'But you specially like Bill.'

'Maybe I do,' she said, 'but that doesn't matter. If we were grown-ups, maybe it would, a little. But I like you all specially. You're the only friends I have. I love you too, Ben.'

'Thank you,' he said. He paused, trying, and brought it out. He was even able to look at her as he said it. 'I wrote the poem.'

They sat without saying anything for a little while. Beverly felt safe. Protected. The images of her father's face and Henry's knif e seemed less vivid and threatening when they sat close like this. That sense of protection was hard to define and she didn't try, although much later

she would recognize the source of its strength: she was in the arms of a male who would die for her with no hesitation at all. It was a fact that she simply knew: it was in the scent that came from his pores, something utterly primitive that her own glands could respond to.

'The others were coming back,' Ben said suddenly. 'What if they get caught out?'

She straightened up, aware that she had almost been dozing. Bill, she remembered, had invited Mike Hanlon home to lunch with him. Richie was going to go home with Stan and have sandwiches. And Eddie had promised to bring back his Parcheesi board. They would be arriving soon, totally unaware that Henry and his friends were in the Barrens.

'We've got to get to them,' Beverly said. 'Henry's not just after me.'

'If we come out and they come back — '

'Yes, but at least we know they're here. Bill and the other guys don't. Eddie can't even run, they already broke his arm.'

'Jeezum-crow,' Ben said. 'I guess we'll have to chance it.'

'Yeah.' She swallowed and looked at her Timex. It was hard to read in the dimness, but she thought it was a litt le past one. 'Ben . . . '

'What?'

'Henry's really gone crazy. He's like that kid in The Blackboard Jungle. He was going to kill me and the other two were going to help him.'

'Aw, no,' Ben said. 'Henry's crazy, but not that crazy. He's just . . . '

'Just what?' Beverly said. She thought of Henry and Patrick in the automobile graveyard in the thick sunshine. Henry's blank eyes.

Ben didn't answer. He was thinking. Things had changed, hadn't they? When you were inside the changes, they were harder to see. You had to step back to see them . . . you had to try, anyway. When school let out he'd been afraid of Henry, but only because Henry was bigger, and because he was a bully — the kind of kid who would grab a firstgrader, Indian-rub his arm a nd send him away crying. That was about all. Then he had engraved Ben's belly. Then there had been the rockfight, and Henry had been chucking M-80s at people's heads. You could kill somebody with one of those things. You could kill somebody easy. He had sta rted to look different . . . haunted, almost. It seemed that you always had to be on the watch for him, the way you'd always have to be on the watch for tigers or poisonous snakes if you were in the jungle. But you got used to it; so used to it that it didn't even seem unusual, just the way things were. But Henry was crazy, wasn't he? Yes. Ben had known that on the day school ended, and had willfully refused to believe it, or remember it. It wasn't the kind of thing you wanted to believe or remember. And suddenly a thought — a thought so strong it was almost a certainty — crept into his mind full-blown, as cold as October mud. It's usingHenry. Maybe the others too, but It's using them through Henry. And if that's the truth, then she's probably right. It's no t just Indian rubs or rabbit-punches in the back of the neck during study-time near the end of the schoolday while Mrs Douglas reads her book at her desk, not just a push on the playground so that you fall down and skin your knee. If It's using him, then Henry will use the knife.

'An old lady saw them trying to beat me up,' Beverly was saying. 'Henry went after her. He kicked her taillight out.'

This alarmed Ben more than anything else. He understood instinctively, as most kids did, that they lived below the sight-lines, and hence the thought-lines, of most adults. When a grownup was ditty-bopping down the street, thinking his grownup thoughts about work and appointments and buying cars and whatever else grownups thought about, he never noticed kids playing hopscotch or guns or kick-the –can or ring-a-levio or hide –and –go-seek. Bullies like Henry could get away with hurting other kids quite a lot if they were careful to stay below that sightline. At the very most, a passing adult was apt to say someth ing like, "Why don't you quit that?' and then just continue ditty-bopping along without waiting to see if the

bully stopped or not. So the bully would wait until the grownup had turned the corner . . . and then go back to business as usual. It was like adults thought that real life only started when a person was five feet tall.

If Henry had gone after some old lady, he had gone above that sight-line. And that more than anything else suggested to Ben that he really was crazy.

Beverly saw the belief ni Ben's face and felt relief sweep over her. She would not have to tell him about how Mr Ross had simply folded his paper and walked into his house. She didn't want to tell him about that. It was too scary.

'Let's go up to Kansas Street,' Ben said, and abruptly pushed open the trapdoor. 'Get ready to run.'

He stood up in the opening and looked around. The clearing was silent. He could hear the chuckling voice of the Kenduskeag close by, birdsong, the thum-thud-thum-thud of a diesel engine snorting it s way into the trainyards. He heard nothing else and that made him uneasy. He would have felt much better if he'd heard Henry, Victor, and Belch cursing their way through the neavy undergrowth down by the stream. But he couldn't hear them at all.

Come on,' he said, and helped Beverly up. She also looked around uneasily, brushing her hair back with her hands and grimacing at its greasy feel.

He took her hand and they pushed through a screen of bushes toward Kansas Street. 'We'd better stay off the path.'

'No,' she said, 'we've got to hurry.'

He nodded. 'All right.'

They got to the path and started toward Kansas Street. Once she stumbled over a rock in the path and

7

The Seminary Grounds / 2:17 A.M.

fell heavily on the moon-silvered sidewalk. A grunt was forced out of him, and a runner of blood came with the grunt, splatting on the cracked concrete. In the moonlight it looked as black as beetle –blood. Henry looked at it for a long dazed moment, then raised his head to look around.

Kansas Street was early-morning silent, the houses shut up and dark except for a scatter of nightlights.

Ah. Here was a sewer-grate.

A balloon with a smiley-smile face was tied to one of its iron bars. It bobbed and dipped in the faint breeze.

Henry got to his feet again, one sticky hand pressed to his belly. The nigger had stuck him pretty good, but Henry had gone him one better. Yessir. As far as the nigger was concerned, Henry felt like he was pretty much okey-dokey.

'Kid's a gone goose,' Henry muttered, and made his shaky staggering way past the floating balloon. Fresh blood glimmered on his hand as it continued to flow from his stomach. 'Kid's all done. Greased the sucker. Gonna grease them all. Teach them to throw rocks.'

The world was coming in slow-rolling waves, big combers like the ones they used to show at the beginning of every Hawaii Five– O episode on the ward TV

(book em Danno, ha-ha Jack Fuckin Lord okay. Jack Fuckin Lord was pretty much okey-dokey)

and Henry could Henry could Henry could almost

(hear the sound those Oahu big boys make as they rise curl and shake

(shakeshakeskake