And now Jake stood and stared at the spot, wondering why in the hell he wasn't freaking out or scared or anything. It was like the arm was part of the house, there was Mr. Fields their realtor who had sold it to them just two months before, saying, "And here you've got your staircase which leads up to your bedrooms and your main bathroom, over here is your living room which leads to the study, and on the side— watch the arm there— is your hallway which leads to your kitchen and your utility room".

After all, it was a spooky old house, and on a few nights when Jake was alone while his mom took his sister to some gay ballet recital or spazfest for ice skaters, he'd had to turn on all the lights and turn the radio on and the Nintendo real loud because, man, you never know what's in an old house.

In fact, Jake was getting a little spooked by the fact the he wasn't getting spooked.

Of course, Jake told Chip about it. Chip was Jake's best friend, and just about the fattest guy in the whole school, even fatter than Coach Fries, who coached seventh and eight grade boys at Tuittle middle school. Chips' real name was Buster or some such dumbness but everybody called him Chip because he always ate chips, all the time, and not Doritos. Just chips.

"What did the arm look like, in your own words," Chip said, stuffing chips into his mouth, really cramming them in there, all mashed up and crumbs falling all over his face and his shirt and his huge humongous gigantic fatso lap.

"What? It looked like an arm. Just a reg'lar old arm," Jake said. He pretty much didn't like chips anymore, after being friends with Chip.

Chip nodded his head knowingly. He watched the X files everyday, and Jake wasn't sure whether he had a crush on the red-headed gal or maybe a crush on that David guy. "What color was the arm, would you say?"

"I don't know. Arm color? It was beige or tan or whatever."

"Would you say it had a greenish hue?" Chips said, squinting over Jake's shoulder at the wall. They were in Chip's room.

"No." He turned to look at whatever Chip was staring at, but it was just a big X-Files poster on the wall.

"Purple, maybe?"

"No."

"Blue?"

"No! Just, you know, like tan or whatever."

"How many." Chip raised one eyebrow, a feat which Jake secretly wished he was able to perform, ".fingers did the alleged arm have?"

"The 'leged' arm, you fat dork, had five fingers."

"Where they really fingers, or perhaps talons?"

"Fingers, Chip."

Chip nodded knowingly, and probably would have stroked his chin if he wasn't too busy cramming chips into his face.

Jake folded his arms. "Never mind that, Okay? It was just like this arm that came out of the wall. The thing was, it was an arm, right? And I didn't even freak out."

Chip chewed thoughtfully, seemed to come to a decision, sighed, and up-ended the bag to swallow the stream of crumbs at the bag's bottom. When he was finished he wiped the crumbs form his face with the back of his arm. "So, the arm had a calming effect on you."

"Uh, I guess."

"Almost as if it were the arm of a long-lost loved one?"

Jake snorted. "No, I don't think so."

Chip continued to nod his head thoughtfully as he reached for a dustbuster and turned it on, running it over his shirt, his face, his lap, the bed on which he sat. He opened his mouth and said something.

"What?" Jake yelled over the dustbuster's noise.

Chip shut the machine off. "I said, maybe it was an alien, disguised as your wall, doing research on human behavior."

Jake rolled his eyes.

The next day Jake hopped off his school-bus and walked home, and stopped in the driveway. His dad's car was there. Great. Oh boy.

He walked tentatively up to the front door, listening for raised voices. He couldn't hear anything, but didn't want to risk it. He was wondering whether or not he should try to climb that tree in the backyard up to his sister's room when Guinivere herself burst out the door, skipping. "Hi Jake!" she yelled, as if her older brother was always wont to lurk around the front door.

But her apparent good mood put Jake at ease. Gwynn was always the first to sense the tension between their parents, and would burst into tears even before the fighting started. If she was okay, they were okay. Jake went inside.

Unfortunately for Jake, the opening into the living room was big enough that he could not escape his dad's vision before he bounced up the stairs. "Jakey-boy! how's it goin'?"

Reluctantly, Jake went into the living room. "Uh, okay, I guess." Jake scanned his parent's face. His dad was smiling, and so was his mom. Maybe they were on drugs.

"Whadya do in school today?"

Jake was going to shrug and say nothing but last time he'd done that there had been an argument that lasted most of the night. "Stuff. You know." Jake tried to do the charm thing. "You were in school once."

