Free The Boy in the Lot by Ronald Malfi

  Eleven-year-old Mark Davis took one look at the rundown motel and thought it perfectly suited his mood. It was a crumbling saltbox against the backdrop of a black hillside forest, the windows bleak, lidded with colorless plastic shades, the entranceway about as welcoming and cheerful as the gates of a cemetery. An uneven slip of potholed blacktop—the motel’s parking lot—stood as a barrier between the ruinous building and the curve of U.S. Route 40.
    As Mark’s dad turned the car into the parking lot, the chassis roller-coastering across the irregular blacktop, Mark surveyed the place. Beside him in the backseat, Tim—short for Timbuktu—panted, his hot dog breath steaming up the car’s windows. Mark petted the old dog and watched as a clear rope of saliva depended from the dog’s mouth and pattered to the car seat.
    “Really, Will?” said Mark’s mother from the passenger seat.
    Will Davis pulled the car into a parking space and geared it into Park . “I’m starting to fall asleep at the wheel,” he said. “Unless you want to keep driving, we’re stopping for the night.”
    Mark’s mother quickly rolled up her window. “It looks like Armageddon came and went.”
    “Quit being so dramatic.”
    “We passed a perfectly good Holiday Inn half an hour ago.”
    “Forget it. I’m not backtracking. This’ll be fine for the night.” His father turned around in the driver’s seat and smiled wearily at Mark. “This work for you, bud?”
    Mark shrugged. Compared to his mood, the motel was a brightly lit amusement park.
    “I’ll go in and grab us a room,” his father said, popping open his door. “You guys wait here.”
    Tim whined as the door slammed shut. Mark continued petting the old dog. He watched his dad hustle across the poorly lit parking lot until he disappeared beneath the entrance portico. Stenciling on the lighted front window said OFFICE .
    “You okay?” his mother asked from up front. Unlike his father, she didn’t turn around and look at him.
    “Whatever,” he said.
    She sighed. She was normally a pleasant-looking woman, but the stress of the move—and no doubt the stress of dealing with Mark lately—had caused her to look weary and strung-out. “Don’t you think you’ve sulked about this long enough?”
    He folded his arms and glanced out the window. Lights were on in some of the rooms, rimming the rectangular shades in milky light. “No,” he said.
    “Grandpa Mike was in the military,” she reminded him, “and I had moved five times by the time I was your age.”
    Good for you, Mark thought, but didn’t dare say aloud.
    “You know,” his mother continued, “your father and I have been talking. Seeing how you’re leaving all your friends behind, we thought it might be okay for you to finally get that cell phone.”
    Mark brightened. “Really?” He had been asking for a cell phone for the better part of the past year. All his friends had one, yet his parents had been adamant that an eleven-year-old boy didn’t need to carry around his own personal cell phone.
    “Your dad and I will lay down some ground rules,” she said, “but yes, we think that if you can be responsible with it, we’re willing to get it for you. Do you think you can be responsible with it?”
    “You bet,” he said.
    His mother sighed contentedly in the passenger seat. “Good boy,” she said.
    A shape exited the motel’s front office and moved like a shadow across the parking lot. As the shape passed beneath an arc sodium light, Mark saw that it was his father. Will Davis opened the driver’s door and poked his head inside.
    “Everybody out!”
    “Lovely,” grumbled Mark’s mother.
    Mark got out of the car and held the door open for Tim, who bounded out after the boy. The dog went immediately to one of the potholes filled with rain and began lapping up the black water.
    Holy crap, a cell phone! Wait till I tell the guys! Of course, this excitement was blanketed by the same black pall