Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow (graded readers TXT) 📕

"I don't think the little ones really remember him -- he's more like a bad dream to them. But he was real, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," Alan said. "But he's gone now."

"Was it right?"

"What do you mean?" Alan said. He felt a sear of anger arc along his spine.

"It's nothing," Billy said, mumbling into his tray.

"What do you mean, Brad?" Alan said. "What else should we have done? How can you have any doubts?"

"I don't," Brad said. "It's okay."

Alan looked down at his hands, which appeared to belong to someone else: white lumps of dough clenched into hard fists, knuckles white. He made himself unclench them. "No, it's not okay. Tell me about this. You remember what he was like. What he...did."

"I remember it," Bryan said. "Of course I remember it." He was staring through the table now, the look he got when he was contemplating a future the rest of them couldn't see. "But."

Alan waited. He was trembling inside. He'd done the right thing. He'd saved his family. He knew that. But for six years, he'd found himself turning in his memory to the little boy on the ground, holding the loops of intestine in through slippery red fingers. For six years, whenever he'd been somewhere quiet long enough that his own inner voices fell still, he'd remember the hair in his fist, the knife's thirsty draught as it drew forth the hot splash of blood from Davey's throat. He'd remembered the ragged fissure that opened down Clarence's length and the way that Davey fell down it, so light and desiccated he was almost weightless.

"If you remember it, then you know I did the right thing. I did the only thing."

"We did the only thing," Brian said, and covered Alan's hand with his.

Alan nodded and stared at his cheeseburger. "You'd better go catch up with your friends," he said.

"I love you, Adam," he said.

"I love you, too."

Billy crossed the room, nodding to the people who greeted him from every table, geeks and jocks and band and all the meaningless tribes of the high school universe. The cute redhead sprinkled a wiggle-finger wave at him, and he nodded at her, the tips of his ears going pink.

The snow stopped by three p.m., and the sun came out and melted it away, so that by the time the game started at five-thirty, its only remnant was the soggy ground around the bleachers with the new grass growing out of the ragged brown memory of last summer's lawn.

Alan took the little ones for dinner at the diner after school, letting them order double chocolate-chip pancakes. At 13, they'd settled into a fatness that made him think of a foam-rubber toy, the rolls and dimples at their wrists and elbows and knees like the seams on a doll.

"You're starting high school next year?" Alan said, as they were pouring syrup on their second helping. He was startled by this -- how had they gotten so old so quickly?

"Uh-huh," Eli said. "I guess."

"So you're graduating from elementary school this spring?"

"Yeah." Eli grinned a chocolate smile at him. "It's no big deal. There's a party, though."

"Where?"

"At some kid's house."

"It's okay," Alan said. "We can celebrate at home. Don't let them get to you."

"We can't go?" Ed suddenly looked a little panicked.

"You're invited?" He blurted it out and then wished he hadn't.

"Of course we're invited," Fred said from inside Ed's throat. "There's going to be dancing."

"You can dance?" Alan asked.

"We can!" Ed said.

"We learned in gym," Greg said, with the softest, proudest voice, deep within them.

"Well," Alan said. He didn't know what to say. High school. Dancing. Invited to parties. No one had invited him to parties when he'd graduated from elementary school, and he'd been too busy with the little ones to go in any event. He felt a little jealous, but mostly proud. "Want a milkshake?" he asked, mentally totting up the cash in his pocket and thinking that he should probably send Brad to dicker with the assayer again soon.

"No, thank you," Ed said. "We're watching our weight."

Alan laughed, then saw they weren't joking and tried to turn it into a cough, but it was too late. Their shy, chocolate smile turned into a rubber-lipped pout.

The game started bang on time at six p.m., just as the sun was setting. The diamond lights flicked on with an audible click and made a spot of glare that cast out the twilight.

Benny was already on the mound, he'd been warming up with the catcher, tossing them in fast and exuberant and confident and controlled. He looked good on the mound. The ump called the start, and the batter stepped up to the plate, and Benny struck him out in three pitches, and the little ones went nuts, cheering their brother on along with the other fans in the bleachers, a crowd as big as any you'd ever see outside of school, thirty or forty people.

The second batter stepped up and Benny pitched a strike, another strike, and then a wild foul that nearly beaned the batter in the head. The catcher cocked his mask quizzically, and Benny kicked the dirt and windmilled his arm a little and shook his head.

He tossed another wild one, this one coming in so low that it practically rolled across the plate. His teammates were standing up in their box now, watching him carefully.

"Stop kidding around," Alan heard one of them say. "Just strike him out."

Benny smiled, spat, caught the ball, and shrugged his shoulders. He wound up, made ready to pitch, and then dropped the ball and fell to his knees, crying out as though he'd been struck.

