The Dead Boys (3 page)

“He always does.”

Teddy wasn't sure what that meant, and Albert didn't explain.

“Into the river,” Albert ordered. “He won't follow us there, and we can float away. We'll meet at the Bookworm if we get split up.”

Teddy wasn't convinced swimming for it was the best plan, though Albert seemed insistent.

“What's the Bookworm?” he asked.

“The bookstore on George Washington Way,” Albert sputtered, exasperated. “It's behind Malley's Pharmacy. Now get in the water!”

“Y'know, if he's walking, I think we can outrun him on our bikes,” Teddy said.

“Negatory. C'mon!” Albert beckoned from the river's edge.

Just then, an older kid sauntered over the hill. He was tall and had stringy hair. His mouth was drawn into what looked like a permanent sneer, acne was ravaging his face, and he wore a sleeveless muscle shirt.

“Hey, looky there!” Henry Mulligan announced. “Two snot-eaters for the price of one!” He hawked up a huge, phlegmy mouthful of spit.

Albert began to shake, and Teddy wondered if the kid from the story who ate boogers had been Albert himself.

“Okay, buddy,” Teddy said, putting a hand on the chubby boy's shoulder, “maybe if we stick together he won't try anything.”

“Buddy?” Albert brightened. “You mean that? You'd stick up for me?” He grabbed Teddy's arm tightly and whispered, “Hey, listen, I'm sorry for dragging you into all this. This is your chance. Forget you saw me, bike away, and don't look back.”

Teddy thought about it. It sounded like good advice, but abandoning the fat kid to a bully seemed a bad start to his first potential friendship. So he didn't run.

To his dismay, two more teens came over the hill behind Henry. They wore black rock-concert T-shirts, had long hair like Henry, and looked very much like they might also carry knives.

“C'mon,” Teddy urged. “To the bikes!” He darted to his own bicycle.

Unfortunately, Albert was not so swift, and it was hard for him to run in bell-bottom pants. The chubby boy only made it a few yards before he stepped on his own pant leg and fell face-first into the dirt.

“He's down!” Henry crowed, well ahead of the other two boys. Teddy saw Henry's green eyes zero in on Albert, who lay curled on the bank. “We got him!”

“You swim for it,” Teddy said as Albert groaned and crawled for the river. “I'll see you at the Bookworm!”

As Teddy hauled his bike up off the ground, he saw that Albert wasn't going to make it in time. At the same moment, he realized that he still had some rocks in his pocket. He pulled out one of the round stones, cocked his arm, and hurled it in Henry's direction, hoping to make the charging bully stop or even just duck for cover.

To Teddy's horror, Henry didn't stop or duck. He kept coming. And with a sickening
thud
, the rock hit him above the left eye.

Henry staggered behind a yellow patch of scrub brush, clutching his head. “You're a dead man!” he yelled, and he waved to his buddies, motioning for them to hurry. But they hesitated to make sure no more rocks were coming.

While the magnitude of what he'd just done sank in for Teddy, Albert pushed himself out into the water. Seeing that Albert had escaped, Teddy took off on his bike in the other direction, pedaling like mad.

Once he was twenty yards up the street, Teddy risked a look over his shoulder. Henry had emerged from the brush to chuck rocks at Albert, but it looked as though Albert had gotten the head start he needed; he was already almost out of range and floating down the river.

As the powerful current dragged Albert away, Teddy waved good-bye to his first potential friend. He hoped that Albert could swim well enough to flounder ashore downstream. Then he pedaled off to find the Bookworm.

Teddy biked hard for five blocks until he hit the town's main drag, George Washington Way.

He found Malley's Pharmacy and circled around the back twice, but there was no sign of the Bookworm—just an empty storefront. He sat on his bike and waited for ten minutes, but Albert didn't show. So Teddy went inside Malley's to ask where the Bookworm was.

The silver cowbell hanging on the door of Malley's clanged when Teddy walked in. It was an old shop with crowded shelves and a tiny pharmacy counter.

“Help ya, sweetie?” asked an equally tiny woman at the counter, whose nametag read JUDY.

“I'm looking for the Bookworm,” Teddy said. “It's supposed to be around here.”

Judy wrinkled her forehead. “The Bookworm moved,” she said.

“But my friend said it was here,” Teddy insisted.

“Do you see it here?”

“No. I guess not.”

“Sorry, it moved across town to the Parkway
years
ago. Anything from this decade I can help you with?”

Teddy felt guilty for bothering her, so he bought a pack of bubble gum. Then, just to make sure, he waited for another fifteen minutes behind the building for Albert to show.

Eventually, Teddy gave up and biked back toward Leslie Groves Park. As he worked his way down to the river, he kept his eyes peeled for Henry and his pals, in case they were still looking for him.

He found the sign for Leslie Groves Park, which looked older than he remembered, and he turned toward the river. But when he reached the edge of the park, he stopped, confused.

There was no Albert, no Henry, no anyone, and the park looked completely different. The dirt trail was now a paved walking path, and a vast lawn of fresh-smelling green grass had replaced the dusty scrub brush. A bright blue jungle gym stood where only tumbleweeds had been before, and a brick building with bathrooms had sprung up in the middle of it all. Even the island looked different. Before, it had been bare rocks, but now it was covered by saplings and wild grasses.

It was all wrong, and the impossibility of it made Teddy suddenly wonder if he'd dreamed the entire incident.

He rolled to a stop where he thought Albert had gone into the water. The flock of seagulls was still gathered on the island, the river was still dark and swift, and shadowy snags still lurked beneath its surface. But somehow these few familiar things were not comforting.

