Into the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

passed it on to the class. “They had it in a restaurant,” he said. “Like, where else?”
     
    “Think they’ll be held back again?” said Mia at recess. They sat on the swings in the farthest corner of the yard at Ferrand Middle, not swinging, just dangling in the cold: Ingrid, Ingrid’s best friend, Stacy Rubino, and Mia.
    “No way,” Stacy said. “Next year they’ll be sixteen. You can drop out of school at sixteen.”
    “Yeah?” said Ingrid.
    “And then what?” Mia said.
    Stacy gave her a quick glance. Ingrid was starting to recognize that Stacy and Mia didn’t have much in common, mostly just the fact that they were both her friends. “Then what?” Stacy said. “Get a job, of course.”
    “With an eighth-grade education?” Mia said. “What kind of a life is that?”
    Stacy’s face reddened. “Good enough for lots of people,” she said.
    Mia shrank back into her puffy pink jacket. She was tiny, with fine bones and features. Stacy was big and strong, hardest kicker by far on last fall’s U-13 girls’ soccer team—a team that had gone all the way to the regional final, losing 2–1, their lone goal coming from Ingrid late in the game, first ball she’d ever headed in.
    They dangled in silence—not one of those comfortable silences—Ingrid dragging the toes of her boots in arcing patterns in the snow. After a while Stacy said, “My dad dropped out at sixteen.”
    “Yeah?” Ingrid said.
    “Yeah,” Stacy said.
    “Oh,” said Mia.
    Mr. Rubino was an electrician, and a great one in Ingrid’s opinion. People still talked about how he’d lit the Cheshire Cat’s smile in the Prescott Players’ production of Alice in Wonderland , somehow leaving a big yellow grin in empty black space. Plus he’d built a kick-ass entertainment center in the basement of the Rubinos’ house, a nice house in the Lower Falls neighborhood, not far from Joey’s. Maybe they weren’t rich, but comfortable, right? And kids liked going over to the Rubinos’, a pretty happy place, despite some problems with Stacy’s older brother Sean, recently sent away to a military academy in Tennessee or Oklahoma or somewhere.
    “That’s that,” Ingrid said. “I’m dropping out in two and a half years.”
    Stacy laughed, then Mia. The mood got back to normal.
    Or maybe not quite, because Mia said, almost to herself, “My dad’s got an MBA from Harvard Business School.” The unspoken part— for all the good that did us —was very clear. Mia’s dad lived in New York, and almost a year after the divorce he and Mia’smom were still fighting—sometimes in e-mails that got copied to Mia, maybe by mistake.
    “We’ll all drop out,” Stacy said. “Start a restaurant in Hawaii.”
    “Surfin’ Fish Burgers,” Mia said.
    More laughter: Stacy had a great laugh, real loud. The bell rang. They hopped off the swings, started back to the building. Stacy remembered something and ran ahead.
    “Did your mom say anything about Joey?” Ingrid said.
    “Joey?” said Mia. “Why would my mom say anything about Joey?”
    “He was with me on Sunday,” Ingrid said. “At the falls.”
    “Huh?” said Mia.
    “We went snowshoeing in the woods,” Ingrid said. “All the way to the falls. Your mom was there. She didn’t mention it?”
    “My mom was at the falls?”
    “In the picnic area,” Ingrid said. “She said you were at the library.”
    “I was,” Mia said. “But she was going to Stop & Shop after she dropped me off.”
    “Maybe she had extra time,” said Ingrid.
    “Are you sure it was her?”
    “We talked. She met Joey.”
    Mia had beautiful eyes, huge and pale blue. Now they seemed to cloud over.
    “Get a move on, you two,” said Ms. Groome, math teacher, waiting at the door, knitting needles sticking out of her coat pocket. Winter light glared off fingerprint smears on her glasses. “Or would you prefer a nice long detention?”
     
    “Afternoon, petunia,” said Mr. Sidney, the school bus driver, as