B004XTKFZ4 EBOK by Christopher Conlon Page B

from her hometown of Quiet, had been found in the riverbed north of the town. There was a report from the scene: a man with a microphone asking the local sheriff for details about the case. I recognized the sheriff, Jim Langston—Lucy and I often saw him in his uniform on the streets of Quiet; sometimes he lifted his hat to us and smiled as we rode by—and I recognized the riverbed, too. Lucy and I had wandered around in it. Maybe not in that exact spot, which was quite a distance north, but the topography all seemed familiar.
    “There, you see?” Louise said triumphantly. “You see how dangerous it is to be out in the middle of the night?”
    “Shh! I’m trying to listen!”
    The sheriff was saying that nothing like this had ever happened in Quiet and that state authorities were coming in to help with the case. The reporter asked him if he suspected foul play and the Mr. Langston’s face grew pensive, even, I thought, frightened. “Yes,” he said. “From the condition of the body…Yes. Foul play. Definitely.” The picture cut back to Bill Bollin, and the story was over.
    “All right, then,” Louise said. “No more nighttime visits with your friend. I want you in before dark.”
    “That’s not fair.”
    She gestured toward the television with her cigarette. “Frances, for God’s sake, you saw that story! It’s a dangerous world out there. You don’t understand.”
    I thought of the crashes and cries in my own home, pictured my mother with a syringe in her arm, glassy-eyed, saw my father moving toward the door, shouting Get out of here! as he slammed it in my face.
    “I know it’s a dangerous world, Aunt Louise. But Ms. Sparrow is usually there—” a bald-faced lie—“and Lucy just lives across the street .”
    “Frances, I want you to be safe.”
    “No you don’t!” I exploded. “You don’t! You don’t care one bit!”
    “Stop that. Don’t talk to me like that.”
    “I’ll talk to you any way I want to! You’re not my mother!”
    “Frances…”
    “ You’re not my mother !” With that I ran to my room, slammed the door shut, threw myself onto the bed, and gave myself over to tears.
     
    Thus it was that I became a rebel.
    A very timid rebel, to be sure; but a rebel nonetheless. I started to leave my dirty clothes on the floor of my room instead of picking them up, knowing it would mean that Louise would have to come get them. I left dishes and glasses around the house. I stopped organizing my closet and bureau with such obsessive focus—they were still quite tidy, in truth, and I knew Lucy would have laughed if I’d called my room sloppy; still, they weren’t as they had been. More importantly, I began to let my schoolwork slide a bit. Again, the slide was very slight, but I found a grim, dirty-feeling satisfaction to see the occasional B on a quiz sheet. Even Lucy was surprised at me.
    In truth, the moratorium on after-dark visits didn’t have much practical effect on our relationship. I just left a little earlier each night, that’s all. We still played, and danced, and horsed around; I still ate bologna-covered pizza with them when Ms. Sparrow was at home. But I had to leave before the Mystery Theater came on, so I got Uncle Frank to loan me an old radio of his that was sitting in the garage and I listened to it myself, in my room. It wasn’t the same, of course. But at least Lucy and I could talk about the stories on the bus the next morning.
    The weekends were unchanged, too. We rode everywhere, discovered strange things. One afternoon we wandered into the market down the street and found to our astonishment Mr. Cox, the bus driver, standing behind the meat counter. Lucy and I stared at each other wide-eyed, ran back out of the store before he saw us. By the time we reached the curb we were doubled over in laughter.
    “Mr. Cox has another job!” I shrieked. It seemed scandalous, somehow.
    “Yeah, Dick Cox and his meat !”
    I don’t think even we could have explained