The God Project Read online

  In one night, Sally Montgomery’s life had changed.

  Chapter 3

  RANDY CORLISS POKED AIMLESSLY at the bowl of soggy cereal. He had already made up his mind not to eat it.

  Five more minutes, and his mother would be gone.

  Then he could throw the cereal into the garbage, swipe a Twinkie, and be on his way. He stared intently at the minute hand on the clock, not quite sure if he could actually see it moving. He wished his mother would buy a clock like the ones at school, where you could really see the hands jump forward every minute, but he knew she wouldn’t. Maybe if he asked his father next weekend …

  He mulled the idea over in his nine-year-old mind, only half-listening as his mother gave her usual speech about coming right home after school, not answering the door unless he knew who was outside, and reporting his arrival to Mrs.-Willis-next-door. At last she leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, and disappeared into the garage adjoining the kitchen. Only when he heard her start the car, and knew she was really gone, did Randy get up and dump the loathsome cereal.

  At five minutes after eight, Randy Corliss went out into the bright spring morning and began the long walk that would take him first to Jason Montgomery’s house, and then to school. All around him children his own age were drifting from their homes onto the sidewalks, forming groups of twos and threes, whispering and giggling among themselves. All of them, it seemed, had plenty of friends.

  All of them except Randy Corliss.

  Randy didn’t understand exactly why he had so few friends. In fact, a long time ago, when he was six, he’d had lots of friends. But in the last three years, most of them had drifted away.

  It wasn’t as if he was the only one whose parents were divorced. Lots of the kids lived with only their mothers, and some of them even lived with just their fathers. Those were the kids Randy envied—the ones who lived with their fathers. He decided to talk about that with his father this weekend too. Maybe this time he could convince him. He’d been trying for almost a year now—ever since the time last summer when he’d run away.

  Last summer hadn’t been much fun at all. Nobody would play with him, and he’d spent the first month of the summer watching the other kids, waiting for them to ask him to play ball, or go for a hike, or go swimming, or do any of the other things they were doing.

  But they hadn’t, and when he finally broke down and asked Billy Semple what was wrong, Billy, who had been his last friend, only looked at him for a long time, then stared at the cast on his leg, shrugged, and said nothing.

  Randy had known what that was all about. He and Billy had been out playing in the Semples’ backyard one day, and Randy had decided it might be fun to jump off the roof. First they had tried the garage roof, and it had been easy. Randy had jumped first, landing in the Semples’ compost heap, and Billy had followed.

  Then Randy had suggested they try the house roof, and Billy had looked fearfully up at the steep pitch. But in the end, not wanting to appear cowardly, Billy had gone along with it. The two of them had gotten a ladder and climbed to the eaves, where they had perched for a couple of minutes, staring down. Randy had been the first to jump.

  He had hit the ground, and for a second had felt a flash of pain in his ankles. But then he had rolled, and by the time he had gotten to his feet, the pain was gone. He’d grinned up at Billy.

  “Come on!” he’d yelled. “It’s easy.” When Billy still hesitated, Randy had begun taunting him, and finally, just as Billy made up his mind, Mrs. Semple had come out to the backyard to see what was going on. She’d appeared just in time to see her son hurtle down from the roof and break his right leg. Furious, she’d ordered Randy out of the yard, and later that afternoon she’d called Randy’s mother to tell her that Randy was no longer welcome in her home.

  Enough, she’d said, was enough. She’d hoped that it wouldn’t come to this, but after today she had to join the rest of the mothers in the neighborhood, and forbid her son to play with Randy Corliss anymore.

  The fact that it had been an accident had made no difference. Randy was a daredevil, a bad influence.

  And so the summer had dragged on. Randy, getting lonelier every day, had begun going off by himself, roaming in the woods, prowling around the town, wishing he knew what had gone wrong.

  Then he had met Jason Montgomery, and even though Jason was a year younger than he was, he’d liked Jason right away. Jason, he’d decided, wasn’t like the rest of the kids. The rest of them were all cowards, but not Jason. They’d become best friends the day after they met, and all this year Randy had stopped by Jason’s house every day on his way to school.

  Today he arrived at the Montgomerys’ house, and went around to the back, as he always did.

  “Jason! Jaaaason!” he called. The back door opened, and he recognized Jason’s grandmother. “Isn’t Jason here?” he asked.

  “He’s not going to school today,” Jason’s grandmother told him. She was starting to close the door, when Jason suddenly appeared, scooting out from behind his grandmother and slipping through the door.

  “Hi,” Jason said.

  Randy stared at his friend curiously. “You sick?” he asked.

  “Naw,” Jason replied. Then he looked directly at Randy. “My little sister died last night, so I don’t have to go to school today.”

  Randy absorbed the information and wondered what he was supposed to say. He’d only seen Jason’s baby sister once, and to him she hadn’t seemed like anything special. All she’d done was cry, and Jason had told him she peed all the time. “What happened to her?” he asked at last.

  Jason hesitated, then frowned. “I dunno. Dad says she just died. Anyway, I get to stay home from school.”

  “That’s neat,” Randy said. Then he frowned at Jason. “Did you do something to her?”

