Free Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman Page B

in the place where he used to be. Rattle it once, in the smooth cup formed by your hand, and you may just draw blood.
    part three.

    EFORE there is any light there is the sound of birds. Their song spirals slowly upward: mockingbird, green heron, indigo bunting, kingbird. If you wake to this song, beneath the open sky, your heart may beat too fast. You may not be certain whether or not you're still dreaming until you see that the stars are already disappearing into the morning sky, flickering as they fade.
    In a lair of sugar cane and strangler figs, beyond the muddy reaches of a green pond, the meanest boy in Verity scrambles to all fours, his eyes still closed, his mouth dry with sleep. His chest heaves, but amazingly enough, the raccoon at the edge of the pond methodically washing its hands isn't frightened off by the sound of the boy's heart beating. The baby who sleeps beside him remains curled up, knees to chest, her thumb in her mouth.
    In her sleep, the baby moves closer, until her spine rests against the boy's leg. For twenty-four hours they have lived on stale doughnuts and one plastic foam cup filled with tepid water.
    At the very bottom of the boy's backpack there is still a peanut butter sandwich, found in a trashcan at the far end of the golf course. The green pond, which has begun to shimmer as the last few stars vanish, is the one where Charles Verity disappeared. Some local boys believe that an alligator still swims here. Golfers mistake its broad back for a half-submerged log. Gulls that light in the center of the pond often sink without a trace, except for a circle of ripples as the water closes over their heads. It is damp this morning and the boy's T-shirt is soaked; his jeans are coated with mud and beetles' wings. The boy gets up on his haunches, to stretch and ease the cramps in his legs, but he can't stand upright beneath the sugar cane. His lungs feel thick and wet; when he opens his mouth to cough, nasty little brown clouds come out.
    There are so many things he should not have done he has lost count of them. He should never have pretended to be asleep, when all he was doing was waiting for his mother's bedroom door to close. He should have left the money he'd stolen from Donny Abrams in his night-table drawer, instead of stuffing it into his backpack and sneaking out of the apartment at three in the morning.
    He should never have kept his secret stash down in the laundry room, or had a stash at all, or come to Florida in the first place.
    When he got down to the basement it was completely dark, except for the wavering fluorescent light above the vending machines. All he had to do was crouch down beside the second washing machine and slide his hand behind it into the hole in the plaster, then dislodge the tin box where he kept his contraband. Instead, he went to the row of dryers, drawn like a crow or a consummate thief to the two gold rings someone had left on the shelL He scooped them up in the wink of an eye. If he brought these rings to the pawnshop Laddy had told him about, he figured he might have enough for a plane ticket back to New York.
    He should have turned and run then, but that was when he realized the sound of water running through the pipes overhead was something else entirely. It was the sound of a woman screaming, and he knew, right away, just how wrong something was.
    He backed up against the cool cinder-block wall and didn't dare breathe. He doesn't know how long he stood there, but it seemed like forever, long enough for vines to grow up through the basement floor and wrap themselves around his knees. And then the scream was over, and all he could hear was the thick reverberation of somebody breathing hard and a funny sort of static in the rhythm of a heartbeat. He saw then that an intercom had been left on the bench, and right beside the bench, in a metal laundry bin, slept a baby, not much more than a year old. When she opened her eyes, he lifted her out of the laundry bin and