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He started down the hill toward his East End neighborhood.

  To keep himself company during the long, dark walk by the side of Parkway Road, he fished his cell out of his pocket and called Alicia.

  She picked up on the first ring. “Oh, so you finally called? I thought you were getting too big in your britches for the likes of li’l ole me, motherfucker. Mr. Student Director!”

  They both laughed. It was good to hear her voice. They had no classes together this year, and somehow they were always missing each other in the mornings. Alicia could just as easily walk to school from her house, so she wasn’t often at the bus stop. Hers was the last stop before Summitville High’s front doors.

  Plus, Truman knew how tough it was for her to get ready in the morning—she had to share a single bathroom with a mom, dad, and two little sisters, all of whom needed to get out before 8:00 a.m.

  “Oh hush,” Truman said as a pair of headlights rose up behind him, as though he were being spotlighted. He heard the familiar bass thrum of a muffler. A Trans Am whizzed by him. Although he couldn’t make out any faces in the car, he knew it contained Stacy and her mystery man.

  “Do you know Stacy Timmons?” Truman asked.

  “White bitch? From the rich part of town?”

  Truman laughed. “That’s what I thought too. Come to find out she lives just down the street from me in East End. She’s poor white trash—like me.”

  Alicia snorted. “Well, she could have fooled me. Why you askin’ about her?”

  “I don’t know. She’s in Harvey—plays the young ingénue part. I just saw her go by.”

  “Where you at?”

  “Walking home from rehearsal. On Parkway.”

  “You be careful. There’s no sidewalk on that road, and folks go way too fast.”

  The mention of folks going way too fast reminded Truman of the Trans Am. What he was about to say wasn’t provable or maybe even true, but he blurted his supposition out to Alicia, who loved gossip more than anyone he knew. “I saw her go by in a Trans Am with some older man.” He frosted the cake with even more made-up details. “Much older. Like, thirty. It just didn’t seem like the girl I was getting to know. You know?”

  “I don’t know, Tru. I don’t know the bitch.” Alicia paused, and he could hear the crunch of something, maybe potato chips, as she chewed. “What do you care if she has a daddy figure in her life? I know you ain’t jealous.” Alicia let loose a high-pitched twitter.

  Truman explained how he saw her get in the car with the guy—how she looked guilty.

  “Well, we all have our little secrets, don’t we?”

  Long ago, Truman had confided in Alicia about his “boyfriend,” Kirk Samson, the quarterback at Summitville High, a young man so deep in the closet he probably would have committed suicide if his secret got out. This was all before Truman had met—and begun a relationship that lasted through the spring of freshman year and the summer following—with Alicia’s brother, Darrell. What a pair they’d made, truly the long and short of any romance!

  “I guess,” Truman said. “Although neither of us seem to have any lately.”

  “Are you asking?”

  “No. It’s none of my business.”

  “You’re right. We’ve both become kind of boring. I keep waiting for senior year to heat up so I can have some secrets, like a rich white boyfriend.”

  “You and me both, sister!”

  They laughed.

  Alicia continued, “What’s also none of your business is what this Stacy girl is up to on her own time.”

  “Are you telling me to keep my nose out of other people’s business? Queen of Gossip at Summitville High?”

  “Honey, you the only queen I know at our school.”

  “Hush, girl.”

  They teased each other for a while more, long enough for Truman to get near his own house. They eventually hung up, with Alicia promising to meet Truman in the morning for breakfast at the Elite Diner. Part of the diner’s charm, for both of them, was that their breakfasts there would be free, compliments of Patsy.

  “Oh… and Alicia?”

  “Yes?”

  “Give Darrell my love.”

  Alicia chuckled. “I will, but I hate to break it to you. He’s got a boyfriend, another B-baller. Irish guy from the south side of Chicago named Keith. He’s hot.”

  “Oh, I know all about Mr. Keith,” Truman said. “Girl, the guy is all over your brother’s Facebook page. I’m happy for him.”

  “Sure you are. Listen, I gotta run. See you in the morning!”

