The Best Worst Thing

It's the night we're going to get murdered so we're sleeping on the living room floor.

Me and my sisters, Mom and Dad, all of us on the floor in front of the couch we pushed up against the wall to make room for our sleeping bags.

The murderer is walking around our neighborhood. He's walking down our street. He's down by the duck pond, hiding under the weeping willow. He's sneaking through the Dugans' yard, creeping through the Cooneys' grapes, coming to get us.

"He'll probably try to come right through that window there," Dad says, and Polly and I scream the screams Dad calls our bee-sting screams and slide our sleeping bags away from the window, as far away as we can get, until we're pushed into the couch pushed against the wall.

"Bill, stop," Mom says, "you're scaring them."

Dad was still at work when we saw it on TV, on the news that we weren't supposed to be watching because Polly's too little, but Mom went to answer the phone during Odd Squad and she was on the phone for a long time. After Odd Squad it was Judge Judy and after Judge Judy it was yellow tape around the Mini Mart. It was a body shape under a sheet. In the corner of the screen there was a picture of a man with a fat chin and his hair pulled back in a ponytail.

"What's suspect at large mean?" I asked.

"It means he's large, stupid," Tana said.

I didn't hear everything the newsman said because of Tana talking and Polly coughing, but I did hear shot and killed, I heard fled on foot. I heard Elm Avenue and my brain started singing the address song, the one Mom used to make us sing on the way to school. My name is Maggie Alder and this is where I li-ive, 845, 845, 845 Elm Av-e-nue. She turned it into a song so we could sing it to police if we got lost. So we could sing it to the fire department if we had to call 9-1-1. 9-1-1's another song she taught us. 9-1-2, that won't do. 9-1-1, let's see that thumb, and we were three thumbs-up in Mom's rearview mirror.

Elm Avenue, fled on foot. I was still working it out in my head when Tana started yelling, "He's on our street!" which made me and Polly start yelling, "He's on our street! He's on our street!" Then we were running our yells and into the kitchen. Then Mom was yelling, yelling at us for yelling. "I thought your arm got cut off!" she yelled. I don't know whose arm she meant, whose arm she was so worried about getting cut off, Polly's arm or Tana's arm, I hope my arm.

"Some guy shot the checkout lady!" Tana yelled. "At the Mini Mart! We were just there, we were there like three hours ago!" As soon as she said that, it was like I was back at the Mini Mart. It was like I could see the lady behind the counter laughing and saying, "You girls having some lunch?" while she was ringing up our candy. It was like all that licorice I ate turned into a big red snake twisting around in my stomach and I had to squeeze my eyes shut so I wouldn't see her get shot.

"Maybe we saw him!" Tana said. It kind of seemed like she was happy about it, like the time she saw Katy Perry in the grocery store, even though I don't really think she saw Katy Perry, because why would Katy Perry just be hanging out in Albertsons buying cheese puffs!

Mom said, "Oh God" and "Oh how awful." I saw her look out the window into the backyard even though she said she didn't, even though she said, "No, I think he's in jail" when I asked if she thought the murderer was in our backyard. "Oh great," Tana said like she always says when I'm worried about something or Polly's crying.

When Dad got home, Polly and I yelled, "Lock the door! Lock the door!" We made him go all around the house checking the windows and under the beds and inside the closets. I yelled for Dad to look behind the dresser and Polly yelled for Dad to look inside our pajama drawer, and that's when Mom said, "Well, I guess we're all sleeping together tonight." Dad said, "All of us in one bed?" and that's how Mom came up with the idea of sleeping bags. "It'll be like camping," she said.

Mom went downstairs to make us some dinner but Polly and I made Dad stand in our room while we got our sleeping bags out of our closet, while we got our pajamas out of our drawers and ran to our beds for pillows. "You're being such a baby," Tana said when I asked Dad to walk us downstairs, even though I only asked because Polly didn't want to go down without him. "I can't believe you're starting middle school in like two days!"

Tana left without us and Dad said he had to shower. "Come on now," he said when Polly and I wouldn't let go of his arms, "you have each other." So we got our soft stabbing parts all wrapped up in our sleep things and each other. We threw our sleeping bags down the stairs and ran like the murderer was chasing us to the bottom.

