The Turtle Boy Read Online Free PDF

never admit it – she began to inch
ahead of him, forcing him to push himself until he felt his chest
start to ache.
    At last they reached the
makeshift bridge. Kim, her legs braced on the wobbling boards,
leaned over to catch her breath. She looked down at the stream
trickling beneath them. "They've ruined it, haven't
they?"
    It took him a moment to
realize what she was referring to and then he told her that yes,
they had ruined it. The construction crews dedicated to tearing up
the land they'd once played in seemed equally driven to foul
whatever they'd been prohibited to touch. Gullies became dumping
grounds for material waste, streams became muddied and paths
cracked beneath the groaning and shrieking metal of their monstrous
machines. Timmy joined her in a moment of mournful pondering at the
senselessness of it all, then tapped her on the elbow and pointed
up at the sky.
    Shadows rushed past them, crawling
through the grass toward the train tracks and spilling from the
trees as the breeze gained strength. Over their heads, the sky had
turned from blue to gray, the sun now a dim torch glimpsed through
a caul of spider webs. All around them the trees began to sway and
hiss as if the breeze were water, the canopies fire.
    Kim nodded at the change and
hurried to his side. She mumbled something to him and he looked at
her. "What?"
    "I said: my dad says they're
going to fill in the pond."
    Before Timmy had met Darryl,
this might have hurt him more than it did now. Still, it didn't
seem right. "Why?"
    "I don't know. He says in a
few years all of this will be houses and that the pond is only in
the way. Apparently Doctor Myers's son sold this area of the land
so they're just waiting for someone to buy it before they fill it
in."
    Timmy knew her father worked on a
construction site across town and would no doubt be privy to such
information. It was a depressing thought; not so much that they
would be taking the pond away, but because he suspected that would
only be the start of it. Soon, the fields would be gone, concrete
lots in their place.
    They carried on up the rise
until the black mirror of the pond revealed itself. Timmy's gaze
immediately went to the spot where he had seen Darryl, but he saw
no one sitting there today. Kim walked on and over the bank and
made her way around the pond toward the brace of fir trees weaving
in the wind. She paused and looked back at him over her shoulder.
"Are you coming?"
    "Yeah."
    But he was already starting
to question the logic behind such a move. At least the last time
he'd been here he'd had the escape route at his back; if The Turtle
Boy had tried anything it wouldn't have been hard to turn and run.
Going into those trees was like walking into a cage. You would have
to thread your way through brambles and thick undergrowth to be
clear of it. And even then, there was nowhere to run but the train
tracks.
    A quiver of fear rippled through him,
and he masked it by smacking an imaginary mosquito from his neck.
Overhead, the clouds thickened. With a sigh, he followed Kim into
the trees.
    On this side of the pond,
dispirited pines hung low. The earth beneath was a tangle of
withered needles, flattened grass and severed branches. The
children had to duck until they'd cleared the biggest and densest
stand of pines.
    At last they emerged on the other side,
a marshy stretch of land that offered a clear view of the train
tracks but soaked their sandaled feet.
    After a moment of listening to the
breeze and searching the growing shadows around them, Kim put her
hands on her hips and looked at Timmy, who was preoccupied with
trying to remove sticky skeins of spider web from his
face.
    "He's not here," she said,
stifling a giggle at Timmy's dismay.
    He didn't answer until he
was sure some fat black arachnid hadn't nested in his hair. When
he'd cleared the remaining strands, he grimaced and looked around.
"Sure looks like it. Unless he's hiding."
    "Maybe he's
gone."
    "Yeah, maybe." It was a
comforting