  Truman stepped up onto his front porch. Odd Thomas must have heard him because he began scratching at the front door. Truman opened it and let the dog out into the front yard. Truman sat on the stoop as Odd made a circuit of the yard, sniffing the front hedge, nose to the ground by the gravel driveway, and finally squatting to pee almost out of view. He called the dog back, and the two of them went inside.

  As he made himself a sandwich, he thought of Alicia’s comment, “Sure you are.”

  He knew Alicia supposed Truman was simply pining away for Darrell.

  In truth, Truman thought, settling down on the couch with his chipped-ham sandwich and Fresca, he was pining for a boy—just not Darrell.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, envisioning the ice-blue eyes, jet-black curls, and broad shoulders of Mike Stewart.

  Then Odd Thomas jumped onto the couch beside him and snatched the sandwich right off the paper plate in his lap.

  Chapter 7

  TRUMAN STIRRED, rolling over and shifting to move his cramped legs away from Odd Thomas. What had awakened him? Had he heard rain tapping against his window? No. That couldn’t be. Just before heading to his room earlier, he’d taken Odd out for his final walk, and Truman recalled the night sky was brilliant with stars, completely clear. He could even make out the Big Dipper.

  The tapping sounded again, and this time, to him, it sounded more like sleet than rain. He sat up in bed, more awake, more alert. Odd Thomas lifted his head to peer up at him from the foot of the bed. He made a snorting sound, then laid his head back down and picked up his snores right where he’d left off.

  Truman glanced over at his window, expecting to see it rain-smeared. Instead, a dark figure stood just outside. Truman let out a little gasp, moved back toward his headboard, and then slowly leaned closer to get a better look.

  Stacy Timmons rapped again on the window with her fingernails.

  Truman picked up his phone off the pile of books he used as a makeshift nightstand and checked the time. It was just past 2:00 a.m.

  What the hell?

  He got up from bed and, rubbing his eyes, approached the bedroom window wearing only his boxers.

  He opened the window and leaned out a little. Cold night air rushed in, raising goose bumps. “What are you doing here?” he asked, the last vestiges of deep, middle-of-the-night sleep still clinging to his voice.

  “Can I come in?” Stacy managed to get out. She was crying. “Please.”

  “What’s wrong?” Truman asked.

  “Can I just come the fuck in, Truman?”

  Truman wanted to ask more questions. He barely knew the girl, after all. “Gimme a sec,” he said, still sleepy. He closed the window because the air coming in wasn’t just chilly, it was cold, maybe even the first harbinger of winter. He found the jeans he’d worn earlier on the bedroom floor and slid into them. There was a Cher T-shirt on the ladder-back chair by his bedroom door, and he pulled that over his head.

  Barefoot, he padded to the front door, casting glances over his shoulder in the gray semidark, expecting Patsy to throw open her own bedroom door at any moment. The last thing she’d expect to see, Truman thought, bemused, was her very out and proud gay son sneaking a girl into the house in the middle of the night.

  He opened the front door, shoulders hunching up and wincing as it creaked, to find Stacy standing outside. She had her arms crossed around herself, shivering.

  “Come on in.” Truma
n opened the door a little wider and stepped back. “Before you freeze to death. What’s going on?”

  She followed without answering. He led her toward his bedroom after putting a finger to his lips to indicate she should keep quiet—at least until they got to his room.

  He switched on the little sock monkey night-light he’d had since he was five, and the room filled with a warm, dim glow. Odd Thomas sat up and stared at Stacy, panting.

  “Aw, poor puppy.” Stacy scratched Odd behind his ears. “You’re so ugly, you’re cute.”

  “People have said the same thing about me.”

  “Oh, they have not. You’re gorgeous. In your own way.” Stacy moved the socks, black with pink polka dots, off the ladder-back chair and plopped down in it heavily, as though carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. She stared down at the floor for a long time, her dark hair a curtain hiding her face, not saying anything. Truman was just about to break the silence by asking to what did he owe the pleasure of this call, or at least repeating his earlier question about what was wrong.

