He swallowed hard.
He and Kurt hadn't spoken of that night since.
"I sometimes wonder if it really happened," Kurt said.
Alan nodded. "It's hard to believe. Even for me."
"I believe it," Kurt said. "I won't ever not believe it. I think that's
probably important to you."
Alan felt a sob well up in his chest and swallowed it down
again. "Thanks," he managed to say.
"When are you leaving?"
"Tomorrow morning. I'm going to rent a car and drive up," he said.
"How long?"
"I dunno," he said. He was feeling morose now. "A couple days. A week,
maybe. No longer."
"Well, don't sweat the Bishop. He can wait. Come and get a beer with me
tonight before I go out?"
"Yeah," he said. "That sounds good. On a patio on Kensington. We can
people-watch."
#
How Alan and his brothers killed Davey: very deliberately.
Alan spent the rest of the winter in the cave, and Davey spent the
spring in the golem's cave, and through that spring, neither of them
went down to the school, so that the younger brothers had to escort
themselves to class. When the thaws came and icy meltoff carved
temporary streams in the mountainside, they stopped going to school, too
-- instead, they played on the mountainside, making dams and canals and
locks with rocks and imagination.
Their father was livid. The mountain rumbled as it warmed unevenly, as
the sheets of ice slid off its slopes and skittered down toward the
highway.
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