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yellow light flickering through the branches. She was up there, in the bedroom. He sensed her. |
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The next moment he was shimmying down the tree. |
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" 'Wicked weird. Everybody says so,'" he whispered as he touched bottom. |
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The lights flickered like strobes through the trees as he cut through them with a remarkable grace. |
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Gina's backyard abutted the woods like the Starkeys' next door. Because of Gina's baby brother, her father had put up a chain-link fence at the edge of the woods. Matty looked to the light of her room. The window was open halfway and the curtains were parted, the shade up. He couldn't see her but he knew she was lying on her bed. |
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He stopped himself at the edge of the trees. |
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But the other, stranger part of him turned his attention to the light in that bedroom window. And the garageit was the same height as Gina's room. With the side window and molding, he could scale it in seconds. |
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The light from the Starkeys' house spilled out onto the backyard. The blue light of the television pulsed in the front room. With the wind making a pressure at his back, he stepped from the trees into the open of the Starkeys' yard, his mind fixed on that yellow light of the second floor corner room in the next house. |
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Gina's house. Gina's room. Gina on her bed. |
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Gina with thick brown hair. Gina who had laughed when Bobby Gorawlski pushed him down. Gina who once giggled to Lisa that Matty's dinky fell off from the cold. |
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He felt the coil of anger. He would show her. |
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He took another step when the barking stopped him. |
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She had appeared from nowhere just three feet behind him, her white teeth flashing as she barked. She would have been at him were it not for the rope. |
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His first impulse was to run. But a counterimpulse flared and he backed into the shadows. Gretchen's hackles made a Mohawk down her back. Her barking was furious, but it drew nobody away from |
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