Jake's' dad rolled his eyes. "Well, yeah, about a million years ago!"

Jake's mom giggled. "Oh, Carl."

This was too weird for Jake. "Umm, I gotta pee."

His dad swatted him on the butt. "Okay, sport, go for me too, wouldya?" he laughed and picked up his beer, and swallowed it off. So that was it, Jake decided. They were drunk. It wasn't even four-thirty yet. Sheesh. He left the room.

Since they'd changed addresses, Guinivere had become quite the sandwich maker. Jake's mom had to work some nights, and when they lived with dad, he was in charge of dinners. But now it fell to Gwynn, and although Jake loved his little sister, if he had to eat one more egg salad sandwich he was going to hurl chunks all over the kitchen floor.

So as Jake walked from the kitchen to the stairs, he was thinking about how great a pizza would be, or maybe just a can of ravioli, heated to that lukewarm temperature that made it so each individual ravioli would just slide right down your throat on a spaghetti sauce slide, and therefore he didn't notice the arm sticking out of the wall until he almost ran right into it.

Jake stared. The arm was holding the vase from two days before, and was shaking it like it was a bottle of salad dressing that need to be shook well before serving. After a few seconds it seemed to get bored and flung the vase away, smacking the opposite wall, making Jake jump. The vase clattered to the floor. Then the arm began to feel around the table again. Whatever the arm was, it obviously couldn't see. Finally it stumbled across a picture frame, with a picture of Jake and Gwynn at the lake from about a hundred years ago. The hand grasped it delicately, like a piece of fine china, and withdrew back into the wall.

It was the weirdest thing Jake ever saw. Where the hell did this arm come from? And why the hell aren't I all scared? Jake walked up to the wall, keeping his head back a safe distance in case the arm decided to reject the picture and bean him in the head with it. That was just the sort of thing you'd expect from some kind of weird arm.

The wall looked normal. It still had the crappy wallpaper that mom said she'd replace the minute she got a spare minute. It was yellow with some kind of white flowers on it that looked like alligators if you squinted really hard and looked at it out of the corner of your eye and said "alligator, alligator, alligator" in your head over and over again. It was pretty yucky wallpaper.

And then, much to Jake's complete and total surprise, he reached up and touched the wall right where the arm had come out. Rationally, and in a calm voice, Jake said to himself, "The arm could come out and grab you, Jake, you big dope." He ran his hand across the wallpaper— it was slightly warm, "That's enough, Jake," he said to himself in a very calm and well-mannered tone, "You don't want to get sucked into wherever the vase and the picture went now do you?"

He retracted his hand, and looked at the wall. He squinted, and thought for a second that just maybe the wall rippled a little bit. Then he shrugged and went up to his room.

Chip sat on Jake's bed with his legs crossed and his hands clasped on his enormous belly. He kind of looked like the Buddha, if the Buddha had freckles and buckteeth.

"You got anything to eat?" he asked.

Jake shrugged. "In the kitchen. Mom says no food in our room cause there's ants."

Chip sighed and nodded.

"You wanna go down and get something?" Jake asked.

But Chip had already worked his way up the stairs. "No. Tell me about this disembodied limb once more. You saw it again yesterday?"

Jake rolled his eyes. "What? It was just there, that's all"

"You say it tossed away the vase?"

"Yeah, like it was looking for something else."

Chip nodded with his eyes closed, as if he knew that that was just the sort of thing that your average arm-coming-out-of-the-wall was likely to do. "And then it took the picture, you say?"

Jake shrugged. "Yep. Took the picture. Very delicately, like it was breakable."

"Oh really? Like this?" Chip put his index finger and thumb together, with his pinkie stuck out."

"Yeah, just like that."

"Delicate, or like it was a pair of dirty underwear?" Chip raised one eyebrow.

Jake shrugged. "Whatever. Anyway, when I touched the wall, it was kind of warm."

Chip shriveled up his face. "Yes, well, your house does face west."

"So?"

"So it would be warm anyway."

"Oh."

They sat in silence for a bit.

"You wanna work on our math?" Jake asked.

"Yeah, okay."

"Jake! Dinner!"

But Jake didn't answer. He was staring at the arm.

