CHAPTER ONE
The Chase
The boy pedaled as fast as he could, but the others were still gaining on him. They were stronger. To make matters worse, a slight mist, sometimes thickening into a drizzle, had fallen all day. His new white Jordans kept slipping off the black grips, which spun back hard into his shins. But still he pushed on. One more block to go and he would turn onto his own street. Surely, he would be safe there.
It had all started that morning in second-period Math. The boy had the misfortune of having a head that sloped up slightly toward the back, where he also fell victim to a pronounced cowlick, and the combination of these features, added to his slim build, gave him a rather pointed appearance, one that drew the attention and ridicule of the class bully—and star athlete—Shane Johnson.
The teacher finished a discussion on multiplying fractions and put several problems on the board. Then she left to use the restroom. As soon as she was gone, the usual rumble of conversations began. Shane, with malice shining in his blue eyes, turned to the boy and said, “Hey, since you’re too retarded to play any sports, I thought of a good use for you.” He smiled. “We can turn you upside down, pound you into the ground, and use you as a fencepost!” He laughed at his own joke, and a few of his friends cackled with him.
Looking down at the sheet of paper where he had copied the practice problems, the boy clenched his teeth. He was used to receiving such idiotic insults and had long ago taught himself to ignore them. Today, however, he had planned to ask Miriam, one of his classmates, if she was going to a dance at the Temple that Saturday night, and having her hear him degraded this way today, of all days, made him burn inside.
Seething, he turned to Shane and spat, “Except you couldn’t build a fence, could you? Because you would have to take measurements and do math. You would have to use fractions, and you only have a fraction of the brains you would need!”
He knew he shouldn’t have said it, and the rest of the class knew it, too. By the time the last words had left his mouth, all conversation—and work on the practice problems, for
that matter—had ceased as everyone awaited the bully’s reaction. Everyone knew Shane was sensitive about his difficulties in math. It was common knowledge he had been forced to attend summer school the past two years just to graduate with his class, and for a few seconds now, his face paled with embarrassment.
He quickly recovered, however, and leaped to his feet to reassert his superiority. He towered over the boy, who sat paralyzed at his desk, looking up at his doom.
Before Shane could do anything to him, though, Miriam flew from her desk, with her long, black ponytail swinging behind her. She threw her diminutive frame between them. Her dark eyes blazed as she pointed her slender finger in the face of the immense athlete and said, “Don’t you dare touch him! You’re the one who started this! You’re always starting in with him! Why can’t you just leave him alone?”
His answer was to reach around her with one of his powerful arms and grab the boy’s collar to lift him from his chair. That was when they all heard the teacher approaching the door of the classroom, her heels clicking on the floor tiles. Shane quickly let go, and he and Miriam scurried back to their desks.
The teacher walked in, oblivious to the conflict she had interrupted. She closed the
door behind her and asked, “Does anyone need help with any of the problems?”
Several of the students raised their hands, and when she had her back turned to help one of them, Shane leaned toward the boy and whispered, “After school you’re dead, and your little girlfriend isn’t gonna be able to save you. I’m gonna kill you.”
After class, as they all shuffled toward the door, Shane stepped to his side and repeated himself, loudly enough for only the boy to hear: “Remember, you’re dead.”
The boy rushed to his locker. His hands were trembling, so it took him several tries to open the combination lock. He always kept this little bit of personal space neat and orderly. An open slot awaited his math textbook, and he knew where to reach for next period’s text on grammar without even looking. He was so distracted glancing around nervously for Shane, however, that his arm veered slightly off course and knocked the face of his wristwatch against the metal edge of his locker.
It was an old-fashioned analog watch, a Timex, with a round white face and a black leather band. He loved it because it had been his father’s. Alarmed, he examined the face for damage, and pain shot through him when he saw he had scratched it. Tears stung his eyes.
He wiped them away with the sleeve of his sweatshirt and carefully retrieved his Language Arts workbook. Looking around once more, he saw no sign of Shane, so he dipped his hand behind the row of books at the bottom and lifted his cell phone into view. His mom would know what to do. Maybe she could come pick him up so he wouldn’t have to ride his bike home. Shane knew where he kept his bike.
He turned his phone on, and after a moment his lock screen shined at him. He started to type his password, and just as he saw 0% CHARGED, the screen went dark. Oh, G-d. He tried two more times and got the same result.
Fear washed over him. He felt like sinking to the floor. What was he going to do now? He got a creepy feeling and turned around.
There was Shane, across the hall, leaning against the wall and grinning at him in triumph. He must have seen the screen go dark.
The boy turned away, jerking his eyes from Shane like fingers from a hot stove. He dropped the useless phone behind the books and closed the locker door. He hurried to his Language Arts class, not daring to turn around. He was sure Shane was following him. When he got to the door, though, he turned, and no one was there.
For the next fifty minutes, the teacher droned on and on about the proper usage of the comma. The boy rarely paid attention. He just wanted to find some way to get in touch with his mother. He could borrow someone’s charger, but no one he knew brought one to school. And even if he found one, he didn’t know where he could use it. Phones weren’t allowed in classrooms.
He could use someone else’s phone, of course. He knew his friend Grady would let him use his, and Miriam would let him use hers. But he couldn’t bear the thought of either of them witnessing his cowardice.
Then he found his solution: between class periods he would hurry to the assistant principal’s office and ask to use the phone there. Last month during Study Hall he had made three giant posters for Mr. Habersham and his secretary, each one announcing a different band competition. He knew they would let him use the phone. He would just say his bike was broken and tell his mom the truth when she picked him up.
