Chapter 13: Paper Cranes

The boy across the hall was going home on Monday.

Day plus forty-five, with his own blood in him and a new crown he'd asked for in advance.

"Chocolate," he'd told me. "With a goalie on it. And don't let Matt touch it."

At four in the morning on Monday, I was alone in the family kitchen with a chocolate cake and a bag of green frosting.

Somebody's leftover soup hummed in the fridge under a strip of masking tape.

I set the cake on my turntable, the old metal one from my shop, and gave it a spin.

It went around once.

Then something under the plate cracked, and the whole top slid sideways off the base.

I caught the cake with both hands.

Half the frosting stayed on my palms.

"Don't move," a voice said behind me.

Matt was in the doorway with a mug, his reading glasses on his head.

"I'm not moving."

"Good. I can't handle a code in the kitchen. The paperwork is unbelievable."

He set the mug down and came around the counter.

He looked at the cake in my hands.

He looked at the broken turntable.

"What happened to it?"

"Fourteen years," I said. "It was my first one. I bought it with tip money."

He picked up the base and turned it over and studied the snapped bearing.

"Time of death, four-oh-six," he said.

"That's not funny."

"It's a little funny."

I put the cake down on the counter very gently.

"I needed it for the grass," I said. "You pipe grass in one long turn. If it stops, it looks like a bad haircut."

"So you need something that turns."

"I need something that turns smooth."

He looked around the kitchen.

Then he slid the cake board off the counter.

He balanced it on his fingertips, both hands, at the height of my chin.

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