Page 4 of Zero Chance

I tilted my face and scratched my hair.Finally, I just asked, “Are you weird or something?”

Heaving out a defeated breath, the girl let her shoulders slump.“My mom doesn’t like it when people call me that,” she announced.“But yeah.I’m weird.Really weird.”

“Are you on the spectrum?”I wondered, starting to grow excited.“My mom was on the spectrum.She had autism.”

This girl kept reminding me more and more of my mother with each passing breath.

Gah, I missed Mom so much; I wanted to latch on to anything even remotely similar to her and just…never let go again.

But the dadgum girl wrinkled her nose before asking, “What’s the spectrum?”

And just like that, I deflated.“Well, if you don’t know,” I grumbled, “you’re not on it.”

“Oh.”She seemed to catch on to the fact that this was disappointing news, and she slumped as well.“Sorry.”

I shrugged, moving past it, only to wonder, “How come you’re so weird, then?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted glumly, glancing over at me with those sad, sad eyes.“I just don’t know how to be normal.”

“Huh,” I answered, not sure what to make of that.

The girl went back to counting her fingers, and I couldn’t handle being ignored, so I rushed to say, “It’s okay.I like weird people just fine.”

She looked up in surprise.“You do?”

“Heck, yeah.”I nodded encouragingly.“My mom was weird, and she was my favorite person on the whole planet.She talked funny, repeating things all the time and counting them aloud, and she didn’t know a lot of stuff people should justknow…you know.But she was still my favorite person, and I loved her more than anyone.”

After a long, slow blink of those brown, brown eyes, the girl asked, “When did she die?”

My throat closed over as I remembered Mom’s funeral, remembered how it had sucked the air straight from my lungs and made me think I was going to die too.

“Three months ago,” I managed to rasp.

Watching me as if she understood my pain, the girl said, “My babysitter diedfourmonths ago.”

Babysitter?She was here because she was grieving for some dumb babysitter?I’d lost mymother.The only person I’d ever lived with.She’d been my entire world.And this girl was stuck on the loss of ababysitter?

“He was only eighteen,” she told me.

I blinked.“Wait.He?You had aboybabysitter?”

She nodded.“Zane.It was my birthday, but both my parents had to work late, so he came over to sit with me.He gave me a stuffed animal and told me I was his best friend.After I went to bed, he killed himself.In my kitchen.”Glancing back down at her hands, she mumbled, “I guess he didn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

“Holy cow.”My eyes widened as I gaped at her, waiting for her to tell me she was just joking.But she didn’t.

And I decided, okay, maybe she had a right to be here after all.

“How’d he do it?”I wondered.

“Knife,” she said.

“Man.”I grimaced sympathetically.“Was there a lot of blood?”

Bobbing her head, she leaned my way and whispered, “I’m the one who found him.I got up to get a drink, and I tripped and fell in the blood.”

“Whoa,” I breathed, gaping at her and no longer wondering why she was so weird.If I’d found my babysitter dead and bloody in my house, I’d probably be ten times as batty as she was.

Reaching out, I took her hand and squeezed her fingers.“That sucks.”

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