Spring Tide by K. Dicke Read Free Book Online

shirt over my head, took a towel from the rack, and exited the bathroom. “I need to rinse out my hair in the kitchen sink.”
    “Good idea. Hungry? Want me to get you somethin’?”
    “A sandwich, nothing big. There’s a ten in my backpack.” I opened his bedroom door and then abruptly turned back to him. “How’d you know to come? How were you there?”
    “Some dude called me from your phone.”
    “Huh?” The dots were all over creation.
    “He said four or five times that I needed to go to The Bakery immediately.” He picked up his keys from the dresser. “I didn’t know what the hell was goin’ on but heard sirens in the background so I went.”
    “It was the paramedic?”
    He shrugged. “It was four a.m. I’m amazed I answered the thing. Yeah, might’ve been him.”
    Nick appeared at the threshold. “That’s so grisly. You got assaulted at a bakery? That’s like getting mugged at a pet store. What the crap?”
    “Please go away.” I looked from him to Derek. “Take him with you.”
    “I’m serious. That’s nast. You okay though?” Boy Wonder snapped off two photos with his cell before Derek took it away from him and cajoled him to the door with the promise of an Italian sub. Ten seconds later I heard Derek’s car start.
    I went to the kitchen, turned on the faucet, and positioned my head bloody side up. With the sprayer in my hand, I held my breath, the temp too cold. Pink water speckled with bits of brown whirled down the drain for what seemed like twenty minutes before it ran clear. I gently rubbed the towel over my head while groping for my comb in my bag. For the next five minutes I yanked the teeth through snarls and snags. I expected my scalp to be more tender, but it didn’t hurt any more than a usual combing. The headache was subsiding and other than fatigue, I felt decent. I sat in a chair with my book, but the small, black print couldn’t hold my attention. Clips from the assault kept replaying in my mind.
    Derek came in and handed me a tuna salad on wheat, a bottle of water, a jar of aspirin, and my ten-dollar bill. “Talked Nick into paying.”

    Good boy.
    My face blanched as I tried to take small bites of the sandwich. Bruises? How did I get outside? Who called the police? Who called Derek? An image of a dwarf flashed through my mind. I was still trying to connect the dots, dots that were clearly in the stratosphere.
    Jericho walked in the back door. He wore board shorts and a T-shirt with a surfing logo, his usual. “Hey, Kris.”
    “Hey hey.”
    “How’re you doin’?” He looked at me more closely.
    “Alright.”
    “What hap—?”
    The side door opened with a screech. Sarah stepped in, saw me, and made a gurgling noise combined with a tiny shriek. Nick had sent her the photos of me, and she was going into heart failure, her face bright red. When she stopped waving her hands around and took a seat, I gave the room a pared-down version of what had happened; he kicked me a few times, cracked me on the head with a glass measuring cup or something like that, and then at some point passed out. It wasn’t really the truth according to my memory, but considering that I was upright and fully functional, it made more sense.
    “I think the guy was on something,” I said. “It was almost like he didn’t know where he was, or rather, it was like he was looking for something but didn’t know what. And his eyes weren’t—”
    Jericho suddenly sat up straight, his elbow knocking a plastic tumbler off the end table.
    “They weren’t right, too glossy … like way shiny.” I finished. “That and he suddenly blacked out.”
    Everyone was quiet. Jericho stared at the plastic cup on the floor. I contemplated the right words to put them at ease. Boy Wonder beat me to it.
    “If I ever see this guy, I’ll rip his head off, smack the head around, set it on fire, and bring the burning skull to you.” He enacted his words.
    My eyes met Derek’s. “That’s really sweet,