1957, Los Angeles. I only had one friend when we lived in our first-ever house because the other mothers in our neighborhood didn’t want their children playing with the daughter of the man who didn’t work and drank beer all day. And they didn’t want their kids hanging around the daughter of a woman who worked full-time and left her children with a good-for-nothing drunk. 

My best friend, let’s call her Alice, was eight like me, and had to sneak to my house while her mom pinned hand-rung sheets to their clothesline. We huddled on the side of the garage, licking pink frosting off circus animal cookies before biting their heads off. 

I told her about the beasts in my dreams with their pointy horns and pitchfork tails. The beasts were real. I still believe that even if they only appeared in dreams.

“They live in the cave in the canyon.” I traded two monkeys for her lion. “One of them said the world is going to end.”

 “I know all about that.” Alice liked the monkey best because it wore pants. “I’ve had the same dream.”

I still had a sliver of trust, so I believed we could have had the same dream. Besides, she was the one who told me Santa Claus was a big fat lie. But I still put my baby teeth under my pillow for the tooth fairy. 

“We have to fight the Evil Ones,” I told her.

We kept eating and talking about saving the world. 

One day, we packed snacks in our paisley bandanas and knotted them to sticks, because we’d been third-grade hobos for Halloween. Other kids in the neighborhood wore store-bought costumes. Being a hobo was better because I got to smudge ash from the fireplace on my cheeks. 

“The sticks will be our swords,” she said like the whole thing had been her idea. 

I sharpened the end of my stick on the sidewalk until it was pointy and hid my satchel behind the garage. We planned to sneak out in the middle of the night while our parents slept.

“I’ll put my Mickey Mouse alarm clock under my pillow,” she said, but not in a braggy way. 

I was still a huge fan of Nancy Drew because she rose above every obstacle. Nothing stopped her from shattering injustice. So I unhooked the screen after my mom tucked me in. She might’ve reached down and touched my face or hair. Or maybe that’s just what I wanted her to do. 

Sometime later, in my licorice-black room, I jolted upright to a tap, tap, tap on my window. I wiggled from the nightgown covering my play clothes and kissed Carol Sue on her plastic doll eyes. Her feet were painted to look like shoes. “Sweet dreams.”  

I crept across the hardwood floor, trying not to bump walls and furniture. Alice stood outside on an overturned bucket to help me over the windowsill. Neither one of us fell, a good sign for our quest. 

We crept to the garage, shouldered our hobo sticks, and left the tidy blocks of tract houses with streetlamps. No maps needed. I knew the stop signs, traffic signals, turns left and right all the way. 

The cave must’ve been fifteen or more miles away, but we didn’t think about that. Or how we’d fight the Evil Ones when we got here. I played Nancy Drew and Alice became sassy Bess.

Neighborhoods slept while we gave stop signs the finger and ignored crosswalks. Alice looked both ways before running from one side of Canoga Avenue to the other. No houses or sidewalks on that stretch. Just hundreds of orange trees hurling dappled shadows.

Alice slowed, holding her stick with both hands. “Are you scared?” 

“No,” I lied.

We were four or five miles from home by then. Even when in the back of Daddy’s truck, this length of Topanga Canyon seemed to go on and on. I snatched a eucalyptus leaf off the ground and tore it in two. The minty smell reminded me of Mom rubbing Vicks on my chest when I had a cold.

It grew colder when the sky began to lighten. I wished for my zip-up jacket but the hood had bunny ears and made me look like a baby.

 “Look!” I pointed at the freeway a half-mile or so ahead. “We’re getting closer.” 

Liar, liar, pants on fire!  The cave was at the far end of the canyon, another ten or so miles away.

“I’m hungry,” Alice said. “Can we stop for a snack?”

“It’s a good thing we’re brave,” I told her. “Because I heard your mom tell my mom she thought you’d be better off in an orphanage.”

She didn’t ask to stop again.

There weren’t any buildings or trees to hide behind, just empty fields. 

“We need to be invisible,” I said. 

“How do we do that?”

“Pretend you’re inside a bubble.” 

She didn’t look so sure. 

Pretending didn’t shield us from a black-and-white cop car. 

I flashed Alice a hairy eyeball. “Act stupid.” 

The car slowed, tires crunching over gravel near the curb.

“Remember, we’re invisible,” I repeated.

Alice’s lips began to quiver. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

The car stopped, a door slammed. An officer called to us. “What are you two doing out here?” 

I was determined not to betray the beasts. “Nothing,” I said.

“Do you live around here?” he asked.

There weren’t any houses within miles. “Just down the street.” 

The officer opened the back door of his car. “Get in and we’ll take you home.”

Another officer eyed us from the passenger’s seat.

“I bet you can show us where you live,” he said, looking concerned. 

I clutched my hobo stick, vowing not to let him take us alive. But we didn’t have a choice, not really. Besides, riding in a cop car was the kind of thing I could talk about during sharing-time, which happened right after lunch because our teacher needed an extra break. 

I scooted across the backseat with an eye-rolling humph. Alice followed quietly, hands clasped in her lap. We didn’t talk or look at each other, just stared at wavy reflections in our personal windows. 

“Your address, young lady,” the same officer said. 

It leaked from my lips and he followed the same route we’d taken in the dark, only backward, from end to start. The light-bar must’ve been on, because prisms of red and blue slashed my house when we pulled up.

Alice stayed in the backseat while the first officer held my hand and walked me up the front walkway. He rapped on the screen door, and the screen, in turn, rapped against the inner wooden door. An echo, Wake up in there! 

Mom opened the door wearing her bathrobe, trembling in the flush of the porch light, the pattern of the screen a crosshatch on her face. She pushed at the screen door, but instead of opening it to let us in, she stumbled back into the living room. The screen banged closed on its own. 

I bet she thought the officer had come for Daddy.

Why didn’t he buy a lunchbox like the one Alice’s father takes to work? Or put a lampshade on his head and tell jokes like the man on Sunday night TV? Poor Carol Sue. I was late with her bottle. I should have taken her with me.

Sherry Shahan started ballet at 40, and pole dancing at 75, which seems sort of silly. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, taught a creative writing course for UCLA Extension for 10 years, and has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prizes (Poetry and Short Fiction) and Best American Short Stories.

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