I’d never been afraid of heights, but pressed against the passenger window looking over the side of the mountain, it seemed like a good time to start. Seat belts? Yeah, good idea. They would make it easier for the rescue team to find our bodies. I pulled mine tighter and braced one hand against the dashboard.
The station wagon chugged up the mountain like a roller coaster straining to make that first peak. A couple of times, the rear wheels spun out, shooting stone torpedoes. Dad clicked off the radio. I didn’t argue; I’d seen the drop as we made that last hairpin turn. If he wanted to concentrate, I was all for it.
The car followed the snaky road back and forth up the mountain. On one side, we were nearly grazing the jagged wall of the mountain; on the other side, we were inches away from plummeting over the edge. Below, barns and fields of crops looked like a paint-by-number picture. Dad cranked the wheel hard at each turn. When he finally steered off let’s-defy-death road, my foot released an imaginary brake and my back relaxed against the seat.
The road we were on now was well hidden by trees and the angle of its entrance. Every now and then we passed a cabin or an old trailer. On one property, a rock fireplace with a chimney sat in the grass. Vines latched onto it and climbed around its base. I could see where the foundation once was. It made me wonder what had happened to the house.
Finally, Dad turned up onto a side road and into a gravel driveway. Nothing but woods on both sides, except for the old house we’d parked in front of. Even then, the trees crept up to the house and stretched their knobby branches toward the roof like they were trying to touch it. The sun lit the treetops, but the woods below stood in darkness. A black forest.
I peered at the mountain through the windshield. “You think any wild animals live up there?”
“Probably just squirrels and birds.” Dad took off his sunglasses. “Maybe bears.”
“Bears!” I said, shooting a glance into the trees.
“Joshua, I’m kidding.” He shook his head. “People wouldn’t live here if it wasn’t safe.” He got out, opened the back of the car, and grabbed a couple of suitcases. “Come on, help me.”
I struggled with a suitcase and followed him up the steps into our new home. The wood floor creaked and echoed our every footstep, and a draft blew at our backs. I shuddered right down to my feet.
When you move, you’re homeless for a while. You don’t live at the place you’re leaving, and you don’t live at the place you’re going to. Sometimes you have to stay in a hotel for a couple of weeks, which is great because the hotel is full of other air force kids who don’t care that they never met you before; they want someone to race with in the hallways or play catch with outside. But sooner or later, you have to leave and face your new life. Today’s new life was in Cheslock, Pennsylvania, courtesy of my dad being an air force recruiter.
My room was upstairs, down the hall from Dad’s. I ripped open a moving carton, pulled out my shoe boxes, and lined them up, one box of treasures for every place I could remember living. Six boxes so far, and that didn’t include the new one for Pennsylvania. Lifting the lids, I eyed some of my stuff: my baseball trophy (best Little League team in Hickory, New Jersey), pieces of quartz (from a field in Tennessee), little bottles of sand (right off the dunes of Lake Michigan). I wondered what Pennsylvania would fill my box with. The only thing I really knew about Pennsylvania was one lame joke: What’s the biggest pencil in the world? Pencil-vania. Yeah, I’d have them rolling in the aisles with that one.
I scanned my souvenirs one more time. My life, right here in these boxes. I pushed them under the bed and tore open more cartons. They were full of stuff like clothes and sheets, and I went through them all until the last box had been emptied. You learn to do that when you’re in the air force.
I looked at the flattened cartons, then out the window. I’d done enough. “I’m going outside,” I shouted, running downstairs as I heard Dad yell the usual Dad stuff, “Be careful! Don’t go too far!”
From the driveway, I spied on the house at the bottom of the road. No one in the yard. No hoop or bikes, either, so I was pretty sure I was the only kid around.
Crossing the side yard, I slipped past some bushes and into the woods. Oaks and maples towered over me, blocking the sky with their leaves. My skin felt cool and damp, and I picked up the scent of pine needles and blueberry bushes. Spongy green moss grew at the base of a tree. I brushed my fingers against it.
Then a flicker of movement caught my eye. I whirled around—bushes flashed their leaves, but I heard nothing and then everything was still.
“Hey!” I shouted. The woods absorbed my voice. My back prickled with chills. Suddenly the trees seemed too tall and the house too far, and I bolted through the woods until I reached our door.
Later, Dad and I sat on the porch and ate pizza off paper plates. Fireflies blinked across the yard. If Mom were here, she’d celebrate our first day in the new home by serving our pizza on china and our pop in wineglasses. She’d make up funny stories about people we’d meet and what would happen in our new town.
I sighed and pulled a pepperoni off my pizza.
“What are you going to do come Monday?” Dad asked.
I gulped down my lemonade. “What do you mean?” I took another bite of pizza, stretching the cheese till it broke.
“I’ll be at work. You’ll be alone all day.”
I kept eating. I wanted to see what he was leading up to.
“I don’t want you by yourself in the house. It’s not like the base; there’s no one here to watch out for you.” He gazed past me into the woods. The trees looked even bigger now, black against the purple sunset. Dad shook his head. “I don’t feel good about leaving you here alone.”
I just about choked on my pizza. “Dad, I’m almost in seventh grade! I don’t need a babysitter!”
“Not a babysitter.” He turned, looked at me, and grinned. “A dog.”