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"You would do that to your sister?"

"I don't care. She shows it off anyway. Guess what? We have side-by-side rooms upstairs, and there was something once attached to the wall in my room. It's gone, but there is now an opening that goes clear through. You can be in my room and see her and she won't even know it."

"I wouldn't do that," I said in a hoarse whisper and backed away.

"Yes, you would. She parades around naked in there, and sometimes... sometimes she does stuff."

It felt like my heart had stopped pounding. My chest was hollow. I shook my head and started walking, but he followed alongside.

"You know what I mean when I say she does stuff?"

"No," I said.

"She gets herself excited. It's something to see. I used to think it was something only guys like us did, but its not. I got to confess. It got me pretty excited the first time I saw her do it. If she knew I had seen her, she'd die,"

I tried to swallow but couldn't. My body felt so hot all over. I wondered if he could feel the heat radiating. He walked with me. Cleo moving from his side to mine as we cut through the forest.

"I'm sure without television, never going to the movies, and with what your mother lets you have and do and what she doesn't, you haven't seen anything. Noble. Once you do, you'll thank me, and to thank me, you just have to agree to meet the girls. They want to meet you so much," he said. You gotta be interested. If you're not, then something is weird, something strange is going on at your house. Maybe your mother is doing something to keep you from being interested in girls. People should know it," he added, a slight note of threat threading through his words.

I stopped and looked at him. He held his ground. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He shrugged.

"I could tell people anything I wanted to tell them and they'd believe me," he said. "I don't even have to make stuff up. Look at all the things your mother does around the place, and I've been by there when she's been singing in that graveyard. Who's buried in there anyway?" he asked.

"None of your business."

"Yeah, you're right," he said. "I don't really care about dead people anyway." Then he softened. "C'mon, well have some fun. You won't regret it. What do you say?"

"Come over tonight about eight. She takes a bath about eight, and then she's in her room. My father's working tonight. too. It'll be just the two of us. We won't even let Betsy know you're in the house. Whaddya say? Huh?"

Was it the power of evil? Was it some dark force coming over me? I felt myself nod.

"Great." He smiled, and then he stopped smiling. "You'd better come. Noble. If you don't, I swear. I'll come get you."

I started away.

"You'd better come!" he shouted after me.

I walked quickly, my heart returning and thumping with a vengeance. What had I agreed to do? When I reached our meadow. I ran all the way to the house and then stopped at the door, panting as hard as Cleo sometimes did. I worked desperately at getting myself calm again, If Mommy saw me like this...

Finally. I entered the house. I could hear her in the kitchen. The first thing she did when she saw me was scream about Cleo's feet being dirty. I practically carried him out and wiped him down, When I returned, her eves were still wide, her hair disheveled. She looked like she had seen something terrible.

"We've got to keep the house immaculate," she told me. We must think of our home as a sacred place. They won't come to us otherwise. From now on, leave your shoes outside the door. There will be a washcloth in a pail of soap and water there, too. Wipe your hands clean before you enter. Do you understand? Do you?"

"Yes,'" I said quickly.

"Good. Good. It's important. Everything is important," she muttered and returned to preparing our dinner.

She was unusually quiet during the meal. Once in a while, she would stop eating and look at me hard, her eyebrows knitting together under the weight of some deep, dark thought she was having, I was sure. Occasionally she would just stare ahead, not chewing, not moving. Finally, something I did, some sound, would cause her eyes to snap back to awareness and she would return to eating.

Afterward, she cleaned the kitchen and had me take out the garbage. When I returned, she was at the door. waiting.

"Take off your shoes," she said and handed me the washcloth, "Remember now, Always clean yourself before you come into to our temple, because that is what our home is, a temple, a sanctuary for them."

I did what she asked, and then she returned to the kitchen. A short while later, she went upstairs. I waited for her to come down, but she didn't, and when I went up to check on her, I found she had fallen asleep with her clothes on. I fixed her blanket over her, but she didn't move.

She's just very exhausted. I thought. All the responsibilities, the worries, have taken their toll on her. She just needs a good night's sleep,