Alan grabbed the little ones' hand and pushed onto the diamond before Benny's knees hit the ground. He caught up with Benny as he keeled over sideways, bringing his knees up to his chest, eyes open and staring and empty.

Alan caught his head and cradled it on his lap and was dimly aware that a crowd had formed round them. He felt Barry's heart thundering in his chest, and his arms were stuck straight out to his sides, one hand in his pitcher's glove, the other clenched tightly around the ball.

"It's a seizure," someone said from the crowd. "Is he an epileptic? It's a seizure."

Someone tried to prize Alan's fingers from around Barry's head and he grunted and hissed at them, and they withdrew.

"Barry?" Alan said, looking into Barry's face. That faraway look in his eyes, a million miles away. Alan knew he'd seen it before, but not in years.

The eyes came back into focus, closed, opened. "Davey's back," Barry said.

Alan's skin went cold and he realized that he was squeezing Barry's head like a melon. He relaxed his grip and helped him to his feet, got Barry's arm around his shoulders, and helped him off the diamond.

"You okay?" one of the players asked as they walked past him, but Barry didn't answer. The little ones were walking beside them now, clutching Barry's hand, and they turned their back on the town as a family and walked toward the mountain.

George had come to visit him once before, not long after Alan'd moved to Toronto. He couldn't come without bringing down Elliot and Ferdinand, of course, but it was George's idea to visit, that was clear from the moment they rang the bell of the slightly grotty apartment he'd moved into in the Annex, near the students who were barely older than him but seemed to belong to a different species.

They were about 16 by then, and fat as housecats, with the same sense of grace and inertia in their swinging bellies and wobbling chins.

Alan welcomed them in. Edward was wearing a pair of wool trousers pulled nearly up to his nipples and short suspenders that were taut over his sweat-stained white shirt. He was grinning fleshily, his hair damp with sweat and curled with the humidity.

He opened his mouth, and George's voice emerged. "This place is..." He stood with his mouth open, while inside him, George thought. "Incredible. I'd never..." He closed his mouth, then opened it again. "Dreamed. What a..."

Now Ed spoke. "Jesus, figure out what you're going to say before you say it, willya? This is just plain --"

"Rude," came Fede's voice from his mouth.

"I'm sorry," came George's voice.

Ed was working on his suspenders, then unbuttoning his shirt and dropping his pants, so that he stood in grimy jockeys with his slick, tight, hairy belly before Alan. He tipped himself over, and then Alan was face-to-face with Freddy, who was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts with blue and white stripes. Freddy was scowling comically, and Alan hid a grin behind his hand.

Freddy tipped to one side and there was George, short and delicately formed and pale as a frozen french fry. He grabbed Freddy's hips like handles and scrambled out of him, springing into the air and coming down on the balls of his feet, holding his soccer-ball-sized gut over his Hulk Underoos.

"It's incredible," he hooted, dancing from one foot to the other. "It's brilliant! God! I'm never, ever going home!"

"Oh, yes?" Alan said, not bothering to hide his smile as Frederick and George separated and righted themselves. "And where will you sleep, then?"

"Here!" he said, running around the tiny apartment, opening the fridge and the stove and the toaster oven, flushing the toilet, turning on the shower faucets.

"Sorry," Alan called as he ran by. "No vacancies at the Hotel Anders!"

"Then I won't sleep!" he cried on his next pass. "I'll play all night and all day in the streets. I'll knock on every door on every street and introduce myself to every person and learn their stories and read their books and meet their kids and pet their dogs!"

"You're bonkers," Alan said, using the word that the lunch lady back at school had used when chastising them for tearing around the cafeteria.

"Easy for you to say," Greg said, skidding to a stop in front of him. "Easy for you -- you're here, you got away, you don't have to deal with Davey --" He closed his mouth and his hand went to his lips.

Alan was still young and had a penchant for the dramatic, so he went around to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of vodka out of the freezer and banged it down on the counter, pouring out four shots. He tossed back his shot and returned the bottle to the freezer.

George followed suit and choked and turned purple, but managed to keep his expression neutral. Fred and Ed each took a sip, then set the drinks down with a sour face.

"How's home?" Alan said quietly, sliding back to sit on the minuscule counter surface in his kitchenette.

"It's okay," Ed mumbled, perching on the arm of the Goodwill sofa that came with the apartment. Without his brothers within him, he moved sprightly and lightly.

"It's fine," Fred said, looking out the window at the street below, craning his neck to see Bloor Street and the kids smoking out front of the Brunswick House.

"It's awful," Greg said, and pulled himself back up on the counter with them. "And I'm not going back."

The two older brothers looked balefully at him, then mutely appealed to Alan. This was new -- since infancy, Earl-Frank-Geoff had acted with complete unity of will. When they were in the first grade, Alan had wondered if they were really just one person in three parts -- that was how close their agreements were.

"Brian left last week," Greg said,