He took his magnifying glass out of his saddlebag and held it over his forearm, but there was no spot of light and no heat. He looked glumly up at the low-hanging clouds and put the glass back. It was a good one, a Richforth. He’d gotten it last Christmas, to help with his ant-farm science project.

“It’ll wind up in the garage, gathering dust,” his father had said, but although the ant-farm project had concluded in February (Pete and his partner, Tammy Witham, had gotten an A), Pete hadn’t tired of the magnifying glass yet. He particularly enjoyed charring holes in pieces of paper in the backyard.

But not today. Today, the afternoon stretched ahead like a desert. He could go home and watch TV, but his father had put a block on all the interesting channels when he discovered George had been DVR-ing Boardwalk Empire, which was full of gangsters and bare titties. There was a similar block on Pete’s computer, and he hadn’t figured a workaround yet, although he would; it was only a matter of time.

So?

“So what,” he said in a low voice, and began to pedal slowly toward the end of Murphy Street. “So. fucking. what.”

Too little to play Paratroops From Hell, because it was too dangerous. How sucky. He wished he could think of something that would show George and Normie and all of the Raiders that even little kids could face dan —

Then it came to him. He could explore the abandoned rest area. Pete didn’t think the big kids knew about it, because it was a kid Pete’s own age, Craig Gagnon, who had told him about it. He said he’d been up there with a couple of other kids, ten-year-olds, last fall. Of course the whole thing might have been a lie, but Pete didn’t think so. Craig had given too many details, and he wasn’t a particularly imaginative boy.

With a destination in mind, Pete began to pedal faster. At the end of Murphy Street he banked left onto Hyacinth. There was no one on the sidewalk, and no cars. He heard the whine of a vacuum cleaner from the Rossignols’, but otherwise everyone might have been sleeping or dead. Pete supposed they were actually at work, like his own parents.