  Just as he opened his mouth to speak, Stacy’s head fell more, down to her open palms. Her shoulders trembled with sobs. This was no casual cry but genuine grief, full-on, nose-running weeping.

  Odd Thomas beat him to the act of showing concern. He got down with some difficulty from the bed, went over to Stacy, and laid his head in her lap. She removed one hand from her face to pet the dog.

  Truman followed suit. He edged close to Stacy and placed an awkward hand on her shoulder. In a soft voice, he asked, “What’s the matter? You can tell me.”

  She looked up at him then with wondering, puffy eyes. Her face was wet. Truman reached over her to grab a tissue from the box on his dresser. “Can I?”

  He handed her the tissue and then squatted down beside her. “Of course you can.”

  “I mean, can I really trust you?” She looked away, then back. “Most kids at school love nothing more than spreading rumors and gossiping. And Facebook and Twitter help them with it!”

  Ah, so she does have secrets. And I bet, ten to one, they have to do with the man in the Trans Am.

  He felt a pang of guilt over gossiping earlier about Stacy with Alicia. He was better than that, wasn’t he? “Listen, Stacy, anything you tell me goes no further than this room. That’s a promise.”

  “Good.” She hiccupped out a final little sob, blew her nose, and wiped impatiently at her eyes. “I somehow just know I can trust you. You’re not the same as most of the kids at school. You’re more mature than most of them, especially the boys. You’re an old soul, you know?”

  Truman didn’t know. So he just said, “You can trust me. Consider this room the confessional. And I’m as gay as any priest, Lord knows. Now tell me—what’s going on?” Truman eyed the closed door. He expected his mom to burst into the room at any minute.

  Stacy paused for a long time. And then she blurted out some of the worst news a girl in high school could have. “I’m pregnant.”

  The words hung in the air for a moment, like something unreal or out of a bad teenage soap opera.

  “What?” Truman asked. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I did a home pregnancy test and everything.” She sniffed. “Besides, I haven’t had a period in three months. And I never miss.”

  Truman moved to his bed and plopped down on it. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he tried, “What can I do?”

  “Oh, Truman, I wish there was something you could do. But honestly, tonight I just need someone to talk to. Can you, maybe, I don’t know, listen?”

  Truman nodded. He patted the bed next to him, and Stacy came to sit beside him. After a moment she put her head on his shoulder and started talking. “At the beginning of the summer, I met this guy, Ryan, out at the lake?”

  Truman nodded. Lake Keller was on the outskirts of town. It was really just an old quarry that had filled in with green-brown water, but it was a place where the popular kids and the bad kids came together to drink, smoke weed, and make out.

  Truman had never been.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “He was older than me. Twenty-five, a real bad boy with his own car—an old Trans Am! He was sexy as hell, with buzzed hair, a beard, lots of tattoos. I knew I shouldn’t go near him, but he drew me like, like—” Stacy groped for the right image.

  “Like a moth to a flame?” Truman filled in.

  “Right!” Stacy stared ahead for a long moment, and Truman imagined her visualizing this Ryan person. He visualized himself and found the image made him feel a little aroused. He tried to suppress the feeling, throwing a black screen over that mental picture of a muscular man with tattoos and a beard, oozing danger and raw sex. A bad boy. Bad boys were always so intoxicating, despite, or maybe because of, their warning labels. He put the bad-boy chatter out of his head. He needed to be present for Stacy right now.

  “He wasn’t anyone I ever thought I could see myself with, Truman. I hang out with the National Honor Society kids and my girls from cheerleading. The wildest we get is maybe sharing a beer somebody stole from their parents’ fridge.” She lifted her head a little to glance at him. “Until Ryan, I was a virgin.”

  “Really?” Truman asked, maybe sounding a little too surprised, he feared. The idea that someone could reach the ripe old age of seventeen or eighteen with his or her virginity still intact was a surprise, though. Truman had lost that distinction himself when he was only fourteen, to Kirk Samson. He shook his head, remembering those passionate—and very, very secret—nights down on the banks of the Ohio, just below this very house.

