Nightrise

he was there. And he came between us and I'll never forget the look in his eyes. He just looked straight at Cavalli and told him to get lost.
    "And you know what happened? Cavalli stepped back like he was dazed and didn't understand what was going on. And then he just sort of walked…stumbled out of the school and kept going.
    "It took the police two days to find him and he nearly died. He'd walked into the desert and became totally lost. This was the summer and it can easily get into the hundreds out there and he had no water.
    When they found him, he had no idea where he was or how he'd got there. Anyway, that was about it. I heard he got better in the end and the family moved to another state. I never saw him again."
    'You think the two of you were responsible?"
    "I know we were. You want to hear the rest of it?"
    Alicia nodded. Jamie took another sip of Coke.
    "Ed and Leanne weren't too bad. We liked Carson City. We used to see bald eagles and hawks in the summer. It was okay. But trouble always followed us around. And this time it was my fault. There was this teacher, Mr. Dempster, and he used to pick on us. Maybe Scott and I knew a bit too much about him. Maybe he guessed that somehow. Anyway, he was always putting us in detention and stuff like that, and one day I decided to get back at him and slashed the tires on his car. He had this Beetle and he was so proud of it. It was a dumb thing to do, and the worst thing was…I got caught.
    "I never thought the whole thing would get so out of hand, but the next thing I knew, I was under arrest and I
    had a probation officer and suddenly I was in front of a judge — and the upshot of it was, what Ed had always been saying came true."
    'You were sent to jail?"
    "I was sent to a juvenile hall…just for a couple of weeks. The judge said it would be a wake-up call. I ended up in a place just outside Reno. I was also told I'd have to work after school hours to pay back the cost of the tires."

    He drank again. The sun was dipping behind the other houses. The shadows stretched across the patio, and suddenly the air was filled with the smell of flowers. Somewhere in the distance, an ambulance screamed its way along the boulevards.
    "Juvie wasn't too bad," Jamie went on. "It was clean and the food was okay and I actually got on with the other kids. It was just boring, mainly. The worst thing was when I got home again. Scott was waiting for me and I thought he'd be happy to see me — but he wasn't. He was furious. He said what I'd done was stupid. He said things were bad for us already and I'd just made them worse.
    "And he was right. After I got back, things were never the same with Ed and Leanne. They were having problems anyway. They were always fighting…shouting at each other. But now they decided that Scott and I were just in the way and that they should never have taken us in to begin with. Ed had started drinking. Vodka, mainly. He'd get through half a bottle a night, easily. About a month after I got back, he had an argument with Scott and hit him. That was the first time he ever did that. And the power was still working — the link between us — because I was the one who got the bruise even though I wasn't even in the room at the time.
    "And at the same time, Derry — our caseworker — got sick. She'd been looking out for us right from the start, but now she couldn't work anymore and all her files were farmed out. She wrote to us, but I never saw her again and I never saw anyone else either. They couldn't handle the number of cases they were already dealing with, and they figured Scott and I were okay, so they just let us go. They probably think we're still with Ed and Leanne even now. I don't know…
    "We weren't okay. Ed's temper was getting worse and worse. He lost his job and that was when he told us we were going to be moving again. I remember it se well. Leanne was out. She did an evening shift at the Carson Nugget and we were alone with Ed. He'd been drinking again and, maybe just for the fun of it, he started taunting Scott. He said that he'd already spoken to the Child and Family Services and the two of us were finally going to be separated. Scott was staying in Carson City. But I'd be in another state.
    "I don't know if he was lying or not. But he made it sound so real, like it was going to happen at any time. He and Scott were yelling at each other and he was drinking, straight out of the bottle, and laughing at us. And that was when it