I discovered that work is hard.

Even on my roughest days of doing chores at home, it had never been anything like this.

As I mopped the floors of the Soda Shoppe after closing time, Ace's nickname for me echoed in my head like a cruel joke. Maybe I really was a Diamond Doll. I'd never had to work for anything, not even grades. Maybe that was why I hated Home Ec. so much. It was actually tough for me to learn.

I frowned and tried to distract myself by thinking of other things. It was too depressing to realize that I was exactly the kind of person Ace thought I was.

I flinched when I remembered calling him a terrible person. I didn't know enough about him to make that kind of judgment. He acted like a jerk, but I hadn't seen the years behind the making of said jerk. He seemed like a guy that probably had to work for things, or do without. Maybe the "jerk" thing had a lot to do with that.

But what the hell did I know?

I sighed and scrubbed harder, focusing on doing the absolute best job that Pop Trenton had ever seen. I wanted to make him proud and glad he'd hired me, but every single time I thought I'd successfully cleaned over a soda spill, I noticed it was still sticky. It was the most maddening thing!

I ended up on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor with an old sponge while Pop took inventory in the back.

And of course Ace Merrill himself would catch me scrubbing on my hands and knees while casually looking through the window leaving Irby's Billiards. Ace, Eyeball, Fuzzy, and Vince, to be more precise.

I kept looking down thinking that maybe they hadn't recognized my face. When Ace knocked on the window with a playful glint in his eye, I cursed the God of Bad Luck that had led him to me.

"Diamond Doll, are you in the wrong place?" Ace said. It wasn't that I was embarrassed to be a person that needed work, but something about this situation made me want to hide behind my bucket of suds and cry.

Ace said something to the rest of the guys with him and I heard derisive laughter. I kept working through the humiliation, and when I looked up again to face them, I noticed that Ace was by standing by himself.

"You got a ride home?" He asked through the locked glass doors. No, I hadn't really thought much about it, in truth. I'd learned to walk home at night by myself in Chicago from my secret place, so I didn't think it'd be a big deal in Castle Rock.

I walked over to the glass doors and nodded to him.

"I can walk home on my own just fine...thanks." I said. Ace frowned and motioned toward a bench near the street corner.

"I'll be waiting out here. Don't take too long." He said. Had I heard right? Ace wanted to give me a ride home. He must have assumed my limousine was in the shop or something.

I returned to my work and found myself scrubbing harder than before. I was frustrated. I could have told Ace to shove it, but I somehow didn't. I could have found it in my heart to really hate him, but I just couldn't. None of this made any sense to me and thus I took all of my anger out on the poor little sponge and the soda spot on the floor.

"I thought you said you were free as a bird." Pop said ten minutes later, busily counting the register. Through the glass windows, Ace was clearly visible leaning against the bench on the corner, smoking a cigarette.

"I am. That's just my ride home." I said. I didn't even look up. The last thing I wanted to see on Pop's face was one of those "yeah, right" expressions.


When Pop locked up for the night and waved me off, I went over and sat beside Ace on the bench. Maybe I could still talk him out of giving me a ride.

"I appreciate the gesture but you don't have to take me home. Sorry I made you wait." I said.

"What's with the job?" Ace asked.

"I owe you money, right? Believe it or not, it doesn't just fall out of the sky for me." I said. Ace's expression was completely unreadable.

"You can't touch Daddy's money yet?" He said bitterly. I frowned and stood up. I'd listened to enough of this for one night.

"Something like that." I mumbled. I started to walk off, but the more I thought about all the snide comments Ace had made at my expense, the more I wanted to set the record absolutely straight. Even if it might not have been the brightest idea.

"Actually, nothing like that. See, not only do I not have an inheritance, my father isn't even dead." I said. With that I stomped off, not even bothering to take a second look back. I wished I'd had, though. It might have been worth it.


On the long walk home, I began to think that maybe it wasn't such a good idea that I told Ace. It was a big secret that my mother had insisted on keeping since we moved here, and if Ace had any brains in his head at all, he'd know I just pretty much handed him a grenade...

If Ace had the notion, he could destroy my family by word of mouth. That is, if he even believed me. He had no reason to trust me, and I had no reason to trust him.

I approached my house slowly, quietly. I hadn't started telling Mom stories about "Clarence" yet, so (at least for tonight) I was forced to sneak into my own bedroom.

I'd left the latch unlocked and by shimmying the glass upward while pressing in, I managed to slide the window open. It took a few running jumps for me to get halfway through, and after a few minutes of dangling my legs against the side of the house to get traction, I managed to climb the rest of the way inside.

I rested on my back on the floor in the dark, thinking that if Ace had dropped me off, he would have just witnessed my clumsy attempt at being a cat burglar. Ace was probably pretty damn good at sneaking in houses after dark. I shook my head with disgust. It was just an unfair assumption.

I slipped into bed around midnight and thought of Ace. The funny tickling in my stomach came back, but I tempered the feeling with an image of Gordie's blackened face and his inability to even smile without pain. I cried myself to sleep.


I struggled to stay awake the next day. Everything was a blur. Ace didn't speak to me at all during school, and while I knew this was probably for the best, I couldn't help but mourn for any lost opportunities. What was wrong with me, anyway? Did I want him to talk to me?

Wednesday wasn't much better, but by Thursday, Teddy and Vern were walking with me to school again. By Friday, all of us were trudging to Mablevale Junior and Senior High as though we'd been doing it for the last hundred years.

On Friday afternoon right after the final bell, I took the boys to the Soda Shoppe and treated them all to an ice cold Coca-Cola. We piled into one of the faded red booths near the window and clinked our bottles together like they did in the movies.