When the bell rang, he grabbed his things and shuffled toward the door with everyone else. The students headed their various directions, and the boy set off at a clipped pace for the glass-enclosed office at the other end of the building.
Before he had made it even halfway there, he knew his plan wasn’t going to work. There, in front of the office, Shane stood with his arms folded across his chest, deep in conversation with Mr. Habersham. Shane saw him and smiled and waved. Mr. Habersham waved, too, thinking all was friendliness, and the boy managed to return the gestures, bitterly. Shane’s presence there was a message to him, a warning that if he made any visit to the office, Shane would assume he was snitching. Shane hated snitches, speaking of them with contempt, even saying they deserved to be killed.
The boy turned back toward his locker and his face collided with the chest of Brandon Swift, a teammate and chief lieutenant of Shane’s. “Excuse me,” he bleated, and turned, but the football player blocked his way. Grabbing a fistful of the boy’s small gray sweatshirt, he said, as if to a friend, “Let me give you some advice. Don’t rat on Shane to anyone, or it’s gonna be twice as bad for you. You don’t want that, do you?”
The boy shook his head fearfully, and Brandon said, “I thought you’d understand.”
As they parted, Brandon gave him a shove and sent him sprawling on his back. The boy craned his neck to see if Mr. Habersham had seen, but he and Shane were gone.
Between all the class periods, either Shane or one of his henchmen stood watch over
the offices, and usually the boy was being followed, as well. By the time he went to Study Hall, his last class of the day, he believed his only hope was to hide somewhere in the school till everyone had gone home, but then it occurred to him that one of them might catch on, might see his bike still waiting for him out front and figure out he was still inside, hiding. Then one, or even all of them, might come back inside and hide, too, and hunt him down once everyone else had gone. The thought of being locked in the dark school building with them terrified him.
Then he got an idea.
He had half an hour till the final bell, just enough time.
He got permission to go to the restroom and went straight to his locker, where he stuffed his phone and everything else he needed into his backpack. Then he closed his locker and went out the front doors into the light rain.
His bike was right where he had left it, where he always left it—locked to the bike rack in the slot closest to the building. He threw his backpack into the dripping basket and unlocked the bike, unable to help glancing nervously around at the empty grounds. He was alone, thank G-d. He stuffed his lock into the backpack and hopped onto the wet seat. He rode the bike around the beige brick exterior of the schoolhouse and left it leaning against the wall, right next to the back doors. Then he went back inside for the last few minutes of Study Hall.
He sat near the front, and when the final bell rang, he bolted from the classroom and scooted down the hallway toward the wide back doors, praying not to be seen by anyone sympathetic to Shane. Several faces recognized his hurry, or maybe even his fear, but neither Shane nor his friends appeared. They were probably rushing to intercept him out front. There was no telling what they would do once they noticed his bike was gone.
The boy shoved the back door open and found his bike right where he had left it. He opened his backpack, slid the notebook and pen he had brought to Study Hall inside, and zipped it shut. He scraped the newly accumulated rainwater off the black seat and hopped on, pedaling down the sidewalk along the back of the building.
Ahead lay the trail he would use to make his escape. He veered off the sidewalk and onto the downward slope some kids had used for sledding the one time it snowed. It was muddy now, so he rode carefully, which meant he couldn’t use his brakes; they would only
rode the bike around the beige brick exterior of the schoolhouse and left it leaning against the wall, right next to the back doors. Then he went back inside for the last few minutes of Study Hall.
He sat near the front, and when the final bell rang, he bolted from the classroom and scooted down the hallway toward the wide back doors, praying not to be seen by anyone sympathetic to Shane. Several faces recognized his hurry, or maybe even his fear, but neither Shane nor his friends appeared. They were probably rushing to intercept him out front. There was no telling what they would do once they noticed his bike was gone.
The boy shoved the back door open and found his bike right where he had left it. He opened his backpack, slid the notebook and pen he had brought to Study Hall inside, and zipped it shut. He scraped the newly accumulated rainwater off the black seat and hopped on, pedaling down the sidewalk along the back of the building.
Ahead lay the trail he would use to make his escape. He veered off the sidewalk and onto the downward slope some kids had used for sledding the one time it snowed. It was muddy now, so he rode carefully, which meant he couldn’t use his brakes; they would only make him slide and crash. He coasted down the hill and went faster and faster.
The principal had long ago declared the trail off-limits. He said it was dangerous. But he should have known the surest way to make anything appealing to the children was to forbid it. Some went to the creek during recess to build earthen dams or catch crawdads. Couples sneaked out of gym class to make out behind the cover of the trees. A few smokers used the trail as a place to get their fix. Mostly, though, kids went there to use their phones.
The boy, however, largely obeyed the principal’s edict. He had been there only once, at the start of fifth grade:
With his bushy light-brown hair; soft, fair-skinned face; and pudgy body, his friend Grady had brought all his irrepressible enthusiasm to bear and convinced the boy to go exploring the mysterious forbidden path. They had found a bramble with strange purple berries, which Grady had eaten and nevertheless failed to collapse into convulsions, and they had also seen two large spiders hanging in their webs, from which they recoiled in fright. Finally, on their way back to class, they had come upon a couple kissing. The older boy had a hand up the girl’s shirt, leaving one cup of her bra visible. The boys had sprinted away, afraid and thrilled and overcome with giggles.
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