The Third Hill North of Town by Noah Bly Page B

at last. “Your mother would blister your little bottom for speaking like that.”
    Elijah put his face in his hands and screamed wordlessly through his fingers before at last falling silent.
    Jon looked through the rear window and cleared his throat. “What happened to the trooper?” he asked Julianna. “Is he . . . is he still alive?”
    Julianna frowned. “What trooper, Steve?”
    Jon made a face, realizing he had to step into Julianna’s fantasy world for her to understand what he was talking about. “Sheriff whatever-you-called-him. Burns, I guess. Sheriff Burns.”
    Julianna’s eyes met his in the mirror as he faced front again; she seemed perplexed by his question. “Sheriff Burns lives in Hatfield, so he doesn’t get over our way very often. I really haven’t seen him in ages. ”
    Jon opened his mouth, then promptly shut it again, giving up.
    Elijah dropped his head in despair, but as he did so he noticed that the cut on Jon’s leg was now dripping blood onto a crushed grocery bag on the floor. All of a sudden it occurred to Elijah he’d be dead if it weren’t for the older boy, and he began to feel ashamed for not doing anything to try to help him with his injury. He shrugged out of the remains of his shirt and ripped another long piece from the back to use as a tourniquet. When he had it ready to tie around Jon’s thigh, he looked up at the other boy for guidance.
    Jon grimaced. “Sorry. I don’t know how to do it, either.”
    “How heavy is the bleeding, son?” Julianna asked.
    Until that moment, her speaking voice had been high and breathy, like a schoolgirl’s. But as she asked this question her voice deepened perceptibly, becoming lucid and more adult in an instant. Both boys heard the change and gaped at the back of her head.
    “Steve?” she prodded. She was unaware of their scrutiny. “Is it slowing down at all?”
    Jon tore his gaze away from her and lifted his hands to inspect the cut again. “Yeah. I think so.”
    “You might not need a tourniquet, then. Just keep pressure on it for a little while.” There was a brief pause, and when she resumed speaking her voice had reverted to its girlish timbre. “You can use the rest of Ben’s cape as a bandage.”
    The boys looked at each other again.
    “Jesus,” Jon whispered. “We are so screwed.”
    Elijah nodded but said nothing. He tried to cover himself again with the pathetic remnants of his shirt, but so little was left of it that he soon gave up. Fresh tears welled in his eyes as he let the soft white cloth fall from his fingers to the floor, and he turned his head so Jon wouldn’t see him cry.
    “It’s not a cape,” he grated at Julianna, fighting to keep from having another panic attack. “It’s my shirt. ”
    Jon had been watching him. He was almost as upset as Elijah, but at the moment he was less worried for himself than he was for the younger boy. For whatever reason, Elijah was the one being hunted by the police, and he looked so sad and vulnerable sitting there in his bare skin that Jon’s heart ached for him.
    “You want my shirt, man?” he asked. “It’s wet, but you can have it if you want it.”
    Elijah stared at him. The kindness behind Jon’s offer astonished and moved him, and he eyed the other boy’s blue T-shirt for a moment before shaking his head.
    “Nah. That’s okay.” He hesitated. “Thanks, though.”
    As much as he hated being unclothed, he hated the idea of wearing somebody else’s dirty shirt even more.
    Jon shrugged. “Sure.”
    There was a long, shy silence as they searched for more to say to each other. Julianna was humming what sounded like a hymn, and the trees on both sides of the road were blurs of green and brown through the windows.
    Jon finally cleared his throat and leaned closer to Elijah so Julianna wouldn’t hear him. The corners of his mouth turned up as he spoke in Elijah’s ear. “Just be glad she didn’t think your underwear was some kind of surgical gauze,” he