  “Why would I do that?” Jason countered.

  Randy shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I just—I just wondered. Billy Semple’s mother thought—” He broke off, unsure how to say what he was thinking. Billy Semple’s mother had thought he was trying to hurt Billy, even though she never said it out loud.

  “Did you push Billy off the roof?” Jason asked.

  “No.”

  “And I didn’t do anything to Julie,” Jason said. “At least, I don’t think I did.”

  Then, before Jason could say anything else, his grandmother opened the back door and told him to come back into the house. Randy watched as his friend disappeared inside, then started once more on his way to school.

  He didn’t really want to go today. Without Jason there, it wouldn’t be any fun at all. It would be like it had been last summer, before he had met Jason, while he was waiting for his friends to come back.

  Waiting, though, is much easier for an adult than for a nine-year-old, and while he was waiting, Randy had begun entertaining himself by getting into mischief. He’d started swiping things from the dime store. Nothing big, just a few little things.

  Then one day Mr. Higgins, who owned the dime store, had caught him.

  Randy would never forget that day. He’d almost been out of the store when he’d felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Mr. Higgins glowering down at him, demanding that he empty his pockets.

  The yo-yo didn’t have a price tag on it, but Randy didn’t even try to pretend he hadn’t stolen it. His face pale, his eyes brimming with tears, he’d stammered out an apology and promised never to do it again.

  But Mr. Higgins hadn’t let the matter go. He’d called the Eastbury police and explained that while he didn’t want to press charges, he thought it would be a good idea if someone put the fear of God into Randy Corliss. “A good scare,” Randy had heard him say into the phone. “That’ll straighten him out.” Randy had been taken to the police station, and shown a cell, and told that he might have to spend the night there. Then they’d fingerprinted him and taken his picture, and warned him that if he ever tried to steal anything again, he’d be sent to prison.

  Wh
en they let him go, Randy was shaking. That night, he began to think about running away.

  Nobody liked him, and his mother never seemed to have any time for him. The only person who cared about him, he decided, was his father. He’d called his father, and begged him to come and get him, but Jim Corliss had told him that he couldn’t, not yet. Then his father had asked to speak to his mother, and Randy had listened to his mother arguing with his father, telling him that she’d never let Randy go, and that his father better not try to take him. Finally, when the fight was over, he’d talked to his father again.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Jim had promised. “But there are laws, Randy, and if I just came and got you, I’d be breaking them. Can you understand that?”

  Randy tried, but he couldn’t. The only thing he could understand was that he hated Eastbury, and he hated his mother, and he hated his friends-who-weren’t-his-friends-anymore, and he wanted to go live with his father. Then he got the idea. Maybe his father couldn’t come and get him, but what if he went to his father?

  Two days later he had made up his mind. When he was sure his mother was asleep, he dressed and sneaked out of the house. He knew where his father lived—it was only five miles away, if you didn’t stay on the roads. And he knew the woods; he’d been wandering in them all his life. He figured it would take him an hour or two to get to his father’s.

  What he hadn’t figured was how different the woods would look at night For a while he walked rapidly along, lighting his way with the flashlight he’d taken from the kitchen drawer, enjoying the adventure. But when the path forked, he began to get confused.

  In the daylight, it would have been easy. Everything would have been familiar—the trees, the rocks, the stream that wound its way through the woods toward Langston, where his father lived. But in the darkness, with shadows dancing everywhere, he wasn’t sure which way to go. Finally, he made up his mind and told himself everything was fine, even though he didn’t believe it.

  A little while later he came to another fork in the path. This time he had no idea at all which way was the right way. He stood still for a long time, listening to the sounds of the night—birds murmuring in their sleep, the rustlings of racoons foraging in the underbrush—and finally decided that maybe going through the woods hadn’t been a good idea after all. He turned back and started toward home.

  Another fork in the path.

  Now Randy was getting worried. He didn’t remember this fork at all. Had he really passed it before?

  The sounds around him were suddenly becoming ominous. Was there something in the darkness, just beyond the beam of the flashlight, watching him?

  He spun around, sweeping the woods with the light, and flashes of light came back to him.

  There were eyes in the night—glowing yellow eyes—and now Randy was frightened. He began running down the path, no longer thinking about where he was going or which path he was on. All he wanted was to get out of the woods.

  And then, ahead of him, he saw a light moving in the darkness. Then another, and another. He hurled himself toward the lights, but they disappeared.

  They came back, flashing across the trees, then disappearing again.

  He stopped short, knowing at last what it was. He was at the edge of the forest, near a road. But which one? He had no idea.

  He stayed where he was for a while, wondering what to do next He really wanted to go home, but he wasn’t sure which way home was. He tried to remember what roads went by the woods, but couldn’t Finally, as the night grew colder, he decided he had to do something. He stepped out of the forest and started walking along the road, the flashlight clutched in his right hand.

  A car pulled up beside him. An Eastbury police car.

  “Goin’ somewhere, son?” the policeman asked him.

  “H-home,” Randy stammered.

  “Eastbury?” the cop asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, you’re goin’ the wrong way.” The policeman leaned over and opened the door. “Hop in.”

