get all her fingers on it (and if it had been an object, she would have held it), but the picture was too small. Once her fingers were on it she couldn’t even see it anymore. Except she could. She saw it very well.
Blue eyes, like Cam Knowles’s in ’Round Here. You couldn’t tell from the picture, but they were that same deep shade. She knew.
Right-handed, like me. But left-handed like me, too. It was the left hand that knew what pitch was coming next, fastball or curveb—
Abra gave a little gasp. The baseball boy had known things.
The baseball boy really had been like her.
Yes, that’s right. That’s why they took him.
She closed her eyes and saw his face. Bradley Trevor. Brad, to his friends. The baseball boy. Sometimes he turned his cap around because that way it was a rally cap. His father was a farmer. His mother cooked pies and sold them at a local restaurant, also at the family farmstand. When his big brother went away to college, Brad took all his AC/DC discs. He and his best friend, Al, especially liked the song “Big Balls.” They’d sit on Brad’s bed and sing it together and laugh and laugh.
He walked through the corn and a man was waiting for him. Brad thought he was a nice man, one of the good guys, because the man—
“Barry,” Abra whispered in a low voice. Behind her closed lids, her eyes moved rapidly back and forth like those of a sleeper in the grip of a vivid dream. “His name was Barry the Chunk. He fooled you, Brad. Didn’t he?”
But not just Barry. If it had been just him, Brad might have known. It had to be all of the Flashlight People working together, sending the same thought: that it would be okay to get into Barry the Chunk’s truck or camper-van or whatever it was, because Barry was good. One of the good guys. A friend.
And they took him . . .
Abra went deeper. She didn’t bother with what Brad had seen because he hadn’t seen anything but a gray rug. He was tied up with tape and lying facedown on the floor of whatever Barry the Chunk was driving. That was okay, though. Now that she was tuned in, she could see wider than him. She could see—
His glove. A Wilson baseball glove. And Barry the Chunk—
Then that part flew away. It might swoop back or it might not.
It was night. She could smell manure. There was a factory. Some kind of
(it’s busted )
factory. There was a whole line of vehicles going there, some small, most big, a couple of them enormous. The headlights were off in case someone was looking, but there was a three-quarters moon in the sky. Enough light to see by. They went down a potholed and bumpy tar road, they went past a water tower, they went past a shed with a broken roof, they went through a rusty gate that was standing open, they went past a sign. It went by so fast she couldn’t read it. Then the factory. A busted factory with busted smokestacks and busted windows. There was another sign and thanks to the moonlight this one she could read: NO TRESPASSING BY ORDER OF THE CANTON COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPT.
They were going around the back, and when they got there they were going to hurt Brad the baseball boy and go on hurting him until he was dead. Abra didn’t want to see that part so she made everything go backwards. That was a little hard, like opening a jar with a really tight cap, but she could do it. When she got back where she wanted, she let go.
Barry the Chunk liked that glove because it reminded him of when he was a little boy. That’s why he tried it on. Tried it on and smelled the oil Brad used to keep it from getting stiff and bopped his fist in the pocket a few ti—
But now things were reeling forward and she forgot about Brad’s baseball glove again.
Water tower. Shed with broken roof. Rusty gate. And then the first sign. What did it say?
Nope. Still too quick, even with the moonlight. She rewound again (now beads of sweat were standing out on her forehead) and let go. Water tower. Shed with broken roof. Get ready, here it comes. Rusty gate. Then the sign. This time she could read it, although she wasn’t sure she understood it.