an instant, while Kram and the others dragged him into the van. Jude had intended to be the one who led the ambush, had brought the baseball bat he’d swung so many times he’d worn it smooth. But when Tory lasered that look at him through the car window—a look of disbelief or supplication or fear—Jude stayed planted in the car.
“If you tell Mom, I’ll tell her where you were all night.”
“You know where I was all night? I was at Tory’s house with everyone else, waiting around in the driveway for his party to start. Finally someone comes saying Missy took him to the hospital.”
Jude rubbed his head again and again. Maybe the pussy wouldn’t report it. Maybe he’d be too scared.
“Now no one wants anything to do with me. Everyone heard what you guys did and now I’m a pariah.”
“Oh, come on. Those guys don’t even know who I am, let alone that I’m your brother.”
“They do now,” she said and sank down on the bed beside him, starting to cry.
“Oh, stop it with the baby voice. We were wearing masks, Pru. How do they even know it was us?”
“She saw Dad’s van, Jude. Everyone knows that’s your van.” Tarzan hopped into Prudence’s lap, and she heaved several sobs into his furry neck.
“You shouldn’t be at one of those lame parties anyway, Pru.”
“You should be worrying about yourself. You’re the one who’s in trouble.”
“I’m not in trouble,” he said, nearly whispering. “I’m not in trouble, I’m not in trouble. He’s all right, right? Tory? He’s not going to die or anything?”
He’d put his hand on Prudence’s arm, he realized, and now she yanked it away. They sat side by side on the bed, staring at nothing. His fingertips were warm where they’d touched the downy branch of her forearm, and suddenly he felt his hands clamped over Missy Sherman’s mouth, trapping a scream inside her head. It had rattled like the call of a far-off bird. The belt he had slipped around her ribs wasn’t his but Tory’s, the braided belt that had lain coiled in his drawer since New Year’s Eve, and it had taken little else to enclose her body in the cage of his arms and pin her against the seat—not a second, not a thought. They’d sat peacefully in the emptied car for what must have been three or four minutes, listening together to the muffled cries from the neighboring van, watching it rock. He could have done anything to her. When the guys dumped Tory into the backseat of the car, Jude released the belt into her lap, like a limp snake.
“I liked you better before,” Prudence said. She was saying that a lot these days. “Before you went around beating people up. You were gentler,” she said, “like Teddy.”
Jude looked down at his hands. On the left one, across the inside of his knuckles, was a smear of pink. Lipstick.
He got out of there fast, jumped on his skateboard and headed downhill, gulping the painfully fresh air. He couldn’t stay home and wait for a knock on his door. He’d be arrested. Or he’d be killed—Tory had friends. Either way, he was in over his head.
They’d go on tour. That was what they’d do. Di would catch up with them soon, anyway—they had no choice but to run. They’d get in the van and go find Johnny and they’d get out of here. Once again they’d get the fuck out of Vermont. He didn’t realize how stupid it was to be seen out in the daylight until his board had carried him to Teddy’s. Three rights and a left.
The house was for sale now, and Jude felt strangely remote, as if he’d never been here before. There was Teddy’s window. There was the porch the band used to practice on. That was all. Not a flood of memories—a drought.
Slowly he made his way on hands and knees to the edge of the house and ducked under it. It was set up on cinder blocks, and Teddy and Jude used to hide out under here, smoking, drinking. Sometimes, when Queen Bea lost her keys, they’d crawl under here to push open the trapdoor that led to the kitchen. The crawl space was lower than he remembered—or he was bigger—and it was littered with unremarkable, half-buried treasures. Beer bottles, a child’s plastic shovel, a bottle cap, which bit into his knee. A blank paper card, the size of a lottery ticket, bleached white. Under