  Terrified, visions of jail cells dancing in his head, Randy did as he was told. “Are you arresting me?” he asked, his voice even smaller than he felt.

  The policeman glanced over at him, a tiny smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “You a big-time crook?”

  “Me?” Randy’s eyes opened wide. He shook his head. “I—I was going to visit my father.”

  “Thought you said you were going home.”

  Randy squirmed in the seat “Well—my dad’s house is home. Isn’t it?”

  “Not if you live with your mother. You running away?”

  Randy stared glumly out the window, sure that he was going to jail “I—I guess so.”

  “Things that bad?”

  Randy looked up at the cop, who was smiling at him. Could it be possible the cop wasn’t mad at him? He nodded shyly.

  The cop scowled at him then, but Randy was suddenly no longer scared, and when the man spoke, his worries vanished completely. “I’m Sergeant Bronski,” the policeman told him. “Want to have a Coke and talk things over?”

  “Where?” Randy countered.

  “There’s a little place I know.” Bronski turned the patrol car around and started back toward Eastbury. “You want me to call your mother?”

  “No!”

  “How about your dad?”

  “Could you call him?”

  “Sure.” Bronski pulled into an all-night diner, and took Randy inside. He ordered a Coke for Randy and a cup of coffee for himself. Slowly, the story came out, ending with the fight the Corlisses had had on the phone. When Randy was through talking, the policeman looked him squarely in the eye.

  “I think we better call your mother, Randy,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s who you live with. If we call your father, hell have to call your mother, and she might think he planned all this. Then she might not let you see him at all. Understand?”

  “I—I guess so,” Randy said uncertainly. The call had been made, and then Sergeant Bronski had taken him home and turned him over to his mother.

  His mother had been furious with him, telling him she had enough to worry about just trying to raise him, without having to worry about him running away too. Finally she had sent him back to bed, and Randy had lain awake all night, wondering what to do next.

  Ever since that night, he had been wondering what to do. He had begged his father to take him away, and his father, never really saying no but never quite saying yes, had told him to wait, that things would get better.

  But months had gone by and not much had changed.

  He’d finally met Jason, but his mother still had no time for him. And every time he approached his father, his father told him to wait, told him that he was “working on it.” Now spring was here, and soon it would be summer. Would it be another summer to spend by himself, wandering in the woods and prowling around town, looking for something to do? It probably would. If something had happened to Jason’s sister, Jasen probably wouldn’t be allowed to play with him anymore. Once again, he would be all alone.

  A horn honked, pulling Randy out of his reverie, and he realized he was alone on the block. He looked at the watch his father had given him for his ninth birthday. It was nearly eight thirty. If he didn’t hurry, he was going to be late for school. Then he heard a voice calling to him.

  “Randy! Randy Corliss!”

  A blue car, a car he didn’t recognize, was standing by the curb. A woman was smiling at him from the driver’s seat. He approached the car hesitantly, clutching his lunch box.

  “Hi, Randy,” the woman said.

  “Who are you?” Randy stood back from the car, remembering his mother’s warnings about never talking to strangers.

  “My name’s Miss Bowen. Louise Bowen. I came to get you.”

  “Get me?” Randy asked. “Why?”

  “For your father,” the woman said. Randy’s heart beat faster. His father? His father had sent thi
s woman? Was it really going to happen, finally? “He wanted me to pick you up at home,” he heard the woman say, “but I was late. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Randy said. He moved closer to the car. “Are you taking me to Daddy’s house?”

  The woman reached across and pushed the passenger door open. “In a little while,” she promised. “Get in.”

  Randy knew he shouldn’t get in the car, knew he should turn around and run to the nearest house, looking for help. It was things like this—strangers offering to give you a ride—that his mother had talked to him about ever since he was a little boy.

  But this was different This was a friend of his father’s. She had to be, because she seemed to know all about his plans to go live with his father, and his father’s plans to take him away from his mother. Besides, it was always men his mother warned him about, never women. He looked at the woman once more. Her brown eyes were twinkling at him, and her smile made him feel like she was sharing an adventure with him. He made up his mind and got into the car, pulling the door closed behind him. The car moved away from the curb.

  “Where are we going?” Randy asked.

  Louise Bowen glanced over at the boy sitting expectantly on the seat beside her. He was every bit as attractive as the pictures she had been shown, his eyes almost green, with dark, wavy hair framing his pugnacious, snub-nosed face. His body was sturdy, and though she was a stranger to him, he didn’t seem to be the least bit frightened of her. Instinctively, Louise liked Randy Corliss.

  “We’re going to your new school.”

  Randy frowned. New school? If he was going to a new school, why wasn’t his father taking him? The woman seemed to hear him, even though he hadn’t spoken out loud.

  “You’ll see your father very soon. But for a few days, until he gets everything worked out with your mother, you’ll be staying at the school. You’ll like it there,” she promised. “It’s a special school, just for little boys like you, and you’ll have lots of new friends. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”

  Randy nodded uncertainly, no longer sure he should have gotten in the car. Still, when he thought about it, it made sense. His father had told him there would be lots of problems when the time came for him to move away from his mother’s. And his father had told him he would be going to a new school. And today was the day.