But they goofed up the return spin and she went sprawling on the grass. “Jesus, Richie, you never get that right! Gah, you’re hopeless!” She was laughing, though. She flopped on her back and stared up at the sky.

“I’se sorry, Miss Scawlett!” the boy cried in a screechy pickaninny voice that would have gone over like a lead balloon in the politically correct twenty-first century. “I’se just a clodhoppin country boy, but I intends to learn dis-yere dance if it kills me!”

“I’m the one it’s likely to kill,” she said. “Start the record again before I lose my—” Then they both saw me.

It was a strange moment. There was a veil in Derry—I came to know that veil so well I could almost see it. The locals were on one side; people from away (like Fred Toomey, like me) were on the other. Sometimes the locals came out from behind it, as Mrs. Starrett the librarian had when expressing her irritation about the misplaced census records, but if you asked too many questions—

and certainly if you startled them—they retreated behind it again.

Yet I had startled these kids, and they didn’t retreat behind the veil. Instead of closing up, their faces remained wide open, full of curiosity and interest.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to surprise you. I heard the music and then I saw you lindy-hopping.”

“Trying to lindy-hop, is what you mean,” the boy said. He helped the girl to her feet. He made a bow. “Richie Tozier, at your service. My friends all say ‘Richie-Richie, he live in a ditchie,’

but what do they know?”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “George Amberson.” And then—it just popped out—“My friends all say ‘Georgie-Georgie, he wash his clothes in a Norgie,’ but they don’t know anything, either.” The girl collapsed on one of the picnic table benches, giggling. The boy raised his hands in the air and bugled: “Strange grown-up gets off a good one! Wacka-wacka-wacka! Dee-lightful! Ed McMahon, what have we got for this wonderful fella? Well, Johnny, today’s prizes on Who Do You Trust are a complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica and an Electrolux vacuum cleaner to suck em up wi—”

“Beep-beep, Richie,” the girl said. She was wiping the corners of her eyes.

This caused an unfortunate reversion to the screeching pickaninny voice. “I’se sorry, Miss Scawlett, don’t be whuppin on me! I’se still got scabs from de las’ time!”

“Who are you, Miss?” I asked.

“Bevvie-Bevvie, I live on the levee,” she said, and started giggling again. “Sorry—Richie’s a fool, but I have no excuse. Beverly Marsh. You’re not from around here, are you?” A thing everybody seemed to know immediately. “Nope, and you two don’t seem like you are, either. You’re the first two Derry-ites I’ve met who don’t seem . . . grumpy.”

“Yowza, it’s a grumpy-ass town,” Richie said, and took the tone arm off the record. It had been bumping on the final groove over and over.

“I understand folks’re particularly worried about the children,” I said. “Notice I’m keeping my distance. You guys on grass, me on sidewalk.”

“They weren’t all that worried when the murders were going on,” Richie grumbled. “You know about the murders?”

I nodded. “I’m staying at the Town House. Someone who works there told me.”

“Yeah, now that they’re over, people are all concerned about the kids.” He sat down next to Bevvie who lived on the levee. “But when they were going on, you didn’t hear jack spit.”

“Richie,” she said. “Beep-beep.”

This time the boy tried on a really atrocious Humphrey Bogart imitation. “Well it’s true, schweetheart. And you know it’s true.”

“All that’s over,” Bevvie told me. She was as earnest as a Chamber of Commerce booster.

“They just don’t know it yet.”

“They meaning the townspeople or just grown-ups in general?” She shrugged as if to say what’s the difference.

“But you do know.”

“As a matter of fact, we do,” Richie said. He looked at me challengingly, but behind his mended glasses, that glint of maniacal humor was still in his eyes. I had an idea it never completely left them.

I stepped onto the grass. Neither child fled, screaming. In fact, Beverly shoved over on the bench (elbowing Richie so he would do the same) and made room for me. They were either very brave or very stupid, and they didn’t look stupid.

Then the girl said something that flabbergasted me. “Do I know you? Do we know you?” Before I could answer, Richie spoke up. “No, it’s not that. It’s . . . I dunno. Do you want something, Mr. Amberson? Is that it?”

“Actually, I do. Some information. But how did you know that? And how do you know I’m not dangerous?”

They looked at each other, and something passed between them. It was impossible to know just what, yet I felt sure of two things: they had sensed an otherness about me that went way beyond just being a stranger in town . . . but, unlike the Yellow Card Man, they weren’t afraid of it. Quite the opposite; they were fascinated by it. I thought those two attractive, fearless kids could have told some stories if they wanted to. I’ve always remained curious about what those stories might have been.

“You’re just not,” Richie said, and when he looked to the girl, she nodded agreement.

“And you’re sure that the . . . the bad times . . . are over?”

“Mostly,” Beverly said. “Things’ll get better. In Derry I think the bad times are over, Mr.

Amberson—it’s a hard place in a lot of ways.”

“Suppose I told you—just hypothetically—that there was one more bad thing on the horizon? Something like what happened to a little boy named Dorsey Corcoran.” They winced as if I had pinched a place where the nerves lay close to the surface. Beverly turned to Richie and whispered in his ear. I’m not positive about what she said, it was quick and low, but it might have been That wasn’t the clown. Then she looked back at me.

“What bad thing? Like when Dorsey’s father—”

“Never mind. You don’t have to know.” It was time to jump. These were the ones. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I did. “Do you know some kids named Dunning?” I ticked them off on my fingers. “Troy, Arthur, Harry, and Ellen. Only Arthur’s also called—”

“Tugga,” Beverly said matter-of-factly. “Sure we know him, he goes to our school. We’re practicing the Lindy for the school talent show, it’s just before Thanksgiving—”

“Miss Scawlett, she b’leeve in gittin an early start on de practicin,” Richie said.

Beverly Marsh took no notice. “Tugga’s signed up for the show, too. He’s going to lip-synch to ‘Splish Splash.’” She rolled her eyes. She was good at that.