CHAPTER 1
Weather was brewing. Heat was still rising from the pavement when the wind started up, carrying with it the tang of coming rain. Gray clouds rumbled overhead, and I broke into a jog through Shady Creek’s century-old downtown.
That’s when an old man ran straight into me—or maybe I ran into him. His silver pocket watch left his grip and went flying, and he grabbed me to steady himself with a feeble dark-skinned hand. We both stared as the watch dropped to the sidewalk and cracked open, spilling its guts.
I shook my head. He didn’t have a phone—he had a pocketwatch. This guy was from a different century, a really different century. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was going too fast. Didn’t see you.” I knelt, face to the wind to get the curls out of my eyes, and took a baker’s minute to pick up a handful of tiny parts.
He seemed frail, hunched over a wooden cane. He looked at the watch pieces in my hand and murmured, “It was my grandad’s.” Then his eyes roved over to my face.
“Richie.” He said my name as if he knew me.
Now that was pretty freaky. He couldn’t know my name because we’d never met.
“Richie,” he whispered.
Tingles spidered up my back. I could count the African-Americans I knew by name on one hand, and none of them carried pocket watches.
“I’m really sorry, sir,” I babbled. “I hope you can get the watch fixed. I just spent my money—” I thrust the pieces into his hand.
I heard rapid footsteps and looked up. Three black teens came from the general direction of a nearby store. Two of them wore black hoodies. I sucked in my breath. This was precisely the type of situation my dad had warned me about.
“Don’t go where there’s a crowd of black people.”
“Pops!” said one. “You all right?”
“Sure I am,” said the old man.
The tallest guy stared daggers at me.
I didn’t know what he wanted, but I ran anyway as the rain began to pelt me. Ran like my life depended on it, and maybe it did.
Danger, right here in Shady Creek, Missouri, my mostly white, boring suburb. Who would have thought?
I won’t josh you. The last couple years of my life were tough. I’d gone from a normal kid with two loving parents to a kid raised by his mean aunt—somebody who I guess never wanted children, especially not now.
I missed Dad, that was for sure. Mom too. Same town, same friends, different house. But it felt like different everything. Like there was a big gaping hole inside of me. I did my best to carry on, keep Dad’s advice in my head, cooperate most of the time.
I’d have left Aunt Trudy’s if I could. But I was only fourteen. How can a fourteen-year-old leave? I had to figure it out. Not that my dad would approve. “You can’t run away from trouble,” he used to say, tapping his finger on his bearded chin. “It’ll always find you.”
I didn’t believe what Dad said. Getting out of Shady Creek was my number one goal.
After two years living with Aunt Trudy, I even believed her sometimes when she said I did everything wrong. But not today. Despite the puzzling encounter with the old man, today I was Smiling Sam, Tall Teddy, Rich Richie. This afternoon I’d be out of town, all the way out to the woods where I was good at things. Even if it wasn’t for very long, it would still be something. Just a little orienteering session while Aunt Trudy was at work, now that school had let out for the summer.
After the storm passed, it only took another hour before me and Ethan made our way out to the Scout troop’s borrowed woodlands. A battered “No Trespassing” sign hung over the warm, shady clearing, nailed to one of the oak trees.
We weren’t supposed to be here unless we were with the Scout troop. But the troop wasn’t meeting this summer since the leadership was changing. Of course, I couldn’t stay away. I was drawn to the woods like a bat to the twilight sky. Besides, nobody would notice. Mrs. O’Rourke, who owned the property, was deaf as a post. Probably blind too.
We pulled out our compasses and a map. I opened the folded-up instructions for orienteering. Ethan leaned forward, dark hair falling into his eyes, hands on knees, and gazed at the paper in my hand. “I don’t remember much.”
“The target is right there on the map,” I explained. “All we have to do is lay the map flat, turn the compass on the map so the north arrow on the compass matches the north arrow on the map, and then head out in the direction of the target.”
“Oh, yeah.” He slapped his forehead. “I remember now.”
We laid the compass on top of the map, sitting in the palm of Ethan’s hand, and gazed off in the indicated direction toward a wooded hillside.
“It’s a paint mark on a tree, right?” Ethan squinted.
“Black?”
“Yup. I bet the paint marks are still here. It hasn’t even been a year since we did orienteering with the troop. Here in this very spot.”
Walking a straight line through the woods isn’t particularly easy. You gotta dodge around trees and thickets and stuff like that. And a black paint mark isn’t easy to find. But we were doing our best.
After a while, we came to an ancient barbed-wire fence. A property boundary?
“I think we should have found that marker by now,” said Ethan.
He was right. “Oh man,” I said.
Ethan laughed. “You always say that.”
I shrugged. “Let’s try again. Like my dad always said—”
“Patience, persistence, perseverance.” He finished the sentence for me, and I punched him in the arm.
We headed back to where we’d started. I picked up a walking stick and whacked a dead tree with it. It made a satisfying sharp crack.
A dog on the other side of the hill started barking.
