The Boy in the Lot by Ronald Malfi
Eleven-year-old Mark Davis took one look at the rundown motel and thought it perfectly suited his mood. It was a crumbling saltbox against the backdrop of a black hillside forest, the windows bleak, lidded with colorless plastic shades, the entranceway about as welcoming and cheerful as the gates of a cemetery. An uneven slip of potholed blacktop—the motel’s parking lot—stood as a barrier between the ruinous building and the curve of U.S. Route 40.
As Mark’s dad turned the car into the parking lot, the chassis roller-coastering across the irregular blacktop, Mark surveyed the place. Beside him in the backseat, Tim—short for Timbuktu—panted, his hot dog breath steaming up the car’s windows. Mark petted the old dog and watched as a clear rope of saliva depended from the dog’s mouth and pattered to the car seat.
“Really, Will?” said Mark’s mother from the passenger seat.
Will Davis pulled the car into a parking space and geared it into Park. “I’m starting to fall asleep at the wheel,” he said. “Unless you want to keep driving, we’re stopping for the night.”
Mark’s mother quickly rolled up her window. “It looks like Armageddon came and went.”
“Quit being so dramatic.”
“We passed a perfectly good Holiday Inn half an hour ago.”
“Forget it. I’m not backtracking. This’ll be fine for the night.” His father turned around in the driver’s seat and smiled wearily at Mark. “This work for you, bud?”
Mark shrugged. Compared to his mood, the motel was a brightly lit amusement park.
“I’ll go in and grab us a room,” his father said, popping open his door. “You guys wait here.”
Tim whined as the door slammed shut. Mark continued petting the old dog. He watched his dad hustle across the poorly lit parking lot until he disappeared beneath the entrance portico. Stenciling on the lighted front window said OFFICE.
“You okay?” his mother asked from up front. Unlike his father, she didn’t turn around and look at him.
“Whatever,” he said.
She sighed. She was normally a pleasant-looking woman, but the stress of the move—and no doubt the stress of dealing with Mark lately—had caused her to look weary and strung-out. “Don’t you think you’ve sulked about this long enough?”
He folded his arms and glanced out the window. Lights were on in some of the rooms, rimming the rectangular shades in milky light. “No,” he said.
“Grandpa Mike was in the military,” she reminded him, “and I had moved five times by the time I was your age.”
Good for you, Mark thought, but didn’t dare say aloud.
“You know,” his mother continued, “your father and I have been talking. Seeing how you’re leaving all your friends behind, we thought it might be okay for you to finally get that cell phone.”
Mark brightened. “Really?” He had been asking for a cell phone for the better part of the past year. All his friends had one, yet his parents had been adamant that an eleven-year-old boy didn’t need to carry around his own personal cell phone.
“Your dad and I will lay down some ground rules,” she said, “but yes, we think that if you can be responsible with it, we’re willing to get it for you. Do you think you can be responsible with it?”
“You bet,” he said.
His mother sighed contentedly in the passenger seat. “Good boy,” she said.
A shape exited the motel’s front office and moved like a shadow across the parking lot. As the shape passed beneath an arc sodium light, Mark saw that it was his father. Will Davis opened the driver’s door and poked his head inside.
“Everybody out!”
“Lovely,” grumbled Mark’s mother.
Mark got out of the car and held the door open for Tim, who bounded out after the boy. The dog went immediately to one of the potholes filled with rain and began lapping up the black water.
Holy crap, a cell phone! Wait till I tell the guys! Of course, this excitement was blanketed by the same black pall that had hung above his head like a thundercloud since he had been told by his parents that they would be moving. His father had gotten a new job in a different state, and that meant leaving all of Mark’s friends behind. A cell phone was a grand thing—it would be his own little slice of independence—but what good was a cell phone if you couldn’t call up your friends and make plans? Sure, he could call them and they could joke over the phone…but in the end, he would just have to hang up again, and continue being friendless in their new neighborhood.
Timbuktu looked up at him. As was often the case, Mark discerned a deep intelligence in the old dog’s eyes.
“You’re my friend, aren’t you, boy?” he said to the dog, once more stroking the silken gold fur along the dog’s back. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
His father swung a few duffel bags over one shoulder then slammed the car’s trunk. He whistled as he joined Mark’s mother, who looked up at the sagging motel roof and fizzing neon VACANCY sign with barefaced displeasure, on the curb. “We’re in Room 104,” he said cheerily enough.
Inwardly, Mark groaned. His father was always in a good mood when faced with adversity. He wondered if the man actually relished the little daily confrontations—switching jobs, moving from one city to another, spending the night in some horror movie motel in rural Maryland. Not for the first time, Mark secretly wished his dad would get fired, just like what happened to Davey Hannah’s dad back in Spring Grove, only without ending in his parents getting a divorce, which is what happened to Davey’s parents. Davey was Mark’s best friend back in Spring Grove. They had gone all through grade school together, not to mention the Boy Scouts, and had even been on the same Little League team two years in a row. People even said they looked the same—they were both slender, tow-headed, freckled, cheerful—and once, in third grade, they had told everyone they were twin brothers, and had even managed to convince a few of their classmates. Mark figured they would have also convinced their teacher, Mrs. Treble, had she not seen their last names on her class roster.