She shook her head and he had to restrain the sigh that swelled in his throat.
“So I guess we’ll have to do something for a while at least,” she said. “What do you want to play?”
“Not dolls, anyway. I hate dolls.” He watched a blue jay until it flew behind her. Tracking it any further would have meant looking in her direction and he wasn’t yet ready to do that.
“Me too,” Kim said, startling him, and he looked at her. Briefly.
“I thought all girls liked dolls.”
He saw her shrug. “I think they’re dumb.”
“Real dumb.”
“Yeah.”
The silence wasn’t as dreadful as Timmy had thought it would be. For one, she didn’t like dolls and that was a plus. Dolls really were dumb. He hadn’t said it just to annoy her. And at least she talked. By now he’d have grown tired of listening to himself talking to Pete and getting no answer. So, he guessed, she wasn’t that bad.
But still, he didn’t like the idea of being seen hanging around with her. No matter how cool she might turn out to be, if anyone at school heard about it they’d say he was in love with her or something and that they were going to have a baby. And that would be bad news. Real bad news.
“Why don’t we go back to the pond?” she asked then, as if reading his thoughts.
Going back to Myers Pond was no more comforting an idea than hanging around with a girl, but at least there no one would see them together.
“I’m not allowed to go back to the pond,” he said, with an ounce of shame. Admitting you were restricted by the same rules as everyone else seemed akin to admitting weakness when you said it to a girl.
“Why not?”
“I’m just not.”
When she said nothing, he gave a dramatic sigh and conceded. “Pete Marshall’s dad thinks there might be some creeps back there or something. He thinks it might be dangerous for kids. My dad doesn’t want me going back there either.”
“Creeps? Like what kind of creeps?”
He almost told her, but caught himself at the last minute and shrugged it off. “Just some strange kids.”
She stared at him for a moment and he struggled not to cringe.
“Like The Turtle Boy?”
Now he looked at her and through the shock of hearing the name he had given Darryl, he realized she wasn’t so ugly and stinky and everything else he associated with the chittering group she swept around the playground with at recess. Her eyes, for one thing, were like sparkling emeralds, and once he peered into them his discomfort evaporated and he had to struggle to look away. Her skin reminded him of his mother’s soap and that conjured a memory of a pleasant clean smell. But still…she was a girl and that made him feel a strange kind of awkwardness.
“What?” she said after a moment.
Eventually he composed himself enough to croak: “You’ve seen him?”
“Yes. He’s awful creepy looking, isn’t he?”
“But…when did you see him?”
“The first day of summer vacation. My cousin Dale came to visit with his mom and we went fishing back there.” She gave him a shy smile. “I’m not much good at fishing. I lost my bobber.”
Timmy remembered the small red and white ball drifting in the water the day they’d seen Darryl and wondered if it was hers.
“Dale caught a catfish. It was ugly and gross and when he reeled it in, he raised it up in front of my face and tried to get me to kiss it. I ran into the trees and that’s where he was. The Turtle Boy. He stank really bad and looked at me as if I had caught him doing something he shouldn’ta been. I was scared.”
Timmy was confused. “But why do you call him that? Did he tell you that was his name?”
“No. I just… I don’t know. I just remember thinking about it later and that’s the name I gave him.”
“That’s weird. That’s the name I gave him.”
“I guess that is weird.”
“Have you ever seen him around before?”
She shook her head. “Have you?”
“No, but I wish I knew why he was here and where he came from.”
A blur of movement caught his eye and he followed it to a groundhog shimmying his way along the bottom of the yard toward the road. He looked back to Kim. “Did he say anything to you?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed and the same fear that had gripped him when he’d seen Darryl’s ankle was written across her face. It made him feel better somehow to see it. It meant he was no longer alone in his fear. With Pete it wasn’t the same. Pete was afraid to ride his bike on the off chance he might fall and get hurt. He was also afraid of storms and dogs and pretty much anything that moved and had teeth.
“He said: ‘They’re hungry.’”
“When me and Pete saw him he was putting his heel into the water. There was a piece of it missing. He said he was feeding the turtles. What do you suppose it means?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” she said.
“How?”
Kim’s braces segmented her mischievous smile but couldn’t take away the appeal of it. A slight smile crept across Timmy’s lips in response. He got the feeling that even though The Turtle Boy had frightened her, she wasn’t easily deterred from any kind of adventure.
“We have to ask him, of course.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rather than taking the regular gravel path back to the pond, a path that could be spotted from most of the houses, they cut across Mr. Patterson’s field, pausing only to look at the large puddle, which was all that remained of the hole Timmy and Pete had been digging. A pile of earth like a scale-model mountain sat next to it.
“We were looking for gold,” he explained.
“Did you find any?” Kim asked.
He shrugged, strangely ashamed. “No. We found some red clay though.”
Kim smiled. “Maybe that would be worth something in some other country. Maybe some country where they have gold to spare and kids dig for red clay?”
He nodded, a silly grin breaking out across his face. He knew it was a foolish notion — he’d never heard of a place that had too much gold — but it was a nice fantasy, and he silently thanked her for not making fun of his efforts.
They carried on through the high grass, chasing crickets and wondering what kind of exotic creatures they heard scurrying at their approach. The field ran parallel to the gravel path, but the trees shielded them from view and they hunkered down, the grass whipping against their bare legs. Much to his surprise, Kim kept the pace as he raced toward the narrow dirt road leading into the pond. At times she drew abreast of him and, more than once — though he would never admit it — she began to inch ahead of him, forcing him to push himself until he felt his chest start to ache.
At last they reached the makeshift bridge. Kim, her legs braced on the wobbling boards, leaned over to catch her breath. She looked down at the stream trickling beneath them. “They’ve ruined it, haven’t they?”
It took him a moment to realize what she was referring to and then he told her that yes, they had ruined it. The construction crews dedicated to tearing up the land they’d once played in seemed equally driven to foul whatever they’d been prohibited to touch. Gullies became dumping grounds for material waste, streams became muddied and paths cracked beneath the groaning and shrieking metal of their monstrous machines. Timmy joined her in a moment of mournful pondering at the senselessness of it all, then tapped her on the elbow and pointed up at the sky.
Shadows rushed past them, crawling through the grass toward the train tracks and spilling from the trees as the breeze gained strength. Over their heads, the sky had turned from blue to gray, the sun now a dim torch glimpsed through a caul of spider webs. All around them the trees began to sway and hiss as if the breeze were water, the canopies fire.