The next day I found myself standing on Benji’s doorstep even though I knew he wasn’t home. Benji and his parents were long gone up to Yosemite. Mrs Connor had given me a spare key years ago, just in case Benji ever forgot his, as if we were joined at the hip. To be fair, that wasn’t so far from the truth, but it was the enthusiasm with which she gave it to me that made the whole exchange a little creepy. I felt like she was trying to push us closer together and turn us into a couple, and was secretly hoping that we would ‘play house’.
I took the key from my pocket, opened the door and went over to the wall to punch in the alarm code. The house was deathly quiet. I crept through the kitchen with its spotless surfaces. I walked down the hallway, past all the happy portraits of Benji through the years, his parents flanked either side. Freddy Prinze snuggled into my legs, happy to have the house all to himself, content with the automatic cat feeder that sat in the corner, exposing a fresh batch of food each day.
I pushed open Benji’s door. For some reason I hesitated before stepping forward, as if expecting the room to be booby-trapped, or for bats to fly out as if abandoning a cave for the night sky. But it was just a bedroom. Mrs Connor had made his bed before he left; the sheets were freshly laundered. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. The posters on the walls that you would find in any teenager’s bedroom; the collection of objects in the cabinet were, to the unknowing eye, pieces of bric-a-brac collected from yards sales. But the reality was something much more disturbing. I opened the cabinet door, touched the piece of floor where RFK had supposedly fallen. I placed my hand flat on the piece of linoleum, waited for something, anything, perhaps an electrical charge, a bolt of light, a dose of meaning. Nothing came. It was just linoleum.
I turned to the cupboard, the reason I was there. I hoped I wasn’t too late. Slowly I opened the door, pushed aside all the perfectly pressed T-shirts on hangers, felt my way through the darkness of the mess below. Finally I felt it; underneath a carelessly tossed robe was the unmistakeable smoothness of glass. I picked up the robe, not wanting to look but knowing I would have to. All of a sudden the cat came back to me: poor little Oscar, thrown in a dumpster and left to bake in the summer heat.
I held my breath. There, in the glass bowl, was Benji’s goldfish, but he wasn’t lying motionless on his side, and he hadn’t floated to the top. He was hiding in his little castle, not moving much, but enough to let me know he was alive. I put the robe back over the top and pulled the bowl out carefully. I would have to expose him to the light a little at a time: too much at once might send him into shock.
‘Come on Sid,’ I said. ‘We’re running away.’
I closed the cupboard door, left Benji’s room, and set the alarm again before leaving.