Voodootown

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Bambi

"Seriously," Bambi said.  "Did you grow up under a rock?"  She asked the question the way her brother Chuck would have, with plenty of sarcasm.  But the weird thing was that Danica didn't seem offended at all.  It was like she was so clueless that she couldn't even tell when someone was giving her crap.  Maybe they were both just too tired.  They had been talking for over an hour and had both begun to yawn and rub their eyes a little bit ago.

"No," Danica said.  "I just liked to hang out in my room."

"But, what did you do in there?"  Maybe Danica played guitar and practiced every spare moment the way Bambi did on the drums.  She doubted it, but wanted to give the poor girl a little credit.

"I wrote in my journal, called my friends, would draw pictures.  Just regular stuff," Danica said.

"Yeah, regular like, fifty years ago," Bambi said.

Danica smiled and looked around Ash's room again.  Bambi let the conversation drop off and looked around too.  It was messy, but a comfortable kind of messy.  It looked like Ash did his laundry regularly, but there were books and DVDs everywhere.  The bed hadn't been made, but Ash had straightened his X-Wing fighter quilt before he had stashed her and Danica in there.

"Why doesn't Ash have a deadbolt or a padlock on his door?" Danica asked.

Bambie thought about treating the question as rhetorical, but saw Danica looking at her, eyebrows up in anticipation.  "Uh, why would he want locks like that?"

"Well, who doesn't?" Danica asked.  "Everyone wants good locks on their door."

That was one Bambi hadn't heard before.  Even the way her parents were, or had been before things started getting weird, she had never thought about getting a padlock on her door.  She considered asking what Danica was keeping out with those locks, but felt like she was close to her weirdness limit for the month.  The answer would not be good.

She thought about it for a moment, and realized that even with finding her house torn up the other morning, and her parents getting all mellow and spaced out and then finding pretty, dark haired, long-legged, rotten Danica half-naked in Ash's house, she wasn't feeling the tension she usually did.  Part of it was probably from feeling so groggy.  Part of it was knowing that Chuck was safe, she was sure.   But part of it had to do with Ash.  He was two inches shorter than she was, probably weighed the same and had Star Wars sheets, but she felt safe around him.  When he was there, she didn't need to tap her fingers or clench her hands or do any of her safety rituals.

"He's cute in his own way, isn't he?" Danica asked.

"What?"  Bambi kept the frown from showing, but let her jaw clench tight.

"He's kind of a dork, but he's really sweet," Danica said.  Bambi felt like her teeth were going to crack against each other.  "And the way he saved me last night was amazing.  He climbed up through my window.  It was very knight in shining armor."

At least Bambi didn't have her drumsticks with her.  If she did, she thought she might wallop Danica with one of them as the girl sat there being so pretty.  Thankfully, Danica had borrowed some sweatpants to cover up her legs.  But then Bambi realized they were Ash's sweats, and his shirt.  He had never given Bambi anything of his to wear.

Danica's face scrunched up.  Bambi didn't care enough to figure out what the look meant.  "I just don't know what he was saving me from," Danica said.  Then she shrugged and her hair bounced in a way that Bambi knew Ash would love.  "I can see why you like him."