  And Stacy was so pretty! He couldn’t fathom why she’d choose to “save herself.” What was the point of that? Where was the fun? Truman mentally shrugged. He guessed not everyone grew up with such a freewheeling and open mom as Patsy. Sexuality had always just been one more topic for conversation around their house, neither good nor bad, just a literal fact of life.

  “Yes, really, Truman,” Stacy said, sniffing a little. “I was a good girl. I planned on saving it for marriage.”

  Truman cocked his head.

  “Why?”

  “You’re not Catholic, are you?”

  “Good Lord, no. We’re not anything.” Truman had actually been to a church about three times in his whole life, all at the behest of his grandma, who lived in Pittsburgh and seldom spoke to Patsy. Patsy, Truman knew, had been raised Methodist. But she considered herself nothing at all these days. And she’d brought him up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion.

  “If you were Catholic, maybe you’d get why it was important to me to save it for my husband.” Stacy toyed with a thread that had come loose from Truman’s quilt. “I always believed that my first time would be with someone special, even if I didn’t quite make it to marriage.” She smiled sadly.

  “Okay…,” Truman said, not sure he understood. He’d known a few Catholics, male and female, in his day. And honey, none of them were saving it for marriage!

  “Anyway,” Stacy said as she let herself fall backward on the bed. “Whatever. None of that matters now, because here I am, seventeen and knocked up.” She stared up at the ceiling. “This wasn’t exactly what I had planned, you know? My dreams were all about finishing school, going to college, maybe Kent State or OU, getting out of here, anyway. I’d get a degree in education, teach elementary school. Somewhere through all that, I’d meet a nice guy, a blond, straight-arrow type who was also a nice Catholic boy, and we’d fall in love, have a long courtship, and finally get married. We’d live in a split-level and have a bunch of kids, a Labrador retriever, an SUV, and a compact car.”

  “Oh God,” Truman said. “I’m sorry, but that sounds like the most boring life ever.” For everything she’d said, he’d imagined almost the opposite for himself. He pictured himself moving to a big city, New York, LA, or Chicago, working to sustain his creative dreams, living somewhere edgy and free, where he could be “gender-fluid,” as he liked to think of himself, an
d no one giving even a single fuck about it.

  “To you, maybe. But it was my dream.” She drew in deeply, let the breath out in a long, quivering sigh. “And then I met Ryan. And it all went to hell. Or heaven. I guess it depends on your perspective. I never thought a hot guy could make me completely lose my mind. Oh my God, Truman, he swept me right off my feet.” She bit her lip as though considering something. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I gave it up to him the very night I met him—right in the back seat of that damn Trans Am of his.” The ghost of a smile, irrepressible, whispered across her features. “Do you think I’m terrible?”

  “No, no, of course not. We’ve all got our inner sluts.” Oh God, that probably wasn’t exactly the most comforting thing to say!

  Truman expected tears of guilt, shame, and regret. “It was awesome!” She laughed. “He was—is—just so hot. A real man. I couldn’t resist. Not then and not a thousand times more the rest of the summer.”

  “A thousand?” Truman gulped, feeling queasily jealous—and not of Ryan.

  “At least,” Stacy said. “Let’s just say I had quite an education over the summer.” She rubbed her tummy. “But, as I knew in the back of my head, the tuition for that education was high.” She was quiet, and Truman had the wisdom not to cut in. He had to resist the urge to ask impertinent questions about positions and the size of Ryan’s cock, even if he was dying to know. What kind of friend would ask such questions, especially at a time like this? Now if it was Alicia lying there next to him—no problem.

  Stacy caught his gaze and held it. Her eyes were growing shiny again with tears. “What am I going to do?” Her voice came out all whispery and quivering.

  “Have you told him?” Truman asked. What was the protocol here, anyway? Shouldn’t Ryan offer to marry her and make an honest woman of her? Or at least pay for an abortion, if that was what Stacy thought best? Although Truman believed Stacy had every right to go for that choice—and at her tender age, it made perfect sense—he couldn’t help but think of Patsy with a rush of gratitude that she hadn’t opted for that same choice eighteen years ago.