* * *
Daisy looks down at Luke, taking in his growth of blond beard and his terribly bruised face, all washed clean like a stone rubbed shiny by the sea. She puts her head on his chest and smells the saltwater. He wraps his arms around her and holds her tight.
They stay like that for a long time. A perfect fit. Old friends, lovers … the only two people in the world.
* * *
With his arms around Daisy, her head still resting on his chest, Luke begins to tell her the horror of his four days trapped in the sewer. Not the rats or the kids or the water, he skims over that, but the horror of realizing he’d wasted his life and knowing that knowledge was too late coming to count.
Then he tells her about the children. Again, not about the terrible things they did, only that they saw his worthlessness and reflected it back at him.
He tells her how he lied to her. Without making excuses, he tells her how ashamed he is. And then something escapes from his heart and falls into words so quickly, so unexpectedly, that he himself hears it for the first time.
“I love you,” he says.
And it’s true. An enormous, world-shaking, terrifying emotion reduced to three words. He just does. Simple as that. He feels the purity of it cleansing his sins.
Daisy lifts her head and looks at him, waiting for the caveat: he loves her … for finding him, saving him, for whatever good deed she has done. But she can see in his face and feel in his arms that this love is not gratitude. It’s that same foolish, inexplicable, overwhelming feeling she has had since the first time she met him.
Perhaps Daisy loved the old Luke foolishly, but this man, this man reborn is different. She can feel it.
Gently, taking care not to touch his bruises, Daisy kisses Luke. It’s only a whisper of a kiss, one that barely touches his lips, yet in it he feels his love returned.
Her kiss gives him the courage to tell her the other things that happened. The children’s cruelty, his shame and degradation, the rats, the blood, the river of rain, everything he can remember about the devastation of those four days.
But his memory is incomplete. The blow from the beam confused the moments just before and during the rainstorm, and Luke grows more and more unsettled. He knows something happened, something important, but he’s unable to dig it out. Desperate urgency rises within him.
Daisy listens in horror. “Please, Luke, no more.” She helps him to his feet. Unsteady, he leans on her, too weak to do anything but stand. “You’re hurt. We have to get you to a hospital. Can you walk?”
Luke stands with one arm on Daisy’s shoulder, breathing deeply, allowing most of his 160-pound weight to be supported by the slender young woman.
Daisy holds onto him, her heels digging into the sand. If he’s too heavy, she doesn’t show it. She waits patiently for him to gather enough strength to take a step.
He does. Unsteady, knees nearly buckling, but through the force of their shared determination, they find the strength to keep him upright. In this halting, painful way, they struggle across the beach toward the dunes. Even through the pain and weakness, Luke feels something powerful scratching at the back of his brain, pressing hard enough to send darts of panic through his whole body. He can feel it but he can’t read it.
Daisy sees his anxiety. “It’s all right, Luke. We’re not in a hurry. No one’s around. Even the doctor will be at the picnic.”
“Picnic?” The word is important, but he doesn’t know why.
“The Fourth of July picnic. Big doings in Shorelane.”
Daisy chatters on, trying to calm Luke with descriptions of the town’s holiday festivities. But Luke doesn’t hear her.
Picnic. Picnic. Picnic.
He uses the word to wrench out the locked thoughts torturing his memory. “Picnic,” he repeats. There’s something there, but he just can’t find it.
Later, he tells himself, when he’s calm. It will come to him. The decision allows Luke to relax somewhat, and in that moment, as he loosens his mind, the memory comes rushing back like the torrent of water that nearly drowned him.
Larry. The gun.
“Lucy!” A surge of adrenaline courses through Luke’s body. “That son-of-a-bitch Larry is going to shoot Lucy!”
His shout comes out at full strength, adrenaline whipping him past his infirmity and filling his veins with the power he thought he’d lost. “Daisy, we have to get there!”
The man who moments ago could barely stand charges across the dunes. Falling, standing, scrambling, and falling again and raking the sand to stand up, but always rushing forward, charging on!
Daisy races behind him, shouting questions. “What do you mean, Luke? What are you talking about?”
Luke is running too hard to answer.
“I have a bike!” Daisy shouts.
“No good! Over there!” Luke points to a beat-up Volkswagen on the street across from the beach parking lot. Daisy runs after him.
The car door is unlocked. The advantage of small-town living.
Inside of two minutes, Luke has hotwired the car—the advantage of big city life—and they’re following Daisy’s instructions to the picnic grounds.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The day has cleared brilliantly, splendid weather for a wonderful Fourth of July picnic. On the picnic grounds in Shorelane Park, people are already gathering as if they were waiting around the bend in a sprinter’s crouch for the weather to clear. Cars and trucks loaded with festive paraphernalia are unloading in the parking lot. Despite the wet earth, people are setting up booths on the football field in front of an antique carousel gifted to the town by a wealthy former resident some sixty years ago. It hasn’t worked in fifty, but they put it up every year anyway. It’s tradition. On the far side, men are just finishing assembling a wooden bandstand.
All of Shorelane loves this picnic, even people who don’t like Shorelane. It feels like an old-fashioned Technicolor musical about small-town holidays somewhere in the innocent, nameless middle of the country; indeed, with the band pumping out old favorites, all it needs is Judy Garland.
