Bells of Avalon by Libbet Bradstreet Page B

distant shape of him leaned stubbornly against a palm tree, watching out for her as she imagined his mother had told him to. She thought of the strange influence Mrs. Gallagher held over son where certain things were concerned. She climbed up a small hill offering a better view of the faraway island.
    “What are you looking at?” he asked, finally catching up from behind.
    “Come up if you want to see.”
    “What? I don’t think we’re supposed to be up there, how high is it anyway?”
    “How high does it look?” she replied.
    He didn’t answer.  She thought he’d given up and left her in peace, but then she heard the tiny cracklings of rocks and dirt.  He pulled himself beside her, his hair having fallen from its neatly combed pattern. He shot her a crabby look.
    “Just couldn’t leave me alone, could you?” she asked. 
    He didn’t answer, didn’t say anything at all for several minutes.
    “Why are you afraid to be outside?” he finally asked and turned to her. She kept her eyes fixed on the ocean.
    “I’m outside now, aren’t I?”
    “You know what I mean,” he replied grumpily.
    She couldn’t look at him, afraid of what she’d see in his ever-changing turnstile of faces. 
    “Have you ever been there?” she asked.
    “Hasn’t everybody?”
    His body relaxed from the perfect sort of posture he usually carried.  The consistency of his posture was a sore spot for her. She’d been graded against the yardstick of his rigid spine for as long as they’d been set to pose together.  No slouching Katie! Stand tall like Danny. There you go, they said as their thick fingers yanked her shoulder blades back and fluffed her dress once again—people like that always had thick fingers.
    “ I haven’t,” she said.
    “Well you aren’t missing much. It’s just like over here, except smaller.”
    “But it looks so different.”
    “How can you tell? It could Alcatraz for all you can see at this distance.”
    “I’ve never been there either,” she said looking down. He sighed impatiently and pulled some grass up by the root.  He tossed it roughly over the edge.
    “Why the hell do you have to say things like that?” he asked, wiping his dirty hands together.
    “Say things like what?” 
    “Nothing,” he mumbled.
    “How do I say things?”
    “I don’t know. Like your dog just died, or you’re reading off a script about your dog dying. It drives me crazy.”
    Her cheeks grew hot.
    “I can’t help that I don’t talk like you or the others.  I’ve never had a dog and I don’t know what Alcatraz is. I don’t understand the things you say most of the time either, but I don’t make fun of you for it.”
    “You don’t know what Alcatraz is?”
    “No, I told you I don’t.”
    “Oh, Katie Webb, I suppose you’ll get it one of these days.”
    “Don’t say that to me. I hate when you say that,” she said and pulled her knees into her chest.
    “It’s a jail.”
    “What’s a jail?”
    “Alcatraz, of course. It’s on an island about a mile off the coast of San Francisco.”
    “A jail on an island?”
    “Yeah, all the bigs go there…Creepy Karpis, Machine Gun Kelly, all of them.”
    “Are they murderers?”
    “Some I suppose—but mostly robbers and numbers runners.”
    “It sounds horrible.”
    “It’s just a jail—like any other. I went there once with my dad when I was little and saw it from the wharf.  It isn’t much to look at really. You could probably throw a rock and hit it from the shore.”
    “Does it really look like Catalina?” she asked.
    “How the hell should I know? I can barely see the thing from out here.”
    “But you said you’d been there? What was it like?”
    “Why do you want to know?” he asked.             
    “I just do. Just tell me”
    He tilted his head and looked her over.
    “I’ll tell you…if you tell me what you were running from back there.”
                  She was silent as she listened to the sound of