Read Lost Boys for Free Online Page B

hundred a month. That's the price of my soul.
    But it was no worse than what his dad had gone through, over the years. A sign company that went belly- up when Dad broke his back, and yet Dad refused to declare bankruptcy and paid it all off, slowly, over the space of ten years, during which time he went back to school, got his B.A., taught at San Jose State for a while, and ended up working at Lockheed designing training programs for missile operators. If Dad had ever had half as much money as I made last year, he would have made sure he was set up as a free man forever. He would have had money in the bank against a rainy day. I spent it like it was going to last forever, and now I'm right where my dad was, all those years at Lockheed, saying yessir to assholes and moonlighting weekends at a camera store in the Hillsdale Mall. Never heard him complain, except that he apologized to Mom when she had to go back to work as a secretary in the public schools.
    That's why I signed that paper, Step realized. So I don't have to make that same apology to DeAnne.
    And if I don't find a way to make some extra money in the next year or so, the IRS is going to put us in that situation anyhow.
    The anxiety, the desperation, the memory of his father's defeats- it all surged through him and burned in his throat and he thought, If I let myself get emotional about all this, it'll show on my face when I go back inside.
    He swallowed hard and breathed deeply, slowly, forcing himself to calm down.
    Somebody opened the door behind him and came outside. Step didn't turn around at first, half afraid and half hoping that it was Cowboy Bob or even Ray Keene himself, worried about him, wanting to smooth things over with him.
    It was just a kid, looked to be still in high school, who wandered a few yards away from him and lit up a cigarette. He took a deep drag, let the smoke out slow, and puffed it into rings.
    "How long did it take you to learn how to do that?" asked Step.
    The kid turned to face him. He had black-frame coke-bottle glasses so his eyes looked like they were swimming around in a specimen jar. "I been blowing rings since my mom taught me how when I was ten."
    "Your mom taught you how to blow smoke rings? When you were ten?"
    The kid laughed. "This is tobacco, country, Mr. Fletcher, and my people are all tobacco people. My mama used to blow smoke in my face when I was a baby, so I'd grow up knowing the difference between the cheap weed in Reynolds cigarettes and the good stuff in E&Es."
    Step hoped that his shudder didn't show. When he and DeAnne were house-hunting, they had had to rule out the whole eastern edge of town, where the Eldredge & Emerson Tobacco Company kept the air filled with the pungence of tar and nicotine, like being trapped forever on an elevator with someone who put out his cigarette just before stepping on.
    What business did Mormons have moving into tobacco country? Especially since DeAnne was so allergic to tobacco smoke that it made her throw up even when she wasn't pregnant. The idea of somebody blowing smoke in a baby's face made Step angry. There's things you just don't do to children, if you have any decency.
    And teaching a ten- year-old to blow smoke rings ...
    "I don't want to sound like some kind of dumb fan or nothing, Mr. Fletcher, but I thought Hacker Snack was the best game anybody ever did on the Atari."
    "Thanks," said Step.
    "Of course, your A.I. routines really sucked."
    It hit Step like a blow, that forced change from shyly, genially accepting a compliment to suddenly having to take criticism.
    "A.I.?" he asked.
    "You know-artificial intelligence."
    "I know what A.I. stands for," said Step. "I just don't recall ever trying to incorporate any of it into my game."
    "I mean, you know, the way the bad guys home in on the player," he said. "The machine intelligence routines. Way too predictable. It stayed too easy to dodge them until you finally beat the player down with sheer speed. Like bludgeoning them