Free Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury

“Scaredy-cat!”
    “Don’t listen, Doug,” said Tom.
    “Yeah, you don’t have to take that,” said Charlie.
    Douglas moved back another step, blinking.
    Douglas held the plate in his hands and the children stood around him. He did not see Quartermain wink at Bleak and jab him with his elbow. He saw only Lisabell’s face. It was a face with snow in it, with cherries, and water and grass, and it was a face like this late afternoon. It was a face that looked into him. He felt as if, somehow, she had touched him, here, there, upon the eyelids, the ears, the nose. He shivered. He took a bite of cake.
    “Well,” said Lisabell. “Got nothing to say? If you’r e scared down here, I bet you’re even more scared up there.” She pointed upward, toward the far edge of the ravine. “Tonight,” she said, “we’re all going to be there. I bet you won’t even show up.”
    Doug looked from her up to the top of the ravine and there stood the haunted house where, in the daytime, the boys sometimes gathered, but where they never dared to go at night.
    “Well,” said Lisabell. “What are you waiting for? Will you be there or not?”
    “Doug,” said Tom. “You don’t have to take that. Give her what for, Doug.”
    Doug looked from Lisabell’s face up to the heights of the ravine and again to the haunted house.
    The cake melted in Douglas’s mouth. Between looking at the house and trying to decide, with the cake in his mouth, sugar melting on his tongue, he didn’t know what to do. His heart was beating wildly and his face was a confusion of blood.
    “I’ll . . .” he blurted.
    “You’ll what?” taunted Lisabell.
    “. . . be there,” he said.
    “Thatta boy, Doug,” said Tom.
    “Don’t let her fool you,” said Bo.
    But Doug turned away from his friends.
    Suddenly a memory came to him. Years ago, he had killed a butterfly on a bush, smashing it with a stick, for no reason at all, other than it seemed like the thing to do. Glancing up, he had seen his grandfather, like a framed picture, startled, on the porch above him. Douglas dropped the stick and picked up the shattered flakes of butterfly, the bright pieces of sun and grass. He tried to fit it back together again and breathe a spell of life into it. But at last, crying, he said, “I’m sorry.”
    And then Grandpa had spoken, saying, “Remember, always, everything moves.” Thinking of the butterfly, he was reminded of Quartermain. The trees shook with wind and suddenly he was looking out of Quartermain’s face, and he knew how it felt to be inside a haunted house, alone. He went to the birthday table and picked up a plate with the largest piece of cake on it, and began to walk toward Quartermain. There was a starched look in the old man’s face, then a searching of the boy’s eyes and chin and nose with a sunless gaze.
    Douglas stopped before the wheelchair.
    “Mr. Quartermain,” he said.
    He pushed the plate out on the warm air into Quartermain’s hands.
    At first the old man’s hands did not move. Then as if wakened, his fi ngers opened with surprise. Quartermain regarded the gift with utter bewilderment.
    “Thank you,” he said, so low no one heard him. He touched a fragment of white frosting to his mouth.
    Everyone was very quiet.
    “Criminy, Doug!” Bo hissed as he pulled Doug away from the wheelchair. “Why’d you do that? Is it Armistice Day? You gonna let me rip off your epaulettes? Why’d you give that cake to that awful old gink?”
    Because, Douglas thought but didn’t say, because, well, I could hear him breathe .
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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
    I’ ve lost, thought Quatermain.  I've lost the game. Check. Mate.
    Bleak pushed Quartermain in his wheelchair, like a load of dried apricots and yellow wicker, around the block under the dying afternoon sun. He hated the tears that brimmed in his eyes.
    “My God!” he cried. “What happened?”
    Bleak said he wasn’t sure whether it was a significant loss or a small