The Troop

Shelley sat beside the dead fire, stirring the ashes with a stick. He drew squiggles. Worms on the brain, must be. He felt like one of those circus performers who spun plates atop long bamboo poles. Lots of irons in the ole fire, as his dad would say.

Next up: Ephraim. Stupid, angry Eef. Eef the fatherless freak. Eef the cuckoo bird who went to Dr. Harley’s office to babble about his feelings. When Shelley’s homeroom teacher suggested that perhaps he could benefit from a session or two with Dr. Harley—this after she’d caught Shelley poking the class hamster, Puggins, with a pencil, the tip of which he’d scrupulously sharpened—his mother had scoffed, outraged. My son doesn’t need to see a damn headshrinker, thank-you-very-much-good-day.

Earlier, back in the cellar, Shelley spotted Eef staring at his hands. His knuckles had broken open when he’d punched Kent—an incident Shelley had enjoyed immensely because it meant group dynamics were shifting. Changes made people unsure, especially boys his age, because routines were important. When you took away routines, things went haywire. And Shelley liked haywire, because then anything could happen.

Shelley could tell that Ephraim was afraid that whatever was in Kent had gotten into him—it’d leapt between their bodies, from Kent’s lips to Ephraim’s hand, swimming in on the rush of blood. Shelley knew Ephraim was scared and he foresaw a great profit in nursing that fear along. It would be easy. Ephraim was so predictable—so predictably stupid.

Of course, Shelley hadn’t seen the teeny-tiny worms at that point—but he’d understood that the sickness, whatever it was, scurried inside of you, ate you from the inside out. That’s what made it so scary. This wasn’t a bear or a shark or a psycho axe murderer; those things were bad, sure, but you could get away from them. Hide.

How could you hide from a murderer who lived under your skin?

After the storm, when they went in the cabin and saw the Scoutmaster’s rotting body, saw those threadlike worms squirming in his chest—Shelley couldn’t believe it. Everything was coming up aces.

Now it was simply a matter of keeping all those plates spinning.

Shelley had a method of probing, of opening doors in people that was uncanny. He rarely used this gift—it could get him in trouble. But he was able to spy the weak spots the way a sculptor saw the seams in a block of granite; one tap in the right spot and it’d split right open.

I saw something, Eef.

That was all it had taken. The smallest seedling—he’d slit Ephraim’s skin, just the thinnest cut, slipping that seed in. If Shelley did some additional work, well, maybe that seed would squirm into Ephraim’s veins, surf to his heart, and bloom into something beautiful. Or horrible. It didn’t matter which to Shelley.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the walkie-talkie. He’d slipped the other one into Ephraim’s backpack this morning, while the other boys had been busying themselves for the hike. He fiddled with the button, not quite ready to put his plan into action.

After all, how much good luck did one boy deserve?

28

SOMETIME AROUND midafternoon, Ephraim sat down and refused to get up.

“That’s it. I’m not walking anymore.”

They had come to a copse of spruce trees. The air was dense with the scent of pine: it smelled like the car air fresheners drivers hung off their rearview mirrors.

Ephraim sat on a moss-covered rock with his fingers knit together in his lap. His body position mimicked a famous Roman sculpture that Newton had seen in a history book: The Pugilist at Rest. Ephraim looked a bit like a statue himself. His skin had a slick alabaster hue, except for around the lips and the rims of his nostrils, where it had a bluish-gray tint. Newton had a scary premonition: if they left Ephraim here and came back years later, he was sure Eef’s body would remain in this fixed position—a statue of calcified bone.

“Come on,” Newt said gently. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re going to find food soon.”

“Not hungry,” Ephraim said.

“Well, that’s sort of good news. It means you’re not sick, right?”

“It doesn’t mean anything.” There was an undertone of liquid menace in Ephraim’s voice. “We don’t really know anything, do we?”

“We have to keep moving, man,” said Max. “If we can find a good place to set a trap, then—”

“Then what, Max?” Ephraim’s chin was cocked at its customary challenging jut. “We catch a skunk? Great! Wonderful! Let’s all chow down on skunk burgers that’ll taste like skunk ass.”

Newt said: “We can’t just give up.”

“Hey, you guys do whatever you want. I’m not stopping you.”

Newton looked at Max as if he should say something. They were best friends, after all—other than Ephraim’s own mother, Max was the only person on North Point who could reliably get Eef to calm down and stop acting crazy. But more and more, even Max felt powerless to address Ephraim’s mounting mania.