Page 77 of Wham Line
Listen: I know.
I know I’ve gone on and on about this.
I know it’s probably all in my head.(Maybe.)
But here’s the thing: if you’d been there, if you’d felt—the way I did—every hair on your body stand up straight like lightning was about to strike, maybe you’d believe, too, that in some way, Indira really was magic.
Because right then, with goose bumps breaking out all over me, feeling like someone had stuffed me into the microwave and set it tozap, I knew.
I knew what Indira wanted me to do.
I even thought I heard her say,Now.
I snatched up that hideous seahorse with the crystal eyes, shouted, “Hey!Over here!”and hurled it at Larry.
The seahorse missed him by about three feet.
Larry started to turn—the reaction was automatic more than anything, the natural human impulse to, well, look.
And then Indira cast a spell on him.
I swear to God, that’s what it looked like.She stepped forward, opened one fist so that her hand was lying flat, and blew some sort of dust off her palm.The dust rose in a cloud and flew at Larry’s face.He drew back instinctively.And then he coughed.
“What the—”
He started to say one of those words that happy little seahorses don’t say, but Indira spoke over him.“Do you know something else?”she asked.“How did you put it, Larry?It’s not hard to prepare pufferfish poorly.”
It took about two seconds for Larry’s breathing to change.Already it sounded thin and shrill.He pawed at his face.“Get it off me!Get it off me!”
He must have had some degree of clarity still because he dropped the gun and rushed toward the bathroom.
Bobby clotheslined him.
Here’s the thing about Bobby: he’s my short king.(He absolutely hates that term, but do you know who hates it even more?Keme.) And I have to remind myself of that fact sometimes when Bobby tells me ice cream isn’t the fourth food group or yes, you have to wash the towels in the bathroom every week.But Bobby is also built entirely out of muscle, bone, and boyish good looks.Larry ran straight into Bobby’s outstretched arm.The force of the impact knocked Larry backward.Larry’s feet went up into the air, and he hit the floor on his back.Everyone in the room heard the air whoosh out of his lungs.
Indira stooped, collected Larry’s gun, and drew down on the gasping man.Her face was unreadable.
(Cheri-Ann was still vacuuming.)
“Indira,” I said and held up a hand.
“Put it down,” Bobby barked.
With a look at each of us as though we were crazy, Indira pressed something on the gun—the safety, my frazzled brain suggested—and handed it to Bobby.
Chapter 21
Big surprise: Indira hadn’t actually created an airborne poison out of dried pufferfish, uh, spleen (or whatever part of the fish contains the poison).Which was probably a good thing because if she had, we all would have died.It had been nothing more dangerous than powdered non-dairy creamer.
It had definitely freaked Larry out, though.He’d sobbed and blubbered until Nalini finally wiped his face clean with a washcloth from the bathroom.And Cheri-Ann, who had finally given up and come into the room (see?my suspicions were correct!) gave him a Luden’s cough drop.They don’t really help, but they do taste pretty good.
Salk and Dahlberg came.They split us up (and thank God, they took the gun before Indira got any more ideas).Indira and Larry ended up in the back of separate cruisers.When the sheriff got there, the questioning began.
It was a long night, made longer by the fact that even with Larry in custody, I couldn’t help worrying about what would happen to Indira.So, I sat by the window in the Rock On Inn’s parlor and watched the night painted red and blue by the cruiser lights.I couldn’t see Indira; the shadows were too deep.But I thought maybe she could see me.
I also drank a lot of tea and ate so many of Cheri-Ann’s shortbread cookies that she started laughing nervously every time she replenished the plate and saying things like “Boy, I thought I just filled this up.”
Yes, Cheri-Ann, you did.It’s called emotional eating.It’s one of my top ten skills.