Even though the music is persistently old-fashioned, the younger kids love it. The teenagers are another story. Usually they bring their own music and make their own party off in a corner on the basketball court.
For the first time ever, Shorelane has rented a carnival setup for the Fourth of July. It’s got bumper cars on one side and a kiddy ride on the other. It isn’t even eleven o’clock, and there are already long lines for both.
The traveling carnival company is a little tired and shabby, but it has its own refreshment stands with cotton candy, zeppoli, and all the usual sodas, popcorn, and hot dogs. There’s a shooting gallery, basketball hoops, and a wheel of fortune with a live fortune teller. This is easily Shorelane’s biggest, most extravagant Fourth of July picnic ever, and the minute the sun came out, the crowds began to arrive. Nearly a thousand people are expected, an enormous turnout for a town of Shorelane’s size.
The Adler family arrives early so Charley and Lucy can ride the bumper cars before the line is too long, but to Ned and Leddy’s surprise neither child wants to go on the ride. Instead, Charley wheedles permission to go off on his own. He plans to find a safe place to hide. Lucy will have to stay with her parents.
“Now set your watch, Charley,” says Leddy. “We’ll meet back in front of the bumper cars at twelve. Make sure you’re on time.”
“Can’t I go with Charley?” Lucy asks.
“No, honey,” says her mother. “It’s too crowded; you’ll get lost with all these people.”
“Let her go, Leddy,” Ned Adler says with a smile. Like her son, Leddy is in charge of all the family worrying. She worries too much, and her husband worries too little. “It’s only an hour, and she’ll be with Charley. Right, Lucy? You’ll stay with your brother?”
“I promise,�
�� says Lucy.
Leddy is unconvinced, but she has to admit that this year Charley has proven to be much more responsible than she expected. He’s done an excellent job taking care of Lucy—except for that one little lapse in going down to the beach. Besides, this is a family event and the Adlers know most of the people here.
“Okay, but if you two are a minute late, we’re taking you straight home. Got that?”
Lucy nods enthusiastically, and Charley says, “Okay.” He could do without the company, but he isn’t about to cross Lucy. Not now.
“And stay away from that O’Neill kid, you hear?” Ned says. The warning is unnecessary: Charley and Lucy have every intention of staying as far away from Larry, Benny, and Dennis as possible.
In fact, it’s Charley’s plan to keep away from the main part of the picnic just in case Daisy and that guy show up. They’re convinced Daisy saved him.
No matter how fabulous the picnic promises to be, it would never be good this year for either of the Adler children.
With Charley in the lead, the two children go straight to the basketball court where the teenagers hang out. They know they’re safe there; Larry will never show up there. He hates kids his own age or older, and they don’t like him very much either. The ones in his class are always making fun of him and calling him Sweatball.
No danger, Charley’s sure of it. Larry will stay far away from the basketball court.
* * *
The twins have been at the picnic for almost twenty minutes, but they still haven’t found Larry. He isn’t at the bumper cars or any of the booths. They search everywhere they can think of before finally deciding he hasn’t arrived. Maybe he isn’t even coming.
“No way,” Benny tells Dennis. They’ve been talking about the picnic for weeks. Larry has a great plan where they set up their own Three Card Monte table and make tons of money. Larry knows how to do everything.
It’s always fun to be with Larry. They do crazy things, like exploring places Benny and Dennis would never go on their own. Like, they would never have gone down to the beach without Larry, and they’d never have found the sewer and done that stuff with the homeless guy. It was fantastic, like owning their own person. He was a grown-up, but it didn’t matter; they could do anything they want with him.
And if some of the stuff Larry dreams up isn’t so fun, you gotta figure he still knows what he’s doing. He’s twelve. If he says it’s okay, it’s okay. Right?
Neither twin speaks to the other about the crying times with Larry. If you want to have a big kid as a best friend, that’s the way it has to be.
They’re disappointed when they don’t find him. Here they are in the middle of the biggest picnic Shorelane has ever had and they have nothing to do.
* * *
The twins can’t find Larry because he isn’t on the lawn. He’s in the wooded area on the hillside above, scoping out his killing field.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The “wooded area” isn’t actually big enough to qualify as woods, being just a football field–sized stand of trees on top of a hillside, but the ground underneath is untended and rugged, giving it the appearance of a miniature forest. A narrow dry riverbed bordered by little cliffs of rocks runs through the middle and drops down almost six feet on either side. Where it reaches the edge of the hillside, it has been filled in with earth.
From the outside, the woods look dense, but from inside looking out, the picnic area, the carnival setup, the basketball court, and the parking lot are all clearly visible. It isn’t even noon yet, and the lot is almost full, rows of cars shimmering in the sunshine.
Larry leans against a tree. He’s overheated, his face blotchy red from running through the parking lot, ducking down behind cars, and trying to keep low in case the twins or Charley are around. He doesn’t care about other people; they won’t look at him anyway. But he doesn’t want his entourage to see him until he’s ready.
