“That’s exactly what I had in mind.” He crossed the street to a brick building that had seen better days. Over the glass double doors hung an unlit marquee that read Double Feature: Carrie and Night of the Living Dead. Standing in front of the door, messing with the lock, was another boy our age. His hair was shaggy and black as pitch. Devon slapped him on the shoulder, ignoring the way his unexpected action made the boy jump. “Markus. This is Stephen.”
Markus turned his attention to me briefly as I joined them under the marquee. “’Sup?”
I nodded my hello and tried to look cool, but really I wondered what the hell we were doing here. The theater was either out of business or closed for the night. And if Markus was doing what I thought he was doing to that lock, I wanted no part of it. Getting caught breaking and entering wasn’t exactly going to keep my dad off my back for the rest of the summer.
Devon peered over Markus’s shoulder. “Are we in yet?”
Markus pulled what looked like a bent paperclip from the keyhole. At the same time, he turned the knob, grinned back at Devon, and pushed the door open. “We were just waiting on you.”
Devon offered an approving nod. “Text the boys.”
Markus pulled out his phone and fired off a quick message. From where we stood, I could see the gas station and the lights of the cop car from earlier, but all other signs of the accident we’d seen were gone. Devon looked up and down the street, but he didn’t seem too concerned about getting caught.
Ten very awkward minutes passed before a broad-shouldered guy rounded the corner. He looked like the kind of guy you might catch playing football on Friday night or riding a motorcycle. Following a few steps behind him was a smaller boy wearing glasses, his eyes downcast and his hands in his front pockets. Everything about the boy was skinny, including his jeans. He oozed quiet. With nods to Devon and then to Markus, but not even a glance in my direction, both boys headed inside the now-open door of the movie theater. I assumed we were going to follow them in, but Markus and Devon kept standing there, saying nothing, until finally two more boys walked up, each wearing a leather cuff on his left wrist. They were having a whispered conversation that I couldn’t quite make out, and that conversation only got quieter as they passed us. Neither of them would look at me, either. They gave an almost-synchronized nod to Devon, smiled at Markus, and then kept right on walking.
Markus followed them in, but just as Devon was about to enter the building, I grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him back. “Where are we going, exactly?”
“Where do you think? We can’t watch a movie out here.” Shaking my hand away, he entered the theater like he didn’t care whether I came or not. I stood outside the open door for a good five minutes, debating whether I should go home or follow along. If I went home, I was a loser. If I went inside, I was a criminal. So basically, I had no choice.
The inside of the building smelled musty, like no one had cleaned the carpet in a decade, even though, I could now see, the theater was clearly open for business. The walls were covered in tacky, red-velvet-flocked wallpaper. The place looked more like some cheesy bordello than a movie theater. By the time I entered the lobby and closed the main door behind me, the last of Devon’s as-yet-nameless friends were making their way into the theater through a red velvet curtain, with armloads of candy, soda, and popcorn. So much for introductions.
Devon was standing behind a glass case in the lobby, rifling through the remaining junk food. As I approached, he held up a yellow box. “Milk Duds?”
I shook my head, but he waved the box at me, rattling the candy inside. I took it with one more nervous glance at the door. “We shouldn’t be in here.”
“You can always leave.” He raised an eyebrow at me. It was a question, a challenge. Was I cool enough to hang with Devon and his friends? Or was I going to puss out in the face of danger and run home to my daddy?
Devon moved through the curtain, again without waiting for my decision. Like brother, like sister. I hated to piss them both off in the same night, but if we got caught . . .
Screw it.
I grabbed a bag of Twizzlers and headed through the curtain.
In the shadow of the theater, I could make out Devon sitting to the right of the biker guy and Mr. Glasses and Skinny Jeans. The other two boys were sitting off on their own. As I made my way to the empty seat beside Devon, I realized that Markus was missing and figured he must have been rigging up the projector. Sure enough, Carrie lit up on the screen in all of her 1976 glory just before Markus returned and took the seat to my right.
