"Scars" on cliche bingo. Short, I know. I apologize; I try not to upload anything under a thousand words.

Coraline is, for the most part, extremely happy to be in the real world. Sure, sometimes she misses toys that play with you too, but she really doesn't miss the beldam or the rats.

Wybie scratches the back of his head when she explains it all to him the day before the garden party. "That sounds like a dream," he says. "Are you sure you're not lying or something?"

"I told you I'd tell you all about it, didn't I?" Coraline says. She's sitting on one of the garden benches, swinging her legs and trying not to look at Wybie. It's really strange to talk to this one with big brown eyes instead of gentle black buttons.

"Yeah," Wybie says, "But, well, it's weird, isn't it?"

Coraline moodily knocks over one of Dad's garden gnomes and says sullenly, "The other Wybie would have let me finish without interrupting." She looks at his hand, the one he doesn't have a glove on, and makes a face at his superhero bandaids.

"Anyway, you saw the other mother's hand," she says, pointing down at his stupid bandaids.

Wybie looks too. "Grandma says it'll scar," he tells her cheerfully.

"Boys are so stupid," Coraline says absently. She scrubs her hands on her jeans. "You believe me now, don't you? Not gonna run away screaming 'crazy, crazy, crazy' this time?"

"You still sound really crazy," Wybie offers, rubbing the back of his neck. "Like, I don't know. Mental institution crazy."

"I'm really not," says Coraline. "You can just ask the cat if you don't believe me."

The cat's stretched out on Wybie's lap, lolling stupidly on his back. The cat wouldn't have let someone see him like that in the Other World, so she's not really surprised when Wybie says, "He's a cat, Coraline. He can't talk."

"Maybe you just can't hear him," she says. She pushes herself to her feet and stomps a few feet away. "Maybe I just have superior senses, did you ever think about that?"

"Sure," Wybie says. He tickles the cat on his belly instead of looking up at her, which she finds frustrating. The other Wybie had always looked at her, no matter what. She doesn't like thinking she's less interesting than an ordinary cat. "So, listen, do you want to go hunt for banana slugs with us?"

Coraline wrinkles her nose. "No," she enunciates slowly, "I do not want to go find banana slugs with you. I don't want to do anything with you, Why-were-you-born."

Wybie shrugs and stands up, the cat hanging contentedly over his shoulder. "Okay," he says, "I'll see you later then, alright?"

He starts to walk away then turns to stare at her, wringing his hands together. Coraline makes shooing motions with her hands. "Go away, Wybie," she says, "I don't want to talk to you anymore."

"Don't go in any holes in the wall again." His mouth twitches into a smile that makes Coraline recoil a little bit; all she can see are the holes in the other Wybie's face, yarn twisting his smile into a nightmare. "My grandma says the house still feels kind of evil, so be careful."

"I thought you said I was crazy!" Coraline shouts at his retreating back.

The way Wybie has of walking that made much more sense when he was the other Wybie, she thinks. He's hunched up and nervous all the time. It annoys Coraline. A little. Then it makes her want to hug him, because he looks so much like her other Wybie, the one who smiled because the beldam made him.

It's very confusing. She thinks she would have liked it better if she could trade the other Wybie, with his fresh pink scars, for this one.

"I wish," she says derisively to herself. She leans over to right her Dad's stupid garden gnome, and pauses. There's something...

Be oh so careful, miss, she hears on a sigh of wind. Even now, the beldam waits, and listens. Don't make wishes, miss, be careful.

Oh, Coraline thinks.

"I didn't actually mean that," she says hastily and loudly. "I like this Wybie. When he's not being a stupid, stalking boy, I mean. And I don't like like him, I just sort of like him. You know."

She's pretty sure the other mother didn't have any other hands scrabbling around looking for the key, but she really doesn't want to chance it trying to lure her in again. She's gonna have to go look at the well again today, to make sure it's still all boarded up.

Maybe she'll take Why-be-born with her later.

Coraline peaks over the stone wall to the pathway away from her house. Unsurprisingly, Wybie's dropped to the ground, his butt in the air while he looks for bugs. "Yeah," she says with a grimace, "I just sort of like him. He has a lot of nerve, calling me crazy, though."

The sudden flicker of black makes Coraline drop her eyes from Wybie's stupid hair to where the cat is strutting up and down his back. She gives it a little wave; the cat stares at her with his huge blues eyes before yawning pointedly and curling around the back of Wybie's neck.

"Stupid cat," she huffs.

The cat winks at her.