Read Online The Kings and Queens of Roam: A Novel by Daniel Wallace - Free Book Online Page B

said. “But we’re not giving up. There’s just not much left to hold on to.”
    Suddenly Johnny spoke up. “Gus and I are about the only boys still here,” he said.
    “Men,” Gus said, correcting him. “We’re men.”
    A black dog wandered in the yard behind them, stopping to look at the gathering as if it might be something the dog wanted to be a part of. Then it disappeared behind the Treadways’ house.
    “Anything else?” Helen asked. “You’re scaring away our customers.”
    Gus looked behind him, to his left and his right. No one was there.
    “Just one more thing,” Gus said. “Rachel.”
    Rachel . She’d never heard her name spoken like that before. Helen wasn’t sure she had heard anyone say her name like that, either.
    “Yes?” Rachel said.
    “We,” Gus started, then rethought it. “Johnny and me and a couple of others—not just us—Laura Anne’s going to be there, too. But we’re going down by the bridge and just, you know, have a farewell party. Say good-bye with smiles on our faces instead of frowns.”
    “The bridge?” Rachel said. “What bridge?”
    Helen would have liked to kill Gus Dyer now.
    “The old bridge down by the ravine,” he said.
    “That bridge is gone,” Helen said. “Long gone.”
    “It’s old,” Gus said. “And I wouldn’t trust it. But—”
    “There’s a bridge?” Rachel asked again.
    “There’s no bridge,” Helen said.
    Gus and Johnny looked at each other, and then at Rachel, and then at Helen. There was a story in Helen’s eyes, and somehow they could read it. It wasn’t a short story, either; it was a long one, and it was allabout Helen and Rachel and who they were to each other, and even about the things Helen had told her. It couldn’t have been clearer if it had been written in a book.
    “There’s no bridge,” Rachel said.
    Gus and John kept looking at Helen, and Helen kept looking at them. “Okay,” Gus said. “Jeez. There’s no bridge. Can you come anyway?”
    “Can Helen come, too?”
    So much happened in the world beyond what Rachel knew. That Gus and Helen were having their own silent conversation at the same time Rachel and Gus were talking to each other was nothing she could have even imagined. That people were able to speak with their eyes—of this, too, she had no idea. But she would learn.
    “I don’t think it’s that kind of party,” Helen said. “Is it, Gus?”
    “No,” Gus said, defeated. “It’s not.” Gus took one last long look at the most beautiful girl he would ever see in his life. “Bye, Rachel.”
    “Bye, Gus. And bye, Johnny Clare.”
    So the boys left. Helen watched them walk away while Rachel appeared to be putting some of the table’s trinkets in a kind of order. Even Helen could feel how sad her sister was, though, sad in a way Rachel could never express, sad for missing out on something she had never, and would never, know. When the boys turned the corner Helen looked at the house standing there—empty now for a week—and saw Tammy Chan looking at her through the living room window. Tammy died ten years ago, in the flood. Helen remembered how her body had been found at the top of a pine tree, but she didn’t look that worse for wear now. Tammy Chan smiled, and lifted a hand to wave, and Helen almost did, too—force of habit. She stopped herself, because it didn’t feel right to be waving at a ghost, even if one waved at you first. Distracted, then, she didn’t hear the click-click of a real person approaching. Dorothy Samuels. Rachel liked Mrs. Samuels. It hadn’t been easy for Helen, keeping the two of them apart, but, for the most part, she had.
    “Girls,” said Mrs. Samuels. “Good morning.”
    “Morning,” Helen said. She watched as Dorothy glanced at her and then quickly to Rachel, where she let her gaze linger. She can’t even look at me, Helen thought.
    “Good morning, Mrs. Samuels,” Rachel said. “How are you today?”
    Mrs. Samuels had been a good friend of their