Ask the Dark by Henry Turner Page B

Then the car slides forward, but at the last second with his hand still on the doorjamb, Skugger, he gives me one of them fuck-you fingers as he goes away.
    I cussed him good right then, you bet I did, screaming, Goddamn motherfucker kiss my ass , scuze my language. And the car, it jerked to a stop, tires screeched, like he’s gonna maybe get on out and do something about it. But do that fucker come back for me? Shit no. He didn’t want a busted lip that day.
    I still got a few blocks to cover, so I go through a yard and over a porch where there ain’t nothing but empty chairs and quiet toys and dust. Then I dodge down into an alley and go on walking slow over the concrete, garages on both sides.
    Then something funny come to me.
    When Skugger’d talked I’d watched that man in there driving the car, this sort’f hairy-looking man about Richie Harrigan’s age, ’cause I’d seen him round a few times over the years, last few years, and he and Skugger was always driving around together, as was lots of other boys who hung out with’m and liked to party. And even though I ain’t never met the man driving, right then I felt there was something real familiar about him, but I couldn’t say just what ’cause of all that smoke blowin’ round inside the car.
    Then just like that I hear feet running up behind me. I turned back quick and saw Jimmy Brest, tall and straight and coming fast.
    ZEETS! he yelled, his face looking on fire.
    I didn’t stay to hear more.
    I ran.
    I went through a gate into a yard, and knowing Brest was fast on his feet, I dodged right through the walk-in door on the side of a garage. I ducked just in time to see’m run past, the motherfucker running along with a big bag of chips in his hand, and his voice sounding funny yelling ’cause his mouth’s all full of chips.
    I figured I had maybe thirty seconds till he backtracked. I stood still a second to slow my breath and listen. I wondered how the hell he’d found me, what with me just getting warned like I did. Then the thought come to me that Skugger’d prob’ly got pissed when I cussed him, called the fucker’n told him where I was.
    The big garage door was open, so I went straight back out in the alley. I heard Brest off in some yard yelling, Where are you, fucker? but I didn’t hang around.
    Across the alley was another garage, and I went in. Was the sort with a stairs to the rafters, wood stairs you get down by pulling on a rope, and I pulled. Keeping the rope in my hand I yanked the stairs back up once I got on the rafters, and just in time, too. Because a second later Brest came in below. I was sitting in the dark on a rafter and I heard’m, knocking things around, saying, Where the fuck are you? And me, I’m thinking, I hope the fucker starts up after me, ’cause there some paint cans up’ere gonna make friends with his head if he do, and I almost bust out laughin’ thinking that, the dumb fucker. But a second later he was out in the alley, running until his footscrapes faded away.

Chapter Eleven
    When I got home it was after curfew. Sun was throwing shadows of trees all ’long the street. Leezie was there standing on the porch, house all dark behind her.
    Where’s Daddy?
    Took a bus ride, she says. Out all day.
    Job counselor?
    Don’t know, she said.
    I looked at her. She was wearing this pair of pants cut so short the pockets flapped out, and she had this sort of pearly paint on her toenails, red it was, and for a shirt she had the flimsiest thing, no different than being naked, looking through it you could see her whole shape, and that black strappy underwear she got on underneath’t. Her face was made up too. Blue on the eyes right up to under the eyebrows, brown stuff on her cheeks like dark hollows, and mouth so red it looked like she’d split her lip. Wearin’ perfume too. Shit, I could smell’r ten foot off.
    Leezie, why you dressed like that? I said.
    She looked at me and winced. I ain’t dressed, she said.