The Dead Boys (2 page)

Teddy shuddered. “You know, Mom, most people stay far away from creepy, poisonous things. They don't move to the desert to live among them.”

“C'mon,” his mother prodded playfully. “Once we get there, you just need to find your place. Don't worry. I'm sure there will be lots of kids for you to meet.”

Teddy sighed—he couldn't help but worry. He was about to become the new kid in a strange town for the first time in his life.

They turned onto the Vernita Bridge, which crossed over the Columbia River. It was strange to see a river in the middle of the desert, especially the biggest river in the Pacific Northwest. It bullied its way through the dry landscape like a giant serpent swallowing up the sand and everything else in its path.

Fifty miles down the river, they came to Richland.

The highway into town took them past a dump where the heat was busily decomposing the stinky garbage, then a gated cemetery, which didn't look very restful sitting beside the noisy road, and finally a run-down trailer park with a wooden sign the relentless sun had bleached almost white. The faded letters read DESERT OASIS! But nothing about the trailer park, or the town for that matter, looked like an oasis to Teddy.

Richland wasn't large. Five more minutes, and they were at their new house.

“So this is the place the government is renting for us,” his mom declared as they stepped out of the car. “Two thousand square feet and new brown carpet. Great, huh?”

Teddy surveyed the block. His new home was a two-story split-level with an attached garage and a huge picture window in front. It was nearly identical to the other houses up and down the street. They were all beige with two stories, and each had the same big window beside the front door. The only difference seemed to be the shade of beige and which side of the house the garage was on.

The street was empty in the midday heat, which the radio had said was over one hundred degrees. Teddy supposed there might be other kids in the neighborhood, but there would be no school to help him meet them for another month. Until then, he was on his own.

To the left of his house, a slightly lighter beige house boasted a bright green lawn, and, just as Teddy began to wonder how it stayed so healthy, an automatic sprinkler popped up and sprayed water across his shoes.

“Nice,” he mumbled, scrambling backward.

On the other side of his yard stood the only unique house on the street. The place was big, square, and looked much older. Its chimney was missing bricks, and its small windows were so dirty they'd turned brown. Rotten wood awnings hung out over them like droopy eyelids. Desert sand was piled up against the front door, making the place look neglected and lonely.

As Teddy stared at the decrepit house, a huge shadow fell across his face. He looked up. A massive, twisted sycamore tree stood in the old house's yard, and its leafy branches blocked out the sun, darkening both the dingy house next door and Teddy's new home. Despite the heat of the day, Teddy felt a shiver run down his spine.

While his mother searched for the key to their own house, Teddy snuck around the fence for a closer look at the abandoned place. Dead grass and dry weeds crinkled beneath his feet, while the tree hovering over the yard seemed in perfect health. It was as though the giant thing was sucking the life from all the plants below, and the lawn was a graveyard of the dried yellow husks of its victims.

He crossed the yard to the porch, where the floorboards were cracked and split. The paint had almost completely peeled off the walls of the home, but it looked as though, in a happier time, it too might have been painted beige. One of the dirty windows was ajar. It would be easy to sneak inside, and Teddy had a sudden, creeping feeling that the old place
wanted
someone to visit.

The porch creaked, making Teddy jump. To his surprise, he found himself standing smack in the center of the splintered old thing. He hadn't realized he'd even mounted the steps. Now he was within arm's reach of the doorknob.

Teddy backed away from the old house, a little spooked that he'd been so drawn to its rickety porch. He felt for the steps behind him with his foot, but when he eased down off the porch, his shoe caught on something. As he fell, he made a grab for the rail, but his hand glanced off and dragged across a loose nail instead. In the hot sun, the rusty metal felt strangely cold slicing into his wrist.

Teddy landed flat on his back in the tall, dead weeds beneath the sycamore. The tree's green leaves seemed to turn away from the sun and look down at him. A large root had caught his shoe, and a few drops of blood from his arm dribbled onto the twisted wood, where they quickly soaked in.

Teddy's head swam—it was hot, and the sight of even a little blood had always made him woozy.

A car horn sounded nearby, and the sudden noise brought him back to his senses. Teddy shook his head clear, jumped up, and hustled back to his own porch as a mail carrier stomped up his walk.

“You live here?” she asked.

Teddy nodded, and she thrust a pile of mail wrapped with a rubber band at him.

“Here's a week's worth,” she said. “Been waiting for you to move in.” She nodded at the old house. “Whatcha doing hanging around that nasty place?”

“Nothing?” Teddy replied.

“A kid disappeared there, you know.” Without any further explanation, she marched back down the walkway and drove off.

Nope
, he thought.
I did not know that
.

Teddy stuffed his hand in his pocket. It wasn't a big cut, and he didn't want to explain what happened to his mom. He slunk around the house to the back door to avoid her, but there she stood in the kitchen, stuffing Tupperware into cupboards.

“Soooo? How do you like it?” she asked.

“It's, uhh . . . great,” Teddy lied. “Almost like a normal town.”

“Good!” She nodded, pushing a mixing bowl into a full cabinet and slamming the door closed before it could fall back out. “I got you a Hide-a-Key to stick out in the yard so you don't have to carry a key with you when you leave.”

“Leave?”

“You know, to explore the neighborhood and make some friends. I'm hoping with a new start you might come out of your shell a little.”

“I dunno, Mom,” Teddy said. “I kinda like my shell. It's safe in here.”

“Out,” she said, friendly but firm. “And don't come back until you've met some other kids.”

