A Tap on the Window Read Online Free PDF Page A

end to our more or less tranquil lifestyle.
    So folks in Griffon gave their police some leeway. The head of the business association was encouraging everyone to sign their names to a pledge of support for the local police force. Downtown shops were urged to carry a form headlined OUR GRIFFON COPS ARE TOPS! and all who put their names to it would not only feel good about themselves but get a five percent discount on their purchases. A little way to say thank you for keeping our town safe.
    Not that bad things didn’t happen in Griffon. We had our share of problems. Griffon wasn’t Mayberry.
    There were no Mayberrys anymore.
    I looked at a framed photo on the bookshelf across the room. Donna and me, Scott in the middle. Taken when he was thirteen. About the time he was entering high school.
    Before the storm.
    Smiling, but careful not to show his teeth, since he’d had braces put on only a couple of weeks earlier and was feeling self-conscious. Looking awkward, embarrassed maybe, trapped in his parents’ arms. The thing was, at that age, what didn’t make you feel uncomfortable? Parents, school, girls. The need to belong, to fit in, was a much greater driving force than the desire to ace a math test.
    He’d always been looking for a way to fit in, yet couldn’t turn himself into somebody he wasn’t to do it.
    He was an eccentric kid, more likely to have Beethoven than Bieber on his iPod. Loved almost anything that was deemed classic, in music, in movies, even cars. That aforementioned Maltese Falcon was a poster on his wall, and there was a model of a ’57 Chevy on his bookshelf. He drew the line at classics of literature. He wasn’t one to stick his nose into a four-hundred-page novel, a trait the doctors had said might be linked to attention deficit disorder—a more clinical diagnosis than the one I’d assigned to myself—although I was never sure I bought any of that stuff. But he did have all the graphic novel classics.
Black Hole
, Waltz with Bashir, The Dark Knight Returns, Maus, Watchmen.
    With the possible exception of those graphic novels, he shared few interests with other kids his age. He didn’t care about the Bills—something of a religion in these parts—and he’d rather put sticks in his eyes than watch the adventures of Jersey Shore nitwits, spoiled housewives, mentally disturbed hoarders, or any of the other reality shows his friends were addicted to. He did like that comedy about the four nerdy young scientists—even took some comfort in it, I think. It gave him hope that you could be uncool, and cool, at the same time.
    So as much as he wanted friends, he wasn’t about to feign interest in things he cared nothing about to acquire them. But then, summer before last, at another Griffon concert, this one featuring several alternative bands, Scott connected with a couple of Cleveland-area kids, vacationing here for the summer, whose contempt for much of popular culture provided an initial bond. These new friends found that mocking the world around them was easier when you softened the edges of it, and they accomplished that with booze and marijuana. They weren’t exactly the first.
    No question, Scott’d had opportunities before to try alcohol and drugs—show me a parent who thinks his kid lives in a neighborhood where this stuff isn’t available and I’ll show you a parent with his head up his ass—but up to now he had, as best we could tell, given them a wave. He’d been at that age where pleasing his parents was important, but now was moving out of it. Having friends trumped making Mommy and Daddy happy.
    Not exactly an unfamiliar tale.
    There were changes in his behavior. Small things at first. An increased fondness for secrecy, but hey, what kid, moving further into his teens, didn’t want privacy? But then came trust issues. We’d give him cash to pick up a few items at Walgreens, and he’d return home with only half the items but no money. He forgot things. His grades started to