Shadow Season Read Online Free PDF Page A

It’s sort of sexy but everything is sort of sexy to him now. A brush of fingers against his wrist can get him hard.
    Her voice comes down from above him, which means she’s over six feet tall, at least in her shoes. Her laughter resonates from deep in her belly and slams like a sonic boom. It sometimes rocks him back a step. When she and Roz go on their little shopping excursions, he feels twice as lonely.
    Hey now, check this out.
    Someone is sneaking up behind him.
    It’s a joke. It’s a gigglefest for the girls. It’s a game meant to drive him into action.
    This is another parlor trick. People think they’re being silent as ninjas because they can’t hear anything above their own breathing and heartbeats. He doesn’t mind playing the game anymore. He has little else to do besides put on a show anyway.
    He squares his shoulders and whips the cane around to snap lightly against flesh.
    “Ow!”
    Now comes the laughter, a pair of insolent titters. Neither is Vi’s.
    “Hey, Mr. Finn, party in the dorm tonight!” It’s Sally. “Starts at dark and goes until dawn!”
    “Why should tonight be any different?” he asks.
    “You stopping by?” It’s Suzy. “You gonna rock out with us? It’s going to be a blast, you know it will. You mind picking up a keg for us?”
    They’re both named Smyth even though they’re unrelated. They’re two of the more serious JDs of the school, always getting caught with pot or sneaking out to ride the back hills with boys from town. In the city it would be considered normal, but out here in the sticks he worries. It’s just so fucking boring in the valley. Of course they’re going to get into trouble. He tries to think of them as independent and willful, but Judith tells him there’s been at least one abortion apiece and a couple of brushes with cocaine. A couple of shoplifting raps, one liquor store smash-and-grab where they hooked a couple bottles of Wild Turkey. He’s put kids like these in rehab. He’s put kids like these in jail.
    “We can give you the cash,” Sally says. “Please, oh please, Mr. Finn.” She throws in just enough of an exaggerated whine for him to realize they’re not serious, this time. “Come on, it’ll be a gas. You can tell us what it was like when you were young, drinking mead down by the Nile, watching baby Moses float by in his wicker basket.”
    “Those were good times,” Finn tells her. “Waving to the pharaoh’s barge. Watching the pyramids go up. All the slave girls waving the palm fronds. Still, why don’t you just spike the punch like all the other delinquents do?”
    “Mr. Finn’s no square, he knows our action.”
    “He’s hep to the world. He doesn’t see but he sees.”
    “That’s why we like you, Mr. Finn.”
    “Yeah, you hear everything but you don’t judge and you never rat.”
    “Not so far as you know anyway,” Finn says.
    He wonders when the fifties lingo started to come back into style. A few of the girls use it now and it keeps throwing him off, like he’s listening to a Hot Rod drive-in flick.
    “We know all right,” Sally contends, and puts an arm halfway around him, tapping the small of his back gently.
    “We trust you.”
    They huddle closely together and too near to his face. They have no true concept of personal space. They force him into almost nestling with them. Finn wears expensive black shades, more because they remind him of his father than anything else. When the girls speak to him, he can feel their breath fogging his lenses.
    “Do me a favor, you two,” he says.
    “You ask and we answer the call. Don’t we always answer the call?”
    “You do.”
    “Then ask.”
    “Don’t break curfew for at least a few days until after this storm passes and we dig ourselves out, okay? It’s supposed to be a bad one.”
    “Us, break curfew?” Suzy tries to sound offended. “You can’t be serious, dad, we’re not those kind of janes.”
    “Like you said, I know your action.”
    “Yes, you