Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Cory Doctorow [big ebook reader .txt] 📗

back," Natalie said. "Nice to meet you, Kurt. I hope you
find your brother, Andy."

"Brothers," Alan said.

"Brothers," Natalie said, and walked away briskly.

#

Alan was the oldest of the brothers, and that meant that he was the one
who blazed all the new trails in the family.

He met a girl in the seventh grade. Her name was Marci, and she had just
transferred in from Scotland. Her father was a mining engineer, and
she'd led a gypsy life that put her in stark contrast to the
third-generation homebodies that made up most of the rest of their
class.

She had red hair and blue eyes and a way of holding her face in repose
that made her look cunning at all times. No one understood her accent,
but there was a wiry ferocity in her movement that warned off any kid
who thought about teasing her about it.

Alan liked to play in a marshy corner of the woods that bordered the
playground after school, crawling around in the weeds, catching toads
and letting them go again, spying on the crickets and the secret lives
of the larvae that grubbed in the milkweed. He was hunkered down on his
haunches one afternoon when Marci came crunching through the tall
grass. He ducked down lower, then peered out from his hiding spot as she
crouched down and he heard the unmistakable patter of urine as she peed
in the rushes.

His jaw dropped. He'd never seen a girl pee before, had no idea what the
squatting business was all about. The wet ground sucked at his sneaker
and he tipped back on his ass with a yelp. Marci straightened abruptly
and crashed over to him, kicking him hard in the ribs when she reached
him, leaving a muddy toeprint on his fall windbreaker.

She wound up for another kick and he hollered something wordless and
scurried back, smearing marsh mud across his jeans and jacket.

"You pervert!" she said, pronouncing it Yuh peervurrt!

"I am not!" he said, still scooting back.

"Watching from the bushes!" she said.

"I wasn't -- I was already here, and you -- I mean, what were *you*
doing? I was just minding my own business and you came by, I just didn't
want to be bothered, this is *my* place!"

"You don't own it," she said, but she sounded slightly chastened. "Don't
tell anyone I had a piss here, all right?"

"I won't," he said.

She sat down beside him, unmindful of the mud on her denim
skirt. "Promise," she said. "It's so embarrassing."

"I promise," he said.

"Swear," she said, and poked him in the ribs with a bony finger.

He clutched his hands to his ribs. "Look," he said, "I swear. I'm good
at secrets."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Oh, aye? And I suppose you've lots of
secrets, then?"

He said nothing, and worked at keeping the smile off the corners of his
mouth.

She poked him in the ribs, then got him in the stomach as he moved to
protect his chest. "Secrets, huh?"

He shook his head and clamped his lips shut. She jabbed a flurry of
pokes and prods at him while he scooted back on his butt, then dug her
clawed hands into his tummy and tickled him viciously. He giggled, then
laughed, then started to hiccup uncontrollably. He shoved her away
roughly and got up on his knees, gagging.

"Oh, I like you," she said, "just look at that. A wee tickle and you're
ready to toss your lunch." She tenderly stroked his hair until the
hiccups subsided, then clawed at his belly again, sending him rolling
through the mud.

Once he'd struggled to his feet, he looked at her, panting. "Why are you
doing this?"

"You're not serious! It's the most fun I've had since we moved to this
terrible place."

"You're a sadist!" He'd learned the word from a book he'd bought from
the ten-cent pile out front of the used bookstore. It had a clipped-out
recipe for liver cutlets between the pages and lots of squishy grown-up
sex things that seemed improbable if not laughable. He'd looked "sadist"
up in the class dictionary.

"Aye," she said. "I'm that." She made claws of her hands and advanced on
him slowly. He giggled uncontrollably as he backed away from
her. "C'mere, you, you've more torture comin' to ye before I'm satisfied
that you can keep a secret."

He held his arms before him like a movie zombie and walked toward
her. "Yes, mathter," he said in a monotone. Just as he was about to
reach her, he dodged to one side, then took off.

She chased him, laughing, halfway back to the mountain, then cried
off. He stopped a hundred yards up the road from her, she doubled over
with her hands planted on her thighs, face red, chest heaving. "You go
on, then," she called. "But it's more torture for you at school
tomorrow, and don't you forget it!"

"Only if you catch me!" he called back.

"Oh, I'll catch you, have no fear."

#

She caught him at lunch. He was sitting in a corner of the schoolyard,
eating from a paper sack of mushrooms and dried rabbit and keeping an
eye on Edward-Frederick-George as he played tag with the other
kindergartners. She snuck up behind him and dropped a handful of gravel
down the gap of his pants and into his underpants. He sprang to his
feet, sending gravel rattling out the cuffs of his jeans.

"Hey!" he said, and she popped something into his mouth. It was wet and
warm from her hand and it squirmed. He spat it out and it landed on the
schoolyard with a soft splat.

