4
By the time Richard returned from the dining room, Jack, freshly showered and with his wet hair adhering to his scalp, was idly turning over books at Richard's desk. Jack was wondering, as Richard swung through the door carrying a grease-stained paper napkin clearly wrapped around a substantial quantity of food, whether the conversation to come might be easier if the books on the desk were The Lord of the Rings and Watership Down instead of Organic Chemistry and Mathematical Puzzles.
'What was lunch?' Jack asked.
'You got lucky. Southern fried chicken - one of the few things they serve here that don't make you sorry for the animal who died to become part of the food chain.' He handed the greasy napkin over to Jack. Four thick, richly battered sections of chicken sent up an aroma of almost unbelievable goodness and density. Jack waded in.
'How long have you been eating as though you oinked?' Richard pushed his glasses up on his nose and sat down on his narrow bed. Beneath his tweed jacket he wore a patterned brown V-neck sweater, the bottom of which had been tucked into the waistband of his trousers.
Jack had an uneasy moment, wondering if it were really possible to talk about the Territories with someone so tightly buttoned that he tucked his sweaters beneath his belts.
'The last time I ate,' he said mildly, 'was yesterday, around noon. I'm a little hungry, Richard. Thanks for bringing me the chicken. It's great. It's the best chicken I ever ate. You're a great guy, risking expulsion like this.'
'You think that's a joke, do you?' Richard yanked at the sweater, frowning. 'If anybody finds you in here, I probably will get expelled. So don't get too funny. We have to figure out how we're going to get you back to New Hampshire.'
Silence then, for a moment: an appraising look from Jack, a stern look from Richard.
'I know you want me to explain what I'm doing, Richard,' Jack said around a mouthful of chicken, 'and believe me, it's not going to be easy.'
'You don't look the same, you know,' Richard said. 'You look . . . older. But that's not all. You're changed.'
'I know I've changed. You'd be a little different, too, if you'd been with me since September.' Jack smiled, looked at scowling Richard in his good-boy clothes, and knew that he would never be able to tell Richard about his father. He simply was not capable of that. If events did it for him, so be it; but he himself did not possess the assassin's heart required for that particular disclosure.
His friend continued to frown at Jack, clearly waiting for the story to begin.
Perhaps to stall the moment when he would have to try to convince Rational Richard of the unbelievable, Jack asked, 'Is the kid in the next room quitting school? I saw his suitcases on his bed from outside.'
'Well, yes, that's interesting,' Richard said. 'I mean, interesting in the light of what you said. He is leaving - in fact, he's already gone. Someone is supposed to come for his things, I guess. God knows what kind of a fairy tale you'll make of this, but the kid next door was Reuel Gardener. The son of that preacher who ran that home you claim you escaped from.' Richard ignored Jack's sudden fit of coughing. 'In most senses, I should say, Reuel was anything but the normal kid next door, and probably nobody here was too sorry to see him go. Just when the story came out about kids dying at that place his father ran, he got a telegram ordering him to leave Thayer.'
Jack had gotten down the wad of chicken that had tried to choke him. 'Sunlight Gardener's son? That guy had a son? And he was here?'
'He came at the start of the term,' Richard said simply. 'That's what I was trying to tell you before.'
Suddenly Thayer School was menacing to Jack in a way that Richard could not begin to comprehend. 'What was he like?'
'A sadist,' Richard said. 'Sometimes I heard really peculiar noises coming out of Reuel's room. And once I saw a dead cat on the garbage thing out in back that didn't have any eyes or ears. When you saw him, you'd think he was the kind of person who might torture a cat. And he sort of smelled like rancid English Leather, I thought.' Richard was silent for a carefully timed moment, and then asked, 'Were you really in the Sunlight Home?'
'For thirty days. It was hell, or hell's next-door neighbor.' He inhaled, looking at Richard's scowling but now at least half-convinced face. 'This is hard for you to swallow, Richard, and I know that, but the guy with me was a werewolf. And if he hadn't been killed while he was saving my life he'd be here right now.'
'A werewolf. Hair on the palms of his hands. Changes into a blood-thirsty monster every full moon.' Richard looked musingly around the little room.
Jack waited until Richard's gaze returned to him. 'Do you want to know what I'm doing? Do you want me to tell you why I'm hitchhiking all the way across the country?'