Faces in Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

garbage can lid on the left side, place her drink underneath, and drop the lid back down. Unknown to her as she walks away, the top of the drink gets caught between the rim of the trashcan and the lid pressing down on it from above. There it rests.
    The lid pops off the drink, the watery soda and tiny melting pieces of ice fall to the floor and run in a puddle on the left side of the garbage can. His heart rate rises. Surely someone will see the mess. Someone will clean the mess. Maybe they’ll see the hat.
    He raises his hand to bite his nails, but he keeps it from touching his face, not wanting to fall back into that old habit again. It seems inappropriate to do so on his return to the past. If things are going to be better, they have to be different. Either his inhibiting apprehension will fade away, or in the least he’ll have to deal with it differently if he wants a happier life.
    Two children run in and out of the streams of people that lead to the two main exit doors of the gym through the lobby and into the parking lot. He wants to reach out; he wants to scream for their parents to stifle them, that they’re bound to hurt someone, possibly even someone who is not present in the building. The beaming adult faces are too preoccupied to notice the sticky brown puddle that has spattered onto the floor with its miniscule icebergs melting away into the carbonated sea.
    The older brother chases the younger again through the left human stream. Before they can reach the right stream, the youngest one’s feet slide from underneath him, his hands go up in the air, and his torso falls toward the sticky, soda-soaked wooden floor. His feet slide into the garbage can sending the lid screeching across the floor into the second stream of people, and the contents of the trashcan spill onto the planks.
    Chester knows it before he can even see it. The hat. The hat is going to make its way back to the old lady.
    All of his efforts might be useless.
    His fears become hot, making him feel as if the searing walls of hell are forming all around him, filling his nose with the pungency of sulfur. An elbow to the back of his right rib cage interrupts his thoughts.
    “Excuse us, just trying to take out the trash,” says the cheerful voice of a young parent volunteer.
    “Yes, pardon us,” adds a deeper voice from around the other side of the trashcan.
    Chester flattens himself against the wall, and they sidestep their way past him and into the main area of the gym.
    As soon as they move out of his way, he can see the socialite woman bending down daintily in her heels and brushing away at the brim of her hat. He can also see a man yanking his son with damp pants hshly by the arm into the lobby and a woman following close behind shaking her head at his younger brother, whom she pushes ahead of her by the shoulder.
    Chester ’s heart sinks, but his mind snaps to attention, much to his surprise. His brain spins trying to concoct a new plan.
    He turns from the main gym room, looking toward the bathroom again. All of the doors are on the left side of the hallway, the wall that is the end of the stage being at his right.
    He sees the kitchen area—the first door. No one is in the room, and on the left wall the metal pull-down shutters are closed against the ordering counters, enclosing the room from the lobby. A door is open at the far end of the right wall; it must be a hallway that runs behind the bathroom. Straight ahead, he sees a sink, and one item on it catches his attention.
    He steps into the room briskly. Children’s giddy voices can be heard echoing down the opened hallway. He realizes that it must lead to the backstage area where children might be changing. He makes it a point to look straight ahead at the sink, despite his urge to make sure no one is watching him from the hallway.
    He focuses on a lump of steel wool. His hand fights his mind as it reaches out to steal the pad of shredded metal. It has already been forced once