Nightblood by T. Chris Martindale

Author:T. Chris Martindale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2019-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Isherwood did not sleep well. The nightmares began just before midnight.

On Cayuga Avenue there was an anxious tapping on a windowpane. Ten-year-old Nate Haskell awoke and reached for his glasses on the nightstand, only to find familiar faces pressed against the window. He could hardly believe it; there was Joey Lipp and Freddy Felder and the Yeager twins, and Andrea Hart was with them, too. Andrea Hart, who was about as hot as a ten-year-old could get, bar none. She even had tits, or at least the starter kit. To Nate she was a goddess. Hell, they were all special—each one a member of the fifth-grade elite, and not one of them had ever deigned to give him the time of day.

No, that wasn’t true. Andrea had said thank you once when he gave her butts in the lunch line, and Freddy had called him a fat-nerd-four-eyes-dipshit once last year on the playground. But nothing since.

So what were they doing here?

“C’mon, Nate,” Joey whispered urgently, looking back to make sure the lights didn’t come on in the other window further along. “Let us in. We gotta . . . talk to ya ’bout something.”

“Yeah, talk,” the Yeagers, boy and girl, both giggled.

“About what?” he asked. “Can’t this wait till school tomorrow?”

“No, it can’t wait,” Freddy sneered, showing a momentary flash of anger and teeth. Andrea swatted him and his smiling, friendly face returned.

Turn it off, Freddy, Nate wanted to say. I’ve never liked you anyway.

“Nathan,” Andrea said lyrically, brushing up against the window so that the budding breasts beneath her sweater flattened out and looked larger. It was a cloying caricature of adulthood. “We just want you to be in our club, that’s all.”

“Right,” Joey said over her shoulder. “A club. You can be one of us.”

Nate brightened behind his too-thick glasses and looked at Joey with amazement, but not for too long. His eyes couldn’t stray far from Andrea. “You want me to be . . . one of you? C’mon, you guys, what’s the catch? You want me to do your homework or what?”

“No catch,” Andrea cooed. “We just want to be . . . friends. We can make you just like us.”

“Just like us,” said the Yeagers, in perfect unison.

Joey pressed his face to the glass. “What do they call you at school, Nate?”

The chubby boy hung his head and said nothing.

“Do they call you fatso?”

“Do they call you four-eyes?”

Freddy laughed. “Nerd? Pigshit? Brainiac? Lard-ass?”

“Yes!” Nate hissed. His eyes were watery, and a few tears had begun a slow slide down his pudgy cheeks.

“Nate,” Andrea whispered, “you don’t have to take it. Never again.”

“I don’t?”

Joey looked feral in his glee. “None of it. No one’ll ever call you that again. You’ll be one of us. You’ll be a big shot.”

“Open up, Nathan,” Andrea smiled. “Let us in. Don’t you like us?”

“I like you, Andrea . . .”

“You know,” she said, pouting adolescent lips, “I never did thank you for letting me in line that one time.

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