Bird Lake Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

into a ponytail that swung like a pendulum when she chased after the dog. Seeing the dog in daylight, tail wagging madly, bounding in and out of his line of vision, Mitch realized that it had been silly for him to have been afraid last night. The dog seemed perfectly harmless. Briefly, Mitch wondered if the boy was a potential friend, but he pushed the thought aside.
    Through the binoculars, Mitch saw the boy sneak up behind the man and jump, swatting the man’s baseball cap off his head. The man turned, laughing, and caught the boy in a playful headlock. The boy was laughing, too.
    Mitch felt a stab of jealousy. The circular framing of the binoculars made it seem to him that he was watching a movie. The moment was isolated for him—father, son, together—emphasized, made significant like a lesson.
    A memory stirred. Mitch recalled doing the exact same thing to his father last soccer season, after the one game his father had come to. Near the end of the game, Mitch had seen him standing on the sideline, his tie loosened, his shirt cuffs rolled up, his Badger cap, red as a cardinal, tipped low over his eyes. From time to time, he’d yell an encouraging comment. He must have left work early, Mitch had thought. Afterward, on the way to the car, Mitch found the perfect moment to flick off his father’s cap. His father stole Mitch’s soccer ball. There was lighthearted sparring back and forth. Mitch ended up wearing his father’s cap on the drive home. “Don’t get it too sweaty, now,” his father had said.
    The dog barked just then. Jasper. The man’s hat was back on his head. After a look at the lake, they all got into the car. Even the dog. They drove away. And the coast was clear for Mitch to do what he needed to do.
    He stashed the binoculars in a cupboard, behind some boxes of pasta and rice that appeared to be about a hundred years old, and turned hurriedly to leave the pantry. He bumped into a folding stepstool that was leaning against the wall. The stool fell, hitting a low shelf and knocking a metal canister onto the floor. The lid came off and sugar spilled out.
    â€œOh, man,” Mitch whispered fiercely.
    Instinctively, he looked to the door and was grateful that he had closed it. A few long, painful seconds dragged by. No one came.
    He quickly replaced the canister. It was a small mess, but still a mess. He felt anger toward Cherry all of a sudden, misguided, but strong. He found a dustpan and a broom and, with sharp, urgent movements, swept up the sugar. He dumped the sugar into a small brown-paper bag grabbed from a stack on one of the shelves. The last thing he wanted was for Cherry to know what had happened, so he took the bag with him.
    Within minutes, he was there. On the intruders’ front porch.
    Think.
    What should he do? What would be the best thing to do?
    Without knowing why, Mitch emptied the bag onto the porch. The sugar was a miniature mountain of pure white. He crouched over it and tilted his head to one side, as if he were looking at a work of art. Then he flattened the pile with the side of his hand and traced the pattern of a soccer ball into the sugar with his finger. He drew a hexagon surrounded by a ring of pentagons.
    Was that correct? He filled the remaining space with random lines. What he ended up with was a bit too oval shaped and lopsided, but he let it be. And it looked more like a geometric design than a soccer ball, but that added to the perplexing nature of it, he reasoned. Hoped.
    He was remembering, once again, the one soccer game his father had come to.
    A bird called raucously from a nearby tree, and he realized he’d been in a sort of trance.
    He took a slow, deep breath. Beneath the design he carefully formed a number twelve, because he was twelve and because it would make the whole thing seem like a code of some sort. Mysterious. A dead bee lay just beyond the circumference of the sugar. With his pinkie, he nudged it next to