Page 65

CHAPTER 65

I STOOD ON THE porch and laughed. Because there’s a point you reach when you’re so tired, and so hopeless, and so far from home that your misery dries up completely and you’re left with a weird, unstable kind of hilarity.

I felt like I was on a boat and Troy Hansen was in the ocean drowning and he’d called out for help, and since then I’d been throwing everything I had off the deck, trying to save the guy — life preservers, buckets, ropes, oars. Troy missed it all and was thrashing and twisting in the waves, sinking, staying under for longer and longer, growing weaker and weaker. There was nothing else left to do — I had to jump in.

I took a step back, raised my boot, and kicked in the Hansens’ front door.