It had sat the picture down carefully, and reached for the vase again. But halfway into withdrawing it seemed to remember what it held, and dropped it. It felt around the table again, knocking off pencils and a few pieces of junk mail.

"Jake!"

"I'll be right there."

Jake couldn't believe what he was doing, but he walked right up to the arm, and touched it.

It was an arm, like you would expect, and had some hair on it, dark hairs. A man's arm. The arm reacted to the touch, swing over to touch Jake. It felt his shoulder, his neck, then decided it didn't want him, and gently pushed him away. It went back to the table.

Jake heard footsteps, and his eyes went wide. What if his mom saw? But then the arm disappeared into the wall, empty-handed. Jake felt his mom's hand on his shoulder, the other one, the one the arm hadn't touched. "Jake? what are you doing?"

"Umm, I." he bent over quickly. "I knocked the vase over." He picked it up, put it back on the table, and then turned to face his mom. "I must of spazzed out or something. I dropped it three times!"

Jake's mom ruffled his hair. "Well, you are a spazz, just like your father."

They went in to dinner.

"Mom? Can I ask you a question?"

It was the next day. They were in his mom's room. She was getting ready to go out, and as usual was putting on way too much lipstick. She usually blotted most of it off before she walked out the door. Usually.

"Sure kid, What's up."

"Are you and dad divorced?"

She looked at him sideways as she applied mascara. "Oh, Jakey, we talked about this. We are not divorced, just. separated."

"That's the same thing, isn't it?"

She sighed. "No, it's not. It's not the same at all."

"But we got this house, and dad still lives at home, and."

She put her mascara down and turned to face him, putting her hands on his shoulders. "Look, Jake, you know that your father and I both love you very much."

Jake rolled his eyes, "Well, duh, yeah."

"And we weren't very happy, fighting all the time."

Jake nodded. "Yeah, I know. And that's cool. But this house— I mean, if you guys divorce, that's cool. I just wondered who's side I was supposed to be on."

Jake's mom looked at him, and winked. "My side, of course." she giggled.

"And Gwynn's on dad's side?"

She laughed again. "Sure. Just like when we played trivial pursuit." She went back to putting on her mascara. Jake sat on the bed.

"So why'd you guys fight all the time?"

She shrugged, a mistake, since it smeared her eyeliner. "Adult stuff."

"You mean I wouldn't understand."

"I mean, you'd be bored by it."

"So why'd you get a house if it's just a separation."

"Cause I hate apartments and I wanted to keep you and Gwynn in the same school."

"Dad coulda got an apartment."

"His office is in our house, Jake, remember?"

"Oh, yeah." He chewed on that. "So we must be pretty rich, huh?"

She smiled, caking too much rouge on one cheek. "You starving, boy?"

"I will if Gwynn makes peanut butter and jelly again."

His mother stood up and faced him. "Well? How do I look?"

Jake was no expert, but she looked a little bit like a circus clown. "You look great, mom. Who are you going out with?"

She pulled her jacket of the back of her chair, and put it on, "A man, a very. nice man." She raised her eyebrows on the "nice."

"What's his name?"

"Carl, something." She smiled a devilish smile.

Jake rolled his eyes. "You're going out with dad? Dad? You guys are weird." He went back to his room.

In school, art was Jake's worst subject. He hated drawing. His drawings were primitive in the sense that they looked like a second grader did them. Of course, his sister was in the second grade and her drawings were superb. Maybe he should go to her class for art, and she could come in here to his.

"Jake! What are you drawing?" Ms. Forkfulk stood over him, squinting.

He was drawing a dog. It looked like a blob with four little buds and a big bud with a beard on one end. "Umm, it's a dog."

"No, Jake, No no no. I told you, you have to work from within. Draw what you know."

"Umm, it's my neighbor's dog. He's. fat."

"Draw what you feel, Jake. Art is about the soul, not about," she made a disgusted sigh, and waved at his attempt, "your neighbor's dog." She walked away.

Jake shrugged. "Well, he's a nice dog." He crumpled up his paper, and started on a new one. He picked a crayon at random. It was beige. He looked at it. He looked at his paper. He drew an arm.

It was a pretty good arm.

