Hearts In Atlantis by Stephen King

the authority to do that, she settled for barking “ WHATYEARYABORN? ” to any kid over five and a half feet tall. With all that going on you could sometimes sneak past her quite easily, and there was no ticket-ripper on Saturday afternoons. But Bobby didn’t want giant scorpions today; he had spent the last week with more realistic monsters, many of whom had probably looked pretty much like him.
    â€œNah, I think I’ll just hang around,” Bobby said.
    â€œOkay.” Sully-John scrummed a few apple-blossoms out of his black hair, then looked solemnly at Bobby. “Call me a cool bastard, Big Bob.”
    â€œSully, you’re one cool bastard.”
    â€œYes!” Sully-John leaped skyward, punching at the air and laughing. “Yes I am! A cool bastard today! A great big cool bastard of a magician tomorrow! Pow!”
    Bobby collapsed against the back of the bench, legs outstretched, sneakers toed in, laughing hard. S-J was just so funny when he got going.
    Sully started away, then turned back. “Man, you know what? I saw a couple of weird guys when I came into the park.”
    â€œWhat was weird about them?”
    Sully-John shook his head, looking puzzled. “Don’t know,” he said. “Don’t really know.” Then he headed off, singing “At the Hop.” It was one of his favorites. Bobby liked it, too. Danny and the Juniors were great.
    Bobby opened the paperback Ted had given him (it was now looking exceedingly well thumbed) and read the last couple of pages again, the part where theadults finally showed up. He began to ponder it again—happy or sad?—and Sully-John slipped from his mind. It occurred to him later that if S-J had happened to mention that the weird guys he’d seen were wearing yellow coats, some things might have been quite different later on.
    â€¢   •   •
    â€œWilliam Golding wrote an interesting thing about that book, one which I think speaks to your concern about the ending . . . want another pop, Bobby?”
    Bobby shook his head and said no thanks. He didn’t like rootbeer all that much; he mostly drank it out of politeness when he was with Ted. They were sitting at Ted’s kitchen table again, Mrs. O’Hara’s dog was still barking (so far as Bobby could tell, Bowser never stopped barking), and Ted was still smoking Chesterfields. Bobby had peeked in at his mother when he came back from the park, saw she was napping on her bed, and then had hastened up to the third floor to ask Ted about the ending of Lord of the Flies .
    Ted crossed to the refrigerator . . . and then stopped, standing there with his hand on the fridge door, staring off into space. Bobby would realize later that this was his first clear glimpse of something about Ted that wasn’t right; that was in fact wrong and going wronger all the time.
    â€œOne feels them first in the back of one’s eyes,” he said in a conversational tone. He spoke clearly; Bobby heard every word.
    â€œFeels what?”
    â€œOne feels them first in the back of one’s eyes.” Still staring into space with one hand curled aroundthe handle of the refrigerator, and Bobby began to feel frightened. There seemed to be something in the air, something almost like pollen—it made the hairs inside his nose tingle, made the backs of his hands itch.
    Then Ted opened the fridge door and bent in. “Sure you don’t want one?” he asked. “It’s good and cold.”
    â€œNo . . . no, that’s okay.”
    Ted came back to the table, and Bobby understood that he had either decided to ignore what had just happened, or didn’t remember it. He also understood that Ted was okay now, and that was good enough for Bobby. Grownups were weird, that was all. Sometimes you just had to ignore the stuff they did.
    â€œTell me what he said about the ending. Mr. Golding.”
    â€œAs