The Turtle Boy (3 page)

"One more thing."

"Yeah?"

"I don't want you going back
to the pond for a while. You know, just in case there are some odd
folk hanging around down there."

"Okay."

"Good boy. See you in the
morning."

"See you in the morning
too." His father started to close the door.

"Dad?"

A sigh. "Yes?"

"Do you think there are
turtles back there? Like, big ones?"

"Who knows? I've never seen
them but that isn't to say they aren't there. Now quit worrying
about it and get some sleep."

"I will."

"Goodnight."

The door closed and Timmy
listened to his father's slippers slopping against the bare wood
steps of the stairs. It was followed by mumbled conversation and
Timmy guessed his mother was being filled in on The Turtle Boy
story. Her laughter, crisp and warm, echoed through the
house.

Timmy turned his back on the
aquatic renderings and stared at his
Hulk
poster on the opposite wall. As
he replayed moments from his favorite episodes of the show, he
found himself drifting, edging closer to the bank of sleep where he
sat among ugly children with wounded feet and burst stitches for
smiles.

CHAPTER THREE

The next morning, he called for Pete
and found him in his sun-washed kitchen, hunched over a bowl of
cereal as if afraid someone was going to steal it.

"Hi Pete."

Pete looked positively
bleached. Except for the angry purple bruise around his left eye.
"Hi."

"Ouch. Where did you get the
shiner?"

"Fell."

"Where?"

Pete shrugged but said
nothing further and while this wasn't unusual, Timmy sensed his
friend was still shaken from their meeting with Darryl the day
before. He, on the other hand, had managed to convince himself that
they had simply stumbled upon some sick kid from one of the
neighboring towns who had ventured out of his camp to see what the
city had to offer. Pete's father had once told the boys about the
less prosperous areas of Delaware and warned them not to ride their
bikes there after sundown. He'd frightened them with stories about
what had happened to those children who'd disobeyed their parents
and ventured there after dark. They had resolved never to step foot
outside their own neighborhood if they could help it. Of course,
they couldn't stop people from coming
in
to their neighborhood either and
after much musing, Timmy had decided that that was exactly what had
happened. Nothing creepy going on, just a kid sniffing around in
uncharted territory. No big deal. And though he'd been scared to
stumble upon the strange kid with the mangled foot, the fear had
buckled under the weight of solid reasoning and now he felt more
than a little silly for panicking.

It appeared, however, that
the waking nightmare had yet to let Pete go. The longer Timmy
watched him, the more worried he became. It didn't help that Pete
was accident-prone. Every other week he had some kind of injury to
display.

"You all right, Pete?" he
asked as he slid into a chair.

Pete nodded and made a
snorting sound as he shoveled a spoonful of Cheerios into his
mouth. A teardrop of milk ran from the corner of his mouth, dangled
from his chin, then fell back into the white sea beneath his face.
A smile curled Timmy's lips as he recalled his mother saying: "If
you ever eat like that kid, you'd better be prepared to hunt for
your own food. Honestly, you'd think they starve him over there or
something."

When Pete finished, he raised the bowl
to his lips and drained the remaining milk from it, then wiped a
forearm across his lips and belched softly.

"So what should we do
today?" Timmy asked, already bored with the stale atmosphere in
Pete's house.

Pete shrugged but the reply came from
the hallway behind them.

"He's not doing anything
today. He's grounded."

Timmy turned in his chair.
It was Pete's father.

Wayne Marshall was tall and
thin; his skin brushed with the same healthy glow nature had denied
his son. He wore silver wire-rimmed glasses atop an aquiline nose.
Thick black eyebrows sat like a dark horizon between the sweeping
black wings of his bangs. He was frightening when angry, but Timmy
seldom stuck around to see the full force of his wrath. Right now
it seemed he was on 'simmer.'

"What were you two boys
doing back at Myers Pond yesterday?" he asked as he strode into the
kitchen and plucked an errant strand of hair from his tie. From
what Timmy had seen, the man only owned two suits – one black, the
other a silvery gray. Today he wore the former, with a white shirt
and a red and black striped tie.

He looked at Pete but the boy was
staring into his empty bowl as if summoning the ghost of his
Cheerios.

Timmy swallowed. "We were
looking for something to do. We thought we might go fishing but our
poles are broken."

Mr. Marshall nodded. As he
poured himself a coffee, Timmy noticed no steam rose from the
liquid as it surged into the cup.
Cold
coffee?
It made him wonder how early these
people got up in the morning. After all, it was only eight-thirty
now.

"The new Zebco pole I bought
Petey for his birthday a few months back, you mean?"

