Free Black Creek Crossing by John Saul Page A

shelter of the pool house before he even realized it. Then, his skin prickling with the sensation of someone watching him, he stopped short. But when he turned around, Zack was talking to Heather Dunne and Chad Jackson, and most of the rest of the kids seemed to be gathering around them like iron filings drawn to a magnet. And no one was looking at him.
    Then he spotted his father standing on the terrace about thirty yards away. Though he was talking to Mel Dunne, Seth knew that his father was also keeping an eye on him.
    If he didn’t at least try to mix into the crowd around Zack and Heather, he didn’t even want to think about what his father might do to him when they got home.
    Feeling his father watching every move he made—and feeling the sting on his backside—Seth edged closer to the group of teenagers. There were almost a dozen of them, all of whom he’d known all his life. But even when he was only a few feet away, not one of them spoke to him.
    Not one of them even looked at him.
    And they certainly didn’t make room for him in the circle around Zack and Heather. In fact, he thought Chad Jackson and Josh Harmon moved closer together so there would be no room for him, and once more he was seized by the urge to disappear into the pool house, where he could just sit by himself until it was time to go home. He stole a glance at the clubhouse, and his father was still there, still watching him. Then, as he saw his father finally turning away, he heard Heather Dunne say something that stopped him from slipping away to the sanctuary of the pool house.
    “Get
out!
Your mom actually
sold
that awful house? To who?”
    “My aunt and uncle,” Zack replied.
    “And they’re actually going to live in it?” Heather asked, shaking her head when Zack nodded. “Oh, God—I could never do that! It creeps me out just thinking about it. I mean, isn’t there blood all over the place?”
    “Jeez, Heather,” someone groaned. “They didn’t just leave it there.”
    Heather Dunne shot the groaner a dirty look. “Well, even if they didn’t, it’s still too gross!” Then, abruptly, she changed the subject. “So what’s your cousin like?” she asked.
    Zack rolled his eyes. “You won’t believe. She’s—” He hesitated a moment, and as he searched for the right words to describe Angel Sullivan, his eyes fell on Seth Baker and his lips twisted into a smirk. “She’s the kind of girl who’d go out with Seth,” he said.
    Seth felt his face burning as the rest of the kids burst into laughter, and then, with his father mercifully gone from the terrace, he turned and fled into the pool house.
    He was still there an hour later when his father came to find him.
    “What the hell kind of kid are you?” Blake Baker demanded. “You think you’re going to get anywhere in this world by hiding?” Seth bit his lip, knowing better than to say anything. “You think I didn’t see what was going on earlier? You think I didn’t know what you were doing, pussy-footing around the rest of the kids? It was just a show, Seth. I knew it, and they knew it. You know why they didn’t let you into their little group? Because you didn’t make them, that’s why! And guess what? Your little show didn’t impress me any more than it did them. So here’s what’s going to happen: You and I are going to enter the father-son golf tournament, and we’re going to win.”
    “I don’t even know how—” Seth began, but his father cut him off with a look so icy it made Seth’s blood run cold.
    “You’re going to learn,” he said. “You’re going to play golf, or I’m going to know the reason why. Understand?”
    Seth nodded, afraid to utter even a single syllable.
    “Good,” Blake Baker said. “Now let’s go home.”
    Seth could tell by both the tone of his father’s voice and the look in his eyes that when they got home he was going to be hurt even more by his father than Zack Fletcher’s words and Zack’s friends’