Lost Boys

They pulled into Frankfort and there was a Holiday I

Officially he didn't believe in omens. But what the heck, it made him feel better to take it that way, and so he did.

2: Maggots

This is the house they moved into: The only cheap wood siding in a neighborhood of red brick. No basement, no garage, not even a roof over the carport. Brown latticework around the base of the house like the skirting around a mobile home. Blue carpet in the living room, which wasn't going to look too good with their furniture, an old-fashioned green velvet love seat and overstuffed chair Step had bought from Deseret industries when he was in college back at BYU. But it had four bedrooms, which meant one for Step and DeA

In the meantime, the movers had piled the living room six feet high with more boxes than they could ever unpack and put away in a place this size, and they had a single weekend to get settled before work started for Step and school started for Stevie. Monday, the deadline, the drop-dead day. Nobody was looking forward to it with much joy, least of all Stevie.

DeA

Or maybe he just seemed serious, because he kept his feelings to himself until he had sorted them out, or until they had built up to a point where he couldn't contain them. So DeA

"Stevie, I know it's scary, but you just need to plunge right in. You'll make friends right away and everything'll be fine."

"I didn't make friends right away at my old school."

That was true enough-DeA

"But that was your first school ever," she said. "You know the routine now."

"When Barry Wimmer moved in after Thanksgiving," he said, "everybody was really rotten to him."

"Were you?"

"No."

"So not everybody"

"They made fun of everything he did," said Stevie.

"Kids can be like that sometimes."

"They're going to do that to me now," said Stevie.

This was excruciating. She wanted to say, You're right, they're going to be a bunch of little jerks, because that's the way kids are at that age, except you, because you were born not knowing how to hurt anybody else, you were born with compassion, only that also means that when people are cruel to you it cuts you deep. You won't understand that you have to walk right up to the ones who are being hateful and laugh in their faces and earn their respect. Instead you'll try to figure out what you did to make them mad at you.

For a moment she toyed with putting it to him in exactly those terms. But it would hardly help him if she confirmed all his worst fears. He'd never get to sleep if she did that.

"What if they were unkind to you, Stevie? What would you do?"

He thought about that for a while. "Barry cried," he said.

"Did that make it better?"

"No," said Stevie. "They made fun of him crying. Ricky followed him around saying 'boo hoo hoo' all the time from then on. He was still doing it on my last day there."

"So," said DeA

"I don't think I'll cry," said Stevie.

"I'm glad," said DeA

"I'll just make them go away."

"I don't think that'll work, Stevie. The more you try to make them leave, the more they'll stick around."

"No, I don't mean make them go away. I mean make them go away. "

"Do you want to hand me that roll of paper towels?"

He did.

"I'm not sure I'm clear on the difference between making them go away and making them go away."

"You know. Like when Dad's programming. He makes everything go away."

So he understood that about his father, and tho ught it might be useful. "You'll just concentrate on your schoolwork?"

"Or whatever," said Stevie. "It's hard to concentrate on schoolwork because it's so dumb."

"Maybe it won't be so dumb at this school."

"Maybe."

"I wish I could promise you that everything will be perfect, but I really don't think they'll treat you the way that Barry Wimmer got treated." DeA

He's a walking victim."

"Am 1 a victim?" asked Stevie.

"Not a chance," said DeA

"Not really" he said, looked at his hands.

"I don't mean your body, Stevie. I mean your spirit is too strong. You kno w what you're doing. You know what you're about. You aren't looking to these kids to tell you who you are. You know who you are."

"I guess."

"Come on, who are you?" It was an old game, but he still enjoyed playing along, even though the original purpose of it -- preparing him to identify himself in case he got lost-was long since accomplished.

"Stephen Bolivar Fletcher."

"And who is that?"

"Firstborn child and first son of the Junk Man and the Fish Lady."

Of all his regular answers, that was her favorite, partly because the first time he ever said that, he had this sly little smile as if he knew he was intruding into grownup territory, as if he knew that his parents' pet names for each other were older than he was and in some sense had caused him to exist. As if he had some unconscious awareness that those names, even spoken in jest, had sexual undertones that he couldn't possibly understand but nevertheless knew all about.

"And don't you forget it," she said cheerfully.

"I won't," he said.

"Mom," he said.

"Yes?"

"Please can't I stay home just a couple more days?"

She sighed. "I really don't think so, Stevie. But I'll talk to your dad."

"He'll just say the same thing."

"Probably. We parents are like that."

The worst moment was at breakfast on Monday. The kids were eating their hot cereal while Step was downing his Rice Krispies, looking over the newspaper as he ate. "This is almost as bad a newspaper as the one in Vigor," he said.

"You aren't going to get the Washington Post unless you live in Washington," said DeA

"I don't want the Washington Post. I'd settle for the Salt Lake Tribune. Salt Lake is still a two-newspaper town, and here Steuben can't even support a paper that puts the international news on the front page."