Page 8 of The Code

A surge of self-consciousness rolls through him. He knows he looks a mess with his dirt-smeared cheeks and stretched-out lowest-bidder navy shirt. Part of him is still back at the Pride House Group Home in his worn-thin foster-kid jeans, hungry and filthy, the kind of boy that respectable folks crossed the street to avoid.

The girl points southward. “’Bout a half mile that way. They’re running ’em late ’cuz the carnival.”

Her skin is shiny and clean, her breath watermelon gum. She seems like something from a movie, something perfect and pure around which he deserves no place.

Again he senses the dried dirt streaks on his arms, the side of his neck, and he lowers his eyes. “Thank you.”

Sitting on a bale of hay, he picks out the almonds, peanuts, yogurt-covered raisins, and dark chocolate chips, eschewing the mini-marshmallows. On an adjacent bale, two scrawny middle-school kids wearing black concert T-shirts discuss a stuffed-animal prize they won, a salamander in pajamas and roller skates.

“So lame,” one kids snickers. “Like, why would an axolotl wear PJs with axolotls on it? It’s not like humans go around wearing suits with pictures of little humans on them.”

Through a break in the stream of carnivalgoers, Evan spots Clay across the way. Now he has two friends with him and he is leaning to talk to them out of the side of his mouth, his gaze locked on Evan.

“Not as lame as the roller skates,” the nerdy friend says. “Real useful for all their extensive land travel. Like: ‘There goes that highly mobile axolotl!’”

Clay and his buddies knife through the crowd, heading Evan’s way.

Evan thinks, Here we go.

He rises, moving quickly in the opposite direction, toward the scattering of trailers he noted on the east side of the carnival.

The crowd thins out as he nears the park’s periphery. The area is unlit, though the glow of the rides follows him. He hears shuffling footsteps behind him, quickening.

“Ole boy looks homeless,” one of the other guys says.

“And scared,” Clay’s voice pipes in. “Go hand in hand, Franky.”

Evan takes a hard right around a corner, heading up a dark alley hemmed in by trailers on either side. The last in line are parked tightly perpendicular against the side of a barn, forming a makeshift cul-de-sac.

Precisely what he is seeking. There are three of them and one of him. He can guard his back here, the dead end horseshoeing him. And the position gives him three walls to shove off for leverage, shatter noses against, bounce heads off.

These boys, they think they’ve cornered him alone.

But that means they have to be alone with him.

As he heads into the cul-de-sac, the light of the Ferris wheel spills across his shoulders, laying his shadow clear on the ground before him. He can see the three kids’ shadows as well, sweeping around the corner, stretching along the sides of the trailers. He gauges distance.

“Ole boy took a wrong turn,” Franky’s voice says. “Whatja think, Dale? Think he needs a escort outta here?”

Laughter.

“You ran the wrong way, m’man,” Clay says. “’S what happens when you run scared.”

Franky again: “You scared, ole boy? What you think we’re gonna do to you?”

Dale now: “Definitely scared. Look at him. Gimp leg and everything.”

Evan reaches the dead end and turns.

The three young men spread out, blocking his egress, and sidle closer. Evan takes one step back out of the reach of the light, the shadow of the barn eclipsing him, turning him into a dark outline.

“Scaredy-cat’s done run himself into a trap,” Clay says.

Evan scans them. No guns beneath their shirts, but he can make out the slender outline of an everyday-carry knife in Clay’s front right pocket.

“Look, I’ve been there,” Evan says.

Franky sidles forward a step. “Where’s that?”