Chapter 15: The Stagehand

The Birchwood Motor Lodge was a low brown row of doors beside a gas station, with a sign that had lost its second B.

Room nine was at the far end.

The curtain was drawn, and a television murmured behind it.

Abel parked the truck across from the door where anyone coming out would have to walk past us.

"If he runs, I'll catch him," Abel said.

"If he runs, he's twenty and I'm limping. You'll catch him."

"I know. I was being supportive."

I got out slowly and knocked.

The television went quiet.

For a long time nothing moved, and then the chain slid and the door opened four inches.

The boy behind it was thin, with a patchy beard and a gray hooded sweatshirt, and his eyes were red.

He looked at my face.

He made a sound I will remember until I die, a small, cracked noise.

"You're dead," he said.

"I get that a lot," I said. "May I come in?"

He didn't answer.

He stepped back with his hand over his mouth, and I went in with Abel behind me.

The room held a bed that hadn't been slept in and a bag of gas station sandwiches.

On the nightstand lay a white envelope, and I could see the edge of the bills in it.

"I saw you," he said. "I saw you in the box."

"I know. You had your phone out."

He sank onto the bed.

"I was going to call. I swear to God, I had my thumb on it." His whole body shook. "She said, 'Not yet.' And I put it away."

"I heard it," I said. "From the ceiling."

He stared at me.

"I'm a long story," I said. "Tell me yours."

It came out of him in one breath.

Two weeks before the show, Imogen had pulled him aside after rehearsal.

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