Where by Kit Reed Page A

inside.
    Once we thought we saw a figure darker than the shadows whip around a corner in front of us. Neddy! I had to swallow my heart. I wanted it to be him, I wanted it not to be him because he’s just a kid, not tough enough to be all by himself out here in the cold. I’ve kept him at arm’s length because I have to keep him safe. He’s big for his age but he’s still my baby brother, and too damn young to be trapped in this awful, preternaturally clean place.
    Ray and I slipped around the corner after who or whatever we thought we saw, thinking to follow without him knowing we were following. We skulked along behind the fast-moving shadow, zigzagging all the way from the plaza to the rim, but when we came out of the shadows at the boundary where pavement gives way to the surrounding dune it was dead empty, same as it ever was.
    Again last night I thought I saw him; maybe it was guilt. I hissed, “Neddy!” and gulped it down so he wouldn’t hear. I can’t have him running around out here in the night; we don’t know what’s out here, or what it will do to us. I miss him. I’d give anything to see that grin, but after everything, he won’t want to see me. Sorry, Ned, I owe you an explanation, but first we have to get you home. Then I’ll sit my brother down and explain a lot of things, starting with why I won’t go back into that bleached cube where he and Father stay.
    I can’t talk to my brother there, it might jump-start Father and bring him back to life. As long as the old man is sedated or whatever it is that’s turned him to stone, Neddy will be safe.
    Tonight Ray and I haunt the shadows on yet another street leading away from the plaza, floating uneducated guesses and coming up empty one more time.
    Then Ray grabs my wrist. He doesn’t have to speak: Listen!
    We stop breathing. Ray cranes, trying to see beyond the next corner. I crack my jaws wide, desperate to hear.
    Nobody says, what was that?
    No one has to. The sound is unmistakable; it’s the plastic clunk of a cell phone, hitting cement and skittering to a stop. Startled, somebody rasps in a voice I almost recognize, “Shit!”

 
    13
    Davy
    Thursday night
    Ray Powell’s house is as fine as any plantation house on St. Helena’s or Pawleys’ Island. From the water, the Azalea Plantation looks so perfect that if you didn’t know, you’d think you’d landed on one of those high-end resort islands where everything runs smoothly and nothing goes wrong.
    It took generations of Powells to create this monument to the way things used to be. Ray’s great-great great-grandfathers built the house in the 1800s and prospered, leaving enough money for Ray to go up north to Charlottesville for college and law school at UVA like his forefathers, mixing with all the other sons of the South’s first families. Like the other great-greats who settled here, the Powells are obligated.
    It’s a matter of noblesse oblige, the idea being that God put the Powells on Kraven island to be leaders— and to keep the main house at Azalea more or less as it was in 1898. That was the year Augustus Powell gave up planting for politics. On his way to the election that put him in the State House, he brought a Charleston tailor to Kraven to build him a handsome three-piece suit, trimmed his beard into a neat goatee and sold off all but the land between the inlet and the gardens around Azalea House.
    By the time Davy skins out of the water and up on Powell’s dock, he regrets leaving everything but his briefs on Earl’s dock. Red welts are rising on his naked flank: cannonball jellyfish, he thinks. It’s not so bad. Without Earl’s waterproof belt Velcroed to his waist, it would have been worse, so he may be wet and near naked, but he’s OK. As for Kraven island, it looks the same. So does Azalea House. Standing here in front of Ray Powell’s house with