His jaw throbbed where Wesley Mores had struck it last night. His head ached in the heat. And, worst of all, the skin of his ankle burned where the knife had been strapped all day. He wondered if it was some kind of allergic reaction, something his sweat had drawn out of the Velcro. Maybe a response to adhesive, just like Jason Ovelle had suffered.
By the time he reached Lott’s Hardware he was still clawing at the skin through his sock. He tugged loose the strap of the knife, just for a moment.
The store, Joel saw, was already closed. Of course. The president of the booster club would leave for the field hours before the start of the game. GO BISON GOOD LUCK EVERS read a handwritten sign in the window. Joel climbed from the car, pressed his hands to the door’s glass, saw a little strip of light way in the back of the store.
South Street was silent. No cars, no music leaking through cracked windows. From the ruined bank came the steady drip of a busted pipe. Joel’s feet made the old wooden boards of the storefront’s porch pop.
He saw light spilling through an open door in the alley. A man emerged from the back of the hardware store, a man whom Joel had no reason to suspect of anything.
The man looked panicked. He shouted, “The girl! She’s bleeding bad.”
“What? Who?”
“Kimbra! Hurry, please, she’s—”
But Joel was already running, fueled by a sudden swell of guilt and shame. He’d put her in danger, just as he’d feared.
Out on the quiet street, there was only a soft thump when Joel was struck on the back of the head. Another thump when he hit the ground. The boards of the storefronts rattled and squeaked when the ground shifted, when something beneath them rose a little closer to the surface, let out a rumble of what just might have been satisfaction at these fresh drops of blood, at this sudden splash of fear.
And then silence again.