yellow-brick complex that looked like a reform school; all it needed was loops of razor wire. Next came the town maintenance yard where the snowplows, road graders, and school buses were parked.
That was another option his counselor had suggested. A town job didn’t pay much, but it came with benefits like health insurance, sick days, pension, and so on. She’d been gazing at him with a look of such concern when she said it that he hadn’t told her what those things—along with the whole idea of plowing snow and mowing grass for a living—made him think of:
An early grave. Not for the guys who liked it, maybe, but for him it would be better just to get his dad’s rifle.
Plus one bullet. He coasted into town, past the red-brick library ( OPEN M-W-F 10–4 & SA 12–3 ), the shuttered Tastee-Freez ( SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER! ) and the ballfield where he’d played Little League until at age eleven, he was already just too big ( PLEASE NO DOGS ALLOWED! ).
He didn’t care, though. By then his interests had already shifted from base hits to bass guitars, veering briefly into freebase cocaine when it was plentiful for a while even way out here. But after coke came meth, so poisonous that you had to have something seriously wrong with you to partake of it.
Which many of his friends, as it turned out, did, and so of course a couple of times he’d tried it, too. He’d gone back to weed pretty quick, though; his acne was bad enough without using some chemical junk to make it worse, and there were a few meth chicks around town by then, too, whose ravaged faces were like living warning signs.
Now rolling down deserted Main Street no-hands, he pulled a half-smoked roach from his jacket pocket, lit up with a quick, deft flick of his Bic, and, while inhaling the sweet, harsh smoke, approached the turn at the potato barn on the corner.
The barn loomed huge and silent, the harsh white security light on its rickety porch casting weirdly angled shadows from the posts that held up its shingled overhang. Decades of stomping by the booted feet of laborers had worn deep cups in the granite slabs of its front steps; from its windows, tall and narrow like vertically slitted eyes, he could imagine dark watchers peering.
Then he was past it and around onto the dark, unpaved lane. Slowing, he rolled past small houses where people were already asleep in front of TVs flickering vividly behind drawn curtains, until at the end he braked his bike silently to a halt.
This last house on the street was the one the cop lady had rented; he knew because his mother had overheard it in the Food King, and mentioned it at dinner just as a matter of general interest. Now the house was completely dark, nothing moving in it or on the street outside. Standing there finishing up the roach, he thought that most of the people asleep in these houses might as well remain there, dreaming forever.
If they even remembered how. Certainly there was nothing to dream about in Bearkill, Maine. Nothing to get up for, either. Not unless you really, really wanted something.
Out, for instance.
And you’d come up with a way to get it. Turning toward the other end of the street, he spotted a familiar van sitting under the corner streetlight by the hulking shape of the potato barn.
Watch her
.
THREE
Lizzie’s office in Bearkill looked no more encouraging the next morning than it had the day before. But she’d already decided what to do about that.
Getting the hell out of Dodge would be my first choice
, she thought wryly, but instead, after switching on the lights for an even better view of the drab space, she went back outside again and walked down the chilly street to the Food King.
Paying for a coffee from the deli in the store, she met the cashier’s curious gaze. “Do you happen to know anyone around here who does chores? Cleaning, painting?”
The clerk blinked twice. “You stay right there.”
The woman in line behind Lizzie wore an oversized U. Maine
That was another option his counselor had suggested. A town job didn’t pay much, but it came with benefits like health insurance, sick days, pension, and so on. She’d been gazing at him with a look of such concern when she said it that he hadn’t told her what those things—along with the whole idea of plowing snow and mowing grass for a living—made him think of:
An early grave. Not for the guys who liked it, maybe, but for him it would be better just to get his dad’s rifle.
Plus one bullet. He coasted into town, past the red-brick library ( OPEN M-W-F 10–4 & SA 12–3 ), the shuttered Tastee-Freez ( SEE YOU NEXT SUMMER! ) and the ballfield where he’d played Little League until at age eleven, he was already just too big ( PLEASE NO DOGS ALLOWED! ).
He didn’t care, though. By then his interests had already shifted from base hits to bass guitars, veering briefly into freebase cocaine when it was plentiful for a while even way out here. But after coke came meth, so poisonous that you had to have something seriously wrong with you to partake of it.
Which many of his friends, as it turned out, did, and so of course a couple of times he’d tried it, too. He’d gone back to weed pretty quick, though; his acne was bad enough without using some chemical junk to make it worse, and there were a few meth chicks around town by then, too, whose ravaged faces were like living warning signs.
Now rolling down deserted Main Street no-hands, he pulled a half-smoked roach from his jacket pocket, lit up with a quick, deft flick of his Bic, and, while inhaling the sweet, harsh smoke, approached the turn at the potato barn on the corner.
The barn loomed huge and silent, the harsh white security light on its rickety porch casting weirdly angled shadows from the posts that held up its shingled overhang. Decades of stomping by the booted feet of laborers had worn deep cups in the granite slabs of its front steps; from its windows, tall and narrow like vertically slitted eyes, he could imagine dark watchers peering.
Then he was past it and around onto the dark, unpaved lane. Slowing, he rolled past small houses where people were already asleep in front of TVs flickering vividly behind drawn curtains, until at the end he braked his bike silently to a halt.
This last house on the street was the one the cop lady had rented; he knew because his mother had overheard it in the Food King, and mentioned it at dinner just as a matter of general interest. Now the house was completely dark, nothing moving in it or on the street outside. Standing there finishing up the roach, he thought that most of the people asleep in these houses might as well remain there, dreaming forever.
If they even remembered how. Certainly there was nothing to dream about in Bearkill, Maine. Nothing to get up for, either. Not unless you really, really wanted something.
Out, for instance.
And you’d come up with a way to get it. Turning toward the other end of the street, he spotted a familiar van sitting under the corner streetlight by the hulking shape of the potato barn.
Watch her
.
THREE
Lizzie’s office in Bearkill looked no more encouraging the next morning than it had the day before. But she’d already decided what to do about that.
Getting the hell out of Dodge would be my first choice
, she thought wryly, but instead, after switching on the lights for an even better view of the drab space, she went back outside again and walked down the chilly street to the Food King.
Paying for a coffee from the deli in the store, she met the cashier’s curious gaze. “Do you happen to know anyone around here who does chores? Cleaning, painting?”
The clerk blinked twice. “You stay right there.”
The woman in line behind Lizzie wore an oversized U. Maine
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