Lost Between Houses by David Gilmour

promising. I’ve got a lot of stuff to sort out up here first.”
    “Like what?”
    “Just stuff. Personal obligations and things. But it’s not very likely.”
    “If you were really daring, you would.”
    “What if I don’t get a ride?”
    “I’d pick you up. Anybody in their right mind would pick you up.” Another pause. “You could sleep in my father’s bed. It’s as big as a tennis court. With satin sheets.”
    “It’ll take hours.”
    “I’ll be up.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Just ring the buzzer. You’ll see.”
    “So?” she said after a moment.
    “I’ll try.”
    “Don’t say you’ll try. People always say they’ll try and nothing ever happens.”
    “All right. I’ll really try.”
    “You better.”
    “I will.”
    “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
    “What?”
    “The address.”
    So she gave it to me.
    After I put down the phone I just sat there for a minute, moving my jaw from side to side. It made a funny sound in the middle of my head. I always did that when I was thinking about something, but Harper said it made me look like a fish with a hook in his mouth so I only did it in private. I went upstairs tohis bedroom. The wallpaper was light blue in there. He had a football balanced on his chest.
    “Was that that broad again?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What’d she want?”
    “She wants me to come down and see her. Tonight.”
    “Right,” he said.
    I went down the hall and sat on my bed. Then I got up and looked at myself in the mirror. I hauled out my wallet and looked inside. I had a whole lot of cash the old lady had left, just in case of an emergency. I
could do it,
I thought, I
really could.
I could feel it going from a wild idea to something I might actually do, I could actually feel it happening inside me, like a lab experiment, fizz, fizz, all the chemical stuff mixing together.
    Finally I got up off my bed and I went back into Harper’s room. I stood in the doorway.
    “I think I’m going to,” I said.
    “What?”
    “I think I’m going to go.”
    “You can’t. I’ll get in shit. The old lady will blame me.”
    “I’ll be back in time.”
    “Forget it.”
    I started down the hall. I heard him get off his bed. I ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, giggling like a maniac, and burst out the side door and started up the driveway. Just when I got about halfway up, I heard the screen door come flying open.
    “Asshole!” he shouted. But I kept going.
    I hurried up the dark driveway toward the main highway. I could hear the stream gurgling behind the trees. Stones scattering under my feet. Man, was I wide awake.
    I got to the top of the road and started to walk toward town. In the moonlight I could see all the way across the fields. There were no cars. I must have walked for about fifteen minutes, everything still as a graveyard when I heard this funny humming sound. I stopped and listened. Way at the far end of the road, a pair of headlights came swinging around the corner and came up toward me like a shotgun. I put out my thumb, shielding my eyes. They got closer and closer, they were really coming down on me, the guy blasted his horn and then roared by, this great big wind flapping my clothes like I was some kind of scarecrow.
    Then everything was still again.
    I kept on; I walked by a farmhouse. A dog barked. I jumped. I moved into the centre of the road, walking on the single line, one foot after the other, sticking my arms out for balance, talking to myself a mile a minute. They would have stuck me in the booby hatch if they’d heard. It was like there were six people with me. Me talking to Harper and to my mother and then Scarlet, even some of the guys at school, explaining to them what I was doing in the middle of the road in the middle of the night. They were all ears.
    Another car came winding around the corner. I stood way back from the highway this time, a friendly little smile on my face so they didn’t figure I’d just taken an axe to my whole