A tangerine sun hovered above the hills of Key Corners, finally dipping behind the highest peak. In the town proper, most were trimming trees and indulging sweet tooths, or soon would be; some were pretending to be glad to be home for the holidays, or soon would be. But standing alone in Heritage Park, barely a half mile from the cradling warmth of his bed, Kelan’s stomach began to twist and turn in the deepening twilight. He could feel countless eyes fixed on him, from every monster his imagination could conjure. The dark was their playground.
And so he wished: Demons … be … gone.
They stole away. For now.
Was there something else?
There was.
The big hungry pikes.
He shoved the thought from his mind, cradling his trusty snowboard against his chest as if it was Bear. But unlike his woolly friend, White Lightning’s rugged face of chipped wood and scuffed bindings felt like the cold touch of the dead.
If only the demons would stay away. Already they were back, from whatever black caves they would crawl into when they fled. He could feel them sizing him up.
He saw no one.
Kelan straightened his orange toque and drew a deep breath. Stepping closer to the edge of the hill, he stared down its seductive length. He shuddered at the sharp slant of its icy belly, and wondered, What is that sound?
He had never heard the chilling thrum of his heart.
A snowball stung his right cheek, the cold biting like a hundred tiny fangs. The derisive laughter that swarmed about him made his blood freeze.
Only the Pack laughed like that.
He heard them coming from behind, sleds in tow. The laughter dwindled as they neared, turning to queries of his sexual orientation, and when that grew tedious, the chatter spun around his physical shortcomings. He closed his eyes and prayed for an earthquake. Anything that would suck the Pack into the earth.
The group fell silent, a standard warning of all things bad. Arnie Kovacs shuffled up beside him, driving him crazy with that incessant chewing of a thick wad of gum right next to his ear. It was always this way.
“You’re never gonna do it, Lishk,” Arnie snorted, his freckled cheeks bulging bags of fat. His words usually sounded slippery, mostly because he had half a pack of Hubba Bubba stuffed into his mouth, partly because of his lisp.
“All talk,” he went on. “You never fushing do it. You’re jush a chicken-shit freak.”
Freak. Arnie liked to call people that, among other things, but Freak was a red flag if ever there was one. It almost always preceded a punch in the face or a kick to the balls. A slap if Arnie’s mood was a good one.
The Pack’s leader (size does matter) turned to the others. Tony Armano, a year Arnie’s junior at twelve and a good forty-five pounds lighter, gave him a quick thumbs-up. Randy Pillsworth, older than Tony by a day and slightly smaller, served the same approval.
“What about you?” Arnie barked, glaring at the smallest of the group.
Simon Kovacs looked up at his brother with frightened eyes. The seven-year-old, barely three months younger than Kelan, nodded quickly and offered two thumbs.
“Thash better,” Arnie told him. “You’re learning.”
“Hi, Kelan,” Simon said. He chewed a single stick of gum his mentor had allowed him, and blew a big bubble that hid most of his tiny face. He managed a garbled, Hey, guys, look!, but no one seemed to care.
Arnie whipped around. He stabbed a finger into the bubble, bursting it over his brother’s face. His dark eyes swelled. His flaming red hair drooped over his forehead, spikes of it jutting out like bloodied knives. His left brow, orange and lumpy and twitched only when he got what Kelan called the Itch, twitched. “Who the fush you talking to? The freak?”
Simon gulped down his gum. His lips began to quiver. He blinked.
Swallowing. Shaking. Blinking. A triple-play from Arnie’s unwritten masterpiece, Seven Signs Of Weakness. To surrender so much as one of the Signs, well, at that point it was over. Arnie could smell fear as if it were stewing in his victim’s underpants.
No one really saw what happened next—Arnie slapped Simon in a breath—but that was the thing about Arnie, he was as big as a tank but could move like the wind. Like the time he kicked Principal Nolan in the jewels not a Fush you after the man had suspended him for smoking. The man had keeled over like a sack of dirt right there in the school parking lot, and wouldn’t you know it, it wasn’t three days later that he had to replace the windshield in his rusting, wood-grained, Olds Custom Cruiser. Apparently, someone had gone to town on it with a baseball bat.
Simon whimpered. Whimpering was another Sign, unlike outright crying, which was an unfortunate side effect of exploited weakness.
Arnie smacked Simon again. He struck him a third time, and Simon cried a river of tears.
“Want more?” Arnie snapped. Spittle slipped from his lips, and he sucked it up. His raven-black eyes narrowed.
Simon shook his head sharply.
“Maybe you like it,” Arnie said. “Maybe you’re like Lishk … a faggot.”
Faggot. Another Arnie favorite. Freak was one thing, but if Arnie used the F-word (besides his other F-words), that meant one thing: the dreaded Really Good Beating. Arnie called it that, a Really Good Beating. And Arnie always said what he meant.
“Am not,” Simon sniffled, wiping his tears on his mitt. “I won’t do it again.”
“Fushin’ better not.”
A hush befell the group. Arnie was good—the best—at intimidation, and one of his favorite ways to drive his prey was to stalk it with nary a word. As it was, no one spoke. No one dared. Arnie was working himself into an Itch.
Kelan barely stirred, but oh how he wanted to scream. When the snowball had struck, he froze, and when he froze in front of Arnie, it was nearly impossible to thaw. And of course, Freezing Up was yet another Sign along that walkway of weakness.
He had dreaded their arrival. The odds had been in his favor that the Pack (officially known as the Four-Pack in school) wouldn’t show up, but he wasn’t what Eric called Really Lucky, he wasn’t even Regular Lucky, he was what his brother called Not So Lucky, and that these turds had shown up now was the proof. They had reared their ugly heads last year at this time, and had beat the crap out of him after he had Chickened Out—Sign number six if he remembered right.
“Faggot needs a lesshun,” Arnie said, snapping the silence. The others nodded. Simon kept on nodding long after Tony and Randy had stopped, raising two thumbs again, just to be safe.
Kelan waited for it—for Arnie to give the order—and there it was, falling from the sky like an anvil in the Road Runner cartoons. It came sharply, the way it always did, the way Arnie loved to say it, the General leading his men to battle, the word exploding in Kelan’s brain like a cannon.
“Formation.”