Jake took out the yellow, and drew in the wall. He started to color it in, but got bored, and decided to draw the vase. He needed silver.

"Hey, Chip, gimee your silver."

Chip handed it to him silently. He was busily working on an incredibly cartoonish looking melting-man.

The silver was worn down to a stub from Chip's four million space saucers that he had drawn. Jake drew in the vase, spilled on the floor, then gave the crayon back. He drew in the table and the picture frame.

He sat back and looked. He had a yellow square with an arm coming out of it, and a darn good arm at that. There was a silver thing that might have been a vase or maybe it was a bone. A brown square, and another smaller brown square with two smily faces in it. It needs more, Jake thought.

Ms. Forkfulk snatched up the picture. "Jake! What is this!"

"Umm, it's an arm."

"It's wonderful, Jake! You've found something here. This is exciting! The arm. It represents, Jake! It speaks!" She put the picture down in front of him, and looked him in the eye. "But it needs more." She walked away.

Jake sighed. He drew in a pencil on the table, and then started to draw in the junk mail, but he blobbed it up. Dang it. Jake squinted at the picture, and looked at out of the side of his eye. The blob kind of looked like a set of keys. Cool.

Jake chewed a tuna fish sandwich, made at last with Miracle Whip, and celery and onions and a hint of garlic. Gwynn was really coming along. Jake stared at the wall.

It was motionless.

No arm.

Jake looked at it for a while, swallowing tuna. He moved his head side to side, trying to see if the wallpaper was ripped or torn in any kind of way. Or maybe stretched out in some kind of way.

Nope.

He looked at the table. The vase was there, on it's side. He stood it up. The picture frame was there, right where the arm had left it. There was one of his sister's hair barrettes.

Jake took another bite of his sandwich, and then he got an idea. Carefully he laid the sandwich down on the table, hiding it behind the vase and the picture frame. He nodded his head. He went outside.

Later that night: "Jake!"

"What?"

"Get your butt down here!"

It was his mom. She must have seen the arm.

He ran downstairs. "Yeah?"

"What the heck is this, mister?" She held up the half-eaten sandwich.

Jake tried a smile "Ooops?"

She held it out. "Throw it away. Now."

Jake took the sandwich and walked to the kitchen, jumping when she swatted his behind.

Jake threw the sandwich away.

Jake and Chip stood on the sidewalk next to the street. Jake was silent. Chip shoved chip after chip into his mouth. The crunching was constant.

"Yea, well, I'm sorry."

"S'okay Jake."

They'd been in the living room, playing nintendo, when Jake's dad had burst into the house. He went straight up the stairs, and Jake could here murmurs from the floor above.

"Maybe I ought to go, Jake."

Jake hung his head. "Yeah."

"I'll call my mom."

And now they stood outside and waited for Chip's mom.

"My uncle got a divorce from my aunt," Chip said between crunches.

"Yeah?"

"Sure. He caught her with another man."

Jake thought about his dad's big ugly nose and his mother's inability to apply make-up. "Well, that's not what my folks got."

Gwynn walked up to them, sniffling. She took Jake's hand. For once, he let her have it.

Chip offered her the bag. She quietly put her hand in and took out a small crumb. You're braver than I am, Gwynn, Jake thought.

Eventually a gigantic lincoln continental pulled up, and Chip got in. "See ya at school, Jake."

"So long."

They watched the car, belching and farting smoke, drive away. Then they sat on the grass. Guinivere sniffled.

Jake patted her hand. "It'll be okay, Gwynn."

"Why do they gotta fight allatime, Jake?"

"Well, they don't fight as much as when we all lived in the same house, right?"

"Why do they have to fight at all?"

Jake shrugged. "Cause they're married. I guess."

Gwynn sniffled some more, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Well, I wish they woulda got divorced before they had us. I hate it when they fight."

Jake nodded. "Me too, Gwynn."

Just then there was a loud slam, and they looked up to see their father storm out of the house. He stomped to his car, and put his hand on the door handle, and tugged at it. Cursing, he stood back and put his hands in his pockets, one by one. Then he did it again, patting himself all over. Despite himself, Jake smiled a little. Gwynn smiled a tiny bit too. Their dad looked back at the house, groaned, looked at the car, kicked the door, hopped up and down on one foot while cursing some more, and than stomped away down the sidewalk.

