watched, helpless and sad, until he finally stopped, tired out from all the stomping. Then he flung her shoes off his feet and left them where they landed among the devastation.
After that, he simply waddled back to his little stone pedestal, hopped up and turned his back to her, apparently content to look like a statue once again.
Katherine was suddenly very tired and a little shaky from the cold. She didn’t know what to do, so she did nothing. She closed her window and turned her back on it, then walked slowly back to bed and climbed under the covers, all the while with a very puzzled look on her face.
There was nothing else to do. She cried herself to sleep and slept fitfully until morning.
Chapter Seven
Decisions
Morning sun pierced through the bottom of the window blind deep into Katherine’s room.
It was very cold, and she woke with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed. The events of the night before came flooding back to her.
She fell back onto the pillow and groaned. She couldn’t begin to think what her parents were going to say when they noticed her shoes among the ruined flowers.
It was Saturday, so both of them were at home. She listened carefully and could hear them both moving around in the kitchen below her, getting breakfast ready, just like any ordinary Saturday morning.
They were letting her sleep in! She wasn’t in trouble yet, which could mean only one thing: they hadn’t noticed the damage.
She was wondering what she was going to say to them. What could she possibly say? The truth seemed like a big, ridiculous lie. And, in a completely confusing and unfair twist, a lie would sound so much more like the truth.
Katherine ran through a few possibilities:
“Mom, I was really mad that I had to stay after school, so I stomped your flowers.”
No, that was no good.
“Mom, I really hate the dinner you made me last night, so I stomped your flowers.”
No, that wouldn’t work either.
“Mom, the gargoyle did it.”
Hopeless. Utterly hopeless.
She was looking up at the light above her bed when a blood-curdling scream filled the house.
“OH MY GOSH! NOT MY FLOWERS! HANK, THE FLOWERS! LOOK AT THEM! THEY’RE RUINED!”
She heard the back door open, then slam. Then silence.
Without getting up to look out the window, she knew her parents were frantically running across the lawn to look at the damage. She also knew without looking that the gargoyle was sitting scrunched up on his pedestal, statue-like, watching the fun. Grinning, most likely.
Quite unexpectedly, Katherine felt a flash of hot anger flood her body. Why should that stupid gargoyle treat her family so badly? Why should he get away with it and make it look like she had done it?
Why? She suddenly knew what she had to do.
She got out of bed and slowly descended the stairs to the kitchen. She walked to the back door and silently opened it for her parents as they solemnly marched back into the house, too shocked to speak to her or to each other.
Neither of them was looking at her. Instead, they sat at the kitchen table and stared at their hands.
Katherine turned off the forgotten stove, where the pan was beginning to smoke, and turned to them.
“Mom, Dad,” she began boldly, “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I stomped all over your flowers in my new shoes.”
She looked at them for encouragement. They were both looking at her now with nearly blank expressions. But at least they were listening. She pressed on.
“It looks bad, I know,” she continued, “but I swear to you I didn’t do it. I’m going to tell you the truth,” she hesitated and bit her lip, “only it’s going to sound kind of crazy.”
At the word “crazy”, her mother’s head shot up and her mouth opened. She was looking hard at Katherine with a funny, dazed expression on her face. She was barely breathing.
“You know, you know...” Katherine trailed off.
What am I afraid of? she asked herself. It’s the truth. I have to tell it, I have to get them to believe me. They’re my parents, after all. They will believe me, won’t they? She took a deep breath and started again.
“Mom, Dad, the gargoyle did it,” she blurted out finally. She breathed out deeply and looked her parents in the eyes. It felt good to tell the truth, no matter how crazy it sounded.
Her parents did two different things at the same time. Her father burst out laughing. Her mother, however, groaned, then dropped her head into her hands and started crying.
Neither Katherine nor her dad was expecting that. They both rushed to her mother’s side.
“What is it, Mom?” Katherine asked.
“What is it, Marie?” asked her dad, looking worried. They pulled up chairs and sat beside her, trying to comfort her.
She was muttering through her hands. “Not that stupid gargoyle! It can’t be! Not again!”
Katherine’s dad was clearly worried about his wife, but Katherine started to wonder what her mother knew. Or thought she knew.
She decided to try a new tack with her mother. She pressed a cup of tea into her mother’s hands and put her hand gently on her shoulder.
“Mom,” she said quietly, “where did you get that gargoyle? I mean, you seem to believe me that it was him, and I’m really glad you do, but you must know that he’s...” she stopped. She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“Alive?” her mother said suddenly, snapping her head up to look Katherine in the face. “Yes! I know he’s alive, Katherine...”
Katherine and her dad stared at her in silence. The room stayed perfectly quiet for what seemed like an eternity. Katherine could hear the kitchen clock above her mother’s head ticking louder than ever before. The fridge motor buzzed around them like a car alarm.
Then her father finally spoke. “Marie,” her father said gently, clearly making an effort to speak calmly. “Can you start at the beginning? Where did you get the gargoyle?”
Her mother had calmed down a bit in the long silence, having finally admitted to her family that she knew the gargoyle was a living creature. She blew her nose loudly, took a sip of tea, then started with her story.
“Okay, okay. I can’t hide it any longer.” She sighed. “It all started about a month ago, while I was walking to work at the agency office. You know I walk past The Golden Nautilus comic bookstore every day?” She looked at Katherine and her husband for encouragement.