The book was way better, of course, but the movie version of Carrie was decent enough. And besides, I dug the main character. Carrie was an outcast, someone who was seriously bullied. Only Carrie had freaky mind powers—powers that she used to exact revenge on her tormentors. To any kid who had ever been picked on, Carrie was the stuff of heroes.
After Markus had changed the reel to Night of the Living Dead, I yawned and stretched and looked over at Devon. He was shoveling handfuls of popcorn into his mouth, his eyes locked on the black-and-white glory as the guy onscreen told his sister, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”
Devon had taken a chance, bringing me here tonight. He’d had no way of knowing if I was the kind of guy who would turn them in for breaking into the theater, or if I’d even come along at all. His friends might not have welcomed me, exactly, but it was pretty cool for him to take a chance like that.
“Hey, Devon.” He glanced at me, a questioning look in his eyes. All I could think to say was, “Thanks.”
He smiled, his lips slightly crooked, and shoved the half-eaten tub of popcorn into my hands. No further words were needed.
chapter 4
When he woke me up the next morning, my dad didn’t mention the fact that I’d stumbled into the house just before dawn so he might not have noticed. But he also didn’t offer to take me out for breakfast again or even give me time to shower. After a quick brush of my teeth and a swipe or two of deodorant, I got to work breaking down boxes that we’d emptied for recycling, still wearing my clothes from last night. I wanted to complain and go back to bed, but any complaints would have brought up questions about where I’d been, who I’d been with, and what I was doing out so late. I wasn’t feeling up to answering any of that, so I kept my mouth shut and took my lack of sleep out on the boxes, stabbing them with my knife a few more times than was strictly necessary.
My dad had been way busier than I had in his unpacking efforts—every single one of his boxes was now in the pile I was making in the driveway. Either he was seriously anxious to settle in, or seriously nervous about what my grandmother would have to say if there was a mess. I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to meet the old lady, or if she was just a twisted figment of my dad’s imagination—kind of like Norman Bates’s mom in Psycho.
My dad handed me a bottle of water and granted me a minute’s rest while he headed back inside, so I sat on the hood of the Beetle and took a swig. That’s when I noticed the four members of the Spencer tanning club—the teens from outside the Lakehouse Grill—strolling up the sidewalk.
I was really hoping they wouldn’t notice me—that they’d just keep walking. In fact, if I’d believed in a god, I even might have prayed about it. It was embarrassing enough to be seen with the Beetle once, but at least last time they’d been on the way out. I’d been picked on enough times at my old school to know that rich kids didn’t like us poor kids, and this beat-up Beetle made it pretty clear we were poor. I wasn’t in the mood to be picked on by anyone here. Not with everything else I had to deal with.
Racquetball Boy smiled at me as they made their way to the end of my grandmother’s driveway, and all four of them stopped, looking from the boxes to the Beetle to me.
Shit.
One of the guys in the group was holding a Frisbee, but there was nothing ultimate about it as far as I could see. Racquetball said, “Hey. I’m Lane. This is Casey, Mike, and Holly. You just
move in or something?”
A genius Lane was not. Trying hard not to focus on the fact that this guy’s parents had named him after a narrow road, I nodded in response, wondering where the hell that narrow road might lead. Not an educational institution. Probably a kegger or maybe an ice cream social. “Yeah. From Denver. I’m Stephen, by the way.”
Holly bounced forward in the most obnoxious way possible, and I immediately placed a bet with myself that she was a cheerleader. Not that I had anything against cheerleaders, in theory. And it wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the jiggle. But something about her peppy smile made me want to hurry back to whatever chores my dad had in mind. She was definitely a morning person. “We were heading to the park. Would you like to join us?”
I held up my hands and shrugged as sheepishly as I could manage. “Can’t. Gotta unpack today. But it was nice meeting you guys.”