He has a plan. He’s going to get Lucy to come back into the woods with him where nobody can see, and he’s going to shoot her. After that, he’ll go out and do the real stuff in front of everybody.
Won’t they just shit in their pants when he starts shooting?
Maybe he can get the twins and Ryan and Charley and some of the kids in his class together and bam-bam-bam, get as many as he can. He’ll have five bullets left after Lucy; if they’re close enough together, he can’t miss. But he’ll have to arrange it.
Getting the twins and Charley’ll be easy. They’ll do whatever he says. He could tell the others that Ryan has something to show them. They’ll go because everybody likes Ryan—he’s a big-shot basketball player. Yeah, he’ll work it around Ryan.
But first he has to get Lucy.
It won’t be easy. She won’t go anyplace alone with him, and he can’t trick her—she’ll just stare at him in that creepy way she has. The only way is to scare the shit out of her.
But it’s not like with the twins; Lucy doesn’t get that kind of scared. Maybe if he tells her Charley is hurt or bleeding or something? He’ll get Charley away from her long enough to say he got hurt.
Except she’s always sticking to Charley like glue.
Fuck, Larry hates her.
* * *
When Larry steps out of the woods, he sees the twins near the shooting gallery. They don’t see him. Good, he doesn’t want them now. Later, maybe. They can stay with Charley while he kills Lucy.
Exhilaration shoots through Larry, making him smile. It’s like he’s making a movie the way he’s arranging everything. And he’s the star. He’s the one doing the killing. That’s the guy everybody watches: the guy with the gun.
After today, Larry O’Neill is all anybody in Shorelane’s gonna talk about. For years they’re gonna shiver and say, “Remember Larry O’Neill, the guy who shot all those kids at the picnic?” And then they’ll say where they were when he was shooting and they’ll be so full of it, talking about how they just missed getting shot or how they grabbed this kid and saved him, bullshit like that.
They’ll remember how one minute O’Neill was just standing there all regular-like and the next second he had a gun and everyone was screaming and running and falling to the ground but it didn’t matter. He’d kill five people, one with each bullet. And maybe even more because sometimes, like they said about President Kennedy in history class, one bullet gets two guys.
And then they’ll say how cool he was, how he wasn’t nervous at all. He just stood there and didn’t say anything as he pumped out the bullets. Bam—bam—bam.
They’ll talk about this day forever. They’ll make a movie out of it. Maybe I’ll even get to see it, Larry thinks. I’d like someone cool to play me. Like Harry Styles; girls love him.
In the movie, they’ll show the truth, that if they didn’t treat me so lousy, I wouldn’t have gotten mad.
They’ll see it was mostly their fault. But before all of that: Lucy.
Larry smiles. Lucy is gonna die. He’s gonna shoot her in the head.
Or maybe in her ear, ’cause what if she moves while he’s got the gun pointed at her head? He might miss. Maybe he should have practiced someplace first. Missing and wasting bullets could ruin everything.
Larry’s only got six and if he doesn’t kill enough people, it might not even get on television.
Nope. He’s not taking any chances. He’s gonna do it in her ear so that even if she does move, the gun will stay stuck in there.
She’s probably gonna scream. He’s gotta make sure to get his hand over her mouth first. But she’s such a little shit she’ll probably bite him. No good. He’s gotta find another way to keep her quiet. In the movies, the guy always hits the victim in the head with the gun. Pistol-whipped; he’s seen it a million times.
So, say she’s following him into the woods. He stops short and spins around quickly; she’ll be surprised, and
before she can say anything, he’ll smack her right across the face with the gun. That’ll knock her out. Then he can shoot her anyplace. But maybe he should stick to shooting her in the ear? Or even better, right between the eyes. That’s another expression he remembers from television. It must work. They wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
On the way to the basketball court, Charley and Lucy see the twins standing by the shooting gallery. They duck around the back hoping to miss them, but the twins are like one person with four eyes. It’s Benny who spots Lucy.
“Hey, where’s your brother?”
“Home,” she says, but Dennis catches Charley on the other side of the booth. All he wants to know is, where’s Larry?
“I don’t know,” Charley says, thankful Larry isn’t there. “C’mon,” he says to Lucy.
“Where ya goin’?” Benny asks.
“No place,” Charley says and keeps walking.
“Okay,” Benny says, pulling his brother by the arm. “We’ll go with you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
From the edge of the woods, looking down from the top of the hillside, Larry sees the four kids walking in the direction of the basketball court. That’s bad luck, them going there. That’s where his tormentors, the teenagers, hang out. He makes it a practice to stay as far away from them as possible.
Although today, when he’s ready to start shooting, he’d like to find some of them.
Larry ducks back into the woods and cuts around to the basketball side to keep a check on the kids. To his surprise, the court is empty except for a lone girl sitting on the grass smoking.
Larry heads down to the court, walking fast. The big kids could be back any minute. He’s gotta get Charley away quickly.
“Hey, Charley!” he shouts as he closes the distance between the woods and the court. The run is sharply downhill and takes him faster than his overweight body can comfortably accommodate. He’s nearly sliding, on the edge of tripping, hoping that the gun in his pocket doesn’t fire and blow his balls off.
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