The Storm King(33)

“We’re fine, Chief,” Nate said.

“Got off easy, then. Those boys being so much bigger.” The chief gave a good impression of avuncular levity, but Nate saw the fear in his eyes.

Sometimes, speaking with the chief reminded Nate too much of his dad and that lost life. He imagined the chief must feel the same way.

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Concussions are serious business.” The chief had been there in April, too. He’d seen the bodies of his best friends and their younger son pulled from the lake. He’d held Nate’s hand in the back of an ambulance as it screamed through the center of town.

The lights, sirens, and medical prodding had already brought Nate perilously close to the memories of that day in April. He knew this feeling would only strengthen once his grandmother arrived. He imagined Grams threading the crowd of gawkers to search the backs of the ambulances for him. He knew exactly what shade of fear would color her face when she found him. This time it would be an expression put there not by chance stacked upon chance, but by basic cruelty.



Pain rippled from his hurt thumb as he clenched his hands.

Mr. Granger appeared and pulled the chief aside.

“We still have to get Adam back, you know,” Nate told Johnny once the chief left.

“But we sent him to the hospital.”

“That was self-defense. Now he has to be punished. For this, and for what he did to Lucy.” Nate knew this with complete certainty. He kneaded the scar tissue and knitted bone of his bad arm. It ached, and he knew that the weather was going to worsen.

The equations of pain were askew, and they must be balanced.

—

THE STORM NATE’S arm foretold finally arrived.

A blip of a thunderstorm, but it was enough to clear the streets and keep people inside. When he and his friends set out into the rain, the town was cowed under the howling night.

The bruise around Nate’s left eye had blackened along the orbital ridge. Under its brace, his thumb had turned a cadaverous yellow. His ribs were as multihued as mold blossoming on a slice of wet bread. He was sore everywhere.

Grams hadn’t let him go to school that morning. “You look like you’ve been through the wars,” she’d told him.

“I’m hurt, but I want everyone to know I’m okay. Otherwise, they’ll talk.” He didn’t want a repeat of the whispering that had followed the accident last spring. After that, he was the Boy Who Fell. He was precious—and a precious thing is a thing held apart. “I can’t deal with that again.”

Grams nodded and looked away. For an agonizing moment, Nate thought she was going to cry. They could both be stubborn, but he relented. He let her take care of him through the day but convinced her to go to the Union for the night shift, and even got her to agree to him sleeping over at Johnny’s house despite it being a weeknight. He swore he’d take it easy.



But these were lies he told to protect her. Nate didn’t plan to have a relaxed evening any more than he intended to sleep over at the Vanhoutens’.

Johnny had given each of them sturdy black raincoats from the Pharaoh. They were just about the only things salvaged from the sailboat they’d wrecked. The black rubbery skin of the coat dangled heavily just below Nate’s knees. They saw only one car on their way to the Deckers’ house, and its headlights glanced off their coats as if they were just pieces of the dark. They were invisible in the night.

The Deckers’ home sat in the foothills, far beyond the Wharf. This was a remote and wooded section of town, no neighbors within sight. It was a sprawling clapboard farmhouse with a look of neglect about it. Battered shutters along the ground floor were missing slats, their vacancies gaping like mouths. There were no streetlights here, and the black would have been impenetrable if not for a single light by the front door.

Johnny called this adventure a Thunder Run. He and Owen were enthusiastic about punishing Adam for what he’d done. Tom, less so.

“We could press charges,” he’d said when they’d rendezvoused at the Night Ship. “It’s assault. They’d get in trouble.”

“Adam’s dad is on the town council. You think as chief of police, your dad wants to file charges?” Johnny had asked.

“Boys will be boys. That’s what they’ll say. Besides, we hurt them more than they hurt us,” Nate said. “People are going to think they already got what they deserved.”

“Exactly, Nate, we already hurt them, so—”

“That’s what they’ll say. I don’t agree.”



“But, I mean, when does this end? If we get back at him and then—”

“The Storm King has spoken, Tommy.” Johnny clapped Nate on the shoulder. This was the first time the appellation had been uttered. This was their first full stride into whatever country waited beyond the frontier of the ordinary.

The others all turned to Nate. “So what’s the plan?” Tom asked.

The house looked empty, but Nate knew by now that such appearances could be deceiving. He jogged to the front door and rang the bell before anyone could stop him. When he rang it again and there still wasn’t a twitch from the home, he turned back to his friends. They couldn’t see his smile, but it was there.

“Nobody home.”

“They could be back any second,” Tom said.