And seethed.
CHAPTER FOUR
That night, he dreamt he was standing at his bedroom window.
Down in the yard, beside the pine tree, a boy stood wreathed in shadow, despite the cataract eye of the moon soaring high in the sky behind him.
And though the window was closed, Timmy heard him whisper: “Would you die for him?”
He squinted to see more than just shadow, his heart filled with dread.
“Darryl?”
And then he woke, warmed by the morning sun, nothing but the distant echo of the whisper in his mind.
CHAPTER FIVE
Shortly after Mr. Marshall made his feelings known about Timmy and his father, he sent Pete to summer camp.
Although the anger and hurt had settled like a stone in the pit of his belly, Timmy missed Pete and hoped Mr. Marshall would realize his cruelty and allow things to return to normal before Timmy found himself minus a friend. Summer was only just beginning and he didn’t relish the idea of trudging through it without his best buddy.
Early the next Saturday, he came home from riding his bike to find his parents grinning at him in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before. It made his heart lurch; he couldn’t decide if it was a good or a bad thing.
“What?” he asked. They were sitting next to each other at the kitchen table, looking fresh and content. His mother was looping a strand of her hair around her finger, his father nodding slowly. They almost looked proud. As soon as Timmy’s eyes settled on the source of their amusement, he felt as if someone had forced his finger into a light socket.
Kim Barnes.
“What is she doing here?” he asked, pointing at the black-haired girl with the braces who stood in the hallway behind them. Her arms were crossed and she shifted from foot to foot as if no happier about where she had found herself than he.
His mother scowled. “Is that any way to talk to a lady? Kim’s sister and her friend have gone to camp too, so she has no one to play with for the whole summer. Isn’t that a nice coincidence?”
Timmy was appalled. “She’s a girl!”
“No flies on him,” said his father.
“But…she doesn’t even like me!”
“Now how do you know that? Have you ever asked her?”
“I know she doesn’t. She’s always making faces at me in school.”
Kim smiled. “I don’t mean anything by it.”
“You see,” his mother said. “You have to give a girl a chance.”
Timmy felt sick.
“I don’t have to play with you if you don’t want me to,” Kim said in a pitiful tone. Timmy felt an ounce of hope but knew his parents, who melted at the sound of her feigned sorrow, would vanquish it.
“Don’t be silly. Timmy would love to play with you, wouldn’t you, Timmy?”
He sighed and studied the scuffed toe of his sneakers. “I guess so.”
“Speak up, son.”
“I guess so,” he repeated, wondering how this summer could possibly get any worse.
His mother went to Kim. With maternal grace, she eased the girl into the kitchen. Timmy felt the color rise in his cheeks and looked away.
“Now see,” his mother said. “Why don’t you both go on outside in the sunshine and see what you can find to do. I bet you’ll get along just fine.”
I bet we won’t, Timmy thought, miserable. With a heavy sigh, he turned and opened the door.
CHAPTER SIX
They were standing in the yard, Kim with her arms still folded and Timmy watching the bloated white clouds sailing overhead when she said: “I didn’t want to come over here, you know.”
Without looking at her he scoffed. “Then why did you?”
“Your mom called my mom and told her you were bored and lonely and—”
“I wasn’t lonely. I was doing just fine.”
“Well, your mom thought you weren’t and asked if I could come over. I told my mom I didn’t want to play with you because you are dirty and smelly.”
Timmy gaped at her. “Really?”
She shook her head and he had to restrain the sigh that swelled in his throat.
“So I guess we’ll have to do something for a while at least,” she said. “What do you want to play?”
“Not dolls, anyway. I hate dolls.” He watched a blue jay until it flew behind her. Tracking it any further would have meant looking in her direction and he wasn’t yet ready to do that.
“Me too,” Kim said, startling him, and he looked at her. Briefly.
“I thought all girls liked dolls.”
He saw her shrug. “I think they’re dumb.”
“Real dumb.”
“Yeah.”
The silence wasn’t as dreadful as Timmy had thought it would be. For one, she didn’t like dolls and that was a plus. Dolls really were dumb. He hadn’t said it just to annoy her. And at least she talked. By now he’d have grown tired of listening to himself talking to Pete and getting no answer. So, he guessed, she wasn’t that bad.
But still, he didn’t like the idea of being seen hanging around with her. No matter how cool she might turn out to be, if anyone at school heard about it they’d say he was in love with her or something and that they were going to have a baby. And that would be bad news. Real bad news.
“Why don’t we go back to the pond?” she asked then, as if reading his thoughts.
Going back to Myers Pond was no more comforting an idea than hanging around with a girl, but at least there no one would see them together.
“I’m not allowed to go back to the pond,” he said, with an ounce of shame. Admitting you were restricted by the same rules as everyone else seemed akin to admitting weakness when you said it to a girl.
“Why not?”
“I’m just not.”
When she said nothing, he gave a dramatic sigh and conceded. “Pete Marshall’s dad thinks there might be some creeps back there or something. He thinks it might be dangerous for kids. My dad doesn’t want me going back there either.”
