The Lesson of Her Death

school now,” Corde said. “We can’t hold her back another grade.” He looked out the window. Why did the sight of a bicycle standing upright bother him so?
    It encouraged him that she could read some books by herself.
    It encouraged him that she had made and kept a few friends.
    It encouraged him that she was pretty.
    It destroyed him that she wasn’t like Jamie.
    “There’s something I ought to tell you,” Corde said, hesitating, not knowing how she’d respond.
    He pointed to the
Register
, which rested with odd prominence on top of four cans of tomatoes in the middle of the table. It was open to the article about the murder.
    “Somebody left a copy of that story at the crime scene. It was saying that maybe we shouldn’t be investigating this case too hard. Now it could be a prank and even if the killer left it I don’t take it all that serious. But I’m going to have a deputy here at the house.”
    This however seemed to be just another small burden on his wife’s shoulders. Diane said matter-of-factly, “We shouldn’t let Sarah play by herself then.”
    “Not outside of the yard, no. We’ll have to tell hersomehow. But we don’t want to scare her. She spooks so easy.”
    Diane said, “You keep babying her. She’s never going to grow up if you keep treating her that way.”
    “I just think we have to be careful is all.” Corde lifted his eyes to the post-and-rail fence two hundred feet away and saw a Hereford grazing in the field beyond. It reminded him of a picture Sarah had once tried to draw of a dalmatian. The drawing had been pathetic—an infant’s scrawl. “It comes close to breaking my heart,” he said. “It’s like she’s …”
    “She
isn’t
retarded,” Diane hissed.
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “My daughter is not retarded.” She turned her attention to the refrigerator. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

R ockets rising from grass from mud no no not mud servo rockets Dathar man he’s great muscles ripping them all apart shooting with xasers.… Their bodies falling.… Falling into flowers
.
    Falling. Into. Mud
…
    Philip Halpern sat behind the two-bedroom house, under the six-by-six back porch, which was for him at this moment the control room of his Dimensioncruiser. He listened. He heard footsteps from the house. They receded.
Falling in mud, in flowers. No no no
…
    Philip was blond, five feet eight, and he weighed two hundred and forty-five pounds. He was the second heaviest person in his freshman high school class. Tonight, in size forty-four Levi’s and a dark green shirt, he sat in a pile of leaves that had drifted under the porch. The boy lowered his head and stared at the bag at his feet. It was small, a sandwich bag, the sort that would containlunch, when his mother made his lunch, of bologna sandwiches smeared with Hellmann’s and potato chips and bananas and Oreos and eighty cents in dull-clinking coins for chocolate milk. Although what the bag contained tonight was small his hand moved slowly when he picked it up, as though the contents were very heavy.
    “Phathar!” a nearby voice whispered.
    Philip jumped then answered, “Jano, that you?” He squinted and saw a boy his age crawling through a secret gate they had built together in the chicken-wire fence that surrounded the Halpern property. “Jano, shit, be quiet.”
    Between themselves, Philip and his friend had taken the names of characters in a recent science fiction film they’d seen four times. It was like a code, a secret that bound them together in this alien world.
    “Phathar, I’ve like called you ten times.” Jano’s voice was agitated.
    Phathar whispered harshly, “Just chill, will you? Shut up.”
    Jano—full name Jano-IV of the Lost Dimension—climbed through the lattice gate of the porch. He said, “Why didn’t you call me back? I thought you’d been arrested or something. Man, I almost puked this morning. I mean, like really.”
    “Chill … out. Okay?” Although Phathar-VII, also a warrior from the Lost Dimension, was calm and in control, Philip Halpern, young and overweight, was close enough to panic without his friend’s adding to it. He said, “So what is there to do?”
    “I don’t know. I almost puked.” Jano repeated, looking as if he had. His mouth was wet and his eyes red and though it was too early in the season for serious freckles, the brown dots stood out on his face in sickly contrast to his pale skin.
    Phathar said, “How can they