lost boy lost girl by Peter Straub Page A

place.”
    “Shane Auslander,” Mark said, looking at the boy in the photograph. “What do you think happened to him, Officer?”
    “Thank you for your time.” The photograph had already disappeared into the manila envelope in the officer’s right hand.
    “Do you think he’s still alive?” Mark asked.
    “We appreciate your cooperation, sir,” the cop said.
    As they moved away, the officer beckoned to a couple of girls who were whispering to each other a little way down the path. Soon the boys were on the edge of the crowd.
    “Look, there’s another cop!” Mark said. “They come in, like, dyads.”
    The second police officer, who was tall, slender, and blond, was showing Shane Auslander’s photograph to four seniors from Madison High.
    “Shit,” Jimbo said. “That’s Raver, Sparkman, Tillinger, and Beaney Jacobs. Don’t let them see us.”
    “Someone ought to snatch one of those assholes, them and their stupid hemp necklaces,” Mark said, moving toward the other side of the fountain. “Hey! I bet that’s what happened!”
    “What?” Jimbo was keeping one eye on Raver, Sparkman, Tillinger, and Jacobs. Horrible individually, collectively they were a nightmare.
    “Someone grabbed that kid right here. Or they met him here and led him away, you know, to their car, or to their house, whatever.”
    “It’s not going to be a whole lot of fun around here tonight,” Jimbo said.
    “Well,” said Mark, “if you feel like leaving, I can think of somewhere to go.”

8
    For the next two days, Mark felt as though he were balancing two opposed forces, the house on Michigan Street and his mother. Both of these forces demanded great quantities of his time and attention, the house overtly, his mother passively. As if in thrall to some insidious disease, Nancy Underhill crept out of the house in the morning, crept back in at night, and did strikingly little in between. She “rested,” which meant disappearing for hours behind the closed bedroom door. According to Philip Underhill, a highly regarded expert on the mental and physical peculiarities of the contemporary American female, especially as represented by his wife, Mark’s mother was undergoing a long-anticipated and long-delayed spiritual backlash from the abuse she suffered daily on behalf of the gas company, not to mention the symptoms common to women experiencing a certain inevitable physical-hormonal milestone. In other words, she got into bed and, with luck, slept through her hot flashes. To Mark, she looked as though she hardly slept at all, nor did he think she was menopausal. From what he had learned in a compulsory sex-education class, women undergoing menopause could be emotionally overwrought. His mother was nothing like that. He would have preferred it if she were. Better a hot-tempered scold than a dispirited wraith.
    Mark’s father seemed almost relieved by the change in his wife. Now that she had at last succumbed to the indignities inflicted upon her by the gas company, she needed to rest up before reaching the next stage, that of realizing that she ought to quit her crummy job. He had never liked the idea of her working; he had adjusted to it when they needed her salary to meet the mortgage and car payments, but ever since his move up into the vice principal’s office at Quincy, he had merely tolerated it.
    Philip was pleased that Nancy came home from work worn and exhausted; he was pleased by the very things that distressed Mark. Mark thought that his mother was grateful for the distractions provided by indigent or irate consumers, and also for the gossipy company afforded by Florence, Shirley, and Mack. She did not meet her new problem at the office; she carried it around with her, like the consciousness of an illness. The problem frightened her.
That
frightened Mark. He had never considered his mother a fearful person, and now she looked as though some particular terror had stopped her in her tracks.
    And while she either could not or