It was an earthworm, thick with loamy soil.

"You!" he said, casting about for a curse of sufficient
vehemence. "You!"

She hopped from foot to foot in front of him, clearly delighted with
this reaction. He reached out for her and she danced back. He took off
after her and they were chasing around the yard, around hopscotches and
tag games and sand castles and out to the marshy woods. She skidded
through the puddles and he leapt over them. She ducked under a branch
and he caught her by the hood of her windbreaker.

Without hesitating, she flung her arms in the air and slithered out of
the windbreaker, down to a yellow T-shirt that rode up her back,
exposing her pale freckles and the knobs of her spine, the fingers of
her ribs. She took off again and he balled the windbreaker up in his
fist and took off after her.

She stepped behind a bushy pine, and when he rounded the corner she was
waiting for him, her hands clawed, digging at his tummy, leaving him
giggling. He pitched back into the pine needles and she followed,
straddling his waist and tickling him until he coughed and choked and
gasped for air.

"Tell me!" she said. "Tell me your secrets!"

"Stop!" Alan said. "Please! I'm going to piss myself!"

"What's that to me?" she said, tickling more vigorously.

He tried to buck her off, but she was too fast. He caught one wrist, but
she pinned his other arm with her knee. He heaved and she collapsed on
top of him.

Her face was inches from his, her breath moist on his face. They both
panted, and he smelled her hair, which was over his face and neck. She
leaned forward and closed her eyes expectantly.

He tentatively brushed his lips across hers, and she moved closer, and
they kissed. It was wet and a little gross, but not altogether
unpleasant.

She leaned back and opened her eyes, then grinned at him. "That's enough
torture for one day," she said. "You're free to go."

#

She "tortured" him at morning and afternoon recess for the next two
weeks, and when he left school on Friday afternoon after the last bell,
she was waiting for him in the schoolyard.

"Hello," she said, socking him in the arm.

"Hi," he said.

"Why don't you invite me over for supper this weekend?" she said.

"Supper?"

"Yes. I'm your girlfriend, yeah? So you should have me around to your
place to meet your parents. Next weekend you can come around my place
and meet my dad."

"I can't," he said.

"You can't."

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's a secret," he said.

"Oooh, a secret," she said. "What kind of secret?"

"A family secret. We don't have people over for dinner. That's the way
it is."

"A secret! They're all child molesters?"

He shook his head.

"Horribly deformed?"

He shook his head.

"What, then? Give us a hint?"

"It's a secret."

She grabbed his ear and twisted it. Gently at first, then harder. "A
secret?" she said.

"Yes," he gasped. "It's a secret, and I can't tell you. You're hurting
me."

"I should hope so," she said. "And it will go very hard for you indeed
if you don't tell me what I want to know."

He grabbed her wrist and dug his strong fingers into the thin tendons on
their insides, twisting his fingertips for maximal effect. Abruptly, she
released his ear and clenched her wrist hard, sticking it between her
thighs.

"Owwww! That bloody hurt, you bastard. What did you do that for?"

"My secrets," Alan said, "are secret."

She held her wrist up and examined it. "Heaven help you if you've left a
bruise, Alvin," she said. "I'll kill you." She turned her wrist from
side to side. "All right," she said. "All right. Kiss it better, and you
can come to my place for supper on Saturday at six p.m.." She shoved her
arm into his face and he kissed the soft skin on the inside of her
wrist, putting a little tongue in it.

She giggled and punched him in the arm. "Saturday, then!" she called as
she ran off.

#

Edward-Felix-Gerald were too young to give him shit about his schoolyard
romance, and Brian was too sensitive, but Dave had taken to lurking
about the schoolyard, spying on the children, and he'd seen Marci break
off from a clench with Alan, take his hand, and plant it firmly on her
tiny breast, an act that had shocked Danny to the core.

"Hi, pervert," David said, as he stepped into the cool of the
cave. "Pervert" was Davey's new nickname for him, and he had a finely
honed way of delivering it so that it dripped with contempt. "Did you
have sex with your *girlfriend* today, *pervert*?"

Allan turned away from him and helped E-F-G take off his shoes and roll
up the cuffs of his pants so that he could go down to the lake in the
middle of their father and wade in the shallows, listening to Father's
winds soughing through the great cavern.

"Did you touch her boobies? Did she suck your pee-pee? Did you put your
finger in her?" The litany would continue until Davey went to bed, and
even then he wasn't safe. One night, Allen had woken up to see Darren
standing over him, hands planted on his hips, face twisted into an
elaborate sneer. "Did you put your penis inside of her?" he'd hissed,
then gone back to bed.

Alby went out again, climbing the rockface faster than Doug could keep
up with him, so that by the time he'd found his perch high over the
woodlands, where he could