works with the kids at the community center—in the special needs program. She asked if I’d volunteer, and because I’m an idiot I agreed without making her tell me exactly what it was I’d volunteered to do. Now I have to paint faces and I have no idea how. If you really want to hang out, hang out and help me.”

He followed me into the dining room, stopping next to the table to study my pathetic efforts.

“What the hell is that supposed to be—a squirrel fucking a dinosaur?”

I sighed, forcing myself to look at the paper. I sort of wanted to bitch him out, but to be honest it looked a lot more like a squirrel fucking a dinosaur than I wanted to admit.

“It’s a ladybug.”

Silence.

Ignoring him, I sat down in the chair, poking at the hateful paintbrush with one finger.

“That’s terrible,” he said.

“I know.”

“No, it’s really bad. Like, I don’t know how a person can be this bad at painting something. Anything.”

“Do you think they’ll cry?” I asked, feeling a little sick—I think some secret part of me had hoped they weren’t quite as dreadful as they seemed.

“Who, the ladybugs? They don’t have any eyes, babe. They can’t cry. Although it’s safe to assume they’re crying on the inside . . .”

I flipped him off, giving a reluctant laugh. “No, the children. How am I supposed to paint their faces if I can’t even paint the damned paper?”

He sat down on the end of the table, kitty-corner from me.

“Well, it’s not really that hard,” he started to say, but I held up a hand.

“Look those ladybugs in the face when you say that,” I suggested. “Do they look easy to you?”

His lip quirked and he shook his head. “I’m trying really hard not to make a sex joke about easy ladybugs.”

“Don’t,” I said, fighting my own smile. “Besides, they’re not anatomically correct. So, do you think you can help me? Friends help each other.”