Page 142 of Fourth Point Of Contact

“The spider?” Patrick asked incredulously.

“Yes, the spider! He was big and black and hairy! He had white spots and he was the devil! Oh, and he was the size of my fist!”

“Piper, that’s just a fucking field spider. You’re in Kansas. They’re everywhere.”

“You didn’t tell me that when I came out here!”

“It wasn’t exactly a stipulation of yours that I fill out a spider identification form,” he snapped, like he was the one who should be angry about this.

“You didn’t tell me you had killer spiders!”

“It’s not poisonous.”

I scoffed at his attempt at coming up with a good excuse. “And that makes it okay? That thing could have torn off my face!”

“I highly doubt that,” he muttered.

“Look, there’s only one way around this. Either you get in here and kill that spider or I’m burning down the house.”

“Right,” he snorted.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I refused to budge on this point. His mother shot him a withering look that he finally gave in to.

“I can’t fucking believe this.”

“I can’t believe I have to convince you to kill a spider,” I retorted.

“I can’t believe you’re freaking out over a harmless spider.”

“I can’t believe you’re stupid enough to think that any woman would be okay with a creature the size of her hand wandering around the house, and she wouldn’t freak out!”

“Okay,” Chase sighed. “We get it. There’s a lot of disbelief going around. Can we kill the spider now so I can go home?”

“Gladly,” I said, shoving the broom at him since Patrick apparently didn’t think it was that big of a deal.

Both of them sighed and pushed their way into the room. I scurried to the doorway, clinging to Debra. This was life and death, after all. They searched for a good minute before they found it, and then Patrick turned to me angrily.

“The size of your fist, huh?”

“It was,” I said, my eyes narrowing at him.

“Really? Come take a look.”

“I don’t think so. I already got a close-up view of it.”

“This thing is no bigger than a thumbnail.”

“And that matters?”

“It does when you want to burn my house down!”

“Well, if you didn’t have gigantic spiders roaming freely, I wouldn’t want to burn it down!”

“I don’t let them roam freely,” he argued.

I pointed a finger at the wall with wide eyes. “Puh-huh!”

“Puh-huh? What the fuck does that even mean?”

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