"Let's go inside," Jake said.

"Okay."

Once indoors, they walked into the kitchen. Jake glanced nervously at the wall on their way, but it was still. In the kitchen, Guinivere ran to their mother. "Mommy!"

She'd obviously been crying, and her make-up was smudged all over the place.

"You okay mom?"

"I'm fine, Jakey," she said, over Gwynn's shoulder.

Jake hung his head. "Was dad drunk?"

Their mother laughed. "What? Of course not!" She laughed again.

Jake sniffed the air. "Umm, you're not. are you?"

She rolled her eyes, "You are a spaz Jake, you know that?"

Jake sort of laughed. He hugged his mom and sister both.

It was late at night. Jake heard a noise downstairs. He went down to investigate. He was brave. It was probably just the arm.

Nope, no arm. The noise was coming from the front door. Jake walked into the living room, and pulled back the curtain to look at the front porch.

It was his Dad. He was trying the doorknob.

Jake went to let him in.

"Jake! What are you doing up?"

"I heard you rattling the door. What are you doing?"

"I uhh, well, I'm here to see your mom." He smiled sheepishly.

"Are you gonna fight some more?"

"No, son, no. I just want to apologize, alright?"

Jake shrugged. "Sure, whatever."

His dad ruffled his hair. "Okay. Seeya tomorrow." He raced up the stairs.

As soon as his disappeared, Jake turned around, and there was the arm, lit by the porch light through the front door. Jake looked at it. It waved around in the air for a bit, and then went down to the table. It knocked the vase off the table, and felt gingerly around the picture frame. Suddenly, Jake had an idea. He grabbed a pen from the floor that the arm had knocked off, and tried to make a mark on the arm. Snake-like, the arm slapped the pen out of his hand before he got a chance. He picked it up and tried again. This time the arm grabbed the pen, and disappeared into the wall.

Well, Jake thought.

Then it reappeared without the pen, and went back to the table. Jake stared at it. "What are you looking for?" he said.

The arm brushed against some keys, and very quickly snatched them up with a loud jangle. It gripped the keys in its fist, and gave them a shake. It clenched them again and gave another shake, a triumphant shake. The arm pumped its fist a few times, as if in celebration, shaking the keys, and then disappeared quickly into the wall.

Jake stood there with his hands on his hips, staring at the spot where the arm had disappeared. He shook his head. He folded his arms. His shook his head again. He sighed. He went upstairs.

As he passed his mom's room, he listened, and heard his mom softly giggling, his dad chuckling. Quickly Jake ran to his own room and put his head under his pillow.

He woke to shouting. "They were right here!"

Jake stumbled out of bed and downstairs. He dad was there by the table, standing with his hands on his hips. Jake blinked at him. "What? Your keys?"

"Yes! I forgot them yesterday, and then when I came back last night I saw them there before I went upstairs." He looked at Jake. "Did you move them?"

Jake laughed. "Not me, dad. I didn't touch them."

"Well then, were could they be?" He got down on his knees and looked under the table.

Jake wandered into the kitchen, and through the door into the garage. He stumbled around the half-opened boxes until he found a hammer. Bleary eyed, he walked back through the kitchen and into the hallway.

His dad was still on his knees, looking along the baseboard. Calmly, Jake smashed the wall with all of his might. His dad jumped to his feet. "Jake! What the he—" Jake swung the hammer again, very calmly, serenely, eyes half-closed, with all of his strength.

His mother appeared at the top of the stairs. "What are you doing! Jake! Carl, stop him!"

With clean overhand smashes Jake battered the wall, ripping the yucky wallpaper and sending plaster and splinters flying. He breathed evenly and could feel his pulse slowly beating in his shoulder.

His mother and father stood next to each other, staring. Neither moved to stop him. Their jaws were on their chests, their eyes wide.

Jake made the hole in the wall bigger, yawning as he rammed the hammer into it over and over again. Eventually he stopped, when he heard a jangling sound. He dropped the hammer, and reached into the hole, pulling his father's keys out. "Here ya go, dad," he said, tossing them over. Then he wandered back to the kitchen to see what Gwynn had made for breakfast. Probably cereal again. One more bowl of Rice Krispies and he'd probably barf all over the school bus.