His summer was as content. He played baseball, drank lemonade, went swimming on the weekends with his mom and his little sister, and played more baseball. It was a fine time to be eleven.

Before the last summer game, Steven participtaed in four double plays, and one iffy triple play, which the team at bat had agreed to only because triple plays were so rare and because they were up by five. He also threw two more rocks. Neither were in the same part of town as that first one. The second one was halfway across town, but the rock wasn't the same- it was more like a lump of broken cement, and it didn't fly with the same ease as the first one. In fact, it punched through the upper left-hand corner, making a hole instead of shattering the pane. But on the third one he realized his mistake. He'd been waiting for the rain to stop, so he could get back to the diamond and play the rest of the game. Wandering around, he found another smooth stone that had come from the creek just outside of town, and it flew with all the grace as the first one had. Steven wasn't becoming a chronic window-breaker, he was just looking for a little practice, AND testing his theory about the rock shape, on that third one. On the first two he hadn't run, but he did on the third, because the rain had stopped falling just when the glass finished breaking, and he wanted to be the first one back on the lot.

Summer ended, eventually, which meant school, and fifth grade. Steven was an average student, and after a few weeks, fifth grade proved to be just like the previous four- once the teacher got decoded, it was all easy. Steven got B's, just to keep his mom from worrying, but mostly he thought about baseball.

He loved the sport, loved the way his glove felt, smooth and slick with sweat from his left palm and from his forehead when he mopped it on cloudless days on top of the second bag. He loved the way his glove smelled, too. He loved the way the ball hung in the air on an infield fly, floating for a moment in the sun before it dropped into his glove with "socking" sound and STAID THERE. He loved the way the ball bounced a fierce little cloud of dust on a grounder, loved the way his body responded cat-like to hop a few feet to the right or left so he could catch the ball between his knees. Once his team's pitcher hurtled a pitch straight through the center of the batter's box, and Steven had caught the ball neatly right next to his left ear even before he'd heard the thwack of the bat.

Steven wasn't obsessed with the game- he didn't know all the stats, didn't keep up with the pennant races, although his dad always reported on who was in the lead at dinner. He wasn't one much for watching it, either, so he listened to it on his transistor at night before he went to sleep, to help him dream about playing second base for the giants or the red sox or the yankees or whomever. It didn't matter which team and secretly, Steven didn't even care if the team he was on won or not, so long as he got to play. In his dreams, though, he always won.

School meant baseball had to wait until the weekends, and Steven's aim slowly slipped through want of practice. He tried two more houses while he could still wear his shirt- sleeves. He tried a red house near the middle of town, but he barely hit the corner of the window, and only cracked it. The other house was faded white, and he missed altogether. Steven didn't try a second time- he wasn't the sort to to ruthlessly pound away at a target until it was so much mush, or in this case, glistening dust. He tried an apple on Halloween, just so he could say he did, though he did it alone, threw it at a door instead of a window, and didn't actually tell anyone. When winter fell he discovored his heavy coat was too bulky to throw with any accuracy whatsoever- though in the school yard, he was considered the best shot with a slush ball. It was probably just as well that he left the rocks in the creek alone- Deereville wasn't a big town and any more stones would probably force the sherriff to make an investigation.

Finally it was spring, Steven was eleven, and on a Saturday morning he decided skip the kiddie cartoons and wake his ol' arm up instead, at the creek. He walked along during the first warm rain in April, splashing in the puddles, soaking his socks, acting like the little kid he wasn't long to be anymore. When he got to the creek he took off his shoes, and stood in the center of the freezing cold water, picking up stones, washing the dirt and mud from their undersides, and hurling them at trees. He missed most of them during the first hour, partly from not having thrown anything for three months, partly from shivering. But he hit a few when he warmed up and felt his arm start to sing. When he picked one area of the creek clean, he moved down a bit. The trees served as targets, not substitutes- they weren't windows, or houses, or even the gloves of the catcher, or first baseman, they were just trees. Steven worked his way all afternoon down the stream until he came up against a formidable windfall, and he realized his arm was red hot and soar enough to fall off. He walked back to where he'd begun, his feet numb. He found his shoes, decided they were sopping anyway, and just carried them home, in his left hand. He cleaned up before his mom could see him and give him her yearly pneumonia speech. His shoes dried over the weekend, and by Monday his arm was okay enough to write with in school.

