Lost Boys Read Online Free PDF Page A

all smart enough to know the difference."
    Ah well. Marriage meant that you had to live with the fact that your spouse's foibles would rub off on the kids. She knew how it annoyed Step that the kids had inherited her attitude toward shoes-they just couldn't keep them on their feet. Step was always walking into a room and either stepping on somebody's shoes, tripping over them, or-when he noticed them soon enough-placekicking them into the hall or putting them under the offender's pillow. "The difference between civilized people and barbarians," he would say, "is that civilized people wear shoes." Step had to live with barefoot barbarians, and DeAnne had to answer questions about why Daddy broke the law all the time. Not exactly a fair trade-she couldn't see that there were any moral implications to bare feet-but she lived with it, grumbling now and then, and so did he.
    To get to Western Allemania Primary School you had to drive past the high school, also called Western Allemania. Yellow buses had been herded into a large parking lot, waiting for the end of the school day. What she liked least about sending Stevie to this school was that the little kids had to ride the same buses as the high-schoolers-and the drivers were high school students, as well. The idea of a seventeen-year-old having the responsibility for not only keeping all the children on the bus alive, but also maintaining discipline-well, what could she do? The principal had looked at her oddly and said, "Mrs. Fletcher, that's the way we do things in North Carolina."
    She drove down the hill into the turnaround in front of the school. Before and after school the turnaround was reserved for buses-parents who were picking up their kids had to drive on a completely different road to a small parking lot at the top of a hill about two hundred yards from the school and wait for their kids. She pointed out the hill to Stevie as she was getting Elizabeth out of her booster seat. "Whenever I pick you up, you go up that stairway leading to the top of that hill. I'll be there for you."
    "OK," said Stevie.
    "And if something ever happened, like the car breaking down, and I'm not there, then you head right back down to the school and go straight to the principal's office and wait there until I come in and get you."
    "Why can't I just wait up there?" asked Stevie.
    "Because this isn't a safe world," said DeAnne. "And what if somebody comes to you and says, 'Your mother asked me to pick you up and take you home'?"
    "I don't go with them."
    "There's more to it than that, Stevie."
    "I get away from that person right away and head straight for the nearest person in authority."
    "At school that means Dr. Mariner. And if you're not at school?"
    "If the person is following me then I don't hide, I run right out into the open, where there are the most people, and if he comes near me I scream at the top of my voice, 'He's not my father!' Or 'She's not my mother!
    Help me!"'
    "Very good."
    "I know all that, too," said Robbie.
    "I know I know," said Betsy.
    "I wish I didn't have to teach you things like this," said DeAnne. "But there are bad people in the world.
    Not many of them, but we have to be careful. Now, what if I really did send somebody to pick you up, because maybe there was an accident and I had one of the other kids at the hospital or something?"
    "The password," said Stevie.
    "And what is it?"
    "Maggots," said Stevie.
    "Little oozy baby fly worms!" yelled Robbie. Step had thought up the password, of course.
    "Quiet, Road Bug, this is serious," said DeAnne. "And do you ask them about the password?"
    "No. I don't even tell them that there is a password. But I never go with anybody unless he says, 'Your parents told me to tell you Maggots."'
    "Right," said DeAnne.
    "If they don't say that, then they're a liar and I refuse to go and I scream and scream if they try to take me anyway."
    "Right," said DeAnne.
    "Mom," said Stevie.
    "What?"
    "What if nobody hears me scream?"
    "You