Chapter 30: THE MOUND
I started going every day for hours, no matter what. I ran up while lightning shot across the sky and thunder rumbled down, the rocks, dirt, and rail ties slick with huge rain. I ran up it when the sun was burning hot, burning a hole in the back of my head, blinding me (even though I’d purchased some mirrored honky lifeguard shades). I ran up when the clouds were so low I was in fog at the top, sweating in the stillness and stinky humidity. It didn’t matter what was going on with the weather. Nothing else mattered. I ran and ran and ran.
Once, I ran up with that leather pouch of hippy rocks and crystals that dumbass drummer Tito had given me to help me relax (which made me a freak in the eyes of my classmates), and I dumped them in my right hand and whipped the whole handful down the M so they disappeared. (I threw the pouch in the weeds.)
Because I didn’t want to be at home (Andrew had, in fact, started asking Jerri “hard” questions. Jerri had, in fact, begun to scream like hell at Andrew), I’d stay out there for hours every day.
Every now and then an old couple or some family with kids or some tourist from another part of the state would show up and climb while I ran. Always, always, always, whoever was there would say, breathing hard, “I can’t believe you can run up and down this hill. It’s amazing.”
I’d nod, smile, keep running. Meep meep.
Mostly, though, I was alone out there. And that was good. No ghosts to freak me out with their pirate/zombie wailing about the past. Nothing to do but what I loved doing. I felt like an adult. It felt perfect to be out there. So much so, I began protecting the whole afternoon.
Stupid Fast
Geoff Herbach's books
- A Brand New Ending
- A Cast of Killers
- A Change of Heart
- A Christmas Bride
- A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
- A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked
- A Delicate Truth A Novel
- A Different Blue
- A Firing Offense
- A Killing in China Basin
- A Killing in the Hills
- A Matter of Trust
- A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
- A Nearly Perfect Copy
- A Novel Way to Die
- A Perfect Christmas
- A Perfect Square
- A Pound of Flesh
- A Red Sun Also Rises
- A Rural Affair
- A Spear of Summer Grass
- A Story of God and All of Us
- A Summer to Remember
- A Thousand Pardons
- A Time to Heal
- A Toast to the Good Times
- A Touch Mortal
- A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
- A Vision of Loveliness
- A Whisper of Peace
- A Winter Dream
- Abdication A Novel
- Abigail's New Hope
- Above World
- Accidents Happen A Novel
- Ad Nauseam
- Adrenaline
- Aerogrammes and Other Stories
- Aftershock
- Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Can)
- All in Good Time (The Gilded Legacy)
- All the Things You Never Knew
- All You Could Ask For A Novel
- Almost Never A Novel
- Already Gone
- American Elsewhere
- American Tropic
- An Order of Coffee and Tears
- Ancient Echoes
- Angels at the Table_ A Shirley, Goodness
- Alien Cradle
- All That Is
- Angora Alibi A Seaside Knitters Mystery
- Arcadia's Gift
- Are You Mine
- Armageddon
- As Sweet as Honey
- As the Pig Turns
- Ascendants of Ancients Sovereign
- Ash Return of the Beast
- Away
- $200 and a Cadillac
- Back to Blood
- Back To U
- Bad Games
- Balancing Act
- Bare It All
- Beach Lane
- Because of You
- Before I Met You
- Before the Scarlet Dawn
- Before You Go
- Being Henry David
- Bella Summer Takes a Chance
- Beneath a Midnight Moon
- Beside Two Rivers
- Best Kept Secret
- Betrayal of the Dove
- Betrayed
- Between Friends
- Between the Land and the Sea
- Binding Agreement
- Bite Me, Your Grace
- Black Flagged Apex
- Black Flagged Redux
- Black Oil, Red Blood
- Blackberry Winter
- Blackjack
- Blackmail Earth
- Blackmailed by the Italian Billionaire
- Blackout
- Blind Man's Bluff
- Blindside
- Blood & Beauty The Borgias
- Blood Gorgons
- Blood of the Assassin
- Blood Prophecy
- Blood Twist (The Erris Coven Series)
- Blood, Ash, and Bone
- Bolted (Promise Harbor Wedding)