Maybe I’d been too long out of the Bad Time, getting soft. I scrambled up off the stones. At first, all I could think was, Run. I looked across the glaring lake. It hurt my eyes and there were no boats to see. I don’t know why that made it worse, but it did. I grabbed the stick the Frisbee hung on and started smashing it against the log. Then I took Huckleberry Finn and threw it as far as I could into the lake. It wasn’t very far. It floated. I heaved rocks, rocks and more rocks at it and missed every time. Then I stood there, staring at it, panting.
I had to float too. To do that, I had to chill. I’d been alone before. I’d spent my whole life alone. This was nothing compared to being a little kid in the Bad Time. It was them against me again. If I could get out of Josh’s office, I could get out of this, whatever this was.
I took a big, shaky breath and picked up what was left of the stick. It was bent in the middle. I tried to straighten it. The pieces almost fit back together, but it was still bent. Unless they were all Oscar-winning actors, the family believed me. Gram and Grampy, Uncle Pete…all of them. Nobody was asking questions. I figured Carleen and Ty were too wasted to know better. Shan had said Carleen was sober, but anyone could tell that hadn’t lasted. And Shan…Shan…Was I wrong about her? Needles of doubt came back to prick me. But why would she do all this if she knew? It made no sense. Did it? I threw the stick away.
Okay then, what did Griffin know? What could he know? What could anybody know? Danny had been gone three years. There were no fingerprints to check. There was DNA, but Shan had joked that my DNA was the same. Why would she do that if she didn’t believe me? They couldn’t check mine if we didn’t agree to it. Would she say no if Griffin asked her for a DNA sample? I could tell she didn’t like him.
By this time, I was tromping circles on the beach. If Griffin had proof, he’d just have me arrested me, right? If he didn’t, he couldn’t do anything unless I blew it. Maybe he was jerking my chain, trying to make me run and give myself away. He’d said people thought Danny ran off. Shan had almost said the same thing on the plane. What was that about?
The waves had almost brought Huckleberry Finn back to shore. I kicked at it and got soaked. The last part of those chapters, the part I hadn’t read, I remembered. Huck and the con men get caught when what look like real relatives show up. Did Griffin know where Danny was? Was the real Danny going to show up? Was he telling me to run before it was too late? Why? Why, why, why? I thought I’d calmed down, but now I had to move again. I had to get out of there.
I was starting up the bank when they came over its crest. For half a beat I didn’t recognize them; I hadn’t seen them since my first day at Open Book, when I spotted them from the window. The guys from the high school hallway. One was lugging a grocery bag that looked to be stuffed with beers, another had newspaper—to start a beach fire, I guessed. The one I’d jumped was lighting a cigarette or a joint. Now we were face to face, maybe ten feet apart, and it was all downhill for them. “It’s him,” one of them shouted. Smoker Boy—Dillon or whatever his name was— looked up, startled.
I’ll tell you a good reason not to smoke: you have a better chance of outrunning a smoker who wants to kick the crap out of you. I took off along the beach toward town, the beach stones sliding and crunching crazily under my feet. I could hear him—or maybe them—behind me, swearing, their steps out of time with mine. It felt like forever. Then their noise fell back and something whirred past my head. A rock smacked into the clay bank, then another. One smashed into my left shoulder, and pain rocketed down my arm. I stumbled and went down over a piece of driftwood. My head banged something, my knee something else, but I kept rolling forward and then was back up again, gasping, running. I kept on running, around a bend in the shore and until I was far out of range and couldn’t run anymore.
My breath tore at my throat. My head and shoulder were throbbing, and I could feel stinging on my forehead. It was bloody when I touched it, and a big goose egg was coming up. At least I could move my arm. My new jeans were torn at one knee, and I could feel more stinging there. I limped along the rest of the beach to town and came out in a tired little playground by the harbor. At first it felt deserted.
A dog barked. A voice I knew called, “Buster!”
I looked up and there was Gillian.