NOS4A2(6)

Vic climbed off her bike. Her legs shook in nervous bursts. She walked her Raleigh over to the Dumpster and leaned it against the side. She found she lacked the courage to think too directly about the Shorter Way.

The alley stank of fried food going bad in the sun. She wanted fresh air. She walked past a screen door looking into a noisy, steamy kitchen and to the high wooden fence. She unlatched the door in the side and let herself out onto a narrow strip of sidewalk that she knew well. She had stood on it only hours ago.

When she looked to the left, she saw a long stretch of beach and the ocean beyond, the green cresting waves glistening with a painful brightness in the sun. Boys in swim trunks tossed a Frisbee, leaping to make show-off catches and then falling in the dunes. Cars rolled along the oceanfront boulevard, bumper to bumper. She walked around the corner on unsteady legs and looked at the walk-up window of





Terry’s Primo Subs

Hampton Beach, New Hampshire


VIC WALKED PAST A ROW OF MOTORCYCLES LEANING OUT FRONT, chrome burning in the afternoon sun. There was a line of girls at the order window, girls in bikini tops and short-shorts, laughing bright laughter. How Vic hated the sound of them, which was like hearing glass shatter. She went in. A brass bell dinged on the door.

The windows were open, and half a dozen desktop fans were running behind the counter, blowing air out toward the tables, and still it was too hot inside. Long spools of flypaper hung from the ceiling and wavered in the breeze. The Brat didn’t like looking at that flypaper, at the insects that had been caught on it, to struggle and die while people shoved hamburgers into their mouths directly below. She had not noticed the flypaper when she’d eaten lunch here earlier in the day, with her parents.

She felt woozy, as if she’d been running around on a full stomach in the August heat. A big man in a white undershirt stood behind the cash register. His shoulders were hairy and crimson with sunburn, and there was a line of zinc painted on his nose. A white plastic tag on his shirt said PETE. He had been here all afternoon. Two hours before, Vic had stood next to her father while Chris McQueen paid him for their burger baskets and their milkshakes. The two men had talked about the Red Sox, who were on a good run. 1986 was looking like the year they might finally break the curse. Clemens was mowing them down. The kid had the Cy Young locked up, with more than a month left to play.

Vic turned toward him, if not for any reason than because she recognized him. But then she just stood there, in front of him, blinking, no idea what to say. A fan hummed at Pete’s back and caught the humid, human smell of him, wafted it into the Brat’s face. No, she was definitely not feeling too good.

She was ready to cry, gripped with an unfamiliar sensation of helplessness. She was here, in New Hampshire, where she didn’t belong. The Shorter Way Bridge was stuck in the alley out back, and somehow this was her fault. Her parents were fighting and had no idea how far away she had got from them. All this needed to be said and more. She needed to call home. She needed to call the police. Someone had to go look at the bridge in the alley. Her thoughts were a sickening turmoil. The inside of her head was a bad place, a dark tunnel full of distracting noise and whirling bats.

But the big man saved her the trouble of figuring out where to start. His eyebrows knitted together at the sight of her. “There you are. I was wondering if I was going to see you again. You came back for it, huh?”

Vic stared at him blankly. “Came back?”

“For the bracelet. One with the butterfly on it.”

He poked a key, and the register drawer popped open with a clashing chime. Her mother’s bracelet was in the back.

When Vic saw it, another weak tremor passed through her legs and she let out an unsteady sigh. For the first time since exiting the Shorter Way and finding herself impossibly in Hampton Beach, she felt something like understanding.

She had gone looking for her mother’s bracelet in her imagination, and somehow she had found it. She had never gone out on her bike at all. Probably her parents had never really fought. There was only one way to explain a bridge crammed into an alley. She had gotten home, sunburned and exhausted, with a bellyful of milkshake, had passed out on her bed and now was dreaming. With that in mind, she supposed the best thing she could do was get her mother’s bracelet and go back across the bridge, at which point she would presumably wake up.

There was another dull throb of pain behind her left eye. A headache was rooting itself there. A bad one. She couldn’t remember ever carrying a headache into a dream before.

“Thank you,” said the Brat as Pete handed the bracelet across the counter to her. “My mom was really worried about it. It’s worth a lot.”

“Really worried, huh?” Pete stuck a pinkie in one ear and twisted it back and forth. “Got a lot of sentimental value, I guess.”

“No. I mean yes, it does. It belonged to her grandmother, my great-grandmother. But I mean it’s also very valuable.”

“Un-huh,” he said.

“It’s an antique,” said the Brat, not entirely sure why she felt the need to persuade him of its value.

“It’s only an antique if it’s worth something. If it’s not worth anything, it’s just an old thingamajig.”

“It’s diamonds,” the Brat said. “Diamonds and gold.”

Pete laughed: a short, caustic bark of laughter.