Dark Dragons by Kevin Leffingwell Read Free Book Online

there for several seconds, staring at the footprints he left in the plush
carpet leading to the patio door.  Slowly, as the floor regained its flat
contour, Darren’s trail vanished.  Allison went back upstairs to get
herself ready for a nightly round of bar hopping with Sam, but she couldn’t get
that goddamn lump out of her throat.
    *
    Darren lived at 2130 Sutton Cannon Drive in La Crescenta, a
small suburb at the base of the San Gabriel Mountain foothills which formed the
northern boundary of Los Angeles.  Darren’s house was the last one on the
street, the hills rising sharply just beyond the dry ravine that separated them
from his backyard.  The peaks were a mecca for summer hikers, campers,
deer hunters, and on this night, four teenagers in search of serenity. 
The peaceful milieu of chaparral, oaks, pepper trees, and eucalyptus conflicted
noticeably with the harsh existence of smoggy L.A. just a few miles to the
south.  Darren enjoyed the transition.
    Tens of vacant shacks were scattered throughout the forest,
left by those who at one time cherished the solitude of the woods but chose to
return to the hurly-burly of city living.  Darren found one of these
shacks a few weeks earlier during a bike ride and mentioned this to his
friends, which they decided would be a cool place to camp out sometime.
    Allison had been left with the impression that they would be
sleeping in Darren’s tent in the backyard next to the pool.  Instead, they
set up the tent and waited for Allison to drive off in her Jaguar XK——a gift
from some past infatuated boyfriend——before sneaking off for the foothills on
their bikes.  Mt. Lukens Road lay just east of Darren’s house and went
northeast before curving around to the northwest toward the peak of Mt. Lukens
itself.
    The boys were just now approaching this turn when Nate
whined, “Are we there yet?  Jesus, my asthma’s startin’.”
    “We’ve got a ways to go,” Darren replied.  “We’ll get
there.”
    “Let’s stop and take a rest,” Nate protested.
    “For Christ’s sake,” Tony mumbled.  “Remedial Phys Ed
hasn’t helped yet, huh?”
    “Gnaw on my fat one.”
    They stopped to take a blow and watch the bright, shimmering
grid of L.A. lights to the south and lonely jets taking off from LAX. 
Darren always loved the Money Shot from here.
    Nate was trying to catch his breath, and Darren smiled at
his effort.  Nathan Douglas was a tall, heavy-set Irish kid who must of
woke up one morning and decided he wanted to be black for the remainder of his
adolescence.  Darren neither condemned or condoned Nate’s choice of dress,
talk, and hand motions.  Close your eyes while Nate was talking “street”
and you’d think you were in Inglewood or Compton.  Open them, and you saw
a white kid from an upper-middle class family wearing baggy pants belted four
inches too low and any choice of oversized designer shirts.  Hip-hop
always played on Nate’s iPod, never rock ’n’ roll.  “Wannabe” was one name
for Nate’s social breed.  A less flattering epithet invented a long time
ago was “wigger.”
    Surprisingly, he got along with the black kids at school who
either tolerated him or actually liked his company.  Other than that,
Darren didn’t know too much about him since he just started hanging out with
Darren, Tony and Jorge a few weeks ago.  Nate was a somewhat popular guy
around school, and Darren couldn’t figure out why he would hang out with losers
like them until just a couple of weeks ago.  It seemed Nate liked Jorge’s
older sister and probably thought he’d warm up to him first.  “Hey,
Mexico, you think I could come over and check out that stereo you was talkin’
about?” or something like that.  Anything to get closer to sis.
    After resting for a few minutes, the boys continued up the
road, leaving the bright lights of Los Angeles behind them.  The San
Gabriel mountains lay ahead.
    Jorge Lopez brought up the rear of the group.