The Shadow Year Read Online Free Page A

his mouth. If you left it there long enough, he’d start to growl. Jim stuck his foot out and made little circles with it in the air near George’s mouth. “Geooorgieee,” he sang very softly. When the dog had had enough, he went for the foot, growling like crazy and fake-biting all over it—a hundred fake bites a second. He never really chomped down.
    When he was revved, he moved to the ladder, smelled it a few times, and then pissed on it. We were ready to do some tracking. George started walking, and so did we. Out of thebackyard, we went through the gate by Nan’s side of the house and under the pink blossoms of the prehistoric mimosa tree into the front yard.
    Around the corner was East Lake School, a one-story redbrick structure, a big rectangle of classrooms with an enclosed courtyard of grass at its center. On the right-hand side was an alcove that held the playground for the kindergarten—monkey bars, swings, a seesaw, a sandbox, and one of those round, turning platform things that if you got it spinning fast enough, all the kids would fly off. The gym was attached to the left-hand side of the building, a giant, windowless box of brick that towered over the squat main building.
    The school had a circular drive in front with an elongated, high-curbed oval of grass at its center. Just west of the drive and the little parking lot there were two asphalt basketball courts, and beyond that spread a vast field with a baseball backstop and bases, where on windy days the powdered dirt of the baselines rose in cyclones. At the border of the field was a high barbed-wire-topped fence to prevent kids from climbing down into a craterlike sump. Someone long ago had used a chain cutter to make a slit in the fence that a small person could pass through. Down there in the early fall, among the goldenrod stalks and dying weeds, it was a kingdom of crickets.
    Behind the school were more fields of sunburned summer grass cut by three asphalt bike paths. At the back the school fields were bounded by another development, but to the east lay the woods: a deep oak-and-pine forest that stretched well into the next town and south as far as the railroad tracks. Streams ran through it, as well as some rudimentary paths that we knew better than the lines on our own palms. A quarter mile in lay a small lake that we had been told was bottomless.
    That day George led us to the boundary of the woods, near the pregnant swelling of ground known as Sewer Pipe Hill. We stood on the side of the hill where a round, dark circle of thepipe protruded and faced the tree line. Some days a trickle of water flowed from the pipe, but today it was bone dry. Jim walked over to the round opening, three feet in circumference, leaned over, and yelled, “Helloooooo!” His word echoed down the dark tunnel beneath the school fields. George pissed on the concrete facing that held up the end of the pipe.
    â€œX marks the spot,” said Jim. He turned to Franky. “You better crawl in there and see if the prowler is hiding underground.”
    Franky rubbed his head and stared at the black hole.
    â€œAre you my right-hand man?” asked Jim.
    â€œYes,” said Franky. “But what if he’s in there?”
    â€œBefore he touches you, just say you’re making a citizen’s arrest.”
    Franky thought about this for a moment.
    â€œDon’t do it,” I said.
    Jim glared at me. Then he put his hand on Franky’s shoulder and said, “He saw your mom’s ass.”
    Franky nodded and went to the pipe opening. He bent down, got on his knees, and then crawled forward into the dark a little way before stopping. Jim went over and lightly tapped him in the rear end with the toe of his sneaker. “You’ll be a hero if you find him. They’ll put your picture in the newspaper.” Franky started crawling forward again, and in seconds he was out of sight.
    â€œWhat if he gets lost in there?”