“The patterns are already there,” she says, squatting like a catcher on a baseball team and turning her sword of light up toward the dark wood rafters. “From federal agent, to the homeless van . . . why’s there such a need in your life to protect people? Why do you think you found your dad lying in that park last night? You think that’s all coincidence? Or better yet: that this is just some dumb search for Superman or the imagined Mark of Cain? You and your dad . . . This is your battle, Cal—the one challenge you’ll keep repeating until—”
She stops.
“What?” I ask, craning my neck up and following her gaze. “You find something?”
She points the light up at the rafters, not far from the top of the chimney.
“Serena, what is it?”
She doesn’t say a word.
“Serena—”
“There,” she whispers, pointing upward with the flashlight. I follow the flagpole of light up through the shadows of the rafters. Bits of dust sprinkle down like snow in a settling snow globe. But I don’t see—
Krrrrrk.
The sound is soft. Like a squeak, or some extra weight on a plank of wood.
She’s still silent.
“What?” I ask. “Is it a mouse?”
Thdddd.
To land that hard . . . That’s no mouse.
I jump at the sound. It’s up in the rafters.
Above our heads, on our far right, a narrow rain shower of dust cascades from the rafters. Whatever it is . . . we’re not alone in h—
Thddd-thdddd-thdddd.
Serena screams. The flashlight falls. And a thick black shadow swoops in, then disappears, leaving tiny waterfalls of dust on our right, then above us, then on our left.
Still hunched over, I grab Serena’s wrist and tug her back the way we came. The flashlight twirls behind us like spin the bottle, flickering bursts of light all across the attic. Up in the rafters, there’s one last thud. Straight ahead of us.
“Gahhh!” Serena yells, freezing right there.
This time, I see it also—lit by the attic entrance in the floor—two deep-set eyes: one glowing black, the other milky white, where it’s been injured. Behind it, a thick fleshy tail dangles down.
I catch my breath and almost laugh. Across from us, perched up on a rafter just past the open hole . . . “Serena, it’s just a possum.”
“I know what it is! I don’t like possums!”
“Can you please relax? Possums play dead; they don’t attack,” I insist, stepping forward to—
“Hsssss!”
“Y’hear that? That’s a hiss! It’s hissing!” she yells, her palms wide open and facing each other as though she’s holding the ends of an invisible loaf of bread. She cringes like my aunt when we once found a snake in the toilet.
“That’s not a hiss,” I tell her. “That was—”
“Hssssss!” it squeals again, baring tiny triangular teeth and raising its ears and fleshy tail.
“Okay, that part was a hiss,” I admit.
“It thinks we’re food!”
“Will you stop, it doesn’t—”
There’s another sound behind us—skrrch-skrrch-skrrch. At first, I almost missed it. But as I turn around and check the rafters, I see what the possum’s really after: the small straw-and-leaf nest that sits just above our heads. Two tiny shadows peek out. Aw, crap. “She wants her babies.”
“Babies!? Where!?” Serena shouts, wriggling wildly as if an army of millipedes were crawling underneath her skin. She tries to run, but she can’t. The possum’s directly above the hole in the attic floor. “Nuuuh! Cal, you have to do something!”
“Wait, what happened to facing life’s challenges and your nice big speech?”
“That had nothing to do with giant cannibalistic rats that just escaped from Middle Earth! Look at those mucous eyes! Please, Cal! I’m serious!”
I laugh again, but I hear that tone in her voice. Next to me, her whole body’s shaking. Her eyes well with tears. Even Superman has kryptonite. We all have our weaknesses.
“What the hell’s wrong up there?” my dad calls from below.
“Zombie possums. They want our brains,” I yell back.
My dad pauses a moment. “Serena doesn’t like possums.”
Next to me, Serena grabs my arm, clutching it against her chest. It’s the absolute opposite of her usual guru Zen confidence, and I hate to say it, but there’s something strangely reassuring in knowing she can flip out just as easily as the rest of us.
“Do your breathing,” my dad calls out from below.
It doesn’t help. She grips my arm even tighter, unable to move toward the possum.
“Serena, it won’t attack us,” I promise.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes. I do.” I go back to my old hostage training. Give them calm and they’ll find calm. I keep my voice slow and steady. “Let’s just . . . keep . . . going.”
She’s still shaking. “Cal, I can’t do this! Uhhh, it’s so— Look at it! If it pounces—”
“It’s not pouncing, okay? It’s just a protective mother.”
“Those’re the worst kind!” she says, shutting her eyes and refusing even to look.
I take a small step forward, and the possum raises its rear end like it’s about to leap.
“What’s it doing!?” Serena asks, her head buried in my shoulder.
“Nothing,” I reply, taking yet another baby step.
Hunched over, we’re less than four feet from the hole. The possum hisses again, baring its teeth.
“Cal . . .”
“It’s just watching its kids,” I lie as Serena again freezes. I try to tug her forward, but she won’t budge. “Serena, as long as her kids are safe, she won’t do anything.”
With her eyes shut, Serena nods but doesn’t move.
“Serena,” my dad calls out, “find your center—”
“Dad, enough already!” I yell.
I can slow my speech and make more reassurances, but instead, I flex the arm that Serena’s gripping and take her hand in my own.
“Serena, you take three baby steps and we’re outta here.”
Still holding Serena’s hand, I take another step. Her grip goes from vise, to clinging, to— She takes the smallest of mini-steps. It still counts.
“There you go,” I say as we finally move forward.
“You lied about the distance, didn’t you?” Serena asks. “It’s more than three steps.”
“Not anymore,” I tell her.
She ducks down quickly, knowing the possum must be close. She’s right.
Up above, perched on the edge of the rafter, the possum peers straight down at us. Its pointy nose doesn’t move, not a single sniff—and its milky eye looks more yellow thanks to the light shining up from below.
Two hands appear through the hole in the floor. “Serena,” my dad calls out, “I’m here.”
We fidget and fumble—my dad guiding her ankles to the ladder, me still holding one of her hands—as we help her squeeze back through the rabbit hole.
She sinks slowly, like she’s being sucked down a bright well. There’s a metal clink: her foot hitting the ladder. I’m on my knees, reaching down into the hole as she finally opens her eyes and looks up at me.
“When we tell this story,” she warns, “it ends with me killing the possum with a rock.”
“Of course—your marksmanship alone . . . plus your deft hand and strong will—”
“Don’t oversell it, Cal. Now let’s get outta here. I need to throw up.”
She lets go of my hand, and as my cheeks lift, I realize that it’s the first time in the past twenty-four hours that I’m actually smiling. And that Serena’s smiling back at me.