Page 96 of The Bright Lands
If you don’t go tonight there’s no stopping it.
Joel cleared his throat. “KT Staler said selling drugs around here was your idea.”
Ranger scoffed. “The drugs have been going on for ages. It’s simple—just use some of that golden boy immunity to sell product the cops won’t hassle you for. After Troy went away, Jason thought it was a brilliant idea and started selling with the Staler boy’s sister—that crazy bitch, Savannah—until the two of thems got busted on the other side of the county line, where they wasn’t safe. Fast forward nine years, Jason gets out of Huntsville, comes back to town, finds out pretty quick KT’s looking for money to move away and somehow KT roped Garrett into selling with him. Jason didn’t tell the boys how things had ended up with Troy, of course. I told all three of them it was about the dumbest idea a man could ask for, but the money was too damn good, I guess. Jason said they’d be cleverer than last time, they wouldn’t get their product from the Mexicans. He’d heard all about this new thing when he was locked up. You can buy drugs off the internet now—did you know that? They call it thedark web.
“Those little bag boys always work the same. KT would get the product delivered off the internet to somewhere here in town. He and Garrett picked it up. Garrett sold some to folks around the county and kept some for their little gang. KT would drive a chunk of it up to Dallas and hand it off to some hotshot he knew up there—KT must have a stack of money the size of a house. Jason skipped town after the three of them got busted by Grissom in July but the arrest didn’t stop the younger boys. Jason was turning over a new leaf in Austin. He was out a few grand worth of product before the arrest so I guess he finally got desperate enough. He must have thought he could sneak into town during Friday’s game and make off with some money while they was playing. Fucking idiot.” Ranger pointed a scarred finger at Joel as if this were his fault. “Jasonknewthe old boys had gotten tired of him. He’d outspent his loyalty, you know.”
Joel struggled to make sense of this. “And you think Jason was killed forthat? Just for coming back to town?”
Ranger burped. “This place is old, Whitley. It has rules.”
Joel’s eyes drifted to the TV screen, where the reporter with the perfect skin was talking to a man in a cowboy hat that shaded his face. The man was stationed near the football stands, a meat smoker belching beside him. Standing behind the smoker, staring at the camera with its glassy black eyes, was the stuffed bison Joel had seen on the highway last Friday as he’d made his way into town.
imissedyou.
Joel went very still when he looked at Ranger again. He was smiling, but there was no joy in it. Something had come loose inside the man. No light from the TV could penetrate the hole where his eye should be.
“Ranger—” Joel heard anxiety thrumming in his voice: he needed to get out of this house. “How does Dylan fit into all of this?”
“You really ain’t asking the right questions here, Whitley. Why ain’t you asking what broke me? Who killed that friend of Parter’s? Who invited Troy—”
“Parter?” Joel leaned back. “Coach Parter? A friend of his died?”
Ranger laughed. He sounded incredulous. “You mean you never heard of Corwin Broadlock? I thought all that business with him is what started you down this road in the first place. The boy was just like your brother.”
At the sound of Broadlock’s name, static began to creep through the TV’s muted speakers in a long, mad whisper, the radio-whisper, the dream-whisper—imissedyou—and it set to work inside Joel’s skull.
On the television the stuffed bison seemed to cock its head at him like a bird.
KIMBRA
Heading 2 uncle jarvis’s house early (store slow!!) will see you Sun
Kimbra was so surprised by her father’s message she forgot to slip her phone back into the top of her cheerleader’s uniform. She stood, stiff and silent, as the Bison team burst through a panel of painted paper spread across the cafeteria’s exit and the other cheerleaders screamed and the band played and the students lining the hallway shouted themselves hoarse. The Bison Stampede, another ancient ritual for the Perlin game, and Kimbra had forgotten how to cheer.
She, Dashandre and April had been stationed by the doors of the cafeteria, meaning that by the time the Bison’s starting line had reached the gym at the other end of the school the three of them were still stuck clapping for the backbenchers whose names people barely remembered. This would have bothered Kimbra enormously last year, back when she still cared about this school and this town, back before her boyfriend started keeping Real Secrets from her and she had Real Life Problems. Now she was too preoccupied. Her father’s message was just the latest strange turn in a day that had already made her tipsy with unease.
Even knowing that KT had been returned home, Kimbra had awoken this morning desperate to know what it was the boy had been hiding from her all this time. She had been eager to help Joel Whitley, certain—for reasons she couldn’t quite define—that these Bright Lands he’d asked about were the key to the great mystery that had grown up around her.
Yet Whiskey and T-Bay, so helpful yesterday, had ignored her after first period. A few of the girls on the squad had shrugged when Kimbra had murmured a simple question—“Have you ever heard of some place some of the boys go? Somewhere they don’t talk about?”—and given her blank looks that she took to be genuine.
Despite all her care and discretion, Garrett Mason had caught her eye in biology, had brought a bruised finger to his lips without a word.Shh.
Then, at lunch, KT had texted, his first message to her since last Friday, and all he wrote waslets leave now. She hadn’t responded, even when he’d started blowing up her phone.
And now here was this odd message from her father. He always went quail hunting on the weekends, leaving town after the game so he could be at her uncle Jarvis’s house outside Sprickstown in time to sleep and still be up well before dawn, when the quail started to rouse. Yet today he had apparently decided to miss the game altogether.
Her father never missed a game.
Something bad is going on
“Yo, K-K-Kimbra. You got a second?”
It was Benny Garcia, the backbencher’s backbencher, standing like a dwarf in his oversize pads and fussing with his gloves. The opening bars of the pep rally’s warm-up number were already echoing from the gym.
“What is it?” Kimbra said.
Benny only nodded at the empty cafeteria. She studied his big green eyes through the grill of his helmet. He looked like he had something important to tell her.
