Hide and Seek Read Online Free PDF Page A

groaned.
     
    "Not yet," she said softly. "Not yet but very soon."
     
    And that was the first time I kissed her, there in the deathly freezing sea.
     
    The taste of her was salty. Her mouth was rich and soft, all tongue and teeth and roaring heat.
     
    When we came out of the water Kim was smiling at us. The classic cat-and-the-canary grin. Though it was caviar on her fingertips and not bird meat. She looked at us and spread her arms so that the breasts jiggled slightly and said, "Love!" Just that.
     
    Steven pointed his finger at me.
     
    "You having fun, buddy?"
     
    "I am, yes."
     
    We all laughed.
     
    It wasn't love exactly. But it wasn't disinterest, either.
     

My phony aunt took a long time dying.
     
    We went to the beach almost every day. It was always the same place.
    We always stole our lunches. In one way or another, there was always the nude flirting.
     
    Despite my resolve to be patient, my frustration level ran high. I began to wonder if Casey wasn't just another cold-assed tease. But there was something about her that was different from the others I'd met, a kind of questioning, a searching, a steady appraisal of me that seemed to carry a more serious intent than anything I was used to.
     
    So I stuck around.

VI
    On the way back home one day I took them down the coast road toward Lubec. You could see the old house way off to the left, slouched against the cliffs in the dim half-light of dusk. Casey was driving and Steven sat in the back with me.
     
    "That's the house," I told him. "The one I talked about."
     
    "The Crouch place?"
     
    "Yeah."
     
    He turned around to have a look. By then we'd almost passed it. I was watching Casey's hair tossing in the wind. There is something about a handsome woman in a sports car that is, one of the best things summer has to offer.
     
    He turned back around and saw me watching her. I caught his expression: a slight frown. He'd been quiet with me lately. I knew there was jealousy there. But at the same time I felt a kind of tacit
     

acceptance of me that hadn't been present at first, a knowledge that I was there for the duration. He was verging on the genuine. The gaudy Hawaiian shirt seemed slightly out of place now.
     
    "I thought you said nobody lived there."
     
    "Nobody does."
     
    He shrugged. "I saw a light."
     
    I turned around. The house was too far behind us now. All I saw was darkness.
     
    "Where?"
     
    "Upstairs. The second floor, I guess."
     
    "That's impossible."
     
    He shrugged again.
     
    "I saw a light," he said.
     
    I was drinking beers with Rafferty in the Caribou after work the following day. So I asked him. Rafferty collects a lot of scuttlebutt at the station.
     
    "Is anybody in the Crouch place now?"
     
    "You kidding?"
     
    "No."
     
    "Not that I heard of."
     
    "That's what I thought."
     
    "Why? You want to rent or something?"
     
    His grin was slightly feral. Rafferty remembered the Crouch place as well as I did.
     
    "We drove by last night. Steven said he thought he saw a light."
     
    "Where?"
     
    "In a second-floor window."
     
    "He didn't see shit."
     
    It came out pretty hostile. There was some resentment, I thought, of my relationship with these people. Maybe he was a little jealous. He'd seen Casey. And maybe he was already thinking what I was not-not yet-that they represented a way out of Dead River. They'd met Rafferty but had shown no interest. I hadn't pushed the matter. There was me and Casey and Steven and Kim. Two boys, two girls. Rafferty was not included.
     
    "If anybody was out there, I'd know. They'd have to come by for gas now and then. Your friend was mistaken."
     

I knew that last bit was meant to soften it slightly.
     
    "I guess he was, George."
     
    We sipped our drinks. Rafferty stared straight ahead at the old Pabst clock over the bar. Then I saw a grin starting.
     
    "Of course, I wouldn't know about kids playing out there."
     
    I smiled back at him. "Now, what kid in his right mind would want to