"Levy-NewHorizons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levy Robert J)

For me, it began at home. My mom had started drinking on top of everything else,
and I'd often come home to find her asleep on the couch, a bottle of Dubonnet on
the floor beside her. Dad hardly called, and then only to pretend he was
interested in me. He sent me a birthday card and got my age wrong.

But so what. Big deal. It was a summer of magic, and I was beyond such petty
concerns.

Still, something was in the air, and the other kids had begun to seem
distracted. I remember sitting atop a car on Burton. Mitch and I were smoking a
couple of Kools he'd ripped off his mom, staring again at the sun staring its
slow fall into Flushing Bay, waiting for the other kids to arrive.

"You know, Doug," said Mitch in that lugubrious way he had, as though he were
inventing the words for the first time before he spoke them, "I kinds wish we
could play stickball."

"Waddya mean? We do. Every night."

"Nah. I don't mean that. I mean, I wish we could just play regular, plain old
stickball."

Then he turned back to the sunset, and took a drag on his Kool.

I knew exactly what he meant, because I could tell the other kids were feeling
the same way. Sure, they liked Huge, and they vaguely understood that he was a
miracle visitor from some other dimension or planet or time. True, they had been
hypnotized with wonder all through July. But now, as August reared its sultry
head, bringing with it the first reminders that school and adult responsibility
would again be thrust upon them come September, a lot of the kids seemed to
want, once again, to just be...well, kids.

It happened gradually, throughout the first half of August. Fewer and fewer
regulars showed up for the Burton Street Games. Later, word came from Mitch that
a couple of the kids, Stu among them, had been seen whacking the tar out of
spaldeens at Dietetic Crescent. The defections hurt. I could even tell that
Mitch himself was getting nervous, as though he'd spent a month in a dream from
which it was now time to wake up.

Me, I felt that tug too. But, like I said, I never had much in common with the
kids around here. It always seemed like half the guys I knew wanted nothing more
than to go into whatever profession their fathers practiced. I always wanted
something more. I wanted to fling myself into wonder headlong. I didn't want to
go back to being "just a regular kid" by any means. But what exactly I wanted
was still unclear.

So I hung on through those dog days of August, arriving on time, regular as
could be. Kids still showed up for the sky show, and Mitch dutifully came by,
but I could tell he was morose and distracted.