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“Was it something you took from my satchel or my bedroll?”

“I didn’t touch your things. I just looked.”

“So you say, liar. Open it.”

I picked up the metal box but held it against my chest.

She wanted another staring contest, and I did my part even though her eyes were disturbing, full of wildness.

She said, “What’s black on the outside and red on the inside?”

I didn’t know what she meant, what she wanted. I shook my head.

From a pocket of her lightweight jacket, she took a folding knife. Switchblade. Seven inches of razor-sharp steel flicked from the yellow handle. “I’m very serious, boy.”

I nodded.

“I like to cut. You believe I like to cut?”

“Yes.”

“Open the box.”

21

Using the blade of the knife, she probed through the contents of the box while I held it out to her. “Just crap,” she said.

“It’s all my stuff.”

“What—you’re in training to be some junk-crazed pack rat? What did you put in here when I was watching you from the doorway?”

“The eye.”

“What eye?”

“I found it in the alley. From a teddy bear or something.”

She picked it up between thumb and forefinger. “Why this?”

“I don’t know. It’s interesting.”

“Interesting? Why?”

“I don’t know. It just is.”

She searched my eyes again, and then she rested the point of the knife on the tip of my nose. “Why?”

I was up against the wall, nowhere to go. Fear of the knife made me speechless.

She slid the blade into my left nostril. “Be very still, snoop. You move too suddenly, you’ll cut yourself. Why is this teddy-bear eye so interesting?”

“I thought it maybe had some juju.”

“Juju?”

“Yeah. Juju is—”

“I know what it is. Juju eye? You’re a real little freak in the making, aren’t you?”