Boys Life

into the office. My heart was a cold stone in my throat. Thunder boomed and the rain slammed against the windows, and I grasped that green feather and jerked it and this time it tore loose from the hatband. It was mine.
    “Cory? What’re you doin’ in-”
    Lightning flared, so close you could hear the sizzle. The lights went out, and the next crack of thunder shook the windows.
    I stood in the dark, the green feather in my hand and Mayor Swope in the doorway.
    “Don’t move, Cory,” he said. “Say somethin’.”
    I didn’t. I edged toward the wall and pressed my back against it.
    “Cory? Come on, now. Let’s don’t play games.” I heard him shut the door. A floorboard creaked, ever so quietly. He was moving. “Let’s sit down and talk, Cory. There’s somethin’ very important you need to understand.”
    Outside, the clouds had gone almost black, and the room was a dungeon. I thought I could see his tall, thin shape gliding slowly toward me across the Persian carpet. I was going to have to get through him to the door.
    “No need for this,” Mayor Swope said, his voice trying to sound calm and reassuring. It had the same hollow ring as Mr. Hargison’s false voice. “Cory?” I heard him release a long, resigned sigh. “You know, don’t you?”
    Darned right I knew.
    “Where are you, son? Talk to me.”
    I didn’t dare.
    “How’d you find out?” he asked. “Just tell me that.”
    Lightning flickered and hissed. By its split-second glare I could see Mayor Swope, white as a zombie, standing at the center of the room with pipe smoke drifting around him like a wraith. Now my heart was really hammering; a spark of lightning had jumped off something metal clenched in his right hand.
    “I’m sorry you found out, Cory,” Mayor Swope said. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
    I couldn’t help it; in my panic, I blurted it out: “I wanna go home!”
    “I can’t let you do that,” he said, and his shape began moving toward me through the electric-charged dark. “You understand, don’t you?”
    I understood. My legs responded first; they propelled me across the Persian carpet toward the way out, and my lungs snagged a breath and my hand gripped the green feather. I don’t know how near I passed to him, but I got to the door unhindered and tried to twist the doorknob but my palm was slick with cold sweat. He must’ve heard the rattle, because he said, “Stop!” and I could sense him coming after me. Then the doorknob turned and the door opened and I shot through it as if from the barrel of a cannon. I collided with Mrs. Axford’s desk, and I heard the photographs clatter as they fell.
    “Cory!” he said, louder. “No!”
    I caromed off the side of the desk, a human pinball in motion. I went into the row of chairs, striking my right knee on a hard edge. My lips let out a cry of pain, and as I tried to find the door into the hallway it seemed that the chairs had come to malevolent life and were blocking my way. A cold chill skittered up my spine as Mayor Swope’s hand fell on my shoulder like a spider.
    “No!” he said, and his fingers started to close.
    I pulled loose. A chair was beside me, and I shoved it at Mayor Swope like a shield. He stumbled into it, and I heard him say “Oof!” as his legs got tangled up and he fell to the floor. Then I turned away from him, frantically searching for the door. At any second I expected a hand to seal itself around my ankle, and that hand to draw me to him like the tentacle of the glass-bowled monster of Invaders from Mars. Tears of terror were starting to burn my eyes. I blinked them away, and suddenly my hand found the cold knob of the door that led out. I twisted it, pushed through, and ran along the storm-darkened corridor, my footsteps ringing on the linoleum and thunder echoing through the halls of justice.
    “Cory! Come back here!” he hollered as if he really thought I might. He was coming after me, and he was running, too. I had the mental picture of myself beaten to a pulp, my hand cuffed to Rocket, and Rocket tumbling down, down, down into the awful netherworld of Saxon’s Lake.
    I tripped over my own flying feet, fell, and skidded on my belly across the linoleum. My chin banged into the bottom of a wall, but I scrambled up and kept going, Mayor Swope’s footsteps right behind me. “Cory!” he shouted, fury in his voice. It was surely the voice of a crazed killer. “ Stop where you are!”
    Like hell, I thought.
    And then