* *
Jason Montgomery jammed the shovel into the ground, jumped on it, then pulled on the handle until the clod of earth came loose. He repeated the process again and again, then stopped to inspect his work.
There was a square, four feet on a side, from which he’d stripped the topsoil. He’d been working for almost an hour—ever since he’d gotten home from his sister’s funeral. So far, no one had come out to tell him to stop.
Maybe today, no one would.
If it happened that way—and Jason thought the chances were pretty good—then he would have his fort done by suppertime. It would be four feet deep and covered over with some planks he’d found behind the garage last week. His father had said they were going to be used for a chicken coop, but Jason had decided that since they had no chickens, he might as well use them for the roof of his fort. Besides, all he had to do was lay them on the ground side by side. They wouldn’t even have to be nailed. The work was all in the digging. He wished Bandy Corliss were there to help him, but he hadn’t even been allowed to call Randy today, so now he had to build the fort all by himself.
He picked up the shovel once more and plunged it deep into the softer earth that lay beneath the surface. He felt the shovel hit something and pushed harder. It gave a little, then a lot. Putting the shovel aside, he knelt down in the dirt and began digging at the loose soil with his bare hands.
A moment later he hit the broken bottle.
It had been whole when the shovel struck it, but now its sharp edges slashed at him, cutting deep into the index finger on his left hand. Reflexively, Jason jerked his hand out of the dirt and stuck the finger in his mouth. He sucked hard, tasting the sweet saltiness of the blood, then spat onto the ground.
He inspected his finger carefully. Blood was oozing thickly from the cut, running down his hand, then dripping slowly onto the pile of loose dirt. He squeezed the finger, remembering someone once telling him that you had to make a cut bleed a lot to keep it from getting infected.
When the bleeding slowed a minute later, he inspected the cut. It was about a half-inch long and looked deep. He decided he’d better go wash his hand.
He slipped through the kitchen and dining room, avoiding the living room where he knew his parents were sitting. Even though he didn’t really miss his little sister, he knew they were very upset, and he didn’t want to bother them. He could take care of the cut himself, or, if he decided he couldn’t, he could get his grandmother to help him.
He went upstairs to the bathroom and began washing his hands. The dirt and already-clotting blood swirled down the drain. Once more Jason squeezed at the finger.
This time it didn’t bleed.
Puzzled, Jason held his hand up to the light and inspected it.
He couldn’t find the cut.
He stared at his finger, and in a moment found the faintest tracing of a scar where the injury had been.
His brow furrowed into a curious scowl as he tried to figure out what had happened.
It had bled a lot.
Now there was nothing.
Did cuts heal that fast? In the past when he’d skinned his knee or something, the Band-Aid always had to stay on for a couple of days.
Of course, who knew what happened under the Band-Aid? His mother had never let him look.
Maybe all cuts healed this fast.
Or maybe the cut hadn’t been as bad as he’d thought.
He tried to remember how much it had hurt and couldn’t remember it having hurt much at all. Not like when he skinned his knees or his elbows, when it stung for a couple of seconds. With the cut, he’d hardly felt anything. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the blood, he probably wouldn’t even have noticed it.
He turned off the water, dried his hands, then went back downstairs and outside. He looked at the ground where all the blood had dripped. There didn’t seem to be much left. And then, from next door, he heard a voice calling him, and looked up to see Joey Connors waving to him.
“Hey, Jason,” Joey was saying, “you wanna come over and see my puppies?”
“Puppies?” Jason repeated, his eyes widening with eagerness, the cut finger forgotten. “You