“But we’re doing the fourth.”
“Criminals is what we are!” Jack raised a fist. “Criminals!”
“Easy with that.” Eddie looked around. “Old Man Foster might hear you.” Jack cal ed to the girl riding twenty feet ahead of them. “Hey, Weez! When do
we get there?”
She usual y kept her shoulder-length dark hair down but she’d tied it back in a
ponytail for the trip. She wore a black-and-white—mostly black
—Bauhaus T-shirt and black jeans. Jack and Eddie wore jeans too, but theirs
were faded blue and cut off above the knees. Weezy’s were ful length. Jack couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen her bare legs. Probably white as snow. “Not much farther now,” she cal ed without looking around.
“Sounds like Papa Smurf,” Eddie grumbled. “This is stupidacious.” Jack turned back to Eddie. “Want to trade bikes?”
Jack rode his BMX. He’d let some air out of the tires for better grip in the sand
and they were doing pretty wel .
“Nah.” Eddie patted the handlebars of his slim-tired English street bike. “I’m al
right.”
“Whoa!” Jack heard Weezy say.
He looked around and saw she’d stopped. He had to jam on his brakes to keep
from running into her. Eddie flew past both of them and stopped ahead of his sister.
“Is this it, Smurfette?” he said.
Weezy shook her head. “Almost.”
She had eyes almost as dark as her hair, and a round face, normal y milk pale,
made paler by the dark eyeliner she wore. But she was flushed now with heat and excitement. The color looked good on her. Made her look almost …
healthy, a look Weezy did not pursue.
Jack liked Weezy. She was only four months older, but his January birthday had
landed him a year behind her in school. Come next month they’d both
be in Southern Burlington County Regional High, just a couple of miles away. But
she’d be a soph and he a lowly frosh. Maybe they’d be able to spend
more time together. And then again, maybe not. Did sophs hang with freshmen?
Were they al owed?
She wasn’t pretty by most standards. Skinny, almost boyish, although her hips
seemed to be flaring a little now. Back in grammar school a lot of the kids had cal ed her “Wednesday Addams” because of her round face and perpetual y
dark clothes. If she ever decided to wear her hair in pigtails, the
resemblance would be scary.
But whatever her looks, Jack thought she was the most interesting girl—no,
make that most interesting
Jack saw a smal clearing with a low wet spot known in these parts as a spong.
But around the rim of the spong stood about a dozen sticks of odd
shapes and sizes, leaning this way and that.
“Who cares?” Eddie said. “If this isn’t what you dragged us out here to see, let’s
keep going.”
After hopping off her bike, she leaned it against a tree and started for the
clearing.
“Just give me a minute.”
His curiosity piqued, Jack leaned his bike against hers and fol owed. The
knee-high grass slapped against his sweaty lower legs, making them itch. A glance back showed Eddie sitting on the sand in the shade of a pine. Jack caught
up to Weezy as they neared the spong.
“They just look like dead branches someone’s stuck in the sand.” “But why?” Weezy said.
“For nothing better to do?”
She looked at him with that tolerant smile—the smile she showed a world that just didn’t get it. At least not
