from those present when the scarred front door wheezed shut. Nobody ever went out in the parking lot with Ace Merrill.
Nobody, that is, but me.
Betsy Malenfant was his girl, the prettiest girl in Castle Rock, I guess. I don’t think she was terrifically bright, but that didn’t matter when you got a look at her. She had the most flawless complexion I had ever seen, and it didn’t come out of a cosmetic bottle, either. Hair as black as coal, dark eyes, generous mouth, a body that just wouldn’t quit—and she didn’t mind showing it off. Who was going to drag her out back and try to stoke her locomotive while Ace was around? Nobody sane, that’s who.
I fell hard for her. Not like the girl and not like Nona, even though Betsy did look like a younger version of her, but it was just as desperate and just as serious in its way. If you’ve ever had the worst case of puppy love going around, you know how I felt. She was seventeen, two years older than I.
I started going down there more and more often, even nights when Billy wasn’t on, just to catch a glimpse of her. I felt like a birdwatcher, except it was a desperate kind of game for me. I’d go back home, lie to the Hollises about where I’d been, and climb up to my room. I’d write long, passionate letters to her, telling her everything I’d like to do to her, and then tear them up. Study halls at school I’d dream about asking her to marry me so we could run away to Mexico together.
She must have tumbled to what was happening, and it must have flattered her a little, because she was nice to me when Ace wasn’t around. She’d come over and talk to me, let me buy her a Coke, sit on a stool, and kind of rub her leg against mine. It drove me crazy.
One night in early November I was just mooning around, shooting a little pool with Bill, waiting for her to come in. The place was deserted because it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, and a lonesome wind was snuffling around outside, threatening winter.
“You better lay off,” Bill said, shooting the nine straight into the comer.
“Lay off what?”
“You know.”
“No I don’t.” I scratched and Billy added a ball to the table. He ran six and while he was running them I went over to put a dime in the juke.
“Betsy Malenfant.” He lined up the one carefully and sent it walking up the rail. “Charlie Hogan was telling Ace about the way you been sniffing around her. Charlie thought it was really funny, her being older and all, but Ace wasn’t laughing. ”
“She’s nothing to me,” I said through paper lips.
“She better not be,” Bill said, and then a couple of guys came in and he went over to the counter and gave them a cue ball.
Ace came in around nine and he was alone. He’d never taken any notice of me before, and I’d just about forgotten what Billy said. When you’re invisible you get to thinking you’re invulnerable. I was playing pinball and I was pretty involved. I didn’t even notice the place get quiet as people stopped bowling or shooting pool. The next thing I knew, somebody had thrown me right across the pinball machine. I landed on the floor in a heap. I got up feeling scared and sick. He had tilted the machine, wiping out my three replays. He was standing there and looking at me with not a strand of hair out of place, his garrison jacket half unzipped.
“You stop messing around,” he said softly, “or I’m going to change your face.”
He went out. Everybody was looking at me and I wanted to sink right down through the floor until I saw there was a kind of grudging admiration on most of their faces. So I brushed myself off, unconcerned, and put another dime in the pinball machine. The TILT light went out. A couple of guys came over and clapped me on the back before they went out, not saying anything.
At eleven, when the place closed, Billy offered me a ride home.
“You’re going to take a fall if you don’t watch out.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said.
He didn’t answer.
Two or three nights later Betsy came in by herself around seven. There was one other kid there, this weird little four-eyes named Vern Tessio, who flunked out of