Dance with Me

Thud … tap … thud … tap.
Why did that sound make her skin crawl?
Why did she feel like she should know what was out there? Why did she
feel like she 
had
to know?
Susie pushed back the covers and got out of bed as if something was
pulling her from its safety. It was like one of those tractor beams she’d seen
in the space movies her dad liked to watch. She had no control. She wanted

---

to stay in the nice warm bed. But instead, she walked out of the room and
down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs she listened to the footsteps, and she watched
a large shadow pass the dining room window. Once it passed, she trotted
into the kitchen and opened the back door.
She waited.
Sometimes, Samantha would come and slam the back door, and they’d
go back to bed. But not tonight.
Tonight, Susie could only stand there … listening to the footsteps come
closer and closer. At the last minute, just before the steps came around the
corner, she closed the kitchen door.
She tried to go back upstairs, but she couldn’t. Instead, her feet took her
to the entryway.
The house had a really big entryway, a “formal” entryway, her mom
called it. She’d told Susie that, in the old days, there used to be a round
table in the middle of the entryway. The table always held a vase full of
flowers from the garden, but Susie’s mom had put the table away when
Susie’s first walking had turned into wild running, because Susie kept
bumping into the table and knocking off the vase.
“She broke seven vases before I gave up,” Susie’s mom liked to tell
people. She never said it like she was mad. It seemed to make her happy for
some reason.
Now the big entryway held only a maroon-and-navy-blue braided rug.
Susie went to the middle of the rug and waited.
When the shadows shifted outside and the shape circling the house
approached the front door, Susie stepped forward and opened it.
As Susie knew she would be, Chica stood tall and stiff outside the front
door. The porch light played with Chica’s yellow body, making it look like
the animatronic was breathing. Susie looked up at Chica’s pinkish-purplish
eyes. Did Chica’s big black eyebrows just move?
Susie looked down quickly. Chica’s orange feet were planted on the
WELCOME
mat, one foot over the 
W
, and one foot over the 
M
. As always,
Susie hesitated. But then she did as she knew she must. She held out her
hand and let Chica enclose her stiff, cold fingers over her own.
Chica turned and walked toward the steps leading down to the leaf-
covered front lawn. Susie had no choice but to go along. Now the small taps

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of her own footsteps joined with Chica’s. And leaves crunched under their
feet as they left Susie’s house behind them.
In hushed stillness, Samantha listened to be sure her mother was in her
room. She had to listen hard because the thick walls blocked little sounds.
Eventually, though, she heard a creak she recognized as her mother’s bed.
She waited a few more minutes before turning on the flashlight under her
covers and reaching for the drawings.
Samantha almost didn’t need to see them. They’d been on her mind since
the moment they appeared. In that time, she’d let herself admit that she
knew the first picture was of her and Susie. But what did it mean?
Tenting her sheet and blanket, she aimed her flashlight at the drawing of
the little girls.
At first, Samantha thought the flying-haired girl, Susie, held a mirror, but
she quickly realized it was a magnifying glass. It looked like the one her
dad used to have in his desk drawer in his office, the one he sometimes let
the girls use to look at things up close. Samantha had never forgotten seeing
Oliver’s wood bark up close. It was like seeing a whole other world. Susie
could name things all she wanted, but Samantha would rather study them.
That’s what she used the magnifying glass for—close-up study. Susie,
though, used it to hunt.
After Susie used the glass to look at a caterpillar up close, she decided to
use it to find “teeny-tiny” insects in the lawn. She was sure she was going
to find something no one had ever seen before. When Samantha used the
glass to look at Oliver’s bark, Susie grabbed it and aimed it at a different