Stranger and Stranger by Rob Reger

the cats have found themselves a new snuggle-buddy instead of having fun-times with me, is a bit much for me right now. Am feeling flashes of jealousy. Very unusual emotion for me. Not pleased!!!!!!!
    Am heading underground.
    Later
    Am feeling somewhat better after a little Q.T. spent on sewer mural. Am glad in a small, vindictive way that I never told OtherMe about this place.

    Binary Larry was there, as usual. I had brushed up on my binary-to-English skills and started to translate his coding (see notes), but stopped after about 13 letters when he realized what I was doing and got embarrassed. Funneeee!
    Also, he brought me flowers! AHahhahhahaAHHhahhahhaAHhaha!
    Have put them in a tin can, just to be polite.

    June 14
    Master Pranks successfully completed, 1; disastrous family outings, 1
    TERRIBLE day.
    It started when Patti came up to the bedroom at sundown and woke me up. “OK, it totally makes my mind hurt, but I decided that I’m not going to run away from the facts,” she said. “So where is she, my other daughter, if that’s what she really is?”
    Good point. “Uh…I don’t know where she slept last night, Patti. We kind of had this fight…Maybe the closet?”
    She wasn’t in the closet, or anywhere else in the room, so Patti and I split up and searched the house for her. Actually, I spent most of that time trying to find my journal, which it turned outI had left in the basement yesterday, and by the time I found it, OtherMe AnnoyingMe had turned up, and she and Patti were sitting on the couch chatting. Patti did not look mentally well at the sight of two of us, but she has agreed to deal with it if we Emilies go along on her “fun” family trip to Black Basin tonight. At least Silifordville is even closer to Black Basin than Blandindulle was, and the drive will be tolerably short.
    One good thing is that we don’t have to do this hiding-in-the-bedroom routine anymore. But I have not forgiven AnnoyingMe for our fight. Nor do I trust her as far as I could dropkick her!
    —Anyway. We got some sandwiches packed and drove out of town to Black Basin Canyon. No matter what town we might be living in, Patti and I have been taking nighttime hikes there for years. Unfortunately, I could tell right away we were not going to have a good time. Instead of making up obnoxious lyrics to songs on the radio, the three of us sat in grim silence. Patti didn’t pretend to take the wrong turns, and I didn’t pretend I was late for my big cheerleading competition, or any of the other silly stuff that normally makes our road trips fun. We didn’t even bother to point out our special landmarks: the phone pole that once got hit by lightning right in front of us, Old Man Dameron’s Krazy Tarp Shack, and our favorite gnarly tree that looks like a cross between a skeleton and a rutabaga.
    Finally (FINALLY) we arrived at the trailhead. Patti insistedon taking a cheesy family photo—we had to use the camera timer since there was no other hiker in sight.
    Patti had brought special low-light flashlights for navigating in maximum darkness. And she really had picked the best night of the month for minimum moonlight. In some small part of me, I knew she was trying to make this hike a bonding experience for her and her bizarrely doubled daughter, and I could appreciate that. But in the rest of me, I felt…I don’t know. Kind of Mad at the World, or something, and wanting the two of them to suffer for it.

    But back to the Hike.
    Black Basin Canyon is probably a spooky place even at noontime, but around midnight on a night with no moon, it’s downright diabolical. The darkness is like tar. The birdcalls arelike ghosts wailing for their dead lovers. The black, bubbling hot springs smell like the sulfurous pits of the underworld. Obviously, it’s been one of my favorite spots all my life.
    After so many years of hiking here, I don’t even use the flashlight…I know all the rocks and all the trees, all the treacherous parts of the