LOT'S MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER NINE: Hunted

Well, the rest of school goes by without anything blowing up. I'm not attacked, and I don't lose anything. All in all, a good day. Hey, my standards are low. Anyway, after school's out and the bus lets us off at the stop, Mindy walks with a football player and they have a clot of people around them. I hang back and take a different way.

Making myself keep going, I go past the nursing home where Granddad Sam had to go when he got real old. He just didn't look like him when he was there. It was hard, but I visited him anyway. Bill couldn't. They (the nurses, I guess) put pictures of Bill and me up on this bulletin board thing by Granddad's bed. He couldn't really get up and see them, not by the time he was there. Even thinking about it now makes me feel like I have something stuck in my throat.

I should just walk back to the Shermans'. Will I be safe there? Are the cemetery hounds stalking around in the shadows somewhere? And what about the Glass Man and his pamphlet freak?

Or I could catch up to Mindy. I think I'd rather be chomped on by a monster. So I keep walking around town and end up on West Main Street.

"Dylan?"

Either the fire hydrant I'm standing next to knows my name or somebody followed me here. Nobody's really around though, nobody that would be calling to me. And then there's laughing.

I look up and see Jamie. She's leaning out a second floor window of the old movie theater. I don't know how that theater is even still in business. There's a bigger one in the mall in Staunton that's a whole lot nicer than this one. The marquee sign showing the movies that are playing isn't an LED. It's just a sign that they slip big letters onto to spell the movies' names. That's where Jamie is, up above the sign. You see, there's the first floor that sticks out a little and the upper floor that recedes a little bit. She leans over with this pole-looking thing with a hook on the end and uses it to pluck a giant "S" from the sign. I guess she drove over right after school let out.

After I wave back, she snatches a "T" and a "G" from the theater sign and then disappears into the theater itself. Just like that, she's gone. As I'm standing there on the sidewalk, staring up, a horn blares at me. That's when I see Roger's car. He pulls over next to me.

"Get in," Roger says to me. But he's not the only one in the car. There's a guy and girl in there, too. He says to them, "Hey, guys, this is Dylan. Dylan, this is Alice and Murphy."

"I'm Murphy. That one's Alice. Just in case you get confused," the guy I don't know says. He's in the back and is tall and kinda stocky. A girl wearing a ton of makeup is in the front seat. Her hair is brown and curls just under her ears. I have to squeeze in behind her to sit next to Murphy.

As soon as Roger steers the car back onto the road, him and Alice start talking about some school dance that's coming up. We take a few right turns and then some lefts that take us further out of town, onto Route 254. After we take a side street called Old White Bridge Road, Murphy pipes up.

"Wait, wait, wait," he says, slapping me on the back as he jumps up and down on the back seat. "You said your name was Dylan, right?"

"Actually, I think Roger said his name was Dylan," Alice corrects him. Then she flips her hair back over her shoulder with one hand.

Murphy snarls up his lip at her and then turns to me, shoving me a little. "So you're Roger's old friend Dylan?"

"No, I'm his old friend Shirley."

Murphy's mouth drops open, you know, like a snake getting ready to gag down a rat, as he starts to laugh. "So that means that you're Dylan Caid. I mean, you're the Dylan Caid."