The lot got humming again on weekends, slowly at first, and then more and more fully. Steven hit a few more houses, and at each one it was the same- fish a rock out of his pocket, chuck it, watch it fly, listen to the glass, and walk on. He heard somebody yelp on one occasion, and on another a guy with his shirt unbuttoned and his socks flopping on the sidewalk ran past him cursing. He didn't even stop to ask Steven if he's seen any one. Steven didn't mind: if his was a pathalogical pursuit he might have been offended that the guy ignored him, but Steven just did it to do it, and it was always over as soon as the glass stopped falling.

When the school-year ended, Steven was no longer a grade schooler, and neither where most of the other boys who played baseball that summer. It was almost as if they were saying goodby to a pastime that would be lost in the heady shuffle of middle school. Most of them, Steven believed, would just give up ball-playing for girls and cars and cigarettes, like their brothers before them. Steven knew he would never do that, but if he had no one else to play with, it looked as if this would be his last summer, too.

So, he decided it would be his last summer with the rocks, also. He threw one every couple of weeks, and the police DID, in fact, launch an investigation. At least, if that's what you call it when a deputy wanders over to the sand-lot and asks the kids if they've seen anyone chucking stones. They answered "no" in a chorus, and Steven really didn't think anything of it, not even when he saw an article in the Sunday paper.

"Serial Killer in Deereville" the head line read on page five. The article justified the title by explaining that window-killer was baffling police the same way killers baffle big-city cops. It talked about patterns and motivation, and Steven only gave it a cursory glance on his way to the funnies. They were all wrong. Steven wasn't a malicious young man, seeking to revenge himself on peers who had done better, peers who had ruthlessly taunted him in school, peers who's perfect family lives were a constant reminder that his own broken home was a muted-stone hell. He was just a kid who liked to throw rocks, and who was going to stop with the end of summer.

And he did- for a while. He was getting pretty good at diving for the balls that tried to squirt between first and second, and even the ones between first and third when the shorstop dropped back to fill in the outfield. He had sore hips instead of a sore shoulder when school began, and middle school was such a whirlwind he didn't have time to idle around town, chucking pebbles at glass. Not if he wanted to survive eighth grader's with attitudes, algebra teachers with grudge's, and school-lunches with ptomaine. In the spring he tried out for the school team, and made it, though the coach wanted him to play third instead of second. He agreed so he could play, and discovered that positions got shuffled on a game per game basis.

It was the first organized team he'd ever been on, And Steven found it all a little too slow. There were all sorts of rules to follow, conventions to adhere to, concerns to be considered. Batting was his never strong suit, but now he had to step into the hole anyway, swing the weighted metal bats like everyone else, then put on his helmet, and wait for the ump to "invite" him onto the plate. He had to bunt if the coach told him to, or "sacrifice it." Before, if he ever hit one, his method was always to run like hell until he thought it was safe to stop. But now, he had to learn signals, had to watch the third base coach who told him to "woe" it, "shoot" it, or "steal" it. If he ever made it to second base, a position he much preferred with a glove on his hand instead of a helmet on his head, he had to stare down the catcher's crotch and read the fingers, then signal them to the manager who relayed them to the batter. Altogether it was more politics than game, and Steven came to the conclusion that the majority of the boys on the team only played to get a letter on their jacket for their girlfriends to wear.

But he stuck it out, so his dad wouldn't get angry at him, and when summer finally arrived he went straight to the sand lot. To his horror, he found he was too big to play there anymore. It was only a year, but somehow he'd grown enough inches, gained enough middle-school savvy to be out-of-place in the play ground. He waited, and watched as the little kids took turns on the bases, like he and his friends had done years ago before they found their homes. When dusk fell everyone went home but Steven staid, and when he was alone, he wandered out to the second bag. He stood at it for a while, hanging his head back and watching the stars come out one by one. He wanted to cry, but he didn't- he just shuffled home.

