Duncan was skinny and tall with long greasy hair parted in the middle. His face had an angry outburst of pimples, making it impossible for him to shave between the swellings. The girls said he was weird. I didn’t know what they meant.
Like most personalities, his sidekick was Crystal, eighth grade, short like a mouse beside Duncan. They went everywhere together. When big Mavis moved into the dormitory, she started hanging out with them too.
The trio, odd as they were, never excluded anyone who showed an interest in being their friend. It was toward the end of the school year when I felt comfortable enough to be in their company that I understood what others meant by “weird”.
They were talking about someone that Duncan didn’t like.
“We finally put him to sleep,” Duncan said as a matter of fact.
I didn’t understand “put him to sleep”.
“It means he killed him,” Mavis explained.
“How?”
“Voodoo,” Duncan looked at me darkly, “I put a curse on him.”
Crystal with his big wide eyes nodded vigorously , “Yeah, he really did.”
“OK,” I said. It sounded like the right response.
When I was very little I saw the pilot light for the first time and someone said it was ghost fire. It scared the hell out of me.
