Five Days in Summer

doctor guy who visited yesterday kept shouting stop stop stop . Those were the words that woke him up. Stop stop stop.
    David didn’t want to go back to sleep, in case the dream started again. It happened sometimes, like putting in the second tape of a long movie. He sat up so he wouldn’tfall back to sleep. A clock next to Sammie’s bed showed in red numbers that it was 5:13 A.M.
    One time he had asked Grandma what time the newspaper came, and she told him about five o’clock in the morning. He remembered that now. He had overheard his dad last night telling Grandma not to let the newspaper into the house. David understood that they didn’t want him or Sammie to see it, especially him, since Sammie couldn’t really read a newspaper yet. They probably didn’t want them to see it because their mother might be in it.
    Her picture might be on the front of the newspaper. She might be dead. It could be that they didn’t want them to know about it. David was tired of being told everything was all right. He knew it wasn’t. He wasn’t stupid and he knew his mother hadn’t come home. He knew bad things happened to good people for no reason except that monsters were real and the world was not the terrific place grown-ups tried so hard to convince kids it was. He knew his parents had been making him learn aikido all these years so if he had to he could fight off the bad people. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that.
    He had watched his father go all around the house last night, making sure every door and window was locked, even the skylights over Grandma’s loft. All locked up tight. The garage door was rolled down every night before they went to bed but this time Dad also locked the door between the garage and the mudroom. It was like going to bed in Manhattan, where everything had to be locked all the time and you couldn’t sleep with your window open even in summer. You got the air conditioner or nothing, but you never got the breeze. Did bad guys only come when you were sleeping, was that the idea? Were they likebats, awake only at night? If bad guys were human, didn’t they do their bad work in the day too?
    David sat in his bed, listening to Sammie breathe and Maxi’s plastic mattress pad crinkle when she rolled onto her stomach. And he made a decision. If Mom wasn’t in her bed right now, he would go up the road and get the newspaper himself, before they had a chance to hide it from him.
    He pushed back his covers and slipped quietly out of the room, leaving the bedroom door cracked open like his mother and grandma did so they could hear Maxi when she woke up. His feet crunched on some toys when he crossed the downstairs family room to the other side, where his mother and father slept. The door was shut tight. When he turned the knob, there was a loud click, and it got worse, because when he pushed the door open, it creaked. The room was very dark. He stood there a minute and waited to get yelled at. Nothing happened. When his eyes adjusted enough, he could see his dad sleeping in the bed. He’d been pretty tired the day before and David guessed he was out cold now. Out cold and alone. Mom wasn’t there.
    David pulled the door behind him without closing it all the way so it wouldn’t click again. He crept up the stairs and to the front door. There was a loud snapping sound when he turned the lock, and another click from the doorknob, but luckily this door didn’t have the creak. David paused and waited for someone to come out and tell him to go back to bed. No one did. He pushed open the screen door, which he knew squeaked pretty badly, and let it fall behind him as he ran from the house and up the road. He’d gotten this far and as long as he got the paper first he didn’t care if they caught him.
    It was so dark out he could hardly even see the dirtroad. His grandpa used to tell them it was an old Indian road back from the days when all the land was owned by Native Americans. They’d even tried to get the land back from the people who owned it now, but couldn’t. Grandma and Grandpa still had their land and their house and their beach. At least Grandma did.
    David stopped running because he was afraid he’d run right off the road. Instead, he walked fast up the old Indian road, past the turnoffs for the two other houses that sat by the lake. You couldn’t see your neighbors out here unless you passed them in your car, and then they always pulled up next to each other and talked. It embarrassed