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4

HE WALKED SLOWLY DOWN the dihtly He walked past classroom doors he would have felt colass s set in each one He looked into Mr Bissette&039;s French II class and Mr Knopf&039;s Introduction to Geometry class In both rooms the pupils sat with pencils in hand and heads bowed over open blue-books He looked into Mr Harley&039;s Spoken Arts class and saw Stan Dorfman - one of those acquaintances ere not quite friends - beginning his Final Speech Stan looked scared to death, but Jake could have told Stan he didn&039;t have the slightest idea what fear - real fear - was all about

I died

No I didn&039;t

Did too

Did not

Did

Didn&039;t

He ca to see a bright desert sky and a blue haze of mountains on the horizon Instead he saw Belinda Stevens standing at one of the sinks, looking into thea pimple on her forehead

"Jesus Christ, do you ht it was the desert"

"What?"

But he had already let the door go and it inging shut on its pneu fountain and opened the door marked BOYS This was it, he knew it, was sure of it, this was the door which would take hileahts A tap dripped solemnly into a sink That was all

Jake let the door close He walked on down the hall, his heels lanced into the office before passing it and saw only Ms Franks She was talking on the telephone, swinging back and forth in her swivel chair and playing with a lock of her hair The silver-plated bell stood on the desk beside her Jake waited until she swivelled away from the door and then hurried past Thirty seconds later he was e in late May

I&039;ve gone truant, he thought Even his distraction did not keep hi amazed at this unexpected development When I don&039;t come back from the bathroom in five minutes or so, Ms Avery will send somebody to check and then they&039;ll know They&039;ll all know that I&039;ve left school, gone truant

He thought of the folder lying on his desk

They&039;ll read it and they&039;ll think I&039;m crazy Fou Sure they will Of course Because I aht, the voice of the man with the bo low on his hips The voice was cold but not without comfort

No, Jake, Roland said You&039;re not crazy You&039;re lost and scared, but you&039;re not crazy and need fear neither your shadow in theto meet you Yow have to find your way back hoo?" Jake whispered He stood on the sidewalk of Fifty-sixth Street between Park and Madison, watching the traffic bolt past A city bus snored by, laying a thin trail of acrid blue diesel s door?"

But the voice of the gunslinger had fallen silent

Jake turned left, in the direction of the East River, and began to walk blindly forward He had no idea where he was going - no idea at all He could only hope his feet would carry hi one not long ago

5

IT HAD HAPPENED THREE weeks earlier

One could not say It all began three weeks earlier, because that gave the iression, and that wasn&039;t right There had been a progression to the voices, to the violence hich each insisted on its own particular version of reality, but the rest of it had happened all at once

He left hoht o&039;clock to walk to school - he alalked when the weather was good, and the weather this May had been abso-lutely fine His father had left for the Network, his mother was still in bed, and Mrs Greta Shaas in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading her New York Post

"Goodbye, Greta," he said "I&039; to school now"

She raised a hand to hiood day, Johnny"

All according to routine Just another day in the life

And so it had been for the next fifteen hundred seconds Then everything had changed forever

He idled along, bookbag in one hand, lunch sack in the other, looking in the s Seven hundred and twenty seconds from the end of his life as he had always known it, he paused to look in theof Brendio&039;s, where mannequins dressed in fur coats and Edwardian suits stood in stiff poses of conversation He was thinking only of going bowling that afternoon after school His average was 158, great for a kid as only eleven His ambition was to some day be a bowler on the pro tour (and if his father had known this little factoid, he also would have hit the roof)

Closing in now - closing in on the moment when his sanity would be suddenly eclipsed

He crossed Thirty-ninth and there were four hundred seconds left Had to wait for the WALK light at Forty-first and there were two hundred and seventy Paused to look in the novelty shop on the corner of Fifth and Forty-second and there were a hundred and ninety And noith just over three minutes left in his ordinary life, Jake Cham-bers walked beneath the unseen umbrella of that force which Roland called ka-tet

An odd, uneasy feeling began to creep over hi watched, and then he realized it wasn&039;t that at allor not precisely that He felt that he had been here before; that he was reliving a drea to pass, but it didn&039;t It grew stronger, and now began to nized as terror

Up ahead, on the near corner of Fifth and Forty-third, a blackup a pretzel-and-soda cart

He&039;s the one that yells "Oh ht

Approaching the far corner was a fat lady with a Bloo in her hand

She&039;ll drop the bag Drop the bag and put her hands to herwill split open There&039;s a doll inside the bag It&039;s wrapped in a red towel I&039;ll see this fro in the street witharound me in a pool

Behind the fat woray nailhead worsted suit He was carrying a briefcase