Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow (phonics books TXT) 📕

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"So you have neighbors who visit you?" she asked, a triumphant gleam in
her eye.

*Damn*. "No, we visit them." Lying now. Sweat on the shag of hair over
his ears, which felt like they had coals pressed to them.

"When you were a baby?"

"No, my grandparents took care of me when I was a baby." Deeper. "But
they died." Bottoming out now.

"I don't believe you," she said, and he saw tears glisten in her
eyes. "You're too embarrassed to introduce me to your family."

"That's not it." He thought fast. "My brother. David. He's not well. He
has a brain tumor. We think he'll probably die. That's why he doesn't
come to school. And it makes him act funny. He hits people, says
terrible things." Mixing truth with lies was a *lot* easier. "He shouts
and hurts people and he's the reason I can't ever have friends over. Not
until he dies."

Her eyes narrowed. "If that's a lie," she said, "it's a terrible one. My
Ma died of cancer, and it's not something anyone should make fun of. So,
it better not be a lie."

"It's not a lie," he said, mustering a tear. "My brother David, we don't
know how long he'll live, but it won't be long. He acts like a monster,
so it's hard to love him, but we all try."

She rocked back onto her haunches. "It's true, then?" she asked softly.

He nodded miserably.

"Let's say no more about it, then," she said. She took his hand and
traced hieroglyphs on his palm with the ragged edges of her chewed-up
fingernails.

The recess bell rang and they headed back to school. They were about to
leave the marshland when something hard hit Alan in the back of the
head. He spun around and saw a small, sharp rock skitter into the grass,
saw Davey's face contorted with rage, lips pulled all the way back off
his teeth, half-hidden in the boughs of a tree, winding up to throw
another rock.

He flinched away and the rock hit the paving hard enough to
bounce. Marci whirled around, but David was gone, high up in the leaves,
invisible, malicious, biding.

"What was that?"

"I dunno," Alan lied, and groaned.

#

Kurt and Alan examined every gap between every storefront on Augusta, no
matter how narrow. Kurt kept silent as Alan fished his arm up to the
shoulder along miniature alleys that were just wide enough to
accommodate the rain gutters depending from the roof.

They found the alley that Frederick had been dragged down near the end
of the block, between a mattress store and an egg wholesaler. It was
narrow enough that they had to traverse it sideways, but there, at the
entrance, were two smears of skin and blood, just above the ground,
stretching off into the sulfurous, rotty-egg depths of the alleyway.

They slid along the alley's length, headed for the gloom of the
back. Something skittered away from Alan's shoe and he bent down, but
couldn't see it. He ran his hands along the ground and the walls and
they came back with a rime of dried blood and a single strand of long,
oily hair stuck to them. He wiped his palms off on the bricks.

"I can't see," he said.

"Here," Kurt said, handing him a miniature maglight whose handle was
corrugated by hundreds of toothmarks. Alan saw that he was intense,
watching.

Alan twisted the light on. "Thanks," he said, and Kurt smiled at him,
seemed a little taller. Alan looked again. There, on the ground, was a
sharpened black tooth, pierced by a piece of pipe-cleaner wire.

He pocketed the tooth before Kurt saw it and delved farther, approaching
the alley's end, which was carpeted with a humus of moldering cardboard,
leaves, and road turds blown or washed there. He kicked it aside as best
he could, then crouched down to examine the sewer grating beneath. The
greenish brass screws that anchored it to the ground had sharp cuts in
their old grooves where they had been recently removed. He rattled the
grating, which was about half a meter square, then slipped his multitool
out of his belt holster. He flipped out the Phillips driver and went to
work on the screws, unconsciously putting Kurt's flashlight in his
mouth, his front teeth finding purchase in the dents that Kurt's own had
left there.

He realized with a brief shudder that Kurt probably used this flashlight
while nipple-deep in dumpsters, had an image of Kurt transferring it
from his gloved hands to his mouth and back again as he dug through bags
of kitchen and toilet waste, looking for discarded technology. But the
metal was cool and clean against his teeth and so he bit down and worked
the four screws loose, worked his fingers into the mossy slots in the
grate, lifted it out, and set it to one side.

He shone the light down the hole and found another fingerbone, the tip
of a thumb, desiccated to the size of a large raisin, and he pocketed
that, too. There was a lot of blood here, a little puddle that was still
wet in the crusted middle. Frederick's blood.

He stepped over the grating and shone the light back down the hole,
inviting Kurt to have a look.

"That's where they went," he said as Kurt bent down.

"That hole?"

"That hole," he said.

"Is that blood?"

"That's blood. It's not easy to fit someone my brother's size down a
hole like that." He set the grate back, screwed it into place, and
passed the torch back to Kurt. "Let's get out of here," he said.

On the street, Alan looked at his blood and moss-grimed palms. Kurt
pushed back his floppy, frizzed-out, bleach-white mohawk and scratched
vigorously at the downy brown fuzz growing in on the sides of his skull.

