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Authors: David Lubar

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BOOK: B003J5UJ4U EBOK
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martin walks the walk


DROP DEAD
!”

The second he shouted those words, Martin knew he’d crossed a line. But there was nothing he could do about it. Life didn’t come with a backspace key.

As his father shouted back, veins bulging in his head, Martin stormed to the front door.

“Martin. Don’t go,” his mom called.

“Let him go,” his dad said. “Good riddance. Let him find out what it’s like in the real world. He’ll come crawling home soon enough.”

“He’s only fifteen,” his mom said. “We’re responsible for him.”

“Nobody’s responsible for him. And fifteen is plenty old enough for a dose of reality.”

There was more, but Martin rushed off, still fueled by anger, and let the words fade into the distance. He couldn’t believe what his dad had done. The phone had rung right after dinner. Martin reached for it, but his dad snatched the receiver and snarled, “Hello?” Then he frowned, glanced at Martin, and said, “Who wants to know?”

“Is it for me?” Martin asked.

His dad ignored him. “He’s grounded. No calls.” A second later, he shouted, “I told you, he’s grounded.” Then he slammed down the receiver.

“Who was it?” Martin asked.

“Nobody.”

“You don’t have the right to do that.”

The rest of the discussion did not go well. A moment later, just like that, he was a runaway. He didn’t even look back until he’d traveled half a block. No sign of his dad. His mom was on the porch, her hands clutching the railing while moths swooped at the light behind her. He hoped she at least wanted to chase after him. But it didn’t matter what she wanted to do. She wouldn’t step off the porch. His dad probably wouldn’t even let her call the cops.
It doesn’t matter to him that I’m underage. Doesn’t matter if I keep walking and never come back.

Martin looked ahead to where the sidewalk blended into the darkness. How perfect. Everything in front of him was murky. The world could come to an end a mile up the road, and he wouldn’t have a clue until he got there and stepped off the edge of the earth.

That described his future, too. Everything ahead of him seemed to be shrouded in darkness. He checked his pockets to verify what he already knew—not a dime. Not anything. All he had with him was a ton of rage and a useless talent for getting people angry.

torchie makes
a joyful noise


MOM, CAN I
go to camp?” Torchie asked.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Remember what happened the last time you went?”

“I’m a lot older now. And this isn’t regular camp, so there aren’t any tents to catch fire. This is accordion camp.” Torchie pointed to the ad on the page next to the comics. “It’s in Philadelphia.”

His mom leaned over his shoulder. “Oh my, that’s expensive.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” In his excitement, he hadn’t noticed the price. “That’s okay. I don’t need to go.” He enjoyed staying home, especially after having to live away from home when he was at Edgeview. And he liked keeping his mom company since his dad was on the road a lot driving his truck cross-country. But for some reason, he couldn’t stop thinking about Philadelphia. It didn’t matter. He knew his mom was right—the camp was too expensive. And he really didn’t need music lessons. He was learning so much on his own. He could teach himself just about any instrument.

Torchie got up from the table and grabbed his accordion.
It was time to entertain the neighbors. That was his mom’s idea. Torchie remembered when he’d gotten the accordion. He’d come home from school one day in April to find the huge box sitting on the porch. He’d carried it right to the living room and opened it as fast as he could. The accordion was way bigger than it had looked in the picture on eBay, and a lot shabbier, but that didn’t matter. He gave it a squeeze. What a great sound. He started right out working on his favorite song. The accordion wasn’t just big. It was also really heavy, which made him sweat, but he didn’t mind. He sweated all the time, anyhow.

“Philip,” his mom had called from the kitchen a half hour later.

“Yes, Mom? Want to hear a song? I’ve got ‘Oh Susannah’ almost figured out. At least, the first part of it.” The absolute best thing was that, unlike the harmonica, he could sing along with the accordion. That meant he could make twice as much music at once.

“Not right now. But you know what I was thinking. I’ll bet that your music would sound even nicer if you played it outdoors.”

“Okay, Mom.” Torchie carried his accordion outside. What a great idea. The sun seemed to be smiling at him, just waiting for a song.

He discovered he liked to stand in the yard near the kitchen so his mom could still enjoy the music. But she’d started keeping the window closed, even though the weather was getting warmer. When he asked her about it, she explained that she liked it really hot in the kitchen so it was easier to cook stuff.
To help her hear better, he moved closer to the window. That way, she wouldn’t miss any of his music.

