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The Goddam Bridge.
the shed,
But a thread is easy to break. So not a thread but a chain. A strong one. And I was the kid with the shackle clamped around his wrist.
“Wasn’t much of a blessing for us, Charlie, was it?”
I wish I had looked longer, but I don’t blame myself. You never know where the trapdoors are in your life, do you?
“There’s always someone at fault,” Dad said. “Which is not the same as blame.”
You have to keep in mind that high school kids—no matter how big the boys, no matter how beautiful the girls—are still mostly children inside.
I couldn’t tell how old Mr. Bowditch was, but pretty old.
“Glad you came. Guess you heard the old girl howling.”
“Just give them to me. Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger. Don’t suppose you know who said that, do you? They teach you nothing these days.”
Mr. Bowditch’s face said he was there. He must have been in excruciating pain, but right then all he could think about—all that he cared about—was his dog.
“What a fucking mess.”
“You’d do that? Can I trust you to do that?”
turned to go and then he spoke again, but I don’t think it was to me. “A brave man helps. A coward just gives presents.”
From behind the door came a scratching, followed by a weird chittering noise that stood up the hair on the back of my neck. Not an animal sound. I’d never
“If I say yes, will I be doing you a favor?”
Goddam doctors with their goddam bad news. Anything else?”
“A grateful alcoholic doesn’t get drunk. That’s what they say.”
So why don’t we say I’m trying to pay it forward, and leave it at that?”
“What did you find?” “Almost nothing, which I would have said was impossible in this day and age.”
“You’re a good kid, Charlie. Not sure what I did to deserve you.”
“Something about presents. You said a brave man helps but a coward gives presents.”
“Time is the water, Charlie. Life is just the bridge it flows under.”
A hundred and seventy-five feet
well of the worlds and
field of gorgeous red flowers. Poppies, I think, but with a smell like cinnamon. I
a small house… a cottage,
gold and fled. Like Jack scurrying down the beanstalk. Only he was just a boy. I should have done better. If you go to that other world, where two moons rise in the sky at night and there’s no constellation the astronomers of earth have ever seen, you need to know certain things, so listen to me closely. The air of our world is fatal to the creatures of theirs, except I guess for the bats. I once brought back a rabbit as an experiment. It died quickly. But the air of theirs is not fatal to us. It is invigorating, in fact. The city was once a grand place but now it’s perilous, especially at
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huge sundial that must be
The sky was gray but the field was bright red. Poppies spread in a gorgeous blanket stretching left and right as far as I could see. A path led through the flowers toward a road. On the far side of the road more poppies ran maybe a mile to thick woods, making
tidy little cottage
like cocoa and vanilla and cherries.
“You told me Hana is a giant and the night soldiers are the undead.”
It was harder and harder not to think of Lilimar as a living entity, semi-sentient and determined not to let us go.
There’s a dark well in everyone, I think, and it never goes dry. But you drink from it at your peril. That water is poison.
blood-red poppies, the only flowers that had continued to grow during the gray years,
