The Dark Side of Nowhere (10 page)

The door creaked open behind me, and Grant stepped out.

“So you're the scoutmaster?” Paula said, turning to him.

“Scoutmaster and den mother all rolled into one,” he responded.

“We're all just a bunch of happy campers,” I said with a forced smile.

“If you're scouts,” asked Paula, “where are the uniforms?”

“It's a camp run by our church,” Grant said calmly. “Jason was probably too embarrassed to tell you that he came.”

“My parents made me,” I offered.

“Were you here twenty years ago, Mr. Grant?” asked Paula. I began to get the test sweats, which usually only accompanied midterms and finals.

“Here in Old Town?” Grant asked. “Sure, I lived right up the street.”

“Good, because I have a few questions I'd like to ask you.”

I leaned over and whispered in Paula's ear, “C'mon, Paula, don't embarrass him.”

But Grant, who overheard me, said, “No, I'd be happy to answer your questions. I'm kind of an expert on Old Town.”

“Okay . . . ,” said Paula. I could see her heading straight for the jugular—it was a trait I was fond of,
but damn it, why did she have to express it now? “Who owned that house over there?” she asked, pointing to the peeling green house we had explored a few weeks ago, in another lifetime.

“The Chambers lived there,” he told her, point blank. “Years ago, of course. As I recall, Billy had a brother who died before he was born.”

“Flu?” asked Paula.

“No, car accident,” answered Grant. “His folks say that Bill is the spitting image of him.”

“Too bad,” I shoved in, with a stupid, nervous chuckle.

“Okay . . . ,” said Paula, letting loose her second offensive, “what about the message on the pantry door?”

Grant had obviously never seen it.

“It says
GOD HELP US
,” I prompted. “It's carved into the wood.”

“Hmm, that's certainly odd,” he said. “Well, Mr. Chambers was known to drink too much around the time their first son died—maybe that has something to do with it. Or else it might have been the infestation. People went a little nuts over that.”

“Infestation?” I said—now I was becoming interested in Grant's little fiction.

“Spiders,” said Grant. “Brown recluse spiders. Thousands of them. They were everywhere. Their bite could
swell you up like a balloon—they're more poisonous than black widows, you know.”

Paula squirmed just a bit.

“Exterminators came and dusted the place with so much pesticide,” said Grant, “that the ground became toxic. It took years until the rains washed it out.”

I watched Paula. What had begun as distrust and doubt was inching toward belief and acceptance. “And that was the epidemic?”

“If you could call it that.”

“People died?”

“Not many,” said Grant. “The elderly mostly. Some from the spider bites, and others may have gotten too much pesticide—although it was never proven. In any case, the pesticide company paid a whole lot of money to keep us quiet about what happened.”

“You got paid, too?” asked Paula.

Grant smiled. “Bought a brand-new house and a satellite dish,” he said.

I laughed at that. Paula had no idea why I would find that funny, and she looked at me like I was from Mars. Close, but no cigar.

“You know,” she said to Grant, “that really stinks, taking money like that.”

Grant looked a bit embarrassed about it. “Well, I guess even in a town like this, money talks. It's not
something we're proud of. People don't like to talk about it.”

“So I've noticed.” Paula eyed him a moment more, and I could see the exact instant when she decided he was telling the truth. I was impressed that Grant could do such a thing, yet furious at him for duping Paula so completely. I couldn't stand to see her fooled, and I hated the fact that I couldn't contradict the story.

Paula folded her arms and tried one last attempt. How about the BB glove?” she asked.

Grant blinked uncomprehendingly. “Sorry,” he said. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Can I take some time to walk her back?” I asked, changing the subject real fast.

He gripped me firmly on my itching shoulder, in that warm way he had, and said, “As long as you're back in time for dinner.”

“Dinner?” said Paula incredulously. “He gives you dinner?”

I shrugged. “It's kind of a three-meal plan.”

W
e walked back, taking the road that led to the washed-out bridge.

Paula laughed out loud. “Pesticides!” she said. “Spiders and pesticides! What a way to screw up a small town.” She turned to me. “He's telling the truth, isn't he?”

I couldn't look at her. “Don't ask me,” I said.

Soon the dead trees around us gave way to huge oaks outside the irradiated perimeter. “so this is what you're doing all summer?”

“It's not so bad,” I told her. “It keeps me out of trouble.”

“Looks like it keeps you in shape, too,” she said, poking my pectorals, which felt tight, and a bit sore. I assumed it was from all the exercise Grant had us do. I was kind of pleased that Paula noticed.

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe next year I'll go out for baseball again.”

She smiled at that.

We reached the broken bridge, then climbed down the slope to the dry creek bed and up the other side. “Do you think you can skip out on Camp Grant every once in a while?” she asked. “Because my parents want to have you over for dinner. They want to see with their own eyes what a menace to society you really are.”

“Oh, boy,” I said. “Maybe I should go out and get an earring just for the occasion.”

She laughed. Then I got a bit serious.

“Maybe,” I said, “you could really shock them, and tell them that . . . I wasn't actually human.”

She laughed even louder. “Oh, they'll love that. Dating outside of my species!”

We grinned dumbly at each other for a few seconds, I kissed her, and then she turned to go. She never knew how close I came to telling her the truth.

W
hen I got back to the diner, the scratching session was over and Grant was out back, tending to the generator. I thought I was lucky that I didn't have to face him right away. I was wrong. As I entered, that pall fell again, as if everyone had been talking about me while I was gone. Not even Wesley would look me in the face.

Billy Chambers was the first to say something.

“Lucky for you,” he said, “Grant knows how to unscrew a situation.” Clearly they had eavesdropped into everything that had gone on outside.

“She won't come by here again,” I told him. “You don't have to worry.”