Teddy pedaled his bike down the street with a bandage on his wrist and his face greased with sunscreen to ward off the desert sun's radiation. He rode past a few cul-de-sacs lined with more houses that looked just like his, each with a pop-up sprinkler system and a green lawn. None were like the old house with the dead yard next door.

Less than a mile from his home, he saw a sign for Leslie Groves Park. A park seemed like a nice place to explore, but when he crested a small hill he saw that the “park” was little more than a strip of ragged yellow scrub brush that began where the tidy green lawns ended.

Beyond the scrub brush, the Columbia River cut a vast swath through the sand-and-tumbleweed terrain. It split into two huge channels around a small gravel island. Each channel was more than a football field wide, and the island itself was bare and only about three feet high. It was covered with squawking white seagulls, even though Richland was hundreds of miles from the ocean, in the middle of the desert.

Teddy almost rode away, but then he noticed a boy standing on the near shore flinging rocks toward the gulls. The kid was chubby, about his own age, and wearing very odd bell-bottom pants.

For a few minutes, Teddy just stood straddling his bike and watched the kid, waiting for a good opportunity to say something. Then, without thinking, he rolled forward, and his bike thumped off the end of the sidewalk into the dirt. The boy heard the noise and whirled around, startled. Teddy was now too close
not
to say something.

“Hey bro.” Teddy offered.

The boy glared at Teddy. “What do you mean, ‘bro'?”

“Uh, I mean, hi,” Teddy clarified.

“Oh. Hi.” The boy seemed to relax. “What's wrong with your face?”

“Nothing,” Teddy replied, then he remembered the shiny layer of sunscreen. “Oh, this? It's Suntastic eighty. It protects against the sun.”

“You need protection to go out?”

“Sort of,” Teddy said. He pointed across the water, hoping to change the subject. “So, uh, are you trying to hit those birds?”

“Naw. They're too far away, and I don't have an arm that good,” the boy explained. “Besides, that would be mean. But I heard that if you can splash one close to the flock, they'll all fly off at once like a big white blanket, and that would be cool to see.”

Another awkward moment of silence made Teddy wonder if he should make up an excuse to leave. But his mom had been very clear about trying to meet some kids, so Teddy dismounted and found a large stick. He chucked it into the water.

“That current looks strong,” he said.

“Yup.”

Submerged snags just below the surface held the stick up for a moment, then the current shook it loose and swept it downstream. Teddy picked up a rock and nailed the stick with a giant splash before it could get away.

The boy gave him two thumbs up. “Ayyy! Nice one. You got an arm like Pete Rose.” He stepped forward and held out a pudgy hand, palm up. “Give me some skin.”

“Thanks,” Teddy said, slapping his hand. “I'm Teddy.”

“Teddy Bear!”

“No, just Teddy,” Teddy said, not sure if the boy was somehow making fun of him. “What's your name?”

“Albert.” The boy smiled a big, open grin that made his eyes squinch up. “I know. It's not a cool name either, but it'll be Big Al as soon as I'm old enough to drive a forklift and get a union job out in the area, eh, Ted?”

“The area?”

“You know, the site.” Teddy still wasn't sure what he was talking about. “The Hanford nuclear plant? Ring a bell?”

“Oh, right,” Teddy said quickly.

“You're not from here, huh?”

“Nope,” Teddy confirmed. “Just biked in from out of town.”

“Funny. You should be a comedian.”

“Naw, I'm studying to be a video game tester.”

Albert gasped. “They have that now? Oh, man, that would be the best job in the world! I love Space Invaders.” He held his thick arms to his sides and rotated them up and down at the elbows while making electronic game noises. “Boomp-boomp-boomp-boomp-wee-wee-wee-wee-woop!”

Teddy laughed. “Yeah. I guess that's sorta retro cool.”

Albert picked up another stick and a handful of rocks. “Prepare to fire!” he barked. Then he tossed the stick in the water and began hurling the rocks.

Teddy filled his pocket with round stones, and together they peppered the floating wood, challenging each other to see who could hit it the most times before the river spirited it away.

They repeated the routine twice more while Albert quoted lines from the original
Star Wars
movie and celebrated each of Teddy's hits with an enthusiastic whoop. He added a brief victory dance whenever he nailed a stick himself, which was less often.

It was fun, and Teddy was just beginning to think he might have met a friend on his first try, when Albert suddenly fell silent and straightened up, alert, his head rotating back and forth as he scanned the shore. He looked, Teddy thought, like a gopher sensing trouble.

“Uh-oh!” Albert said. “It's Henry Mulligan.” He threw himself flat behind a tumbleweed next to the riverbank. “Stay calm. Don't freak out,” he said, waving for Teddy to join him on the ground.

“Who?” Teddy looked around, wondering why Albert was freaking out. He didn't see anybody, but Albert was waving so frantically that he crouched low just in case.

“You really aren't from here,” Albert said. “Henry Mulligan! He's fourteen and carries a knife this big.” Albert held his hands six inches apart to demonstrate its size.

Teddy cringed—he didn't like knives, or the blood they could produce.

“He was hanging out behind the Uptown Theater today with his smoking buddies,” Albert blustered. “They must have seen me!”

“Maybe they just
act
tough.”

“No way. Henry's like the Darth Vader of junior high. He once made a kid eat boogers.”

“Uh . . . some kids do that anyway.”

“
Henry's
boogers—at knifepoint. C'mon, man, we gotta get out of here!”

Teddy looked around again. “I don't see anyone. How do you know he's coming?”