But now, in the harsh light of the July midday, the sun blazing down out of another cloudless sky, the heat a faint shimmer rising off the burned–out flats, the park seemed small and constrained. The ball fields lay just beyond the service road, their parched diamonds turned dusty and hardened and dry, their grassy outfields gray–tipped and spiky. There were four altogether, two close and two across the way east. Farther on, a cluster of hardwoods and spruce shaded a play area for small children, replete with swings and monkey bars and teeter–totters and painted animals on heavy springs set in concrete that you could climb aboard and ride.
The entrance to the park was to Nest's immediate right, and the blacktop road leading into the park ran under the crossbar toward the river before splitting off in two directions. If you went right, you traveled to the turnaround and the cliffs, where the previous night she had rescued Bennett Scott. Beyond the turnaround, separated from the park by a high chain–link fence that any kid over the age of seven who was worth his salt could climb, was Riverside Cemetery, rolling, tree–shaded, and sublimely peaceful. The cemetery was where her mother was buried. If you turned left off the blacktop, you either looped down under a bridge to the riverbank at the bottom of the cliffs, where a few picnic tables were situated, or you continued on some distance to the east end of the park where a large, sheltered pavilion, a toboggan slide, a playground, and the deep woods waited. The toboggan slide ran all the way from the heights beyond the parking lot to the reedy depths of the bayou. A good run hi deep winter would take you out across the ice all the way to the embankment that supported the railroad tracks running east to Chicago and west to the plains. Stretching a ran to the embankment was every toboggan rider's goal. Nest had done it three times. There were large brick–chimney and smaller iron hibachi–style cooking stations and wooden picnic tables all over the park, so that any number of church outings or family reunions could be carried on at one tune. Farther east, back in the deep woods, there were nature trails that ran from the Woodland Heights subdivision where Robert Heppler lived down to the banks of the Rock River. There were trees that were well over two hundred years old. Some of the oaks and elms and shagbark hickories rose over a hundred feet, and the park was filled with dark, mysterious places that whispered of things you couldn't see, but could only imagine and secretly wish for.
The park was old, Nest knew. It had never been anything but a park. Before it was officially titled and protected by state law, it had been an untamed stretch of virgin timber. No one had lived there since the time of the Indians. Except, of course, the feeders.
She took it all in for a moment, embracing it with her senses, reclaiming it for herself as she did each tune she returned, familiar ground that belonged to her. She felt that about the park–that through her peculiar and endemic familiarity with its myriad creatures, its secretive places, its changeless look and feel, and its oddly compelling solitude, it was hers. She felt this way whenever she stepped into the park, as if she were fulfilling a purpose in her life, as if she knew that here, of all places in the world, she belonged.
Of course, Pick had more than a little to do with that, having enlisted her years ago as his human partner in the care and upkeep of the park's magic.
She walked across the service road, kicking idly at the dirt with her running shoes, moving onto the heat–crisped grasses of the ball diamond, intent on taking the shortcut across the park to Cass Minter's house on Spring Drive. The others were ' probably already there: Robert, Brianna, and Jared. She would be the last to arrive, late as usual. But it was summer, and it really didn't matter if she was late. The days stretched on, and tune lost meaning. Today they were going fishing down by the old boat launch below the dam, just off the east end of the park. Bass, bluegill, perch, and sunfish, you could still catch them all, if not so easily as once. You didn't eat them, of course. Rock River wasn't clean enough for that, not the way it had been when her grandfather was a boy. But the fishing was fun, and it was as good a way as any to spend an afternoon.
She was skipping off behind the backstop of the closest ball field when she heard a voice call out.
"Nest! Wait up!"
Turning awkward and flushed the moment she realized who it was, she watched Jared Scott come loping up the service road from the park entry. She glanced down at her Grunge Lives T-shirt and her running shorts, at the stupid way they hung on her, at the flatness of her chest and the leanness of her legs and arms, and she wished for the thousandth time that she looked more like Brianna. She was angry at herself for thinking like that, then for feeling so bizarre over a boy, and then because there he was, right hi front of her, smiling and waving and looking at her in that strange way of his.
"Hey, Nest," he greeted.
"Hey, Jared." She looked quickly away.
They fell into step beside each other, moving along the third–base line of the diamond, both of them looking at their feet. Jared wore old jeans, a faded gray T-shirt, and tennis shoes with no socks. Nothing fit quite right, but Nest thought he looked pretty cute anyway.
"You get any sleep last night?" he asked after a minute.
He was just about her height (oh, all right, he was an inch or so shorter, maybe), with dark blond hair cut short, eyes so blue they were startling, a stoic smile that suggested both familiarity and long–suffering indulgence with life's vicissitudes, and a penchant for clearing his throat before speaking that betrayed his nervousness at making conversation. She didn't know why she liked him. She hadn't felt this way about him a year ago. A year ago, she had thought he was weird. She still wasn't sure what had happened to change things.
She shrugged. "I slept a little."
He cleared his throat. "Well, no thanks to me, I guess. You saved my bacon, bringing Bennett home."
"No, I didn't."
"Big tune. I didn't know what to do. I spaced, and the next thing I knew, she was outta there. I didn't know where she'd gone."
"Well, she's pretty little, so — "
"I messed up." He was having trouble getting the words out. "I should have locked the door or something, because the attacks can — "
"It wasn't your fault," she interrupted heatedly. Her eyes flicked to his, then away again. "Your mom shouldn't be leaving you alone to baby–sit those kids. She knows what can happen."
He was silent a moment. "She doesn't have any money for a sitter."
Oh, but she does have money to go out drinking at the bars, I suppose, Nest wanted to say, but didn't. "Your mom needs to get a life," she said instead.
"Yeah, I guess. George sure doesn't give her much of one."
"George Paulsen doesn't know how." Nest spit deliberately. "Do you know what he did with Bennett's kitten?"
Jared looked at her. "Spook? What do you mean? Bennett didn't say anything about it to me."
Nest nodded. "Well, she did to me,. She said George took Spook away somewhere 'cause he doesn't like cats. You don't know anything about it?"
"No. Spook?"
"She was probably scared to tell you. I wouldn't put it past that creep to threaten her not to say anything." She looked off into the park. "I told her I'd help find Spook. But I don't know where to look."