I, Michael Bennett

Mary Catherine whistled and waved some more. Something was up.

“I knew it,” I said as I started kicking and splashing back toward the house. It had been too quiet for too long.

“Sorry to bother you, Mike. It’s probably nothing,” Mary Catherine said as I finally made it back and tossed the tube up onto the dock.

Unfortunately, one glance at the concerned look on her face as I pulled my dripping self out of the lake said the opposite.

“Okay. I’m here. What’s wrong?” I said.

“It’s Brian and Eddie. They left to go to the pizza place down the road about an hour ago, and they’re not back yet. I called and texted Brian’s phone, but it seems like maybe the battery is dead. I just sent Seamus down the street to see if maybe they went to the neighbor’s. They weren’t there, but the neighbor said when he passed the pizza place, he might have seen Brian and Eddie talking to two girls and a teenager with a car.”

No wonder Mary Catherine was looking concerned. Brian was sixteen but Eddie was only thirteen, and they were hanging around some older kids and girls? It just didn’t sound right.

“A car? What kind of car?” I said, pissed. We’d had a big family meeting with the older ones about always making sure to let people know where they were.

“A black convertible,” Mary Catherine said, biting at a thumbnail.

“A black convertible?!” I repeated after a frustrated breath. “Oh, well, that’s just great. Maybe they’ll learn how to drag race. Let me get dressed, and I’ll go find them.”

“Do you think they’re in trouble?” she said.

“No, no, Mary Catherine. I’m sure it’s probably nothing. I mean, how much trouble could they possibly get into up here in the sticks?”

CHAPTER 42

FROM THE BACKSEAT of the growling Mustang convertible, Eddie Be

He couldn’t believe it. He thought coming up here into the country was going to be dullsville 24-7, but wow, had he gotten it all wrong. Right off the bat, as he and Brian walked into the country-road pizza place, they met two girls, Jessica and Claire. Not just any girls, either. They were older, pretty high school girls wearing Daisy Duke shorts and tank tops and lots of makeup. They started talking to Brian first, joking with him, but after a little while, they were saying how cute Eddie was and asking him if he liked older women.

“Come on, we’re going to go for a ride,” the redheaded one, Claire, said, pulling out her cell phone as they came outside in the pizza joint’s parking lot.

“Yeah, come on. It’ll be fun,” added Jessica, who had wild, mascara-rimmed eyes. “Or do you have to go home and ask Mommy?”

“Of course we’ll go,” Brian said before Eddie could open his mouth.

Then Claire sent a text message, and this guy, Bill, a long-haired dude with tattoos and those freaky flesh-tu

I ain’t gotta Benz, no just a Honda

But try to get my money like an Anaconda

.

Who knew life could get this cool? Eddie thought.

“Hey, you dudes havin’ fun?” Bill said, turning down the stereo. “Jessica tells me you boys are from New York. That right?”

“Yep,” Brian said with gusto. “New York, New York. Born and raised.”

“Big Apple in the house!” Eddie tossed out, but then shut his mouth as Brian gave him a glare.

Bill nodded and looked at them in the rearview mirror. He had a long, weird-looking face, Eddie thought, like one of the elves from The Lord of the Rings. Kind of cool but also sort of creepy, actually. Eddie looked away.

“That’s cool,” Bill, the tattooed elf, said. “I love the city. It’s good to meet people who are down. Hey, I have an idea. I know a spot over in Newburgh where they sell some primo smoke, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Jessica started giggling in the front seat. She stopped as Bill gave her a long cold look.

“Problem is,” Bill continued, “I don’t like buyin’ on my own. You guys mind if I make a stop there and have ourselves a party? If you don’t, that’s cool, too. It’s a pretty hairy, scary block. I just thought it’d be no biggie since you were from New York and all.”

The girls gri

“Let’s do it,” Brian said, pumping a fist.

Eddie sat there, blinking, trying to catch up. Everything was blurring by faster than the roadside trees. What had Brian just agreed to? To go buy weed? Dad would kill them. Hell, he was a cop. He’d arrest them first and then kill them. But never mind that. Brian was an athlete. He wouldn’t know one end of a cigarette from the other, let alone what to do with a joint if he saw one. He was just doing it because he liked the girls, Eddie realized.

Eddie opened his mouth to say something, but Brian glared him down again.

The Mustang slowed and then chirped to a stop. Eddie slid against the door hard as Bill the elf did a dust-raising U-turn.

“All righty, then, homies. Newburgh, here we come,” Bill said.

CHAPTER 43

THE MUSTANG FLEW over a couple of tiny back roads and then bumped over some railroad tracks onto a real road that had businesses on it. A BP gas station, a T.G.I. Friday’s, a Home Depot.

As they rolled up a hill into the city where they’d gotten hot dogs, Eddie’s stomach dropped again. He wanted to ask Brian why the hell they were doing all this, but when he turned, he could see why. Brian was busy kissing Claire. Great.

Eddie took out his new cell phone and saw 8 NEW MESSAGES pop up on the screen. They were all from his dad, he knew. They were already in trouble. He slid the phone back into his pocket. This wasn’t fun anymore. It was crazy.

The Mustang swerved onto a side street that headed steeply down toward the Hudson. They passed old houses. One of them had plywood nailed over its windows. Was a hurricane coming or something? Eddie thought.

Bill turned down the radio before they pulled onto a narrow road. It looked like something out of Grand Theft Auto IV. Sidewalks strewn with couches and tires, abandoned cars, graffiti all over everything.

When they suddenly stopped, Eddie felt his lungs seize up. On both sides of the street, sitting on parked cars and the stoops of crumbling, haunted-looking houses, were a dozen or more really muscular black dudes. Most of them were wearing red—red ball caps, red do-rags.

These are gang members, Eddie thought with sudden terror. Actual real-life gang members.

Jessica, in the front seat, laughed as she lit a cigarette.

Bill jumped out of the car and walked over to one of the black kids and slapped hands. They talked for a second, and then Bill came back.

“He says I have to follow him into the backyard for a second to do the buy. Will you come and watch my back?”

Staring at Bill, the evil elf, Eddie realized that he was even older than twenty. More like thirty. He was like a junkie or something. Junkies and gangbangers! What the hell had they gotten themselves into?