Free The Graduation by Christopher Pike Page B

recalled how he’d asked to sign her cast after she’d had a skiing accident. He’d drawn a tasteless sketch of her stepping into a bear trap, her foot being sliced off at the ankle and bleeding all over the ground. That was one thing everyone seemed to agree on—the dude could draw. He had talent. He might even be a genius.
    What he didn’t have, and what Michael desperately needed to find, was a friend. Clark didn’t seem to have a single one. No one knew where he lived. No one had his phone number. He had attended the school for three years and no one could provide Michael with a single fact about his personal life. Did he have a job? Did he have any brothers or sisters? Did he have a favorite place to eat? Michael heard the same answer repeatedly—I don’t know. At one point he began to feel he was chasing a phantom.
    Then in mid-March he got a lead. He was on something like his twentieth visit to Temple High and talking to a guy who had gone motorcycle riding with Clark a couple of times. The guy’s name was Fred Galanger, and although he appeared to be a Pretty tough son-of-a-bitch—he carried thick biceps and lurid tattoos beneath his biker jacket—he spoke of Clark reluctantly, as if he were afraid Clark’s ghost might suddenly appear and rake him over with a steel chain. Fred probably knew Clark better than anyone at Temple, which, of course, was not saying much. Michael had cultivated his acquaintance carefully. Then he had tired of the game and offered Fred twenty bucks for a single slice of useful memory. Fred’s brain cells had lit up.
    “We were out that afternoon I told you about before,” Fred said carefully, sliding the crisp bill into his pants pocket and keeping his hand wrapped around it in case it somehow vanished while he spoke of the mysterious rider. “We were hot-dogging these turns in the foothills down from Big Bear. That’s a dangerous place to be riding hard, but Clark, he’d have a smile on his face heading into the hood of an oncoming truck, if it came to that. He was crazy. It took guts to keep up with him. I was one of the few guys who could.
    “Anyway, we came around this one turn near the bottom of the mountain and there was an oil spill on the road. Clark’s front wheel caught the edge of it and he went flying, right off the embankment and into this ravine. I figured he’d bought it right then. But he didn’t even have a scratch. Don’t ask me how. He was already pushing his bike back up the hill and onto the road before I could get to him. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world. But his leather coat was torn to shreds and he’d crushed his shift lever. It was weird; I went to help him bend the lever back so we could get home, but he wouldn’t let me touch it. He said he didn’t let anyone near his bike except this Indian who works at a station in Sunnymead. He wouldn’t even work on it himself, like it was sacred to him or something dumb like that.”
    “What’s the name of the station?” Michael interrupted.
    “I don’t know. It’s an independent, right off the freeway, I think at Branch. Yeah, it’s on Branch. We crawled there at ten miles an hour, Clark’s bike stuck in first gear the whole way. The Indian’s a mechanic at the station. I don’t remember his name—Birdbeak or Crowfoot or something. He must have been in his nineties. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding him. They seemed like old friends. He’ll probably know where Clark lives.”
    “Anything else?” Michael asked.
    “No. Except if you do find him, don’t mention my name. I mean it.”
    “Why not?”
    Fred Galanger wouldn’t tell him why. He didn’t have to. He was obviously afraid of Clark.
    Fred was right about one thing—Michael did find the gas station without difficulty. He also met the Indian mechanic. His real name was Storm watcher, and although he didn’t have Clark’s strange pale eyes, he had a similar otherworldly stare that made Michael