The Little Friend

by Donna Tartt

Yet sometimes—at home, mostly—Allison was disturbed to notice tiny flaws and snags in the thread of reality, for which there was no logical explanation. The roses were the wrong color: red not white. The clothesline wasn’t where it was supposed to be, but where it was before the storm blew it down five years ago. The switch of a lamp ever so slightly different, or in the wrong place. In family photographs or familiar paintings, mysterious background figures that she’d never noticed before. Frightening reflections in a parlor mirror behind the sweet family scene. A hand waving from an open window. Why no, her mother or Ida would say when Allison pointed out these things. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s always been that way. What way? She didn’t know. Sleeping or waking, the world was a slippery game: fluid stage sets, drift and echo, reflected light. And all of it sifting like salt between her numbed fingers.