There’s a toy manufacturer named Hasbro. They’re best known for making G.I. Joe, Rubik’s Cube, and Baby Alive. Believe it or not, Hasbro has a direct communication line to the spiritual world. I’m talking about the Ouija board. Hasbro makes that, too. And for one summer we used it to talk to our friend Danny.
“Check it out,” he said. He sat down next to us on the brown plaid couch that once belonged to my grandma. We got it after she died. It still smelled like lavender and cigarettes.
“That don’t work.” I shook my head. “It’s like the Magic Eight Ball.”
“Whatever,” Troy shot back. “You going to try it with me?”
Troy sat down on the couch with us and opened the box on the drink-stained, lacquered coffee table. He unfolded the game board. Printed on top was the alphabet—a gentle arc of letters A through Z in a sort of spooky old Victorian black typeface. Below that were numbers, one through ten. A pen-and-ink illustration of a black-and-white sun, replete with a smiling face, was one in corner; a sleepy crescent moon in the other. At the bottom of the board was the word “goodbye.”
We sat still. We were so quiet you could hear the pendulum inside the grandfather clock upstairs in the living room swinging away. Nixon barked.