Teddy biked back home, lost in thought about the bizarre change in the park and what might have happened to Albert. He stashed his bike in the backyard and hustled up to the deck, eager to get inside and make some sense of the afternoon. He was also ferociously thirsty after a couple hours in the desert sun.

The heat,
he thought,
maybe it made me hallucinate.

His mom had a pitcher of lemonade waiting for him. She'd been busy unpacking, and the room was littered with empty boxes.

“Hey.” She greeted him with her artificial smile. “You were gone for longer than I thought. Did you explore?”

“Yeah, a little,” he replied.

“Where'd you go?”

“Down by the river.”

“Oh,” she said. “Be careful down there. The current is fast.”

“I know.”

She pulled a glass from the cupboard and poured it full of the unnaturally pink lemonade. Teddy took it with a quiet “thanks.”

“Meet any other kids your age?”

“Yeah, one,” he said, taking a huge gulp.

“So . . . what did you two do?”

“Threw rocks,” Teddy said. He wanted to tell her more, but he didn't understand exactly what had happened, and he knew if he tried to explain, he'd probably wind up telling her that he'd nailed the neighborhood bully in the head.

“Was he, umm, cool?” she asked.

“Yeah. He seemed like a nice guy.”

“That's great! Are you going to see him around?” she persisted.

“I don't know.” It was an honest answer.

“Well, if he's nice, I sure hope so,” she said. “It's important to pick good friends.”

That night Teddy sat on his bed in shorts. It was an old sleigh-style bed, and the frame sat high off the ground, leaving a cavernous space underneath. A bulky gray comforter he'd had for years sat on top like a layer of protective armor. He hoped that after a decent night's sleep, he'd wake up with a reasonable explanation for the impossible events of the day.

His open window looked out at the old house next door and its massive sycamore tree. The tree's leaves were as big as dinner plates, with pointed tips that splayed out from the center.

Like hundreds of hands
, Teddy thought,
reaching in all directions
.

A desert wind was rising, and swirling dust devils flung sand through the window into his second-floor room. One of the groping branches leaned in too, pushing the white curtain aside. But when Teddy rose to close the window, the branch retreated on a sudden gust.

The sun's glow lingered late on the summer horizon, and it was almost ten o'clock when it faded completely. Teddy was exhausted, so he shut off his light with a loud
click
, climbed into bed, and pulled the comforter to his chin, settling in for his first night's sleep in his new home after a very uncomfortable first day.

Hours later, Teddy awoke to the rapping sound of tree branches clawing at the house. He blinked in the darkness and looked around, bleary-eyed. He almost reached out from under the covers for the bedside lamp, but then he noticed the open window. He could have sworn he'd closed it.

Could the wind have somehow blown it open?
he wondered. But even half asleep in the middle of the night he knew that didn't make any sense.

He glanced at the clock—which read 2:30 A.M.—then back at the window. A small branch had twisted over the sill and disappeared down behind his bedside table. He peeked over the edge of the bed, and the rotten smell of wet, decaying leaves wafted over him.

It was then that he heard the scratching sound, like something with claws dragging itself across the new brown carpet. Teddy sucked in a breath—it was coming from under his bed.

The branch quivered behind the nightstand, making Teddy's heart pound as he imagined a rattlesnake curled around the end that was beneath his bed, shaking with its eagerness to strike. Or maybe a swarm of scorpions or black widow spiders pouring in on the branch from outside to scatter across his floor, creep up the walls, and crawl over his mattress.

That was enough for Teddy. He dove off the bed wearing his comforter for protection and ran for the door. To his horror, the dust ruffle swished aside behind him, and something scratched over the carpet after him.

In the dark, he found the doorknob and desperately yanked at it, still shrouded in the comforter. The knob was new to Teddy, and he rattled it back and forth, horrified by the thought of some desert terror racing across the floor to leap on his back.

Just then, there was a sharp tug on his comforter. He didn't dare turn to look. To face the thing seemed more terrible than to simply curl up in the bedspread and pray that it went away.

But suddenly the knob turned, and he was in the hallway.

Teddy slammed the door behind him as hard as he could. Down the hall, his mom stumbled around the corner, eyes puffy, blindly groping toward the commotion.

“What the heck is going on?” she growled.

She snapped on the hall light to reveal Teddy wrapped up like a mummy in his comforter, holding the door closed.

“Teddy, why are you up?” she asked.

“Couldn't sleep?” he said lamely, squinting into the light.

His mother groaned. “My first day of work is tomorrow.” She pushed open his door, eliciting a gasp from Teddy as he jumped behind her.

“What's wrong with you?” she asked.

“Something grabbed my comforter.”

She pointed to where the gray bedspread was pinched in the jamb. “Something like the door?” She flipped on his light and walked into the room.

Before he could stop her, she knelt down on the floor and lifted the dust ruffle. “There's nothing here,” she said.

As Teddy eased into the room, she held the ruffle up so that he could see. The floor beneath the bed was bare. He turned to the window. The branch that had climbed through it was gone.

“The window is still open,” Teddy pointed out.

She closed it and turned the lock.

“Should we check the closet?” he suggested.

“Good night,” she said, motioning him back to bed. She walked out, turning off the light and shutting the door behind her.

Teddy took a deep breath. He wanted to trust his mother's instinct that he was overreacting—after the events of the afternoon, he certainly didn't trust his own. Maybe it was just a bad combination of moving to a new town, having a weird day, and waking up in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar room, he thought. There was nothing there, just like she said.