lost boy lost girl by Peter Straub

all this stuff for? Why was it put here?”
    “Why? To keep other people off his property.”
    “Take a look at the other houses on this block. What’s different about this one?”
    “You can’t get in there without a hell of a lot of grief.”
    “You can’t even see in,” Mark said. “This is the only house in this whole neighborhood that you can’t see from the alley. Does that tell you anything?”
    “Not really.”
    “The guy who put this up, whoever he was, didn’t want anyone looking at his backyard. That’s what all this stuff is for, to keep people from seeing it.”
    “You’ve been thinking about this way too much,” Jimbo said.
    “He was hiding something. Look at that humongous wall! Don’t you wonder what his secret was?”
    Jimbo stepped backward, his eyes round with disbelief. “You’re like the world champion of bullshit. Unfortunately, to you everything you say makes sense. Can we go to the park now?”
    In silence, the boys left the northern end of the alley and turned east on Auer Avenue, not an avenue at all but merely another residential street lined with houses and parked cars. Down Auer they proceeded for a single block that offered for their consideration two interracial couples sitting on their respective porches, a sight that so forcefully brought to the boys’ minds what their fathers would have to say about this spectacle that they themselves maintained their silence throughout their turn onto Sherman Boulevard and the one-block trek past the diner, the liquor stores, and the discount outlets to the corner of West Burleigh. Without waiting for the light, they ran across the busy street and continued on into the little park.
    A substantial crowd of people milled aimlessly around the dry twenty-foot basin of the fountain. The competing sounds of Phish and Eminem drifted out of two facing boom boxes. Together, Mark and Jimbo noticed the uniformed officer leaning against the patrol car parked off to the side.
    As soon as they saw the cop, their way of walking became more self-conscious and mannered. Indicating their indifference to official observation, they dipped their knees, dropped one shoulder, and tilted their heads.
    “Yo, little homeboys,” the policeman called.
    They pretended to take in his presence for the first time. Smiling, the cop waved them forward. “Come here, you guys. I want you to look at something.”
    The boys lounged toward him. It was like a magic trick: one second the officer’s hands were empty, the next they held up an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of a stoner metalhead. “Do you know this guy?”
    “Who is he?” Jimbo asked. “He’s in trouble, right?”
    “How about you?” the cop asked Mark.
    “I don’t know him,” Mark said.
    The cop moved the stoner’s photograph closer to their faces. “Have either of you ever seen him here at night? Does he look familiar to you guys?”
    They shook their heads. “Who is he?” Jimbo asked again.
    The policeman lowered the photograph. “This kid’s name is Shane Auslander. He’s sixteen years old.”
    “Where does he go to school?” Jimbo asked.
    “Holy Name,” the cop said.
    That explained a lot. For Mark and Jimbo, the boys who went to Holy Name fell into three basic categories: squeaky-clean nerds who were secret lushes; bullies and/or jocks who had a tendency to get in car wrecks from which they emerged pretty much unscathed; and, on the bottom rung, potheads struggling with the question of Mary’s virginity. Members of the third category often failed to complete high school.
    “What’d he do, break into a drugstore and steal all the OxyContin?” Jimbo asked.
    “He didn’t do anything,” the cop said. “Except four days ago, he went missing.”
    “Went missing?” Jimbo asked.
    “Vanished,” the cop said. “Disappeared.”
    “He ran away, believe me,” Jimbo said. “Just look at this guy! His parents drop-kicked him into Catholic school, and he couldn’t stand the