All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 66

66

Outside the bakery he smelled the sweetness as Mrs. Odell dressed her window with onion rye and Austrian pumpernickel. In his daze he heard bloodless laughter and saw the group led by Chuck as they walked up Main Street and ripped each of his posters down.

He gritted his teeth and stood in the center of the road mute to the horn as a Jeep ground its brakes, and he called out to the group that they were gutless.

They stopped and turned, five of them like an ordered army in their letter jackets, their general leading them back toward Patch.

“You’re littering our town,” Chuck said, so weak Patch almost laughed.

Still handsome in that vapid way, a sweep of fair hair pushed to the side, an even tan and build, a good five inches taller. Patch glanced at Chuck’s friends and wondered how they found each other, people so similar and lacking. Maybe on the football field, or maybe their fathers were the kind that worked in banks or insurance, and their mothers the kind who held coffee mornings and displayed fresh flowers in opaline vases.

Chuck held up a couple of posters. “This the girlfriend you made up, right?”

He glanced across into Monta Clare Fine Art and saw Sammy leaning in the doorway and watching, and beside him he saw the prints in the window.

The wooden floor and the army of ornate girls in ballet pumps and colored ribbon. He thought of Grace spinning and what she had glimpsed for herself

and for them.

“Five on one,” Chuck said.

Patch stared at him. “You want to fetch a couple more to even things up?”

He was not sure who shoved him, but he managed to stay on his feet, and maybe that was the wrong move because the shove was followed by a flurry of punches and kicks. He felt nothing as they landed, just dropped to the hard sidewalk and did not move to protect himself. He tasted blood and saw the flutter of her name as the posters came to land beside him.

He thought of Eli Aaron, how that was a real beating. They backed up a little when they saw him smiling at them.

He stood. Stretched. Raised his fists and grinned and beckoned them back for more.

Patch did not see the girl step in front of him until she pulled the sourdough baguettine from her bag and belted Chuck so hard the crack echoed.

Chuck clutched his ear, his eyes flaming.

The group moved again, but Misty severed their resolve with attitude alone, her eyes squint like she was choosing who’d be next.

A Coca-Cola sign spun as Patch carefully collected his posters.

Misty wore jeans flared at the ankle and narrow at the hips. Her blonde hair tied and sitting over her shoulder like a kind of luxurious throw.

A couple of kids stood watching on the redbrick sidewalk as Chuck carefully weighed things.

They stood there, the beautiful rich girl, the missing boy, the king of

Monta Clare High and his followers.

They fanned out and walked away slow.

Patch reached into his school bag and took out a roll of tape.

Misty held the posters in place as Patch carefully taped them.

Together they moved up the street, from post to post.

“My parents want you to come to dinner,” Misty said, focusing too hard

on the task at hand.

“Why?”

“Gratitude. Or perhaps guilt.”

She handed him the baguettine, so hard he winced a little for Chuck’s ear, and worried a lot for his own teeth.

“I made this for your lunch.”

“It has some of Chuck’s blood on it.”

“The other day you didn’t return the silver cutlery.”

“I know.”

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