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They jumped to the far side of town and they weren&039;t even tired Maggie lead Brent over to a junkyard on the far side of a quarry and for a while they tried out their new strength by picking up old rusted-out cars and playing catch with the down on broken glass and old orange sharp pieces ofon a pebbly beach, and then as the car caht he would hold up his arine parts or axles or the edges of s that had lost their glass long before Then he would wind up, swinging froie missed a catch and the car Brent had thrown landed on a pile of old washing machines and a couple broken-down carnival rides, which exploded in a cloud of rust and flying springs and cogwheels and dryer doors that went spinning up into the air and then ca furrows in the dirt The noise was i, and Brent wasn&039;t surprised when he heard a dog barking and saw so toward theie said She ran up to the top of a stack of long pipes and gestured for him to follow as she juht speared upwards after theone, half a block away and accelerating

Brent was still "it", ju from the top of the elementary school to the complicated roof of the local industrial bakery when he noticed Maggie wasn&039;t chasing hih a bunch of skylights and then looked back This time he could see her just fine She was perched like a bird on the edge of a roof, two or three blocks back, looking down She wasn&039;t laughing anymore

Brent ju down into the street at a line of very small houses across the way The houses had unke around each little plot of land In ht of television sets So at had a yellow light in oneBrent could see aat a kitchen table inside, hunched over so, and having trouble

"Mags?" he asked, co at?"

"Dad took me out here, once," she said, very quietly "He didn&039;t want to He didn&039;t think it was appropriate but I asked and asked until he gave in and said yes I wanted toat the man in the"I wanted to ask hiht you should coet this house We drove up and parked over here, and then Dad and I stood in the street just looking at the house for the longest time It scared me It scared me so much I couldn&039;t move I me to o up and press the door bell Dad wouldn&039;t do it for me, he said If I really wanted it I had to do it myself"

Brent was afraid he kneho the h "Did you ring it?" he asked

Maggie wrapped her arms around her knees "No I chickened out I just wanted to ask him why, you knoanted to ask him why he killed Mom"

"We knohy," Brent insisted "The lawyer said He was drunk, and he lost control of the car It was just an accident Soet hurt" It was not so Brent understood very well, hiet in a car if they knew they were drunk Dad had suggested that when you drank, sometimes you couldn&039;t tell how drunk you were, and sometimes it seemed you were fine when you really weren&039;t Brent, who had never so much as tasted alcohol, didn&039;t know

He started to say soht as a knife and dropped into the street She landed effortlessly and walked across to the fence around the man&039;s house Brent started to follow but he didn&039;t knohat she was going to do Maggie tore open the man&039;s trash cans and then threw the lids back on with a clattering noise Then she grabbed the blue recycling bin and held it up so Brent could see

Brent looked up and saw theout of his yello His face was scared, Brent thought Really scared He didn&039;t knohat Maggie was going to do next, either But he recognized her Brent could see it in his face The ie said, picking a bottle out of the bin She hurled it at the house and it shattered against the ith a tinkling rattle "Gin," she said, and threw another bottle This one was plastic and it just bounced off with a clunk "Beer Plenty of beer" The bottles crashed on the side of the house like !" she yelled "How can you still be drinking!"

Eventually, Brentworse They headed ho back the way they&039;d coame anymore When they h Brent&039;s , Maggie was shaking She stood in the door of his rooernails

"I wanted to kill him," she said

"I know," Brent told her

"After all this ti I don&039;t think I can I think there&039;s so with me"

"No," Brent told her "That&039;s not true"

"I could kill people, now, pretty easily," she said "With these neers? I could have punched him a couple of times and that would have been all it took I could have picked hi don, and dropped him over the side I could have - "

"But you didn&039;t," Brent told her

She went back to her roo more