“Concerned, ma’am?”
“Has he been seeming down to you?”
“Down? Well . . . maybe. Maybe some, yeah. But I guess in some ways he’s always seemed a little down to me.”
“And you don’t think it’s gotten worse lately?”
“I don’t know what to say about that, ma’am. I don’t know. Maybe. But then sometimes I think I’m not a very good judge.”
“Well, I thank you for your honesty, Lucas.” She stood, and straightened out her skirt. Fiddled with her belt for a second. “You’ve been such a good friend to my son. I believe you, what you say. I’ll just go leave you to your day.”
My mother said, “Won’t you stay and have a cup of tea, Pauline?”
But Connor’s mom said, “No. No, thank you, Ellie. I don’t want to leave my boy alone too long.”
And with that, my mother saw her to the door.
Part of me was so happy to have the ordeal be over. But another part of me said it wasn’t over and I knew it. It was my job to be a good friend to Connor. And I had withheld a piece of important information. And I had a sudden bad feeling that too much withholding could be the end of my friend.
My mother walked upstairs, and I sprinted to the door. Slipped out of the house.
I caught up to Mrs. Barnes from behind as she walked down the street. It seemed to alarm her. At least until she saw it was only me.
“One more thing I have to tell you,” I said.
We stopped, and she turned to face me on the sidewalk. And she wouldn’t look at me. The old Mrs. Barnes had returned. She had screwed up her courage to come into my house and be a new and improved Pauline Barnes, but now that was over. Whatever she had gathered together, she’d run out of it by then.
Either that or she had some idea what I was going to say.
“You asked me if I was concerned about him. He did say something that worried me. But I’d really appreciate it if I didn’t have to say word for word what it was. Because there’s an honor with guys. He tells me things he wouldn’t tell anybody else, and I’m supposed to keep it to myself. That’s what best friends do, right? But I have been worried about him lately. So if you were thinking it was a good idea to get him some kind of help or keep an extra-close eye on him, well . . . I guess I’d say I think that’s a good idea, too.”
She smiled the saddest smile I’d ever seen in my days. The saddest I’ve seen even up until now. She reached out and held one warm hand to my cheek.
Then, without a word, she walked away.
Chapter Ten
Pebbles and Contempt
I didn’t sleep well.
It had been all I could do to stop myself from going over to Connor’s, and I mean right up until bedtime. But I knew his mom would’ve been the one to let me in. And she would’ve immediately known that I’d come to tell him what she’d done—coming to my house, and all. Telling me everything she’d told me.
So I just stayed home and let it ruin my sleep.
I dozed off at about three a.m. and popped awake an hour later. I tossed and turned for what felt like a long time, then got up and got dressed without turning on any lights.
I slipped out of the house and walked over to Connor’s without a flashlight. There was a moon, and that helped. But mostly it was just a walk I could have done in my sleep. That is, if I could have gotten any sleep.
I slipped across his front yard, cutting over the grass. His next-door neighbor’s big German shepherd, Ajax, heard me and barked a few times. But Ajax barked at everything, so I didn’t figure he’d draw much attention.
There was a ring of gravel around a little seedling apple tree near the front stoop. I picked up a couple of the smallest pebbles I could find, working almost entirely by feel.
Then I positioned myself under Connor’s window and bounced three pebbles off the window frame. I purposely avoided the glass, because maybe even a small pebble could break a window if you threw it hard enough. Fortunately I was a pretty good shot.
He came to the window and stared down at me, and I stared up at him. It was too dark to see the expressions on each other’s faces, but the way he just froze there with his hands on the glass seemed to be a thing that spoke loudly enough.
Then he disappeared again.
I stood still for a minute or two, feeling stupid. Not knowing if I was waiting for anything or not. If he planned to come down, or if he’d just thought, “The hell with Lucas,” and gone back to bed.
Then I heard Ajax barking again. A movement caught my eye, and I looked over to see Connor standing in his driveway in the dark, his old threadbare blue robe tied over his pajamas. He tossed his head toward the backyard and we walked down the driveway together.
We pulled two webbed chairs off the back patio and sat next to each other in the grass. Still without saying a word.
I had my head dropped back, staring up at the sky. Man, there were a lot of stars! This was back before the town had much outdoor lighting to pollute the dark sky at night. I saw more stars than I might’ve thought existed for me to see. I saw the Big Dipper, Ursa Major and Minor, Cassiopeia. I heard crickets for the first time, even though they’d probably been playing their strange music all along.
“Sorry to wake you up,” I said. Barely over a whisper.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said.
“Got it. Guess there’s a lot of that going around.”
Another minute of silent stargazing. Then I figured I’d better get