It didn't occur to him to throw rocks. until the summer was almost over. He'd spent most of it mowing lawns and laying around- laying around the pool now that he was old enough to hang out near the deep end, or laying around the house watching television until his mom told him to get off his lazy carcass, or laying around the park, looking at clouds with his head on his mit on a park-bench. With a week before school started he was shuffling home when he passed by that first blue house. He stopped without knowing why, and looked up to see a new window. It was dusk again, but this time there was no stone on the sidewalk. The lawn did need a good mowing, however, as there were more dandelions than that day two years before.

The more he thought about it that week, the better it seemed. School was scheduled to start on a Wednesday, so on the preceding Tuesday, Steven went with his mom and his sister to get haircuts and to buy new shoes and pencils and notebooks, like they did every year. She took them out to lunch and told them how big they were getting, and Steven nodded in all the right places like he was supposed to. As they drove home he looked out the window at all the houses, with thier big windows and their little windows and their living room windows and their bedroom windows. He recalled how one rocks had hit the glass and and ruffled a heavy curtain behind it. On another occasion he'd heard the glass break and then something else right behind it. He couldn't wait to get home.

Once there he announced that he was going to break in his new keds, and he marched straight to the creek. It was fairly low with the summer heat, like it always was in August, stealing no business from the municipal pool whatsoever. He got a few rocks from high on the banks, so they wouldn't be muddy. He walked around, sizing up locations, until he found a redbrick home with no car in the drive. No one was watching, so he let one go- he hadn't so much as tossed a beach-ball all summer but somehow his aim was flawless. Bullseye. Before he knew what was happening he was running down the sidewalk, around the corner, into an alley. He hid behind a trash can, cheat heaving, grinning madly.

He got his keds worked in, all right, hitting no less then five houses. All the rules he had followed without knowing were gone. He stalked the houses, snuck up on them, threw the rocks, and ran. If he missed, he made sure no one had seen him throw the first one, then threw another.

School started, and Steven tried to hold himself back. He tried concentrating on his studies, tried to bully the sixth graders, tried to get involved with the football team as another manic supporter. But it didn't work. He started to sneak out of the house, late at night, to wander the streets and throw rocks. He tried tossing them at cars, but the satisfaction wasn't the same. His favorites were houses with big lawns that sat right between two street lights. Steven would stand on the sidewalk, with a little pile of rocks next to his [editing note- make them stones in the first half of the story, and then rocks only at the end] feet. He would stand still, waiting for the breeze to finish playing with his shirt collar, and then slowly reach down to grab the first one. He's swing his arm back, slowly, and then throw, watching the rock fly, tumbling through the air, end over end, seemimg to roll in the cool, quiet, night air. He watched as if it were swimming away in slow motion, until CRASH it went through the window. And, then, as fast as he could pick them up he'd thrown them- CRASH- a double play, CRASH a triple, CRASH pick off the runner trying to steal home, CRASH CRASH and then he'd run for it, chest bursting, all the way back to the creek for some more rocks.

He threw rocks well into the fall, stopping only for rain. He went out in the winter, too, opting for a quilted vest over a flannel shirt to stay warm with, so he could use his arms. He knew what he was doing was wrong, but he couldn't help it. He slept easier at night, knowing he'd thrown and thrown and thrown. His patterns were never the same. He'd hit two houses in one night, go a few days, then hit three more, then a week off before hitting just one. He hit big houses, little ones, houses with expensive cars out front, houses with junkers in the driveway.

There was plenty of investigating going on. The sherriff handled the case himself, patrolling in his car late at night. Steven saw him on three different occasions, but the sherriff never saw Steven. Once he walked around until he found the Sherriff idling near the house of one Steven's old teachers. He waited until the sherriff moved on, and turned the corner. Then he let the house have it. He got two windows before he decided the sherriff was too close for comfort. He dashed back home.

There was plenty in the papers about it too, and no longer bored-journalistic sensationalism on the back pages. There were long stories about the investigation, editorials about the investigation's failures, and advertisements for unbreakable plexiglass windows.

