The Girl in the Window by Valerie Douglas

Author:Valerie Douglas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-12-19T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Josh’s truck was a big old rattletrap Ford that had once been painted red and was nothing like the trucks of the people Tyler knew from school, the big rumbling diesels or glossy monster trucks like Jeff’s. It was a working truck and that showed. There were signs of use – rub marks on the sides and hay in the bed – and signs of age – rust spots here and there – but you could tell by the sound of the engine that it still ran good. It had one big bench seat that ran across it. Tyler sat in the middle between Josh and Beth as they drove.

He’d been raised in town, or what there was left of the town, which was nothing but a bunch of mostly closed stores all clustered around the Square and the courthouse. He and his mom lived in a set of newer buildings on the outer edge. Subsistence housing, they called it, provided by the county. It was where poor people lived. School was just outside of the town limits, too, an old building with no air conditioning in the summer and uncertain heat in the winter. His mom had said that they were talking about building a new one, a county school. He’d have to ride a bus instead of walking to school. That was cool with Tyler – it was better than sweltering in the heat and much better than freezing his butt off in the winter.

All the stuff where things really happened was miles away out by the interstate, though.

There was a bunch of big stores there, fast food, hotels and stuff. His mom worked at one of those stores, but she didn’t make much money, which was why they lived where they lived.

They drove between farm fields thick with corn or soybeans or whatever.

What was amazing was how it smelled out here, what it looked and felt like, not close and tight like in town, but open. The air here smelled sweet.

It had been dark and he’d been kind of drunk on beer when he’d come here last so he almost didn’t recognize the house when they finally arrived, pulling into a long driveway beside a faded white fence outside of a big red barn.

The house was a typical farm type house, two stories, nothing fancy, a little worn from the weather with a broad front porch and a porch swing.

Next door was a house with a bright, shiny, new coat of paint.

None of it was like the shabby blocks of fake brick apartments where he and his mom lived after his dad had split, the cheapest place she could find for them to live.

This house didn’t have sheets or blankets covering some of the windows instead of curtains, like some of the apartments and houses around theirs.

Then he saw the horse and he knew where he was.

It was beautiful, that horse, big and black, but it looked wild now, tossing its head, pacing agitatedly around the paddock.

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