“Jake,” I asked, pressing my face up against the glass of the tank. “How come you play your music so loud? You’re going to be deaf by the time you’re thirty.” Squatting down, my eyes came level with a dark gold reptilian eye. 

 “Whoa!” I cried jumping back and shuddering. “Why can’t you have a dog, Jake, or a fish?” I asked my older brother, who was still beneath the car he and my dad had been working on. “Because snakes are cool. They also don’t hear good and Rupert likes eighties pop.”

I huffed. “No one likes eighties pop.”

 My brother pulled himself out from under the ancient Chevy, sliding easily on the concrete of our basement floor. Jake assured me the vehicle would be worth money when he and dad were done, but I doubted it. 

 Picking the oily towel up off the hood he threw it at me and snapped, “No one asked you, Zoe.” Swatting at the dirty rag was futile as it hit me in the face anyway. I glared at my brother. He made a mean face and grabbed some sort of tool before crawling back under the hunk of junk. 

 “Ugh! You’re so annoying!” I exclaimed jumping onto the counter beside the snake cage. I looked down at Rupert. The thick python was entirely unsympathetic. “You, too,” I told it. The song on the old radio switched and I rolled my eyes. 

 Muttering, I turned the dial, looking for a channel with more contemporary music. All I got was static and more static, loud and grating. Wincing, I kept rotating the dial. Nothing except high pitched scratchiness emitted from the speakers. “Zoe!” My brother complained and I waved him off. “I’ll find something in a sec, anything is better than what you had playing.” 

 Yet, nothing was coming through.

 Then a faint word emerged and I shouted in triumph. Finally! I turned the volume up and sat back. The static was still there, buzzing in the background for a while before the word came again up out of the air waves. 

“Jake.” 

I frowned. That was weird. 

“Jake.” 

 Reaching for the dial once more I swiveled it back and forth. My twisting of the dial became increasingly distressed as every station simply replied, “Jake.” 

 My brother growled at me from under the car, “That isn’t funny, Zoe.” I knew it wasn’t funny, in fact it was starting to scare me. “I’m not doing it!” 

“Stop it.” Jake said scrambling out from under the machine. 

 “I’m trying!” I snapped, frantic. “You know how many Jakes there must be in the world.” Then the rhythmic repetition ceased but the static continued. 

“That was super weird, right?” I asked turning around. 

 “Jake?” I questioned the empty basement. “Hey, Jake?” My brother did not reply. A quick check under the car revealed nothing. Static filled the basement. I looked down at the snake and it’s slitted eyes stared back at me. Jake was gone. 

 “Zoe,” the radio whispered. I screamed.