The citizens of Deereville were starting to get angry. One little boy who threw a shoe through his living room window was nearly dragged to the police station by his own father until his mother pointed out that it was thrown from INSIDE and had been an accident- he was trying to hit his little brother. He was grounded, instead. Some folks patrolled their neighborhood, and looked with an evil eye on the homes that hadn't been hit. Steven considered doing his own house, just to throw away any suspicion- but there was none to speak of, since he rarely stayed close enough to home for his neighbors to wonder why HIS hadn't been victimized. Other measures were employed- dogs, all-night vigils. Most people took to putting bright lights on their garages or over their front doors.

But that was just the sort of thing Steven loved. He loved the bright lights, because bright lights meant he could see what he was doing, and then hide in their shadows.

Steven turned twelve, and to celebrate, he had a party at his house. Friends from school, and a few relatives. It was all very nice and fun, and Steven ate two pieces of cake just to show everyone what a good time he was having. But what he really wanted to was invite everyone to run around the neighborhood with him, breaking windows. He could get them the best rocks, show them how to throw AROUND the shoulder and OVER the knee. He could tell them how to plan the arc so the rock is DESCENDING when it hits the glass, making for the loudest noise.

But he waited until everyone was gone, thanking each as they left for the gifts- a ball from Jerry, a record from his Grandma, and a new glove from his folks. He pretended to whine about staying up late, since it was his birthday, but not too much, lest his parent's actually give in. When everyone was in bed, he counted to a thousand, skipping the eight-hundreds out of impatience, and then snuck out. He went to the creek, and by the light of the half-moon he picked out twelve perfect rocks. He left eight behind, and with the remaining four, stalked the streets. CRASH he ran over a few blocks. CRASH, he ran a few more. CRASH he ran back in the direction he'd come from, avoiding the converging police cars. CRASH. He went back for another set of rocks.

By the sixth rck he was already past his record for one evening. But he wouldn't stop until he'd thrown all twelve- one for every candle on his cake. When the ninth rock flew he realized he might not make it to the twelfth- the whole town was filled with cars and people running around. But he managed, and even managed to get back into the house and into bed before his parents got a call from his mom's best friend from across town- her neighbor had been hit, taking out the front window AND denting the television badly. The next day at school it was all any one could talk about.

Steven let it go for a week, and then, hit them with a three night flurry. He went back and got a few houses he'd gotten before, and even did one three times, just because the lighting was perfect. He terrorized Deereville, and no one suspected him at all.

One spring night, he threw his penultimate stone. He'd only tossed two that night, but one of them happened to be through the window of Charles Grubb. Charles worked in the hardware store, were he'd worked since high-school graduation some six years before. His parents had died when he was nineteen, leaving him the house, where he sat bewteen shifts, eating pizza and reading detective magazines. On the night of his front window's demise, he was in his car, on a stake-out a few blocks down. He had been trying to solve the stone-case, to help him get a job with the sherriff's department. But Steven always saw the people that tried to hide in their cars- most of them smoked, and left a window open to let let out the fumes. Charles was no different.

The sherrif and his deputies had been responding to as many calls as they could since the Steven had gone berzerk, so when the lady across the street had called in to say the Grubb place had been hit, they went to investigate. Getting no answer from the bell, deputy Johanson stepped through the broken glass, turned on a light- and shrieked. Before him on the floor was every newspaper article on the window-breaker, black and white photographs of some of the houses that had been hit, and a pile of stones, marked to match the houses.

The deputy picked up some of the photos and some of the articles, and a few of the stones, and took them to the sherriff, who was talking to a one of the nighbors. A regular crowd had gathered. Most of them saw the deputies "evidence," and many went off to call their friends. A mob gathered, including the vengeful AND the curious. Steven was there, having just finished for the night and seeing his parents treck off. Thankfully, they hadn't bothered checking his bed before they left. People were milling about, listening to the sherriff and ignoring him, about jumping to conlusions justice and a fair trial. Then, Charles came home.

Before the sherriff could even approach him to put him in cuffs, somebody threw a rock- it hit Charles in the chest, making a whoosh sound come out of his mouth. Another rock followed the first one, then another, then some more, and by the time their hands were empty Charles Grubb was on the ground, unconscious and bleeding heavily. He was rushed to the hospital while the deputies dispersed the angry crowd. Steven's parent's didn't question his prescence there- they just put him in the car and slowly drove home. Charles didn't die, but one night while he was in intensive care Steven had to throw one more stone, just so everyone would know.