Ivyland by Miles Klee Page A

under the low-hanging pine branches and find Henri a few feet away. He’s sitting between two pricker bushes and pulling up grass by its roots.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œShut up and go. Not the stairs.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œAnd shut up,” I remind him.
    Henri shrugs, gets up and starts threading his way through the overgrown vegetation with the expediency of a dying turtle. I can’t leave him. I kick him hard in the ass instead, and he wheels around with an expression of silent indignation.
    A gunshot punctures the air above us. I shove Henri to the ground next to the shrubbery lining the stairway and topple onto him in the process. We roll apart and tense up. A drop of sweat bleeds into my eye. Henri’s heartbeat mingled with mine. Mine faster. We keep our eyes on the one stair visible through the brush. Two bare feet drop onto it and shift around anxiously.
    â€œStill here, aren’t you,” the guy shouts. “Good. Long as you’re trespassing I can still kill you.” We wait a long minute and hear him spit. “Fuck it,” he says quietly, and the feet withdraw.
    â€œI think that’s old man Clafter,” Henri whispers.
    â€œListen to you with the old man shit.”
    â€œYou know, Leo’s dad.”
    â€œYou didn’t even see him.”
    I raise my head and spot the man up near our pine, parting its branches with his gun to look for a climber. We get to our feet and move as silently as boys could ever hope to, slinking through the last clusters of bushes toward the street.
    â€œYou know why he went crazy, right?”
    â€œHow would I?”
    â€œCause their other son got all messed up from VV when he was little. You know, the gas? He was allergic—stopped his brain from developing.”
    â€œSuch a liar.”
    â€œYeah-huh, Leo never got VV, the gas is too risky if there’s a family history. And his older brother—”
    â€œLeo doesn’t have a brother.”
    â€œThen why’d he beat up Jack for saying it? Anyway they bought him twenty years guaranteed at Harvey House and that’s why Leo’s too poor for school lunch.”
    I glance back up the hill in time to notice that Mr. Clafter or whoever is crouched like a spider on the front stoop and calmly training his gun on us. A shot goes wide, burying itself in the lawn with a queasy thunng . I gasp as though it passed clean through me.
    We drop into a gravity-assisted sprint. Every breath stabs at shredded lungs. Joints are pumped fluid. Another shot. Henri, a few feet in front of me, is running like he’s forgotten his body, running so fast that he can’t compensate for the last bush in our way and catches the side of it with his shoulder, knocking a whitish football-shaped bees’ nest out of its niche within.
    Buzzing dots unfunnel from the papery ball as it tumbles downhill with us. Tearfully I barrel through the swarm, taking dozens of stings in my forearms, the only shields I have. The sound gooey terror, a living chainsaw. Henri tramples the nest as it rolls into his path. Pop and hiss of two more bullets. One for each of us. Bone grinds. Vision is a stain. This is what it’s like to regret something, I have the weird coolness to reflect. We should have played Submarine.
    We make it to the street, but it’s not good enough: I look back to see Clafter struggling to reload atop the stairs. Red welts flame out like mutant chicken pox. Henri’s giving his kickstand a rapid-fire series of kicks to get it to swing upward, too panicked to realize that he’s kicking from the wrong side.
    â€œI knew he was crazy!” he shrieks. “I knew it!” He gives up and starts riding with the kickstand still down. My hands grip rubber, igniting bolts of pain from stung palms. We ride, Henri’s bike limping is how you might describe it, kickstand periodically catching the road and grating along asphalt till he regains