Lane nodded. Even though he was still smiling, I could see the disappointment in his eyes. “Cool. Well, maybe we’ll see you around later.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I sincerely hoped not. They were pretty annoying. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on why. They were just . . . annoying. Like some people are.
They continued down the sidewalk a ways before crossing the street. My dad joined me beside the Beetle, a bit too chipper for my tastes. “Are those the guys you were out with last night? Making new friends?”
“Not exactly.” I was hoping that would be all the answer he needed, but as he stared at me, it became pretty clear he wanted me to elaborate. Oh sure, now he wanted to talk about things. I sighed. “They’re not friend material, Dad. Not for me.”
“You should be more open-minded, Stephen. It can be difficult to fit in and meet new people, especially in a town this size. And who knows how long we’re going to be here. Maybe give them a chance.” He stood there looking at me, waiting for some sign that his wisdom was sinking in. The only response I gave him was to pull the small leather book from my back pocket, the one I’d found on the sidewalk last night, and ruffle its pages with my thumb. Finally, he gave up and walked back inside.
As if he had any right to offer me fatherly advice. After all he was putting me through.
I turned the book over in my hand, examining it closely. In the dark, I’d thought it might be somebody’s Bible or something. Now I could see the cover was red leather, but so worn that it looked almost brown. The material felt soft in my palm as I peeled back one cover and let the pages flip quickly between my fingers. It turned out it wasn’t a Bible at all, but a crazy sketchbook or somebody’s journal. Somebody who apparently had a thing for birds—there were scratchy drawings of wings on almost every page, as well as words. It occurred to me that this might belong to Devon, since he was the one who’d been standing outside my house last night, and I’d found the journal right where he’d been. As soon as I had the thought, I wanted to see what was in the journal more than ever—but I also felt like I was invading his privacy somehow. I decided I’d give the journal back to Devon the second he asked for it. But if he didn’t ask for it . . . I shoved it in my pocket, emptied my bottle of water, and retrieved my knife from where I’d dropped it in the driveway.
I’d just made it to my bedroom to grab more boxes and then maybe take a much-needed nap when a voice from behind me stopped me cold.
“That doesn’t go there, Harold!”
It was an older woman’s voice, coming from the open front door of the house that I was supposed to be viewing as home. It was weird to hear my dad called Harold, as he had gone by “Rollie” for as long as I could remember. It had to be her, Dad’s mom, my grandmother. Who else would be yelling at him like he was a child? I turned my head to get a look at her.
The woman standing at the front door wore a pinched expression on her face, and judging from her frown lines I guessed that that was pretty much the only expression she ever wore, no matter what her mood was. Her eyelids were painted in thick blue, her lips lined in a color that was distinctly darker than the rest of her mouth. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her face and carefully wound into a bun that sat atop her head. She was dressed in powder-blue polyester slacks, with a silky top that had more flowers than I’d ever seen in one place before. Her blouse was buttoned all the way to her neck, but the buttons were hidden by a large ruffle. This had probably been stylish fifty years ago.
The line of her mouth struck me as very familiar. It only took me a moment to identify it as my dad’s mouth—or to realize that my grandmother also had my dad’s nose. I guess it was the other way around, really. He didn’t have her eyes, though. I did.
As those eyes fell on me, the left corner of her mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not even the hint of one. Just a twitch. Like a bad taste had settled in her mouth or something. She didn’t say anything to me, but instead spoke to my dad as she looked at me through a veil of disapproval. “I won’t put up with messes, Harold. The boy looks unkempt. Does he keep his room clean?”
If I’d ever wanted to know what it felt like to be the Invisible Man, I was getting a good taste of it then. But I wasn’t about to be ignored. You could do whatever you wanted to me, but I was a person. Don’t ignore me. Don’t pretend like I don’t exist, when I’m standing directly in front of you. “Hi. I’m Stephen. You must be my grandmother. Nice to meet you.”
She looked me up and down with a sour purse of her lips, then went back to pretending I wasn’t there at all. “He looks dirty. Didn’t you and that wife of yours teach him anything?”
