(An excerpt)
The ringing phone woke Marc the next morning.
Hardly anyone ever called his house, and he knew Helen and Lisa were both heavy sleepers. They wouldn’t wake to silence the phone anytime soon, so Marc groaned dramatically and went downstairs, catching it on the last ring.
“Marc?” Adam Heller’s voice on the other end of the phone rang in his ear.
“Yeah?” Marc asked both groggily and a bit irritably.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing much,” Marc answered without thinking, wondering if it had been a half-lie.
“How’d you…sleep?”
Marc pulled the phone away from his ear for a second, glaring at it as though his friend could actually see his irritation.
“Adam? Are you okay? Is this for real? You’re calling me this time in the morning to ask me how I slept?”
“Actually,” Adam began dryly, “it’s eight o’clock.”
“So?”
“That’s…like…late.”
“Not for me,” Marc snapped. “And I slept pretty good, if that makes you happy. Good, of course, isn’t like sleeping on cloud nine, since I’ve been dealing with some kind of new insomnia that I’m not aware I’m under, until I wake up the next morning, as tired as if I’ve never slept!”
There was silence on the other end of the line for so long that Marc, in his annoyance, nearly hung up the phone.
“Well…okay, but the real reason I called was that I wanted to know about your knife,” Adam said, totally ignoring Marc’s well-thought-out complaint, which surprised him a bit.
“My knife? You can’t have it. It’s something of my dad’s,” he answered tersely.
“That’s cool. My dad doesn’t do stuff like that. He’s too busy with work…yeah…so how long have you had it?”
“A long time, Adam. Remember? Mom ditched him almost three years ago. Dude, have you snuck some booze or something?” Marc asked, feeling a tinge of genuine concern starting to invade his thoughts.
“No, I haven’t,” Adam snapped.
“Gee…touchy…”
“Sorry,” Adam sighed; he could almost picture him rubbing the back of his neck as he always did.
“Gotta go, Marc. Dad got a raise yesterday, and he’s taking us out to breakfast to celebrate. See you.”
And then he hung up, and all Marc heard was the disconnected tone.
Okay, that was really weird, he thought, replacing the phone and yawning.
Feeling as wretchedly tired as many of the nights before and not knowing why, he wished he wasn’t, because it was entirely bogus for him to be getting robbed of sleep for no particular reason.
Marc stretched, feeling a little achy and wondering why.
Then the door opened and slammed, the person entering obviously not trying to be too stealthy.
Marc looked up, surprised to see Ken walking into the kitchen, his suitcase in his hand.
“Morning,” Marc said guardedly, an edge to his voice.
Ken spun around like he’d been shocked. “Marc? Hey, where’s Lisa?”
“I’m right here,” Lisa answered cheerfully, emerging from the living room on light feet. She waltzed up to her husband and wrapped her arms around his neck in a quick embrace. “What are you doing here?” she asked curiously.