"You think I'm a nut," Alan said. "It's okay, that's natural."

Kurt smiled sheepishly. "If it's any consolation, I think you're a
*harmless* nut, okay? I like you."

"You don't have to believe me, so long as you don't get in my way," Alan
said. "But it's easier if you believe me."

"Easier to do what?"

"Oh, to get along," Alan said.

#

Davey leapt down from a rock outcropping as Alan made his way home that
night, landing on his back. Alan stumbled and dropped his school bag. He
grabbed at the choking arm around his neck, then dropped to his knees as
Davey bounced a fist-sized stone off his head, right over his ear.

He slammed himself back, pinning Davey between himself and the sharp
stones on the walkway up to the cave entrance, then mashed backward with
his elbows, his head ringing like a gong from the stone's blow. His left
elbow connected with Davey's solar plexus and the arm around his throat
went slack.

He climbed to his knees and looked Davey in the face. He was blue and
gasping, but Alan couldn't work up a lot of sympathy for him as he
reached up to the side of his head and felt the goose egg welling
there. His fingertips came back with a few strands of hair blood-glued
to them.

He'd been in a few schoolyard scraps and this was always the moment when
a teacher intervened -- one combatant pinned, the other atop him. What
could you do after this? Was he going to take the rock from Davey's hand
and smash him in the face with it, knocking out his teeth, breaking his
nose, blacking his eyes? Could he get off of Davey without getting back
into the fight?

He pinned Davey's shoulders under his knees and took him by the chin
with one hand. "You can't do this, Danny," he said, looking into his
hazel eyes, which had gone green as they did when he was angry.

"Do *what*?"

"Spy on me. Try to hurt me. Try to hurt my friends. Tease me all the
time. You can't do it, okay?"

"I'll stab you in your sleep, Andy. I'll break your fingers with a
brick. I'll poke your eyes out with a fork." He was fizzling like a
baking-soda volcano, saliva slicking his cheeks and nostrils and chin,
his eyes rolling.

Alan felt helplessness settle on him, weighing down his limbs. How could
he let him go? What else could he do? Was he going to have to sit on
Davey's shoulders until they were both old men?

"Please, Davey. I'm sorry about what I said. I just can't bring her
home, you understand," he said.

"Pervert. She's a slut and you're a pervert. I'll tear her titties off."

"Don't, Danny, please. Stop, okay?"

Darren bared his teeth and growled, jerking his head forward and
snapping at Alan's crotch, heedless of the painful thuds his head made
when it hit the ground after each lunge.

Alan waited to see if he would tire himself out, but when it was clear
that he would not tire, Alan waited for his head to thud to the ground
and then, abruptly, he popped him in the chin, leapt off of him turned
him on his belly, and wrenched him to his knees, twisting one arm behind
his back and pulling his head back by the hair. He brought Davey to his
feet, under his control, before he'd recovered from the punch.

"I'm telling Dad," he said in Davey's ear, and began to frog-march him
through to the cave mouth and down into the lake in the middle of the
mountain. He didn't even slow down when they reached the smooth shore of
the lake, just pushed on, sloshing in up to his chest, Davey's head
barely above the water.

"He won't stop," Alan said, to the winds, to the water, to the vaulted
ceiling, to the scurrying retreat of the goblin. "I think he'll kill me
if he goes on. He's torturing me. You've seen it. Look at him!"

Davey was thrashing in the water, his face swollen and bloody, his eyes
rattling like dried peas in a maraca. Alan's fingers, still buried in
Davey's shiny blond hair, kept brushing up against the swollen bruises
there, getting bigger by the moment. "I'll *fucking* kill you!" Davey
howled, screaming inchoate into the echo that came back from his call.

"Shhh," Alan said into his ear. "Shhh. Listen, Davey, please, shhh."

Davey's roar did not abate. Alan thought he could hear the whispers and
groans of their father in the wind, but he couldn't make it
out. "Please, shhh," he said, gathering Davey in a hug that pinned his
arms to his sides, putting his lips up against Davey's ear, holding him
still.

"Shhh," he said, and Davey stopped twitching against him, stopped his
terrible roar, and they listened.

At first the sound was barely audible, a soughing through the tunnels,
but gradually the echoes chased each other round the great cavern and
across the still, dark surface of the lake, and then a voice, illusive
as a face in the clouds.

"My boys," the voice said, their father said. "My sons. David, Alan. You
must not fight like this."

"He --!" Davey began, the echoes of his outburst scattering their
father's voice.

"Shhh," Alan said again.

"Daniel, you must love your brother. He loves you. I love you. Trust
him. He won't hurt you. I won't let you come to any harm. I love you,
son."

Alan felt Danny tremble in his arms, and he was trembling, too, from the
icy cold of the lake