“No, really. It’s very nice to meet you.” It was ridiculous the way she went on as if I hadn’t just spoken to her. Like maybe if she ignored my presence long enough, I’d evaporate into thin air. Maybe that’s what she wanted. But it wasn’t what she was getting. We were here now. I was here. Like it or not, we were stuck together.
She snorted in derision, as if she’d heard my inner observation and didn’t like it any more than I did. “Clean up my yard, Harold. I want everything looking its usual way by this afternoon.”
She didn’t wait for a response. She simply went back to her room and closed the door with a loud click—not a slam, exactly. Nothing so noisy. Just enough of a sound to make her displeasure known. Once she’d gone, I grunted. “Wow. I want to be her when I grow up.”
My dad shot me a look that was either telling me to watch my mouth or, more likely, pleading with me not to be like his mother in even the smallest sense. I said, “Sarcasm, Dad. Don’t worry. I’m starting to understand why you left this place and stayed away for so long.”
“Your grandmother and I fail to see eye to eye on many things. But let’s just try and make the best of a bad situation. She may warm up to you in time.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” That was what I said. But what I thought was, “The hell she will.”
The fact was, there was no pleasing some people because some people didn’t ever want to be pleased. I got a gnawing feeling in my stomach that said my grandmother belonged to that club. But screw her. I had had a life before her and I’d have a life after. Only six months stood between me and the age of majority, and if my dad didn’t move us out of her crappy house before then, I was gone—off to college, or anywhere else far away from my family and their screwed-up problems. Away from my bitter grandmother and her pursed lips and whatever ideas she’d already made up her mind about when it came to me.
My dad went outside to clear stuff from the front lawn, and with a sigh, I turned back to the task at hand. The boxes in my room weren’t going to break themselves down.
“Harold.” She’d stuck her head out her door again, but just long enough to bark an order disguised as a request. “It would be nice, since I’m letting you live here rent-free if you and the boy could do some maintenance around the house to repay me. You can start by scraping the old caulk from the windows and redoing it. Don’t make a mess, now.”
She disappeared again before he could say anything. The look in his eyes as he dropped another stack of cardboard in th
e recycling pile was one I hated to see. It was a look of defeat.
chapter 5
The outside of Tom’s Hardware was plain and painted cinder-block gray, with the name written out on the simplest of signs hanging over the glass front door. The inside was cramped, overstuffed with the kinds of manly-man things that I largely didn’t give a crap about. Buckets of various-sized screws were everywhere. And it had this weird hardware-store smell, like grease and loneliness. But that didn’t seem to bother the four old men who were crowded around the cash register, talking to the old man standing behind the counter—presumably Tom.
This group of old men looked vaguely similar to the one that had been outside the gas station when we’d first arrived in town, but there was no way I could pick either group out of a lineup. They were all old. They were all men. One of these guys had a kind of mustache or something. At this point, all I knew was that we’d been working on my grandmother’s stupid windows for a week now, and my dad had sent me here to buy more caulk. I had snickered like an idiot when he told me to buy the big tube.
Who knew that a week could stretch into an eternity when you were doing everything at someone else’s bidding, for someone else’s benefit? I did. Now I did, anyway. Every day of my new life had begun with scrambled eggs and lukewarm showers, and every night had ended with me lying on my bed, exhausted but unable to sleep. When my grandmother wasn’t at home coming up with mile-long to-do lists for Dad and me, Dad was on the internet, scouring every job site he could find. When I told him he’d better not be looking for any jobs in Spencer, he’d said there weren’t any jobs in Spencer to find, anyway.
Now, as I moved through the aisles, searching for a row of pointy-ended white tubular things, the conversation from the cash register floated over the tops of the shelves to my ears. It’s not like I meant to eavesdrop. It’s not like I really gave two craps about old-men gossip. But it was there and so was I, and I listened in an offhand way.