"This is really great that you work here, Marley. Can you get us free banana splits?" Vern asked.

"She's only worked here a few days, you lamebrain." Teddy said. He lisped a little when he talked because of a deep cut on his lip that was still healing.

"How are things with you and Clarence?" Gordie said with mirth in his voice. Chris grinned and looked at me in a congratulatory way.

"Ya gotta boyfriend, Marley?" Chris said. I shook my head vehemently.

"Just between us, Clarence is fake. But if my mom asks, he's a real nerd and he doesn't talk a lot." I said. I took a healthy swig from my glass bottle of Coke.

"Of course he's fake. The only way Marley here could ever get a guy to date her is by making him up." Teddy said, baiting me. Vern and the other guys made that "ooh" sound again and I rolled my eyes playfully.

"You're just mad that you're too young for me." I replied. We all laughed even though it wasn't that funny because it had been a long time since it was okay to laugh. Too many things had happened, and I was only aware of some of them.

"How about your story, Marley? Have you figured out the rest?" Gordie asked. I was pretty touched by his efforts to include me in the group. Even though we all seemed to be getting along, I still felt like an outsider. Not only was I the new kid, but I was older, and a girl. And it sucked.

"You write stories, too? That's so boss." Vern said excitedly.

"Tell us about it." Chris said. Chris was also trying to make me feel like I belonged, and I had noticed how much he protected and cared for the other guys like an older brother. I couldn't understand why my Uncle only saw a thief when he looked at him.

"Not much to tell. Once upon a time in the Old West, you know, 'cause that's how these things start..." I began. I felt extremely flattered that the boys were actually listening to me.

"...there was a lady of the night. No one knew her real name, but everyone called her "Rose" because of her complexion and her deep red hair. She lived above the Golden Nugget Saloon and Hotel, where all the prospectors went to stay while looking for chunks of gold in the rocky mountainside." I continued.

"What's a prospector?" Vern asked.

"That's what they called the gold diggers back then, you dweeb." Teddy said.

"Anyway, since there were so many strangers coming in and out of the Golden Nugget on a daily basis, Rose spent her time with a different man every night, most likely never to see them again. One night before a show, the piano player found pieces of Rose chopped up inside the strings of his Steinway." I said. The boys were staring at me with rapt attention by this time.

In all honesty I was making it up as I went along, because my thoughts had been more or less consumed by Ace "The Devil" Merrill and I'd since put the story aside. But watching their eyes widen with interest, I suddenly felt in my element again.

"No one knew which prospector was responsible for hacking Rose to death, but it was going to be like searching for a needle in a haystack to nab the murderer. That's when Sheriff Honor McTeague decided that he would take it upon himself personally to bring the killer to justice." I said. I paused here because I didn't know how Sheriff Honor would do it. I'd already written myself into a wall.

"Why would the sheriff care about a hooker?" Teddy asked.

"Because everybody's life counts, that's why." Chris said with meaning.

"What he said." I added. I looked over at Gordie and shrugged, meaning that for now, the story was largely unfinished. He nodded slowly in understanding.

"It's good, so far. But it's gonna take him forever to find the guy. Maybe even his whole lifetime." Gordie said.

"Yeah. Especially if the prospectors spread out across the States." Chris said. And thus the conundrum. Realistically it would have been impossible, but I wasn't interested in realism at this point. I wanted closure.

"True. But he'd try anyway. He'd ride on horseback through the burning Arizona desert, through the panhandle until he made it the freezing wonderland of Michigan in winter. And then travel to the East Coast, ride down the beach until he reached the southernmost tip of Florida. All over the place." I said.

"But why?" Vern asked. Gordie had asked me the same question the other day but I still didn't have a very good answer.

"It does seem like a lot to go through for no reason." Gordie admitted. I sighed and thought it over for a minute. The reason I'd made up the story was because of Ray Brower. There was something off about his death and I felt like I was the only one who'd really noticed.

Secretly I'd hoped there'd be a Sheriff Honor McTeague somewhere in Oxford County who would take up the gauntlet for himself and find out what really happened up there on Back Harlow Road. It sure as hell wasn't just berry pickin,' in my opinion.

"I think he cares because he knows no one else does. Sometimes certain people just want to pick up the slack for the rest of the human race." I said. As I said this and it rolled over in my head some more, I realized that maybe I could be Sheriff Honor for Ray Brower. If for no other reason than to make sure that somebody knew the truth, whatever it was.

"What is it?" Chris asked me. I fiddled with the neck on my bottle and debated on mentioning the kid in front of them. I remembered Gordie turning pale at the news story on tv and the mere mention of him at dinner.

"Nothing. Just thinking." I ended up saying.

Eventually the topic drifted off and the boys ended up talking about school and how mean their new math teacher was, and then Teddy and Vern brought up the DeSpain twins having a Halloween-themed birthday in the middle of October.

I'd never met the DeSpain twins before, but Teddy and Vern were beginning to talk about them more and more in conversation. They didn't sound too bright or interesting, and I got the feeling that Chris and Gordie felt the same way. Every time the DeSpain boys were mentioned, Chris and Gordie would wear a bored expression on their faces.

"They're making a haunted house in their backyard!" Vern said.

"That's baby stuff. Joey Campion got permission to use his dad's chainsaw at the door to scare the shit out of all the trick-or-treaters." Teddy said.

"Joey Campion cried when he tried to use a card scraper in Wood Shop. There's no way he'd get close to a chainsaw, man." Chris said. Gordie and Vern laughed.

I listened to them talk about their Halloween plans and fight over whose idea of a scary prank was the best, and it really began to sink in just how far away from home I was and just how lonely I really felt.