Billy just shrugged as he sketched more of his graphite demons on a scrap of paper. “I didn't know you were still going out with her.”

“Why, are you jealous?” I asked snidely. “You were the one who broke up with her, remember?”

Then it started coming at me in stereo. Roxanne spoke up.

“Y'know,” she said, “I see them together all the time. I saw them at the movies just the other day.”

Wesley leaped to my defense. “What's wrong with
going to the movies? Everyone goes to the movies.”

“It's okay,” I told him. “I can take care of this myself.”

I looked around the room. There was uncertainty on everyone's faces. They could tell a line was being drawn in the sand, and they didn't know which side to stand on.

“If you've got a problem with me going out with Paula,” I told Billy and Roxanne, “then it's
your
problem, not mine.”

Billy stood up. “It's everyone's problem,” he announced. “If she figures things out, she could blab it to the whole town.”

“She's smart, but she's not a mind reader. She won't figure it out.” But even as I said it, I knew that this wasn't what they were really getting at—and I got mad, because I realized what was coming next.

“We're not supposed to be around them,” growled Billy. “And we're definitely not supposed to be dating them.”

I gritted my teeth and spat my words at him: “Paula is not a
them
.”

“Whatever,” he said, glaring at me through his mottled gray eyes.

A sensible person would have backed off at that point, but I guess I wasn't the sensible type. I wanted to make him as angry as he made me.

“You know, Billy,” I said. “There's a picture that looks just like you hanging on a wall down the street.”

Billy snapped up his eyes to me. “Yeah, so?”

“So I guess you were last in line when they were handing out faces, huh, Billy-boy?”

A bunch of the others kids laughed. Billy's under-average features got all sharp, and his lips stuck out in anger. “Are you calling me ugly, Miller?” he snarled.

I shrugged and grinned. “Face it, Billy, your parents didn't exactly pick you out a set of designer genes, now, did they?”

More snickers. Billy's pale, freckled face turned a deep crimson. “Well,” he said, “at least I don't go dating something like Paula Quinn. But I guess you have a thing for inferiority.”

I lost it. I knew I would. He could say what he liked about me, but saying things about Paula—that was walking into a minefield. I dove on Billy, swinging with no mercy, and he fought just as furiously. Around us the kids all stood up and spread back, forming a little arena that always surrounds a good fight.

I hurled him back against the wall, then threw a jab at his nose, but he ducked at the last second. My fist hit the wall . . .

. . . and went through it.

I pulled my hand out with a cloud of sawdust. It
wasn't a plasterboard wall—it was wood. Seeing the hole in the wall sort of gave us both pause. My hand didn't hurt, although I knew that it should have.

“That'll be enough!” It was Grant. I turned to see him storming toward me across the floor.

Billy and I stared at each other with those don't-turn-your-back sort of eyes.

“That could have been your head,” I told him.

The other kids looked at the hole and were impressed. I really didn't want them to be impressed—my little antisocial fighting streak was more of an embarrassment to me than anything else.

Grant grabbed me solidly by the arm. “A word outside, Jason.” He pulled me out to the front porch, while behind me, I heard Wesley say, “Y'know, Billy, you gotta admit he's right—you're kind of like the dog-faced boy of Billington.”

“Aw, shut up.”

G
rant was stern with me, but he held his temper on a tight leash. More than I could say for myself. “As your father's son, I expect you to set an example,” he said.

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“It means fighting with Billy Chambers is counterproductive.”

“But he said—”

“What he said was probably right,” concluded Grant.

I could feel my hands balling into fists at my side again. “Now
you're
gonna tell me I can't see Paula Quinn?”

Grant chose his words carefully. “It would be wise . . . ,” he said, “if you just let it go. In case you haven't noticed, there are plenty of girls right here who like you.”

This was news to me, although I had to admit I wasn't looking very hard. “Not interested,” I told him, “and besides, there's nothing to worry about with Paula.”

“No? She found out about the glove, didn't she?”

I looked down and kicked up some dust. “I showed it to her before I knew anything—and if
you
hadn't been so secretive about the whole thing, I might have kept it to myself.”

“The kids here follow your lead, Jason,” added Grant—which was also news to me. “What do you think is going to happen if you continue going out with her?”

“I think they'll realize that while we're waiting for this phantom invasion, we still have to live.”

Grant took a deep breath—I could feel his temper tugging at that leash. “You're going to have to break away from her in a couple of weeks anyway,” he said. “No matter what.”

“Why?” I demanded, wondering what other news he was about to blindside us with.

He took a moment to think about his response and finally said, “You'll have to find that out for yourself.” And so ended today's ration of information.

Grant might have been put in charge of us, but he didn't own me.

“No,” I said, and repeated it, just in case there was a part of the word he didn't understand. “No, I won't stop seeing Paula.” Then I turned my back on him and stormed off.

“Where are you going?” he yelled after me.

“Anywhere but here!” I shouted. “And if you have a problem with it, go tell my parents. Then maybe at least they'll visit.”

W
hat happened next had to come eventually—we just pushed it a little, that's all. The fact was, that no matter how high Grant chose to build his dam, the things he was keeping from us had to burst through.

After my fight with Billy Chambers and then with Grant, I refused to sit alone to stew about it. So I invited Paula over for dinner. She arrived at dusk.

“I guess Grant wasn't cooking anything good tonight,” she said as she stepped in.

I shrugged. “Nothing like a home-cooked meal.”

She looked around at the house, which I had struggled hard to clean before her arrival. “Where are your parents?”

“Well, that's the thing,” I told her. “It's kind of just you and me.”

“But I thought you were inviting me over for dinner with them.”

“Don't you think I can cook?”

She looked at me doubtfully and a bit apprehensively.