The Lesson of Her Death

even find us?”
    “Oh, Jesus.”
    “You’re like a total pussy.”
    “I am not!” Jano’s eyes blazed.
    Philip, whom Jano could have pounded to the dirt floor with a single fist, backed off. “All right, dude, all right.”
    Jano said, “We’ve got to destruct the files.”
    “You know how long it took us to make those up?”
    Jano said, “We’ve got the names of half the girls in class on them. All the codes, all the pictures.”
    “I’ve got them in a secret file. If anybody tries—”
    “But the pictures—” Jano whined in a voice that wasn’t at all the voice of a Dimensional warrior.
    “No, listen,” Phathar said. “If anybody tries to open the drawer everything self-destructs. It’s automatic.”
    Jano gazed into the night. “Oh, man, I wish we hadn’t done it.”
    “Stop talking that way,” Phathar whispered ruthlessly. A fleck of saliva shot onto Jano’s arm. The boy’s revulsion showed in his face but he didn’t brush the dot away. Phathar continued, “We
did
do it! We. Did. It. We can’t bring her back to life.”
    “Dathar could,” Jano sniveled.
    “Well, we can’t so quit like crying about it.”
    “I almost puked.”
    Above them: A squeak of opening door. A low voice snapped, “Phil!” Both boys froze. “Phil-lip!” His father’s voice stabbed through the night like a Dimension-cruiser’s engine kicking into antimatter mode. “The fuck are you? You got school tomorrow.”
    Philip wondered if he himself was going to puke. Even Phathar was trembling.
    “You can hear me, you got ten minutes. I have to come looking for you it’ll be with the handy man.”
    When the screen door slammed Phathar said, “You gotta leave. He finds you here he’ll whip me.”
    Jano stared at the underside of the porch above them then said, “Tomorrow.” He left silently. To his shadowy, receding form, Phathar lifted his arm and closed his fingers in a Dimensional warrior salute.

    Oh, she struggled. She wrote the words a dozen times, careful always to tear up the ruined note and drop it into a garbage can. She’d failed him once. She wasn’t going to make it worse by letting her mother and dad find out about him.
    Sitting at her desk she hunched over the tricky letters, willing her pen to move one way then watching it move the other. She would tell it to go up to make the top of a b and instead it went down and became a p. Left instead of right.
    Is this how an S goes? No. Yes
.
    Sarah Corde hated S’s.
    She heard the crickets playing their tiny squeak-fiddles outside in the cool night, she heard the wind brushing the trees. Neck and back cramped with tension she wrote for another half hour then looked at her work.
    Im sorry. I cant’ go awya, they wont let me anb a police man is coomign comming in the mourning to watch us. Can you help me? You can have yor mony back. You are the Sunshine Man aren’t you? Can I see you?
    She signed her name carefully.
    She felt a moment of panic, worrying that the Sunshine Man might not be able to read the note. Then she decided that because he was a wizard he could probably figure most of it out.
    Sarah folded the paper and wrote his name on the outside. She put on her jacket then she paused. She opened the note and added some words at the bottom.
    Im sorry I dont’ spell good. Im realy sorry
.
    Then she snuck out the back door into the windy night and ran all the way to the circle of rocks.
    The deputy showed up at eight-thirty almost to the second. He was young pink-scrubbed beefy eager and he wore on his hip a combat-gripped .357 Colt Python witha six-inch vented barrel. He was, in short, everything a husband could want to protect his wife and kids.
    “Morning, Tom.” Corde picked up the
Register
from the driveway and held the screen door open for the deputy.
    “Howdy, Detective. Nice house you got here.”
    Corde introduced him to the family. Diane offered him some coffee. He declined regretfully as if this were a slap at her cooking.
    The deputy retreated to the comfort of his Dodge watchtower parked in the driveway and the family sat down to breakfast. Jamie and Diane were talking about something, animated, near to an argument. Sarah sat quietly but was overjoyed at the news that she could stay home from school today. (“Only today, mind you, one day, just one, but no more absences for the rest of the year, you understand, young lady?”—Oh, yes, and how many times had they said the same thing?)
    Corde wasn’t listening to his