Free Sons of Liberty by Adele Griffin Page A

school.
    “How’re you feeling?” Rock now asked her abruptly. Nothing looked wrong with Liza now as she sat opposite him in the JennAir, her cheeks peppermint pink from the cold. But at his question, Liza’s smile emptied and she crossed her arms over her chest.
    “Rock, I came out here for a reason, ’cause I wanna show you something, I wanna show you this, what I got here,” Liza said, patting the side of her parka. “So pay attention since this is important.” She groped at her jacket’s inside pocket and pulled out a greasy piece of paper, which she shook at Rock. “Look with your eyes, not with your hands.”
    “Shut up.” Rock leaned over and squinted at the smudged pencil script.
    Seamas Barnes
    Manahasick road
    Third house left side facing the dead end
    Knock three times fast, two times slow
    Ask for Seamus
    “Seamus Barnes? Who’s that?” Rock pronounced the name “Seem-us.”
    “No, it’s Shame-us. That’s how you say his name.”
    “Well, I don’t know him. Who is he? He’s from Sheffield?”
    “Uh-uh.” Liza smiled gravely. “He’s from …” She stretched her hands in front of Rock’s face and snapped her fingers, pop-pop-pop. “He’s from—remember the time a few months ago when I pretended like I got lost from our field trip? The time we went to the New Haven Cane and Hickory Museum?”
    Rock nodded. He remembered.
    “Well, that was the same day when I met Seamus. He was just hanging out in the train station. He’s a pretty cool guy, should be in high school, but he don’t go to school, he just hangs out and takes trains all around.”
    “A bum,” Rock said. Liza frowned.
    “Not a bum. Not like some geezer who sleeps on a grate and stinks. Seamus is cool, he has a cool tattoo of a chain-link fence around his ankle, and another one of a shamrock on his back, close to here, about.” Liza twisted to one side and tapped the small of her back. “We hung out a long time, he’s wicked mellow—he even bought me some French fries at the Burger King. And at the end of the day, he gave me this.” She waved the paper.
    “He gave me it, and he told me if things ever got tough all around—that’s how he put it, tough all around—then I should come hang out with him and his friends at this house. Just kids live there. Cool ones. I had to promise, may I be hit by a truck if I reneged, that I’d never tell no one about the place, except for a kid who needed to go there. So technically, I already broke my promise. Except I know you won’t tell.”
    Liza tipped her head to one side and slumped down so that her jacket walled up around her chin. She looked very small. Small and watchful, like a turtle.
    “You never told us about that kid Seamus. You said you just hung out in the mall all day.” Rock felt resentful. He hated secrets being kept from him.
    “I did—we did. But it felt like a hidden thing. Private. Which it still is,” Liza asserted quickly. “It’s a secret hideout, see. That’s what Seamus is talking about.”
    “But now you want to go there. To New Haven?”
    “Yep. Till I get my plan fixed. I’ll lay low awhile, try and get some money together. So that I’m in good shape financial-wise, when I pick a new spot to live.”
    Rock began to mentally unfold this plan, trying to shake out its strangeness and daring.
    “You’d leave without telling Arlene and Timmy, right?”
    “I gotta.” Liza’s October eyes held his for long enough for him to know she meant what she said.
    “And this house is a place for kids?”
    “For kids like me. And I’m set on it. I’ll hang out there, for a while. So I need you and Cliff to help me out a little, to get me where I’m going. I asked Cliff already. He’s in, but now I thought I’d tell you, too. You’ll help me out, won’tcha, Rock? Huh?” Her words were light, but she sat motionless, waiting for his answer.
    “Course.” Rock snapped his head up and down. “Course I’ll help.”

CHAPTER SIX
MIDNIGHT