We looked at each other and walked faster.
An engine started on the other side of the hill and growled closer.
I froze. Ethan’s eyes opened wide.
It sure did sound like a truck rumbling in our direction on the gravel road. The gravel road that was supposed to be our way home. We crashed through the dense brush under a tree while an ancient, rusted Ford pickup slowly drove past.
The driver stopped the vehicle. Opened the door. And got out. A huge man, wearing overalls and a plaid shirt. “You! Get over here!” His voice rumbled like a volcano.
We crumpled the map and took off running, dodging leaves and branches. “Caretaker. For Mrs. O’Rourke,” Ethan gasped.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears.
Up ahead, a small black and white animal blindly stumbled into a stump, just his head covered by an empty tuna can.
The little skunk needed help. But we needed to keep going.
“C’mon!” Ethan, panting beside me, pulled on my sleeve. “Leave him alone!”
Footsteps stomped through leaves behind us. Did I dare help the little guy? If I didn’t, who would?
I changed direction, reached down as I dashed past, snagged the can, and then dropped it. I held my breath for a second, even with my legs pumping like crazy, and then let it out. He hadn’t sprayed me.
The footsteps behind us stopped. Maybe the skunk was positioning himself to defend his rescuers, and our pursuer didn’t want to test him. Relief washed over me. I glanced over at Ethan and grinned as we pounded a shortcut to the blacktop road without pursuit. Dodging vines and bushes, we made it to the edge of the road where we flopped down, panting.
Once we had settled down, Ethan stood and started back toward town. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
We pocketed our compasses and folded up the map, then sauntered along for a while, catching our breaths. We pretended to look cool, and then we started laughing like crazy. No. We had to be calm and collected. In case a police cruiser came by.
But we just couldn’t stop laughing.
Flashing its lights, a vehicle pulled up next to us silently.
“You kids, get over here.”
Busted.
CHAPTER 2
Aunt Trudy picked me up at the police station. I had to wait alone in a small room with a battered desk and a couple of metal chairs till she got off work. Long after Ethan’s mother took him home. Aunt Trudy glared at me and shook her wiry brown hair. “Trespassing. Of all things, Richie. You’re fourteen years old. You know better than this.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I adopted a monotone voice and stared at the floor. The best way, I’d discovered, to keep her from blowing her stack. But sometimes it backfired.
She stamped her foot. “I don’t know why you do these things. Sneaking around with your friends while you’re supposed to be at home. Now, trespassing. Next, it will be stealing. Yes, I do know why you do these things. You’re stupid and lazy and disobedient too. I don’t know what my brother kept seeing in you.”
Man, I missed him. Why did he and Mom have to be in that car accident? I needed them bad along about now.
“In fact, I’m ready to give up,” Aunt Trudy said, her hands on her hips now. “I’m calling the Family Support Division in the morning. You’re going somewhere else. I don’t know what they could have expected me to do.”
I felt like someone socked me in the gut. “Where?”
“Wherever they’ve got for trespassers like you. For delinquent boys like you.”
I pulled myself up to my full height. “I don’t want to live with you either,” I said.
“I’ll bet.” She marched out of the room and motioned for me to follow. The ride home was silent. My thoughts drifted to other car rides, Mom at the wheel, chatting with me about my day and telling me what a good job I was doing at the target range.
Before I got out of the car, Aunt Trudy said, “You’ll learn.”
In my room, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, I let memories flash through my head. Aunt Trudy’s frowning face, criticizing the way I cleaned my room, the way I walked, and anything else I did. When I was twelve, and I first came to her, I’d asked for a smartphone. But she said, “You can have one of those little flip phones—and pay the bill yourself.” How does a kid pay for it himself? By mowing neighbors’ lawns in the summer, after mowing ours. And that’s what I did.
The Ozarks called to me, troops and troops of green hills marching into the distance filled with oak and pine and squirrels. A calm, quiet place where no one could bother me. That would be just fine.
But how would I get there?
Aunt Trudy probably meant to ground me for the weekend, but she was so focused on sending me to live somewhere else she hadn’t said the words. Ethan, Jack, and Ethan’s brother were still coming by in the morning, after she left for work, to pick me up for camping, despite the little scrape with the law.
Then, I’d just … stay in the woods after they left. I’d never see this new “home” she was going to dig up for me. It was probably juvie, or some kind of detention center. Even though the extent of my crimes consisted only of a record of bad grades in the past two years and the trespassing incident.
No to juvie. Or anywhere else someone dreamed up. I had to leave if I wanted to get control over my life.
I could live in the woods. I’d been a Scout a while, and my dad taught me stuff, like how to shoot my modest .22-caliber rifle. I could cook. I could fish. I could forage. I could do it. I could strike out on my own.
I packed up my camping gear in my big camping backpack, my super big box of ammo Dad had bought me, my edible plants book, some changes of clothes, four Pop-Tarts, three cheese sandwiches, and my phone. I put a picture of my mom and dad in a side pocket.
That’s all I needed.