Soon after that, his mom had told him, “It doesn’t seem right that I’m the only one enjoying this. Music is meant to be shared. I’ll bet some of our neighbors would like to hear how well you’re playing.”

“That’s a great idea.” Torchie had gone up the street to Mrs. Muller’s house. He knocked on her door and waited for her to come to the porch. Then he played his best song for her.

“Want to hear another?” he asked.

“Why, Philip, I think your music is so beautiful, you should share it with lots of people. I’d feel selfish if you just played for me.”

So he’d gone to the next house on the block, and then the next. Everyone loved his music so much, they told him he really needed to share it with other people. Some of them even gave him rides to houses far down the road. People in Yertzville really did love their neighbors and look out for them.

As far as Torchie could tell, they also traveled quite a bit. A lot of folks didn’t seem to be home when he knocked, even if their lights were on and their cars were in the driveway. It didn’t matter. Torchie was even happy playing for himself.

lucky has left
the building


PHILLY,” LUCKY SAID
.

“What?” the nurse asked.

“I gotta go to Philadelphia,” Lucky told her. He hated cities. There was lost stuff all over the place, calling out to him. Walking down a city street was like sticking his head into a room with a thousand televisions. But it didn’t matter how much he hated cities. He had to go to Philadelphia. That was the strongest voice. The one that almost drowned out all the others. That was the voice that knew him.

“Easy there,” the nurse said, smiling at him as she held out his medicine.

Lucky gulped down the pills, not even bothering with water, then fell back on the bed as the wonderful numbness flowed through his mind, smothering all of the voices. They were still there, but they didn’t seem to matter.

“Lucky,” they whispered, calling him by a nickname that was pathetically inaccurate. He’d never had any real luck, except for meeting the guys. Thanks to them, a normal life had seemed possible after he’d left Edgeview. As he drifted into the
comfort of nothingness, he saw the moment when it had all come apart.

At first, school hadn’t been bad. He did okay in his classes and even made a couple friends. He thought he’d escaped his past. Until early last February, when they’d moved to the new building. That’s when it all went horribly wrong.

As the door to his room closed, he heard the nurse say, “Doctor, I think we’ve made a breakthrough. He talked to me. He actually made sense.”

“That’s encouraging. What did he say?”

“He wants to go to Philadelphia.”

cheater discovers that
poker is a contact sport

THE FIRST PUNCH
knocked Cheater to the floor. Flashes of pain mixed in his mind with flashes of panic and scattered fragments of the laws of motion. Good old Newtonian physics. Equal and opposite reactions. A body at rest. His face had been at rest, and resisted the impulse to move, but the force of the fist had overcome inertia. His brain, inside his skull, had also been reluctant to move, even after his skull had shifted its spatial location. His brain had no choice but to follow.
Do thoughts have inertia?
he wondered.

A kick caught him in the middle of his back, right under the shoulder blades. More laws burst into his mind—force equals mass times acceleration. A heavy boot has more mass than a shoe. A fast jab has more acceleration than a looping hook. A whole lot of force was coming his way.

Cheater curled into a ball and tried to protect himself. A sphere had the least surface area of any geometric solid. But any surface at all was far too much right now. Thoughts rained on him, too, along with the punches and kicks. They hated him for a thousand reasons. He was smart, he talked too much, he looked different, and he was cleaning them out
at a game they thought they were good at. They even hated him because he was short.

Something stomped down hard on his side. He let out a whimper, but clamped his teeth together. He knew anything he said would just provide more fuel for their rage.

After the next kick rocked his head, the sharp pains faded, replaced by numbness. He heard a conversation from far away.

“Oh great, I think you killed him.”

“No way. He’s still breathing. We’d better get out of here.”

“What if he tells on us?”

“You’re right. Maybe we should make sure he can’t talk.”

“Why bother? It would be his word against ours. Nobody would believe him. We can say we were at a movie or something. Let’s just get out of here.”

Cheater waited, not really caring what they did next. Though he was curious what they would decide. It was an interesting ethical problem. Commit a greater crime to eliminate the risk of being accused of a lesser crime? Maybe he could solve it using a game-theory matrix. First, he’d have to quantify the parameters …

He was still thinking about situational ethics when he passed out.

flinch kills his audience
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