Lost Boys

"Oh, this helped me a lot."

"It did?"

"Sure," said Douglas. He stood in the open doorway. Step and DeA

"You can't use this to prove it to anybody else," said Step.

"Don't have to prove it to anybody else," said Douglas. "I know it. So now I'll never rest till I find this guy and stop him."

"And then will Stevie stop having these- imaginary friends?"

"When the source of his affliction is gone, then there won't be any need for him to deal with it anymore, will there? My wife never dreamed the same dream twice."

He started to walk toward his car, when DeA

"Why not?" he said. "Might turn out to be useful."

"We'll phone you this afternoon, OK?"

"Fine," he said. "If I'm not there, tell it to whoever answers the phone, they'll be expecting it."

He got in his car and drove off. DeA

They phoned it in. As Douglas had said, the man on the phone was expecting them, and he was thorough and businesslike. And then it was done.

Step and DeA

"This is going to sound awful," said DeA

"Me too," said Step. And then he laughed in relief. "Stevie isn't crazy. All that shit from Dr. Weeks-forgive me, but a spade's a spade-that's all back in the crock it came from. Whatever's going on in Stevie's life, it isn't made up and we didn't cause it and he isn't crazy. It's the real world that he's living in, only just as we thought, he sees it more deeply and truly than the rest of us. And when you think about it, it's kind of sweet, isn't it? I mean, whatever happened to these lost boys, they still live on in Stevie's mind. He imagines them and he's made playmates out of them, he's made friends out of them. And I'm not afraid of them anymore."

"I'm still afraid," said DeA

"Well, so am I-of the killer."

" I wish we lived somewhere else," said DeA

"Me too," said Step. "But this is the place where the doctors know about Zap. This is the ward that fasted and prayed for him. The rest of us can live anywhere, but Zap is already part of the life of this place. Those people in our ward, you think they're going to watch Zap grow up and think, What a strange- looking kid, why can't he hold his head up? No. They're going to say, we know that boy, he's one of us. We'll never find that anywhere else, DeA

"I know," she said. "I know." But she was not yet comforted.

"The danger is still here," said Step, touching the newspaper article again. "But it's not pointed at us. I mean, it's like the article says, a child in Steuben is still far more likely to be killed in a traffic accident or a gunshot accident than to be a victim of this killer. Parents have to be less trusting of strangers for a while, that's all. And we were already nearly paranoid, so I think we'll be fine."

She nodded.

"And we can't afford to move, DeA

"I guess I'm just thinking, I don't want to be a grownup anymore. I want to go home and have mom and dad take care of me." She laughed at herself. "It's hard to be mom and dad. Isn't it? Because anything you decide might be wrong."

"Heck, everything we decide will be wrong," said Step, "because no matter what we do, something bad will happen later. So I refuse to regret any of it. I don't regret taking the job with Eight Bits and I don't regret quitting. I don't regret all those expensive tests they ran on Zap, because we had to know. I especially don't regret that day when I saw you talking on the phone and I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful as my wife being kind to someone else who was in need."

She leaned over to him and put her arms around him and rested her head on his chest for a moment. "You make me feel so good."

"And think of this," said Step. "We not only got some assur ance that nobody in our house is crazy, but we also got our bedroom cleaned for the first time since we moved in."

She pretended to bite him through his shirt, and then sat back up. "Well, no matter what I feel, it's time to feed Zap, if I can wake him up. I'm begi

"I know the feeling," said Step. He carefully refrained from pointing out to her that she had just called the baby Zap. He did that the first time she called Elizabeth Betsy, and she had made it a point never to call her that again, so the poor kid was growing up thinking that she was one person to men and another person to women.

Which might not be that far from reality, of course, given the way society worked. Pretty soon he'd probably give in and stop calling Betsy Betsy, so she'd have the same name to everybody. But he thought Zap was a great name, at least until he was old enough to complain about it, and if he could get DeA

Step stayed in the kitchen and looked mindlessly at the newspaper for a moment. Then he realized that they had both lists out on the table-the list of Stevie's friends and the list of people who might hate him enough to send an anonymous threat. He got up and put them in a high cupboard. No matter what Douglas had said, Step wasn't really happy with either list. He'd much rather that everybody on both lists just leave his family alone.

Late that same Sunday night the phone rang. DeA

"This is Step Fletcher," he said. "Who am I speaking to?"

"Hey, this is Glass, Step. Remember me? From Eight Bits Inc.?"

"Yeah, of course," said Step. "Isn't this a little late to be calling, though? I mean, it's almost midnight."

"Well, see, this isn't exactly a social call. They only let me make one phone call, and I thought about it for a minute, and you were kind of my best choice. Or at least I sure hope you are."

"Best choice for what?"

"I'm down at the police station. I need a ride home. Can I explain it to you later? I'm not arrested or anything, I just don't want to be driven home in a police car, you know? It looks bad, people ask questions."

"If you're not arrested, then how come you only get one phone call?"

"Oh, like, that was just theatre. You know? Just making it more dramatic than it is. It's really nothing.