Tana was sitting at the kitchen table looking through a magazine, Mom was making us a living room picnic. We wrapped our arms around her while she stuck roast beef on bread and opened up a jar of mayonnaise. We followed her to the napkin drawer to get the napkins. We followed her into the living room to put the plate of sandwiches on the coffee table, then back into the kitchen where we squeezed up around her while she poured us some Cokes. We were a six-legged creature walking to the freezer for ice.

In the living room Polly and I sit cross-legged inside our sleeping bags and bunch them all around us until only our heads are sticking out and sometimes an arm when we need a bite of sandwich. Tana's pretending to read her magazine. I know she's pretending because she hasn't flipped a page in forever. I wish our living room window wasn't so big. I wish it wasn't so black.

"This is fun," Mom says. "We should do this more often."

"Too bad we don't get many murderers around these parts." Dad's all done with his shower, he's wearing his striped pajamas that look like one of his work shirts stretched over his whole body. He sits down in the La-Z-Boy near the big window, too close to the big window. The murderer sees Dad. The murderer shoots Dad right through the window. The window is breaking, Dad is dead. Please don't let the murderer shoot Dad, please don't let the murderer shoot Dad, I say with sleeping bag over my mouth so no one will hear, and twice to make it even.

When the neighbor's dog starts barking, Polly starts crying, so Mom sits on the couch behind us and pats Polly through her sleeping-bag puff. She says, "It's probably just another dog."

"I'll go have a look around," Dad says.

"Don't be—!" Tana yells. (I think she almost said stupid!) "He has a gun!"

"He has a gun!" Polly and I yell.

Dad grabs the mustard knife off the sandwich plate and makes a bad-guy look that's supposed to be funny, but it isn't funny because our dad, I just now for the first time realized, is a small man. Our dad is a very small man and he has skinny arms. He has skinny arms because he's old, he's much older than our friends' dads. He doesn't wear baseball hats, he doesn't drive a truck. Our dad wears button shirts and sells insurance and carves sea animals out of driftwood.

Now he's doing his pretend tough cowboy walk into the kitchen. We hear the back door open and close but there aren't any locking sounds, Dad didn't lock us in, he just left the back door open for the murderer.

Someone just coughed! Outside! Now my heart is coughing, ka-ka ka-ka in my chest. I don't know if it was Dad coughing or the murderer coughing, or maybe the murderer just heard Dad cough and now he's going to shoot him! Please don't let the murderer shoot Dad, please don't let the murderer shoot Dad.

"He's just looking around," Mom says. She says it again, even though we didn't ask, even though we know she can't see him out there in the dark.

"Are you worried? About Dad?" I know she's worried, I can tell from her voice.

"Oh great," Tana says, and Mom says, "Maggie, please. He's just looking around." Polly pulls her sleeping bag around her face until she's just a nose. "Don't worry," I whisper to her nose, "he's just looking around."

But why is he taking so long!

He's taking so long because he's dead. He's under a sheet with his face covered up. Our yard is wrapped in yellow tape. The suspect is large.

When the kitchen door opens, we are so fast out of our sleeping bags and on top of Mom, even Tana dives on Mom, only there isn't enough Mom for all our arms and legs and now the murderer is stomping through the kitchen, the murderer is coming to get us. I can tell Tana's praying even though I can't hear her. I can see her chin moving, and Tana praying means Tana's scared, and Tana scared means we're all going to die!

"Don't be scared," I whisper to Polly, "it's just Dad. It's just Dad, don't be scared. It's just Dad."

I don't let go, I don't even open my eyes, not even when Mom yells, "What on earth took you so long!" I keep holding on, I don't want to look, because what if the murderer shot Dad, what if Dad's all bloody, what if the murderer followed Dad into the house and now he's going to shoot us too! Please don't let the murderer shoot us, please don't let the murderer shoot us.

I don't let go until I hear his voice. "Chased him all the way to China," he says, and we leap off Mom and onto Dad. Tana's just standing there but Polly's hugging Dad's stomach and I'm hugging Dad's neck. I have to kiss his cheeks, I have to give them two kisses each so the murderer won't come back and get us while we're sleeping, but I can only reach one cheek and now Dad's saying, "Okay, girls," and unwrapping our arms. I have to do it, I have to kiss his other cheek!

"Maggie," Dad says when I grab his head. I don't like the way he said Maggie, he said it kind of mean, but at least I kissed both his cheeks, so now we can all go to sleep and nothing bad will happen.