Page 98 of The Bright Lands
Kimbra didn’t have time for Bethany anymore. If she wanted to dance and cheer while boys were getting killed and running away and telling lies about her father then Bethany could—
She grabbed Kimbra’s arm.
“You have ajobto do.”
Jesus Christ. Kimbra dropped her bag and brought her heel down on Bethany’s foot, twisted when the girl squealed and tossed her into a locker. The metal boomed through the empty hall. Bethany released her.
It was almost satisfying—Kimbra had wanted to give Bethany Tanner a nice shiner for years. She took a quick step away, out of Bethany’s reach, but Tanner made no move to grab her again. The girl only stared at Kimbra, rubbed the back of her head. For the first time in her life, Kimbra saw Bethany on the verge of tears.
B-B-Benny spoke briefly in her mind. Fine. Kimbra would be a good person. “If you want to be useful for once in your life, tell Luke Evers not to go tonight, wherever he’s going,” she told Bethany. “Tell him it’s dangerous.”
And with that, Kimbra turned on her heel and strode away. For once, finally, she had had the last word.
JOEL
He retraced his route toward town and checked his phone for news from Clark. No messages, no service. Fifteen minutes earlier, Ranger had refused to say another word. Whatever had motivated him to reveal so much to Joel—spite or revenge against this town or a desire to see justice done for Jason—had run dry as abruptly as it had sprung up. The man had screwed his mouth shut, stared at the television, played with his beer, not even glancing up when Joel had slipped from the shack without saying goodbye.
So where did that leave him? He had gone to Ranger’s to discover one thing: whether KT had been lying and Dylan had been involved in drugs after all. Joel had harbored a long shot theory that perhaps, if Dylan had been murdered because of KT’s involvement with narcotics, then Garrett Mason, KT’s apparent business partner, might have been involved in the murder—that boy with his big bruised fist sure seemed to have plenty to hide. Perhaps, Joel had thought, Garrett Mason might even have been the boy KT had spoken of Dylan traveling to the coast with; it sounded absurd, certainly, but what else did he have to go on?
A rabbit darted across the road. Joel slapped his forehead with his palm. It was right there: KT had told Clark and Joel this morning that Dylan and his boy had gone away on their weekends together. But Garrett had been arrested with KTin Bentleyon a weekend that KT and Dylan were both supposed to be out of town.
Joel sighed. Another theory for the scrap pile.
He tapped out a quick note to Clark on his phone, hitSend, wondered if it would ever reach her.
He thought of Dylan, of his brother telling Joel five days before his murder that he couldn’t sleep. Dylan had added that he couldn’tgo to the bright landsanymore. And yet had Dylan gone to them regardless, whatever they were, the night he died?
“What we did wasnothingcompared to the shit that goes on in this town,”Wesley had said.
it’s like i hear this town talking when i sleep.
Broken men and frightened men. A missing shirt, a bloody jacket, a bloody sock. Escort ads and drugs and dick pics, oh my. Bag boys, old boys, golden boys, gone. A hate crime or a love crime. A shallow creek, an iron slab, a pit.
A warning etched with the point of a knife: GET OUT NOW FAG.
He drove until he found cell service and called Clark. The call went to voice mail. For the first time that day, Joel wondered just how powerful this darkness from the pit really was. Had it done something to Clark’s father so it could get her out of town? To get Joel alone, just like this?
Nothing seemed impossible anymore. If Clark’s mom was to be believed then they were dealing with a force a lot older than Bentley or Pettis County or this whole prejudiced country.
“This place is old, Whitley. It has rules.”
Joel googledCorwin Broadlock,the name Ranger had mentioned before abruptly shutting down. His phone’s browser choked and stuttered on the tenuous connection that reached him in the open country.
He was nearly back to town by the time he found the old newspaper article.
STAR PLAYER’S WHEREABOUTS REMAIN
UNKNOWN.
Joel read the story—it was little more than a blurry scan of an old page on the WacoTribune-Herald’s website—and his heartbeat quickened.
On April 5th, 1976, Corwin Broadlock, the wide-receiver who brought the small town of Bentley such pride in their first championship game, ran away from home without warning. Mr. Broadlock has not been seen since.
The story stated that Broadlock’s parents had received a letter one month after his disappearance, urging them not to worry about his whereabouts. The letter bore a Miami postmark, but no trace of the boy had been found there. Corwin’s parents insisted that the content and tone of the letter sounded nothing like their son but there was little the police could do.
“It’s an absolute shock,” says Mr. Broadlock’s former teammate Grady Mayfield. Close friend Tom Parter adds, “I thought these were the best years of our lives. I can only hope Corwin’s found whatever he needs wherever he went.”
joel im sorry but i cant stay in bentley right now
