3.

So they rode in silence for awhile. There was no traffic once they pa.s.sed the Pigwockit Campground. The sky overhead was still blue, but the sun was now buried in the oncoming clouds, rendering the day bright but queerly shadeless. Presently Amanda spoke in an uncharacteristic tone of thoughtful curiosity. "Would you have come for me even if you didn't need a partner in crime?"

Lisey considered this. "I like to think so," she finally said.

Amanda lifted the Lisey-hand closest to her and planted a kiss on it-truly it was as light as a b.u.t.terfly's wing-before replacing it on the steering wheel. "I like to think so, too," she said. "It's a funny place, Southwind. When you're there, it seems as real as anything in this world, and better than everything in this world. But when you're here..." She shrugged. Wistfully, Lisey thought. "Then it's only a moonbeam."

Lisey thought of lying in bed with Scott at The Antlers, watching the moon struggle to come out. Listening to his story and then going with him. Going.

Amanda asked, "What did Scott call it?"

"Boo'ya Moon."

Amanda nodded. "I was at least close, wasn't I?"

"You were."

"I think most kids have a place they go to when they're scared or lonely or just plain bored. They call it NeverLand or the Shire, Boo'ya Moon if they've got big imaginations and make it up for themselves. Most of them forget. The talented few-like Scott-harness their dreams and turn them into horses."

"You were pretty talented yourself. You were the one who thought up Southwind, weren't you? The girls back home played that for years. I wouldn't be surprised if there are girls out on the Sabbatus Road still playing a version of it."

Amanda laughed and shook her head. "People like me were never meant to really cross over. My imagination was just big enough to get me in trouble."

"Manda, that's not true-"

"Yes," Amanda said. "It is. The looneybins are full of people like me. Our dreams harness us, and they whip us with soft whips-oh, lovely whips-and we run and we run, always in the same place...because the ship...Lisey, the sails never open and the ship never weighs its anchor..."

Lisey risked another look. Tears were running down Amanda's cheeks. Maybe tears didn't fall on those stone benches, but yes, here they were the smucking human condish.

"I knew I was going," Amanda said. "All the time we were in Scott's study...all the time I was writing meaningless numbers in that stupid little notebook, I knew..."

"That little notebook turned out to be the key to everything," Lisey said, remembering that HOLLYHOCKS as well as mein gott had been printed there...something like a message in a bottle. Or another bool-Lisey, here's where I am, please come find me.

"Do you mean it?" Amanda asked.

"I do."

"That's so funny. Scott gave me those notebooks, you know-d.a.m.n near a lifetime supply. For my birthday."

"He did?"

"Yes, the year before he died. He said they might come in handy." She managed a smile. "I guess one of them actually did."

"Yes," Lisey said, wondering if mein gott was written on the backs of all the others, in tiny dark letters just below the trade name. Someday, maybe, she would check. If she and Amanda got out of this alive, that was.

4.

When Lisey slowed in downtown Castle Rock, preparing to turn in at the Sheriff's Office, Amanda clutched her arm and asked what in G.o.d's name she thought she was doing. She listened to her sister's reply with mounting amazement.

"And what am I supposed to do while you're making your report and filling out forms?" Amanda asked in tones etched with acid. "Sit on the bench outside Animal Registry in these pajamas, with my t.i.ts poking out on top and my woofy showing down south? Or should I just sit out here and listen to the radio? How are you going to explain showing up barefoot? Or what if someone from Greenlawn has already called to tell the Sheriff's Department that they ought to keep an eye out for the writer's widow, she was visiting her sister up there at Crackerjack Manor and now they're both gone?"

Lisey was what her less-than-brilliant father would have called hard flummoxed. She had been so fixated on the problems of getting Manda back from Nowhere Land and coping with Jim Dooley that she had completely forgotten their current state of dishabille, not to mention any possible repercussions of the Great Escape. By now they were nestled in a slant-parkings.p.a.ce in front of the brick Sheriff's Department building, with a visiting State Police cruiser to their left and a Ford sedan with CASTLE COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPT. painted on the side to their right, and Lisey began to feel decidedly claustrophobic. The t.i.tle of a country song-"What Was I Thinking?"-popped into her mind.

