taillights ahead of him. Every vehicle pumps the fear of the chase into him, each rumbling auto a possible accident—maybe the last sound he’ll hear before being knocked to the pavement. Maybe I am out of my mind. The glare of oncoming cars has quickened the darkening of the sky. It’s the same spooky half-light that surrounded him as he approached the slide last night. He wants to shake it from his head but he can still feel every angry step he took up the ladder. What happened up there? He can’t make any more sense of it now than he did yesterday: the heat coming off Jackson and Ruby and Larry locked in their struggle, the dull steel railing and chute, the final crazy impression of Jackson flying away. Not jumping, not falling, flying.
At the intersection of Tappan Boulevard and Washington Road he finally stops. Three smaller streets spread out from the two main avenues and drivers are nosing past each other in six different directions. He needs to cross, can’t figure out how. The sensation that an accident is waiting to happen takes over—every car that turns without signaling seems to have his name written on it. For the first time since leaving his house he thinks it was wrong of him to take this trip, that if he gets hurt on his way to see Jackson it would be the absolute worst thing possible, not even for his own injuries but for the proof that he is foolish and can’t take care of himself, much less anyone else. He considers going back but remembers the stifling anxiety of the long afternoon and decides instead to cut through the Shell station at his right. He pedals up a hill that he thinks might get him to the hospital. The traffic here is just as heavy, but the road is only one lane in either direction. There might be a safer chance to cross up ahead.
He’s not familiar with this end of town. There’s a shopping plaza with a big hardware store he’s visited once or twice with his father, and the only Chinese takeout place for miles, the one Uncle Stan insists uses pigeon meat in the chicken dishes. Beyond that, he’s not sure. He keeps moving forward, until the road narrows a bit and the streetlights are less frequent, the houses are smaller and less packed together. In the distance he can see the bright perimeter of a cemetery, a row of gravestones glowing behind a chain link fence and then the impenetrable darkness beyond. It’s so obviously ghostly he snickers a panicky laugh, no way he’s going to ride any closer to that. He cuts sharply to the left, enough distance between him and the nearest approaching car to get him across Green and onto a side street he hopes will lead him back on course.
His thighs are starting to ache, and the underside of his butt where he didn’t even know he had muscles. A persistent itch is circling across his scabbed palms. He slows down a bit to catch his breath and feels the air against his sweaty face. His ears ring before they adjust to the noises fading behind him. Gentler sounds make their way in: the click of a car door, a couple of voices from someone’s front stoop, some muffled TV dialogue drifting from an open window.
A car starts up in a driveway, he glimpses the back of a black man’s head in the orange interior light. Farther down he sees a couple of small figures chasing each other across their lawn, black kids, younger than himself, and a woman, also black, taking out her trash. She squints her eyes at him and watches as he passes by. A sign above a mechanic’s shop on a corner: Marble Road Auto Body. Marble Road: his first reaction is disbelief, that this place really exists beyond the fearsome stories he’s heard—like the one Larry told him about a gang of black girls who jumped a white girl walking down Marble Road and wedged a miniature-golf pencil up her ass. He had an image in his head of high rise apartment buildings, gangs of young men hanging out, and funk music blasting from big cars, like a miniature Harlem, or the opening credits on Good Times. But this place is so quiet, and not even quiet enough to be scary. It’s just another part of Greenlawn. The only thing that strikes him as really different is the road, which is more cracked, and weedy at the curb. The streets in his neighborhood get paved every year.
He turns at the next intersection for no reason at all, just full of doubt, needing to change directions. His bike chinks and rattles over the broken-up macadam. Some lights up ahead: a baseball field, a few cars parked at the edge of the glow. Two girls and two boys on the hood, one of them smoking. A bass line thumping lightly under their conversation. A face turns toward him, a halo of light on slicked down, straightened hair. A girl’s voice: “Hey? Who’s that?”
Another girl: “It’s a white boy.”
A guy’s voice, duller: “Some white boy got lost.”
“Ooo.” This from one of the girls.
“Hey, where you going, boy?”
For a split second, he thinks about asking for directions but his feet impulsively push harder on the pedals—an impulse so old he doesn’t think he’s ever not had it. He rides away, away from a taunt he can’t comprehend and the tail end of bored laughter. And now it seems like he’s been riding for hours, and he’s wondering if he’s going anywhere at all.
Chapter Five
He makes it to a road that he recognizes, running beneath a vast slope of dead, flattened grass. Surrounded by chain link at the top is a mansion, a gray silhouette against the sky, that’s been uninhabited for years and is rumored to be haunted. In the winter kids sleigh all the way down from the fence, though it’s dangerous because you have to turn sharply at the bottom or wind up in the line of traffic. Up ahead are two more landmarks: the Dairy Queen, where he and Victoria used to hang out before she went away for the summer, and beyond that the town dump, where he’s accompanied his father with bottles and newspapers for recycling. A CLOSED UNTIL APRIL sign is nailed to the front of the Dairy Queen.
The parking lot is lit up but empty—except for a van parked near the back, which seems suspicious to him. He wheels his bike toward the pay phone. He’s got some change in his pocket but isn’t sure who to call. Nana Rena, by now mad with worry? Maybe Uncle Stan is back at the house. She’ll send him out looking; everyone will be pissed off. As he rounds the corner of the low building he’s startled by a noise.
A boy his age is sitting on the ground, his head tilted back against the wall. Robin can see dried blood around the boy’s nostrils, little clay-colored flakes on the white stretch of his upper lip. He’s wearing a baseball cap; dark hair pokes out around his ears and neck. His ears are the perfect kind of ears, delicate and flat, the right size for his thin face. Robin’s seen this guy before, in school.
“What’s up?” Robin says, digging into his pocket for a dime.
The boy stares at him, startled. His face is sad or angry or something that sends out a warning. He wipes the bloodstain from under his nose with the cuff of his flannel shirt.
Robin puts a dime into the slot. No dial tone. He flicks the coin-return lever but gets nothing back.
“It doesn’t work,” the boy mutters.
“Oh,” Robin says, and then just stands there. “The hospital’s not far from here?”
The boys squints up at him. “I don’t need no fucking hospital.”
“No, I mean for me.”
“What’s wrong with you? You sick?”
“No, my brother is. He’s . . . hurt.”
The boy shoots a quick look toward the van at the back of the lot. Robin sees some motion in the trees behind the vehicle, makes out the blurry figure of a man stooped over, picking something up. Then the boy stands up, dusts off the seat of his jeans, and speaks. “I know who you are.”
Now Robin recognizes him from phys. ed.: the other kid hanging out at the top of the bleachers, trying to avoid the Skins vs. Shirts punchball game. “Yeah, yeah, I remember. Gym class. Pintack? Fourth period?”
“I fuckin’ hate that guy,” the boy spits out. “Fuckin’ asshole jock. He fuckin’ hates me and I hate him back.”
Robin nods, happy for something in common. “Yeah, I can’t stand him. He acts so tough and gets everyone all riled up about all those stupid games and—”
“Yeah, I know about you,” he interrupts.
Robin tries to figure out what he means—does