11
When Honi had been little, he’d hated the tunnel-like hallway in the bungalow. The bare lightbulb illuminating the space had been broken more often than not, and his active imagination had conjured up all sorts of horrors hiding behind the kickboards.
One day, when he’d just started preschool, his father had removed one of the boards because he’d heard some rustling.
He’d leveraged the piece of wood off with a screwdriver. The moment the baseboard had hit the ground, Honi’s dad had turned pale and scooted back on his butt. Honi’d laughed at first. But then a snake, light-brown with a distinct, darker diamond pattern on its back and a head shaped like an arrow, had slithered out of the darkness.
His dad had whispered, “Honi, don’t move.”
The fear in his voice had frozen Honi to his