Ridiculous, of course-she wasn't a fugitive, Greenlawn wasn't a prison, and Amanda wasn't exactly a prisoner, but her bare feet...how was she going to explain her smucking bare feet? And- I haven't been thinking at all, not really, I've just been following the steps. The recipe. And this is like turning a page in the cookbook and finding the next one blank. "Also," Amanda was continuing, "there's Darla and Canty to think about. You did fine this morning, Lisey, I'm not criticizing, but-"

"Yes you are," Lisey said. "And you're right to criticize. If this isn't a mess already, it soon will be. I didn't want to go to your house too soon or stay there too long in case Dooley's keeping an eye on that, too-"

"Does he know about me?"

I got an idear you got some kind of sister-twister goin on as well, isn't that so?

"I think..." Lisey began, then stopped. That kind of equivocation wouldn't do. "I know he does, Manda."

"Still, he's not Karnak the Great. He can't be both places at the same time."

"No, but I don't want the cops coming by, either. I don't want them in this at all."

"Drive us up to the View, Lisey. You know, Pretty View."

Pretty View was what locals called the picnic area overlooking Castle Lake and Little Kin Pond. It was the entrance to Castle Rock State Park, and there was plenty of parking, even a couple of Portosans. And at mid-afternoon, with thunderstorms rolling in, it would very likely be deserted. A good place to stop, think, take stock, and kill some time. Maybe Amanda really was a genius.

"Come on, get us off Main Street," Amanda said, plucking at the neckline of her pajama top. "I feel like a stripper in church."

Lisey backed carefully out onto the street-now that she wanted nothing to do with the County Sheriff's Department, she was absurdly sure she was going to get into a fender-bender before she could put it behind her-and turned west. Ten minutes later she was turning in at the sign reading CASTLE ROCK STATE PARK.

PICNIC AND RESTROOM FACILITIES AVAILABLE.

MAYOCTOBER THIS PARK CLOSES AT SUNDOWN.

BARREL-PICKING PROHIBITED FOR YOUR HEALTH.

BY LAW.

5.

Lisey's was the only car in the parking lot, and the picnic area was deserted-not even a single backpacker getting high on nature (or Montpelier Gold). Amanda walked toward one of the picnic tables. The soles of her feet were very pink, and even with the sun hidden, she was clearly nude under the green pajamas.

"Amanda, do you really think that's-"

"If someone comes I'll nip right back into the car." Manda looked back over her shoulder and flashed a grin. "Try it-the gra.s.s feels positively slinky."

Lisey walked to the edge of the pavement on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, then stepped up into the green. Amanda was right, slinky was the one, the perfect fish from Scott's pool of words. And the view to the west was a straight shot to the eye and heart. Thunderheads were pouring toward them through the ragged teeth of the White Mountains, and Lisey counted seven dark spots where the high slopes had been smudged away by cauls of rain. Brilliant lightnings flashed inside those stormbags and between two of them, connecting them like some fantastic fairy bridge, was a double rainbow that arched over Mount Cranmore in a frayed loophole of blue. As Lisey watched that hole closed and another, over some mountain whose name she did not know, opened, and the rainbow reappeared. Below them Castle Lake was a dirty dark gray and Little Kin Pond beyond it a dead black goose-eye. The wind was rising but it was improbably warm, and when her hair lifted from her temples, Lisey lifted her arms as though she would fly-not on a magic carpet but on the ordinary alchemy of a summer storm.

"Manda!" she said. "I'm glad I'm alive!"

"So am I," Amanda said seriously, and held out her hands. The wind blew back her graying hair and made it fly like a child's. Lisey closed her fingers carefully around her sister's, trying to be mindful of Amanda's cuts but aware of a rising wildness in herself all the same. Thunder cracked overhead, the warm wind blew harder, and ninety miles to the west, thunderheads streamed through the ancient mountain pa.s.ses. Amanda began to dance and Lisey danced with her, their bare feet in the gra.s.s, their linked hands in the sky.

"Yes!" Thunder cracked and Lisey had to yell it.

"Yes, what?" Manda hollered back. She was laughing again.