“Creeps? Like what kind of creeps?”
He almost told her, but caught himself at the last minute and shrugged it off. “Just some strange kids.”
She stared at him for a moment and he struggled not to cringe.
“Like The Turtle Boy?”
Now he looked at her and through the shock of hearing the name he had given Darryl, he realized she wasn’t so ugly and stinky and everything else he associated with the chittering group she swept around the playground with at recess. Her eyes, for one thing, were like sparkling emeralds, and once he peered into them his discomfort evaporated and he had to struggle to look away. Her skin reminded him of his mother’s soap and that conjured a memory of a pleasant clean smell. But still…she was a girl and that made him feel a strange kind of awkwardness.
“What?” she said after a moment.
Eventually he composed himself enough to croak: “You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. He’s awful creepy looking, isn’t he?”
“But…when did you see him?”
“The first day of summer vacation. My cousin Dale came to visit with his mom and we went fishing back there.” She gave him a shy smile. “I’m not much good at fishing. I lost my bobber.”
Timmy remembered the small red and white ball drifting in the water the day they’d seen Darryl and wondered if it was hers.
“Dale caught a catfish. It was ugly and gross and when he reeled it in, he raised it up in front of my face and tried to get me to kiss it. I ran into the trees and that’s where he was. The Turtle Boy. He stank really bad and looked at me as if I had caught him doing something he shouldn’ta been. I was scared.”
Timmy was confused. “But why do you call him that? Did he tell you that was his name?”
“No. I just… I don’t know. I just remember thinking about it later and that’s the name I gave him.”
“That’s weird. That’s the name I gave him.”
“I guess that is
weird.”
“Have you ever seen him around before?”
She shook her head. “Have you?”
“No, but I wish I knew why he was here and where he came from.”
A blur of movement caught his eye and he followed it to a groundhog shimmying his way along the bottom of the yard toward the road. He looked back to Kim. “Did he say anything to you?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed and the same fear that had gripped him when he’d seen Darryl’s ankle was written across her face. It made him feel better somehow to see it. It meant he was no longer alone in his fear. With Pete it wasn’t the same. Pete was afraid to ride his bike on the off chance he might fall and get hurt. He was also afraid of storms and dogs and pretty much anything that moved and had teeth.
“He said: ‘They’re hungry.’”
“When me and Pete saw him he was putting his heel into the water. There was a piece of it missing. He said he was feeding the turtles. What do you suppose it means?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” she said.
“How?”
Kim’s braces segmented her mischievous smile but couldn’t take away the appeal of it. A slight smile crept across Timmy’s lips in response. He got the feeling that even though The Turtle Boy had frightened her, she wasn’t easily deterred from any kind of adventure.
“We have to ask him, of course.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rather than taking the regular gravel path back to the pond, a path that could be spotted from most of the houses, they cut across Mr. Patterson’s field, pausing only to look at the large puddle, which was all that remained of the hole Timmy and Pete had been digging. A pile of earth like a scale-model mountain sat next to it.
“We were looking for gold,” he explained.
“Did you find any?” Kim asked.
He shrugged, strangely ashamed. “No. We found some red clay though.”
Kim smiled. “Maybe that would be worth something in some other country. Maybe some country where they have gold to spare and kids dig for red clay?”
He nodded, a silly grin breaking out across his face. He knew it was a foolish notion — he’d never heard of a place that had too much gold — but it was a nice fantasy, and he silently thanked her for not making fun of his efforts.
They carried on through the high grass, chasing crickets and wondering what kind of exotic creatures they heard scurrying at their approach. The field ran parallel to the gravel path, but the trees shielded them from view and they hunkered down, the grass whipping against their bare legs. Much to his surprise, Kim kept the pace as he raced toward the narrow dirt road leading into the pond. At times she drew abreast of him and, more than once — though he would never admit it — she began to inch ahead of him, forcing him to push himself until he felt his chest start to ache.
At last they reached the makeshift bridge. Kim, her legs braced on the wobbling boards, leaned over to catch her breath. She looked down at the stream trickling beneath them. “They’ve ruined it, haven’t they?”
It took him a moment to realize what she was referring to and then he told her that yes, they had ruined it. The construction crews dedicated to tearing up the land they’d once played in seemed equally driven to foul whatever they’d been prohibited to touch. Gullies became dumping grounds for material waste, streams became muddied and paths cracked beneath the groaning and shrieking metal of their monstrous machines. Timmy joined her in a moment of mournful pondering at the senselessness of it all, then tapped her on the elbow and pointed up at the sky.
Shadows rushed past them, crawling through the grass toward the train tracks and spilling from the trees as the breeze gained strength. Over their heads, the sky had turned from blue to gray, the sun now a dim torch glimpsed through a caul of spider webs. All around them the trees began to sway and hiss as if the breeze were water, the canopies fire.
