bleachers. They usually came to the games and cheered us on. When Mr. Greene was busy talking to Miss Stratton, I slipped away and found a seat beside Emmy.
“Hi, Odie,” she with a bright smile.
“Well, good afternoon, Odie,” Mrs. Frost said. “It’s good to see you. I was afraid Mrs. Brickman might lock you up in the quiet room forever.”
“Just for the night,” I said. “But no supper.”
Mrs. Frost went livid. “I’m going to speak to that woman.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Albert and Mr. Volz managed to slip some food to Mose and me. Have you seen them?”
“Isn’t Albert out there?” She scanned the ball field, then looked back at me. “You haven’t seen him?”
“Not since last night. And not Mr. Volz either.”
“Is it possible they’re just working on some carpentry project together?”
“Maybe,” I said, thinking the project, if that was what had taken them away, was more likely Volz’s still. I hoped it was that rather than some of the darker possibilities the Black Witch was capable of conjuring.
Then I saw Volz making his way among the bleachers. He caught sight of us and came over.
“Good day, Cora,” he said to Mrs. Frost. “Hey there, little Emmy. You’re looking lovely today.”
Emmy smiled and her cheeks dimpled.
“Herman, have you seen Albert?” Mrs. Frost asked.
He shook his head, then checked the field. “What would keep him from playing?” He looked at me. “Have you seen him, Odie?”
“Not since last night.”
“Not good,” Volz said. “Let me see what I can find out. But, Odie, you should get back with the other boys.”
“Can’t he sit with us? Please?” Emmy said.
Volz frowned, but I knew he would give in. Nobody could resist little Emmy. “I’ll take care of it,” he promised.
When Andrew Frost was alive, he’d coached the baseball team and had whipped them into good shape. They had a reputation, and even the lackluster guidance of the current coach, Mr. Freiberg, whose main job was driving the heavy equipment, hadn’t tarnished the efforts of Cora Frost’s late husband. Mose pitched a great game, the fielding was flawless, and we won four to nothing. It would have been fun, except the whole time I was watching for Albert, or for Volz to return with word of Albert. But when the game ended, neither of them had shown.
After the game, and before dinner, we had an hour of rare free time. I lay on my bed in the dorm, reading a magazine, Amazing Stories, which I’d taken from the school library. Everything in Lincoln School library was donated, and I don’t think Miss Jensen, the librarian, ever really checked the donated magazines carefully. I was always finding interesting publications—Argosy, Adventure Comics, Weird Tales—among the Saturday Evening Posts and Ladies’ Home Journals. We weren’t supposed to take anything away from the library, but it was easy to sneak a magazine out under my shirt.
During the school year, the younger boys were in one dormitory and the older boys in another. But in the summer, when so many of the students had gone home, all the boys were herded into a single dorm. While I read, one of the younger kids was sitting alone on his bunk not far from mine, staring at nothing, looking sad and lost, which wasn’t unusual, especially among the newer kids. His name was Billy Red Sleeve. He was Northern Cheyenne from somewhere way west in Nebraska. He’d come to Lincoln School from another Indian school, one in Sisseton that was run by Catholics. We all knew about the Sisseton school. Eddie Wilson, a Sioux kid from Cheyenne River, had cousins who’d been sent to Sisseton. He told us stories his cousins had told him, about beatings worse than anything we got at Lincoln, about nuns and priests who came into the dorms at night and took kids from their beds and made them do unspeakable things. At Lincoln School, there were a couple of staff we all knew sometimes did things to kids, most notable among them Vincent DiMarco, but we did our best to wise up new kids fast, so that they could stay out of harm’s way. Those who came from other schools, like Billy, wouldn’t talk about what had been done to them, but you saw it in their eyes, in the frightened way they regarded everyone and everything, and you felt it every time you tried to reach out to them and met that invisible wall they’d erected in the desperate hope of protecting themselves.
I was deep