"Yes, I mean to kill him!"

"That's what I said! I'll help you!" Amanda shouted, and then the rain began and they ran back to the car, both of them laughing and holding their hands over their heads.

6.They were under cover before the first of that afternoon's half a dozen real downpours came, and so were spared a serious soaking, which they most certainly would have gotten had they dallied; thirty seconds after the first drops fell, they could no longer see the nearest picnic table, less than twenty yards away. The rain was cold, the inside of the car warm, and the windshield fogged up at once. Lisey started the engine and turned on the defroster. Amanda snared Lisey's cell phone. "Time to call Miss Buggy b.u.mpers," she said, using a childhood name for Darla Lisey hadn't heard in years.

Lisey glanced at her watch and saw it was now after three. Not much chance of Canty and Darla (once known as Miss Buggy b.u.mpers, and how she'd hated it) still being at lunch. "They're probably on the road between Portland and Auburn by now," she said.

"Yes, they probably are," Amanda said, speaking to Lisey as though she were a child. "That's why I'm going to call Miss Buggy's cell."

It's Scott's fault if I'm technologically challenged, Lisey thought of saying. Ever since he died, I keep falling farther behind the cutting edge. Why, I haven't even gotten around to buying a DVD player yet, and everybody has those.

What she did say was, "If you call Darla Miss Buggy b.u.mpers, she'll probably hang up even if she realizes it's you."

"I'd never do that." Amanda stared out at the pelting rain. It had turned the BMW's windshield into a gla.s.s river. "Do you know why me n Canty used to call her that, and why it was so mean of us?"

"No."

"When she was only three or four, Darla had a little red rubber dolly. She was the original Miss Buggy b.u.mpers. Darl loved that old thing. One cold night she left Miss Buggy on a radiator and she melted. Sweet baldheaded Christ, what a stink."

Lisey tried her best to hold back more laughter and failed. Because her throat was locked and her mouth was shut, it came out through her nose and she blew a large quant.i.ty of clear snot onto her fingers.

"Euwww, charming, high tea is served, madam," Amanda said.

"There are Kleenex in the glove compartment," Lisey said, blushing to the roots of her hair. "Would you give me some?" Then she thought of Miss Buggy b.u.mpers melting on the radiator, and this crossed with what had been Dandy's juiciest curse-sweet baldheaded Christ-and she started laughing again, although she recognized the sadness hidden like a sweet-sour pearl within her hilarity, something that had to do with the neatly-put-together do-it-my-way-darling adult Darla and the ghost child still hidden just beneath, that jam-smeared and often furious kid who had always seemed to need something.

"Oh, just wipe it on the steering wheel," Amanda said, now laughing again herself. She was holding the hand with the phone in it against her stomach. "I think I'm going to pee myself."

"If you pee in those pajamas, Amanda, they'll melt. Give me that d.a.m.n box of Kleenex."

Amanda, still laughing, opened the glove compartment and handed over the Kleenex.

"Do you think you'll be able to get her?" Lisey asked. "In all this rain?"

"If she's got her phone turned on, I'll get her. And unless she's in a movie or something, she's always got it turned on. I talk to her almost every day-sometimes twice, if Matt's off on one of his teaching orgies. 'Cause, see, sometimes Metzie calls her and Darla tells me what she says. These days Darl's the only one in the family Metzie will talk to."

Lisey was fascinated by this. She'd had no idea Amanda and Darla talked about Amanda's troubled daughter-certainly Darla had never said anything about it. She wished she could pursue the matter further, but supposed this wasn't the time to do so. "What will you tell her, if you get her?"

"Just listen. I think I've got it figured out, but I'm afraid if I tell you in advance, it'll lose some of its...I don't know. Freshness. Believability. All I want is to get the two of them far enough away so they won't come wandering in and-"

"-get caught in Max Silver's potato grader?" Lisey asked. Over the years they'd all worked for Mr. Silver: a quarter for every barrel of potatoes you picked, and you ended up scrubbing dirt out from under your nails until February.

Amanda gave her a sharp look, then smiled. "Something like that. Darla and Canty can be annoying, but I love em, so sue me. I sure wouldn't want em getting hurt just because they turned up in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Me either," Lisey said softly.

