Three
When I was little and got upset, my mother used to say, “Well, David, into every life a little rain must fall.”
If that's true, then Harold was my own personal thunderstorm. Two years older than me, and about forty pounds of solid muscle heavier, Harold projected all the friendly charm of a porcupine having a bad hair day.
Even so, his mother adored him — a fact probably worth a scientific study all by itself.
Harold and his mother came to visit more often than I would have liked. Well, once in a hundred years was really more often than I would have liked, but Harold and Aunt Marguerite actually showed up almost once a month — including the day that I was stolen.
I had already had a rough week, and when I found out that they were coming that day I threw myself to the floor and screamed, “Just kill me now and get it over with!”
“That's not funny, David,” said my mother.
“I'm not trying to be funny,” I replied.
They came anyway.
As usual, Aunt Marguerite had “private things” to discuss with my mother — meaning that she was having trouble with her latest boyfriend and wanted Mom's advice. In my opinion, Aunt Marguerite's endless string of boyfriends was one source of Harold's problems. But no one asked me. Anyway, the fact that she wanted to talk to Mom meant that I got to entertain Harold.
It was a wretched, rainy day, so the two of us had to play up in my room. After a while, Harold grabbed Fluffy and said, “How about a game of Kitty Elephant?”
Kitty Elephant is something Harold invented, and it will tell you a lot about him. Basically, it consists of putting a sock over a cat's face so that it looks like it has a long trunk, then laughing hysterically while you watch the cat try to get out of it.
I had learned to stay out of the way when Harold was doing something rotten, but when I saw Fluffy getting too close to the bed I tried to grab her. Harold grabbed me first. Twisting my arm behind my back, he hissed, “Don't interfere with the game, Beanbrain.”
“Harold, you don't understand!”
“I understand that you're a wuss,” he said. “I'm embarrassed to have you for a cousin.”
I thought about telling him that I was disgusted to have him as a cousin, but decided against it, since he had already twisted my arm so far behind my back it felt like it was coming out of the socket.
Fluffy was getting closer to the edge of the bed.
“Let me GO!” I screamed.
To my surprise, Harold did let go — mostly, I think, to keep our mothers from coming up to see what was going on. It was too late. In her efforts to get the sock off her head, Fluffy had rolled under the bed.
A bolt of lightning sizzled through the rainy sky.
For an instant I had dared to hope that this was one of the times when the floor was in its solid state. The lightning told me that it was not. And when I heard a “pop” like someone pulling their finger out of a bottle, I knew Fluffy was gone.
The popping sound drew Harold to the edge of the bed. “Come on out, Fluffy,” he said, reaching under to grab her.
When he couldn't find her, he bent and lifted the edge of the bedspread. Then he scrambled over the bed and looked down the other side.
“What happened?” he asked nervously. “Where did she go?”
“Why don't you crawl under there and find out?” I said bitterly, feeling so wretched I thought I might throw up.
– End Chapter Three –