Timmy grimaced. "I didn't
know it was a new one. He never told me that."

The man leaned against the counter and
studied Timmy with obvious distaste and the boy felt his face grow
hot under the scrutiny. He decided Pete had earned himself a good
punch for not rescuing him.

"Yeah well…." Pete's father
said, pausing to sip from his cup. He smacked his lips. "There
isn't much point going back to the pond if you're not going
fishing, is there? I mean, what else is there to do?"

Timmy shrugged. "I dunno.
Stuff."

"What kind of
stuff?"

Another shrug. His mother had warned
him about shrugging when asked a direct question, and how
irritating it was to grown-ups, but at that moment he felt like his
shoulders were tied to counterweights and threaded through eyehooks
in the ceiling.

"Messin' around and stuff.
You know…playing army. That kind of stuff."

"What's wrong with playing
army out in the yard, or better still in
your
yard with all the trees you've
got back there?"

"I don't know."

The urge to run infected
him, but his mind kept a firm foot on the brakes. He had already
let his yellow belly show once this week; it wasn't going to happen
again now, no matter how cranky Mr. Marshall was feeling this
morning. But it was getting progressively harder to return the
man's gaze, and although he had seen Pete's dad lose his cool more
than once, he wasn't sure he had ever felt this much animosity
coming from him. The sudden dislike was almost palpable.

Mr. Marshall's demeanor
changed. He sipped his coffee and grinned, but there was a distinct
absence of humor in the expression. His smoldering glare shifted
momentarily to Pete, who shuffled in response. Timmy felt his spine
contract with discomfort.

"Petey was telling me about
this Turtle Boy you boys are supposed to have met."

At that moment, had Timmy
eyes in the back of his head, they would have been glaring at Pete.
He didn't know why. After all, he had told his father. But
his
father hadn't blown a
gasket over some busted fishing poles, Zebco or no Zebco, and had
waved away the idea of a ghost at Myers Pond without a second
thought.

The way Mr. Marshall was
looking at him now, it appeared he had given it a
lot
of thought.

"Yeah. It was weird," he
said with a lopsided grin.

"Weird? It scared Pete half
to death and from what he tells me you were scared too. Didn't your
mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?"

"Yes, but it was just a
ki—"

"Don't you know how many
children disappear every year around this area? Most of them
because they wandered off to places they were warned not to go.
Places like that pond, and while I don't believe for a second that
either of you saw anything like Pete described, I don't want you
bringing my boy back there again, do you understand me?"

"But I didn't—"

"I spent most of last night
prying ticks off him. Is that your idea of fun, Timmy?"

"No sir."

"I told him not to hang
around with you anyway. You're trouble. Just like your
father."

Caught in the spotlight cast by the
morning sun, dust motes seemed to slow through air made thick with
tension.

Timmy's jaw dropped. While
he had squirmed beneath his friend's father's angry monologue, this
insult to his own father made something snap shut in his chest.
Anger and hurt swelled within him and he let out a long, infuriated
breath. Unspoken words flared in that breath and died harmlessly
before a mouth sealed tight with disgust. He felt his stomach begin
to quiver and suddenly he wanted more than anything to be gone from
Pete's house. The departure would come with the implied demand that
Pete go to hell in a Zip-Loc bag, the sentiment punctuated by a
slamming of the front door that would no doubt bring Mr. Marshall
running to chastise him further.

Fine
, he thought, the words poison arrows in his head.
Let him. He can go to hell in a baggie
too.

"I gotta go now," he mumbled
finally, and without sparing his treacherous comrade a glance,
started toward the front door.

Hot tears blurred the
hallway and the daylight beyond as he left the house and closed the
door
gently
behind
him. The anger had ebbed away as quickly as it had come, replaced
now by a tiny tear in the fabric of his happiness through which
dark light shone. He was dimly aware of the door opening behind
him.

Pete's voice halted him and
he turned. "Hey, I'm sorry Timmy. Really I am."

"Oh yeah?" The hurt spun
hateful words he couldn't speak. With what looked like monumental
effort, Pete closed the front door behind him. With an uncertain
smile, he said: "My Dad'll kill me for this, but let's go do
something."

"Good idea," Timmy said,
aware that an errant tear was trickling down his cheek. "You can go
to hell. I'm going home."

"Timmy wait –"

"Shut up, Pete. I
hate
you!"

He ran home and slammed the
door behind him. His mother sat wiping her eyes, engrossed in some
soppy movie. He waited behind the sofa for her to ask him what was
wrong and when she didn't he ran to his room and to bed, where he
lay with his face buried in the cool white pillows.

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?"