Lost Boys: A Novel Read online

  There were seven other funerals in Steuben during those few days between Christmas and the new year. The bodies of those seven children were accompanied to the grave by the small gifts that had been found with them: A Hot Wheels racer, a fake-ceramic dog, a harmonica, a ball of string, a Star Wars button, a squirt gun, a deck of cards.

  Because life must go on and bills must be paid, Step finished the program he had been working on and sent it in, and Agamemnon would pay him and he would begin his next project for them because his family needed him to do it. Just as the family needed DeAnne to tend to Jeremy and Elizabeth and Robbie, the three who remained. It was their needs now that mattered, and she supplied them, and Step, too, as best they could.

  On New Year’s Day the family members who had flown from Utah to be with them all flew home. The ward members who had dropped all their regular concerns to help the Fletchers now picked them up again. Gradually life settled back to normal for all of them.

  Even for the Fletchers, life settled. Not back to normal, for there was no going back for them. Rather their life settled into a new way, a new road. There was always in Step’s mind a sense of someone watching, as if he could always turn at the moment of some triumph and say, See that? Pretty good, hey? And the one who watched would say, Neat. Neat, Dad.

  In DeAnne’s mind she saw him as a light in the distance, a beacon. If I always look toward that light, she thought, if I always walk straight toward it, then someday, even though it’s very far away, I’ll reach that goal.

  They remembered Stevie on his birthday every year, and told stories about him until Robbie and Elizabeth could almost recite them all from memory. Every now and then Robbie would refer to the Christmas when Stevie’s friends came, though the family never actually talked about that night.

  One other thing was lost, too, that Christmas Eve. Step no longer called Robbie “Robot” or “Road Bug”; Betsy became Elizabeth to him; and Jeremy was Jeremy. With Step not using them, the nicknames soon died out, except when Robbie now and then teased Elizabeth by saying, “We used to call you Betsy Wetsy, you know.” As the children grew up they lost all memory of their parents calling each other Junk Man and Fish Lady. They wouldn’t have believed it if you told them; no one told them.

  It wasn’t that Step or DeAnne actually decided that the nicknames ought to stop. It’s just that those names were part of a set, and it didn’t feel right to use any of them unless you could use them all. But someday they would use them, they knew. Someday they would use all those old names, when Door Man met them on the other side.

  About the Author

  Bob Henderson, Henderson Photography, Inc.

  Multiple New York Times bestselling author ORSON SCOTT CARD has won several Hugo and Nebula Awards for his works of speculative fiction, including his Ender series and The Tales of Alvin Maker. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife and youngest child. You can visit his website at www.hatrack.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Praise

  Resounding praise for New York Times bestselling author

  ORSON SCOTT CARD

  and

  LOST BOYS

  “A powerful storyteller with the gift of making mundane details sparkle.”

  Los Angeles Times

  “He has raised to a fine art the creation of suspense by ethical dilemma, and in doing so has raised his work to a high plane.”

  Chicago Sun-Times

  “His ending really delivers . . . Lost Boys offers something unique—in its perspective, in the way its story is worked out, and in the sweet spirit that pervades it.”

  St. Petersburg Times

  “The pull of family drama with an overlayer of rising suspense.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Affecting, genuine, poignant, uplifting; a limpid, beautifully orchestrated new venture from an author already accomplished in other fields.”

  Kirkus Reviews

  “One of our best writers.”

  Columbus Dispatch

  Also by Orson Scott Card

  HOMEBODY • TREASURE BOX

  LOST BOYS • PASTWATCH:

  THE REDEMPTION OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

  SAINTS • THE FOLK OF THE FRINGE

  ENDER’S GAME • SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD

  XENOCIDE • ENDER’S SHADOW

  SHADOW OF HEGEMON • SHADOW PUPPETS

  CHILDREN OF THE MIND • SEVENTH SON

  RED PROPHET • PRENTICE ALVIN

  ALVIN JOURNEYMAN • HEARTFIRE

  THE CRYSTAL CITY • THE MEMORY OF EARTH

  THE CALL OF EARTH • THE SHIPS OF EARTH

  EARTHFALL • EARTHBORN

  CRUEL MIRACLES • FLUX

  MONKEY SONATAS • THE CHANGED MAN

  SARAH • REBEKAH

  RACHEL AND LEAH • MAGIC MIRROR

  ENCHANTMENT • STONE TABLES

  THE WORTHING SAGA

  MAPS IN A MIRROR : THE SHORT FICTION

  OF ORSON SCOTT CARD

  TREASON • WYRMS

  HART’S HOPE

  Copyright

  The quotation on page 381 from Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, copyright © 1982 by Anne Tyler Modarressi is used by permission of the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  LOST BOYS. Copyright © 1992 by Orson Scott Card. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  First HarperTorch paperback printing: February 2005

  First HarperPaperback printing: December 1993

  First William Morrow hardcover printing: November 1992

  HarperCollins®, HarperTorch™, and ™ are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Visit HarperTorch on the World Wide Web at www.harpercollins.com

  ISBN 0-06-109131-6

  EPub Edition April 2013 ISBN 9780062284488

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