Kim nodded at the change and hurried to his side. She mumbled something to him and he looked at her. “What?”
“I said: my dad says they’re going to fill in the pond.”
Before Timmy had met Darryl, this might have hurt him more than it did now. Still, it didn’t seem right. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He says in a few years all of this will be houses and that the pond is only in the way. Apparently Doctor Myers’s son sold this area of the land so they’re just waiting for someone to buy it before they fill it in.”
Timmy knew her father worked on a construction site across town and would no doubt be privy to such information. It was a depressing thought; not so much that they would be taking the pond away, but because he suspected that would only be the start of it. Soon, the fields would be gone, concrete lots in their place.
They carried on up the rise until the black mirror of the pond revealed itself. Timmy’s gaze immediately went to the spot where he had seen Darryl, but he saw no one sitting there today. Kim walked on and over the bank and made her way around the pond toward the brace of fir trees weaving in the wind. She paused and looked back at him over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah.”
But he was already starting to question the logic behind such a move. At least the last time he’d been here he’d had the escape route at his back; if The Turtle Boy had tried anything it wouldn’t have been hard to turn and run. Going into those trees was like walking into a cage. You would have to thread your way through brambles and thick undergrowth to be clear of it. And even then, there was nowhere to run but the train tracks.
A quiver of fear rippled through him, and he masked it by smacking an imaginary mosquito from his neck. Overhead, the clouds thickened. With a sigh, he followed Kim into the trees.
On this side of the pond, dispirited pines hung low. The earth beneath was a tangle of withered needles, flattened grass and severed branches. The children had to duck until they’d cleared the biggest and densest stand of pines.
At last they emerged on the other side, a marshy stretch of land that offered a clear view of the train tracks but soaked their sandaled feet.
After a moment of listening to the breeze and searching the growing shadows around them, Kim put her hands on her hips and looked at Timmy, who was preoccupied with trying to remove sticky skeins of spider web from his face.
“He’s not here,” she said, stifling a giggle at Timmy’s dismay.
He didn’t answer until he was sure some fat black arachnid hadn’t nested in his hair. When he’d cleared the remaining strands, he grimaced and looked around. “Sure looks like it. Unless he’s hiding.”
“Maybe he’s gone.”
“Yeah, maybe.” It was a comforting thought. Behind them in the distance, the hungry heavens rumbled as God made a dark stew of the sky. “Maybe he caught a train out of here.”
Kim glanced toward the tracks, which were silent and somehow lonely without a thousand pounds of steel shrieking over them. “Or maybe a train caught him.”
Before Timmy could allow the image to form in his mind, he heard something behind him, on the other side of the pines.
“Did you hear that?”
Kim shook her head.
A twig snapped and they both backed away.
“It’s probably a squirrel or something,” Kim whispered, and Timmy was suddenly aware that her hand was gripping his. He looked down at it, then at her, but she was intent on the movement through the trees behind them. He ignored the odd but not entirely unpleasant sensation of her cool skin on his and held his breath. Listening.
“Maybe a deer,” Kim said, so low Timmy could hardly hear her above the breeze.
They stood like that for what seemed forever, ears straining to filter the sounds from the coiling weather around them. Timmy could hear little over the thundering of his own heart. Kim was holding his hand even tighter now. A terrifying thought sparked in his mind: Does this mean she’s my girlfriend?
“C’mon,” he said at last. “There’s no one there.”
She nodded and they both
stepped forward.
Timmy was filled with confused excitement. Then, just as quickly, uncertainty came over him. Was she waiting for him to let go of her hand? Was she feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed now because he was holding her hand just as tightly? He tried to loosen his fingers but she squeezed them, and a gentle wave of reassurance flooded over him.
She wasn’t uncomfortable. She didn’t want to let go. His heart began to race again but this time for a completely different reason.
And she continued to hold his hand. Continued even when something lithe and dark burst through the pines in front of their faces and dragged them both screaming through the trees.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Timmy’s mother opened the front door. Her look of surprise doubled when she saw the rage on Wayne Marshall’s face.
She stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. “What on earth is going on?” she said, crossing her arms. The gesture meant to convey that she was prepared to dispense blame wherever it was due.
On the porch, Pete’s father still had a firm grip on the collar of Timmy’s T-shirt, but he held Kim by the hand. Timmy felt strangely jealous.
“Sandra, I found these two snooping around back at Myers Pond,” Mr. Marshall said firmly, as if this should be reason enough for punishment. Timmy’s mother stared at him for a moment as if she didn’t think so. Her gaze shifted briefly to Kim, then settled on her son.
“Didn’t your father tell you not to go back there?”
Timmy nodded.
“Then why did you? And I suppose you dragged poor Kimmie back with you, back into all that mud and sludge? Look at your sandals. I only bought them last week and you’ve wrecked them already.” She shook her head and sighed. After a moment in which no one said anything, she looked at Mr. Marshall. “You can let them go now, Wayne. I don’t think they’re going to run away.”
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