his mom was in the shower and let in a man who then—
But this was Salvation City, where people kept guns in their homes but did not always lock their doors.
“Hey, didn’t you hear me ring?”
Rather than lie Cole said simply, “Hey, dude, what’s up?”
“I was supposed to come by and get some help with this sermon I been working on. I know it’s way early.”
“You ride your bike over?”
“Yeah. Actually, I been riding around since light.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Just checking things out. Lotta people didn’t sleep last night, you know. They’re way freaked out.”
“What about your house?”
“I guess they’re okay.”
Like Cole, Clem was an only child. He lived with his mother and his grandmother in what had once been the town’s little red schoolhouse. His great-grandparents had been pupils there. Clem’s father had died in the Iraq war a few months before Clem was born. Clem kept his father’s army medals in a special case on his bedroom wall. He kissed the case every night before he went to bed. The Harleys also had a flu orphan living with them, an eight-year-old retarded girl named Olettra who refused to leave the house, fighting like a wild animal if you tried to make her. Everyone thought this was because she was too disabled to grasp the real reason her parents were no longer around and was scared that the monster that had got them could also get her.
Clem said, “I know some people are doing like PW said and staying home, but there’s a pretty big crowd at the church. I figure he’ll be going over there this morning. I don’t know if he’ll even have time for me.”
Cole explained that PW was not up yet. Clem nodded thoughtfully and said, “That pain just won’t let up on him, will it.”
Cole told him about the two attacks of the night before. Clem listened, frowning. Then he said, “I don’t know that drinking’s such a good idea.”
“But it really helps,” said Cole.
“In the short run, maybe. In the long run, it may turn out to be worse than the disease.”
It was this kind of thing that could make Clem seem older than he was. He often talked in this grown-up, authoritative way. Probably it had to do with the fact that his mother had never remarried and he’d always been the man of the house. A serious, level-headed, slow-if-ever-to-anger boy, precociously handy, and, like the father he never knew, a crack shot. Everyone admired him for the way he took care of his women. In general, he was more admired than liked, Cole thought. But he himself had always liked Clem, even though they didn’t have much to say to each other.
He was tall for his age, but that was his only good feature. He was pear-shaped, his skin and hair were drab, he was prone to sties and chapped lips and cold sores. Huge, blocky hands and feet made him look clumsy, though he was not—just as a sharp nose and black-button eyes made him look inquisitive, which he also was not. (In turn, his lack of curiosity often made him seem less smart than he was.)
He had a habit, sometimes irritating to Cole, of hesitating before he said anything, as if English weren’t his first language. Tracy, on the other hand, called it the mark of wisdom. (“He does like they say: Think before you speak.”)
The boys in their church were like other boys, meaning obsessed with sex. They might not have been as gross as secular kids, but they told dirty jokes and used words like boner and tits and hump and blow job. They’d huddle about a girl they thought was hot and what they’d do to her, even though they’d all pledged to stay virgins until they got married. It pained a lot of them (and a lot of girls, too) to think that Christ could return too soon, meaning before they got their chance to have sex. Meanwhile they could dream, and, at least when there were no grown-ups around, they could talk. Most would rather talk about sex than just about anything else. Except Clem. Not that he’d criticize others for talking, or leave the room when they did. He’d just sit there with a blank look on his face, as if everyone else were speaking a foreign tongue, or as if whatever they were talking about did not, and would not ever, have anything to do with him. He didn’t care—or at least