reversed the coat, then broke into a high-stepping run, mouth open in a silent laugh. He couldn't wait to get home and call Brian, couldn't wait to let the asshole know that Tar Boston was not just a stupid jock.
School Street was empty, and the pavement sounded like thin ice beneath his sneakers. By the time he reached the next corner he could feel the cut of the night air against his cheeks and in his lungs, and he sniffed to keep his nose from running. Now he wished he had the car, the ten-year-old junkpile his old man had bought for him on his last birthday. It barely ran, when it bothered to run at all, but the heater still worked and he could use it now.
Or the relative luxury of Pratt's automobile.
He slowed and scowled. Stupid jock-that's what Pratt had called him at practice today-stupid jock, get the fuck outta my way before I run you down. There was a bug up his ass, that's for sure, because he hardly said two words to him and Fleet the whole time, even when they were doing weights after the coach had left. Like he was mad or something, and Tar hadn't been able to get him to tell him what was the matter.
Fleet was almost as bad, but different. That jerk acted like he was running from the cops or something, the way he kept looking around on the way home. Tar had gotten so damned nervous he almost sideswiped a bus.
But Fleet wouldn't say anything either.
And it wasn't until Tar was home and eating supper that he had the idea that would even the score between himself and the Duck for accusing him and Pratt of dumping that shit on Hedley's porch. A truly fantastic idea. A blow at the fucking principal and at the Duck at the same time. Stunning. And it would shut Pratt up about how Tar must've blown it when the Duck didn't get the blame the way it was planned. The idea for the dead bird came as he passed a butcher shop on the way home and saw a goose in the window. From there it was a simple matter of stopping at a friend's house, a friend who had two little brothers who kept four ducks in a pen in the backyard. He didn't even have to look at the bird; he'd clobbered it with a stick while it struggled in the burlap bag he'd dropped over its head; then he'd wrung its neck. Not a speck of blood on him. Even when he dropped it into the bushes he didn't look. Didn't have to. Didn't even care if the Boyds found it that night or the next morning.
He picked up the pace, racing for the goal line with Pratt the jerk blocking in front of him.
The hard part was getting the car. He knew he would have time for only a few good blows before somebody heard him, and after he'd taken care of the bike, he took them standing on the hood. He pretended the windshield was Boyd's face, that the hood was the Duck's chest, and it had been beautiful! And a shame that Brian couldn't be there. But he was acting like an asshole, like the minute after the game the pros were going to carry him away to the Super Bowl on their goddamned shoulders, for Christ's sake.
He rounded another corner and headed for home, taking in air in deep, satisfying gulps. It was going to be like this tomorrow night. He was going to take North apart, and those fuckers wouldn't know what hit them. It was going to be excellent, and Brian was going to have to show him respect. Absolutely.
Something moved behind him.
He turned and walked backward a few steps, seeing nothing but the empty sidewalk, the porch lights hazed in the crisp air, the cars at the curb silent and black. He turned again and groaned when he saw a battered pickup in the driveway, blocking his own car-his old man was home early from the factory tonight. That meant he was going to have to put up with the back-slapping and the jabbing and the reminders of how the old fart had been a star in his day, the best quarterback in the state and don't you forget it, boy, when I give you the best goddamned advice you ever had in your life. The trouble was, it's been twenty years since they played the way his old man did, and the jerk didn't know it. He didn't know why his mother put up with it, and him, all these years. He sure as hell wasn't going to. As soon as he had that diploma in hand, he was gone.
Out of that house and out of this town and out of this whole goddamned state if he could.
Something moved.
Shit, he thought, angry at the way his good mood could be shattered by the simple thought of his father. Shit!
He looked over his shoulder, his expression daring anyone to say something, to do something, even to breathe wrong tonight. And he walked past his house with his head down and averted, spitting at the pickup, zipping up his jacket and jamming his hands into his pockets. Fuck it, he would walk over to Brian's instead of calling. The story would be better anyway, with him doing the telling in person.
Something ...
He stopped at the boulevard, looked up and down the avenue, and then whirled around, fists at the ready.
There was nothing there.
But something was moving.
'Yo!' he said loudly.
A porch light blinked out, and he could see his breath feathering out of his mouth.
With his head tilted slightly to one side, he stepped off the curb and looked curiously down the block, under the trees that reached over the blacktop and created a tunnel almost solidly black. He tried to bring to mind a picture of Don's stricken face when he found the dead bird, when he discovered the bike, because suddenly and inexplicably anything would be better than seeing into that dark. But all he could see was the broken and faded white line stretching into the night, and something in the middle moving toward him without a sound.
'Yo, stupid!' he called.
Only one streetlamp worked, and his gaze kept moving toward its light where it caught the front end of a car and the lip of a driveway.
'Asshole,' he muttered, and turned away, but didn't move. He was suddenly indecisive. Beacher's was already closed, and the idea of going to Brian's didn't seem as much fun as he'd thought. But he couldn't go home. Not yet. Not until his old man had had his beers and was asleep on the couch and his mother had already finished the dishes. Then he'd be able to kiss her goodnight and go to bed, get some sleep. Tomorrow, as the coach kept reminding them, was the Big Day, as if they didn't know it, and he supposed he might as well get all the rest he could.
Tomorrow, he was going to be a hero, and the hell with Brian Pratt.
Then he heard something move and he whirled again, and took a deep breath, holding it until John Delfield's fat dachshund waddled into the light.
Don stood in the shower, oblivious to the hot water turning his skin pink. Slowly he pulled the plastic curtain aside and stared again at the jeans lying beside the wicker laundry basket. A bit of red leather poked out from one pocket. His hand released the curtain and it rattled closed, and the steam rose to cover his face while he tried to understand what was going on. He knew who the keys belonged to. He knew what he should have done the second he had found them. Yet he'd put them in his pocket and had said nothing, hadn't heard a word his father had said about whoever had committed that atrocity, hadn't felt a thing except a slow roll of nausea he only just managed to keep down.
Norman had suggested they not mention it to his mother; she was upset enough about the car, and they needn't bother her with this. He hinted about Brian, about Tar, even about Fleet, and there was something in his voice that made Don stare at him for a second-a realization that Norman didn't like kids.
It wasn't just the troublemakers, the snobs, the ones with influential parents who made being a principal a vicious sort of hell-it was kids, period. And he remembered his father saying once that he wished all children could be born adults, without the parents having to do anything but show them the front door. Don had thought it a joke then; now he knew, perhaps more than Norman did, that it wasn't a joke at all.
That, more than anything, had stopped him from fixing the blame. His father, in the mood he was in now, would have gone over to the Bostons and had Tar arrested-after he had slammed him a few times into a wall.
Because of the car; you win some, you lose some was the only epitaph for the bike.
He backed out of the spray and wiped the water from his face, sat on the cool edge of the tub with his hands dangling between his knees. Tracey was right; but it wasn't just Brian who was jealous, it was Tar as well.
He doubted that Pratt had put his friend up to it tonight, because it wasn't Brian's style. But he guessed that Brian had said something today to give Tar the idea that something had to be done to put Don in his place, retaliation for being called into his father's office.
He moved the curtain again and looked at the key case, and he smiled.
There was power of some kind in that bit of cheap dime store leather. He knew it, and now all he had to do was figure out how to use it.