A burst of hail rattled down on the roof and windshield; then it was just hard rain again.

Amanda patted her hand. "I know that, Little."

Little. Not little Lisey, just Little. How long since Amanda had called her that? And she'd been the only one who ever did.

7.

Amanda entered the number with some difficulty because of her hands, going wrong once and having to start over. The second time she managed it, pushed the green SEND b.u.t.ton, and put the small Motorola phone to her ear.

The rain had let up a little. Lisey realized she could see the first picnic table again. How many seconds since Amanda had sent the call on its way? She looked from the picnic table to her sister, eyebrows raised. Amanda started to shake her head, then straightened in her bucket seat and raised her right forefinger, as if summoning a waiter in a fancy restaurant.

"Darla?...Can you hear me?...Do you know who this is?...Yes! Yes, really!"

Amanda stuck out her tongue and bugged her eyes, miming Darla's reaction with silent and rather cruel efficiency: a game-show contestant who has just won the bonus round.

"Yes, she's right beside m...Darla, slow down! First I couldn't talk and now I can't get a word in edgeways! I'll let you talk to Lisey in just a..."

Amanda listened longer this time, nodding, at the same time clipping the thumb and fingers of her right hand together in a quack-quack-quack gesture.

"Uh-huh, I'll tell her, Darl." Without bothering to cover the mouthpiece of the phone-probably because she wanted Darla to hear the message being pa.s.sed on-Amanda said, "She and Canty are together, Lisey, but still at the Jetport. Canty's plane was held up by thunderstorms out of Boston. Isn't that a shame?"

Amanda gave Lisey a thumbs-up as she said this last, then returned her attention to the phone.

"I'm glad I caught you guys before you started rolling, because I'm not at Greenlawn anymore. Lisey and I are at Acadia Mental Health in Derry...that's right, Derry."

She listened, nodding.

"Yes, I guess it is sort of a miracle. All I know is I heard Lisey calling and I woke up. The last thing I remember before that is you guys taking me to Stephens Memorial in No Soapa. Then I just...I heard Lisey calling me and it was like when you hear someone calling you out of a deep sleep...and the docs at Greenlawn sent me up here for all these tests on my brain that probably cost a fortune..."

Listening.

"Yes, hon, I do want to say hi to Canty, and I'm sure Lisey does, too, but they want us now and the phone won't work in the room where they do their tests. You'll drive up, won't you? I'm sure you can be in Derry by seven o'clock, eight o'clock tops..."

At that moment the skies opened again. This cloudburst was even fiercer than the first had been, and suddenly the car was filled with its hollow drumming sound. For the first time Amanda seemed completely at a loss. She looked at Lisey, eyes wide and full of panic. One finger pointed at the roof of the car, where the sound was coming from. Her lips formed the words She wants to know what that sound is.

Lisey didn't hesitate. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the telephone away from Amanda and put it to her own ear. The connection was bellclear in spite of the storm (maybe even because of it, for all Lisey knew). She heard not just Darla but Canty as well, talking to each other in agitated, confused, jubilant voices; in the background she could even hear a loudspeaker announcing flight delays due to bad weather.

"Darla, it's Lisey. Amanda's back! All the way back! Isn't it wonderful?"

"Lisey, I can't believe it!"

"Seeing's believing," Lisey said. "Get your a.s.s up to Acadia in Derry and see for yourself."

"Lisey, what's that noise? It sounds like you're in a shower!"

"Hydrotherapy, right across the hall!" Lisey said, lying giddily and thinking We'll never be able to explain this later-not in a million years. "They've got the door open and it's awfully noisy."

For a moment there was no sound but the steadily downpouring rain. Then Darla said, "If she's really all right, maybe Canty and I could go to the Snow Squall anyway. It's a long drive up to Derry and we're both famished."

For a moment Lisey was furious with her, then could almost have punched herself in the eye for feeling that way. The longer they took, the better-wasn't that right? Yet still, the put-upon petulance she heard in Darla's voice made Lisey feel a little sick to her stomach. And that was also the sister thing, she supposed.