Chapter 1

Am I dreaming?

That’s what the little boy thought when the old Ford station wagon hit a speed bump and knocked him awake. He had that feeling of being cozy in bed, but suddenly needing to go to the bathroom. His eyes squinted in the sun, and he looked out over the Ohio Turnpike. The steam from the August heat came off it like waves at the pool that Mom took him to after saving up by skipping lunches for a while. “I lost three pounds,” she said and winked. That was one of the good days.

He rubbed his tired eyes and sat up in the passenger seat. He loved riding in the front seat when his mom drove. He felt like he belonged to a club. A special club with him and this cool skinny lady. He looked over at her, framed by the morning sun. Her skin was sticking to the hot vinyl seat. Her shoulders red around her halter top. Her skin pale just under the cutoffs. She had her cigarette in one hand, and she looked glamorous. Like the old movie stars in their Friday Night Movies together. He loved how the ends of her cigarettes had red lipstick. The teachers back in Denver said cigarettes were bad for you. When he told his mom that, she joked that teachers were bad for you and kept on smoking.

“Actually, teachers are important, so forget I ever said that,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

He watched her stub out her cigarette and light another instantly. She only did that when she was worried. She was always worried when they moved. Maybe it would be different this time. That’s what she always said since Dad died. This time it will be different. Even though it never was.

And this time, they were running.

She took a drag, and the smoke curled up past the beads of August sweat on her upper lip. She peered out over the steering wheel, deep in thought. It took her a full minute to realize he was awake. And then, she smiled.

“Isn’t this a great morning?” she whispered.

The boy didn’t care about mornings at all. But his mom did. So he did.

“Yeah, Mom. It sure is.”

He always called her Mom now. She told him to stop calling him Mommy three years earlier. She said it made him small, and she never wanted her son to be small. Sometimes, she told him to show her his muscles. And he would take his skinny little arms and strain to make his biceps be anything other than flat. Strong like his dad in that Christmas picture. The one picture he had.

“You hungry, buddy?” she asked.

The boy nodded.

“There’s a rest stop right up the turnpike over the state line. I’m sure there’s a diner there.”

“Will they have chocolate chip pancakes?”

The boy remembered the chocolate chip pancakes back in Portland. That was two years ago. There was a diner under their apartment in the city. And the cook always gave them chocolate chip pancakes. There had been Denver and Michigan since. But he never forgot those pancakes or the nice man who made them. He didn’t know men other than his dad could be nice until him.

“If they don’t, we’ll get some M&M’s and throw them in the middle of the stack. Okay?”

The little boy was worried now. He had never heard her say that. Not even when they moved. She always felt guilty when they moved. But even on her guiltiest day, she told him that chocolate was not a breakfast food. Even when she had her chocolate SlimFast shakes for breakfast, she told him that. And no, those shakes do not count as chocolate. He had asked her that already.

“Okay,” he said and smiled, hoping this wasn’t a one-time thing.

He looked back at the turnpike. The traffic slowed as they saw an ambulance and a station wagon. The emergency men wrapped a man’s bloody head with gauze. He looked like he cut his forehead and might be missing some teeth. When they drove a little farther, they could see the deer on the station wagon’s hood. The antler was still stuck in the windshield. The eyes of the deer were open. And it struggled and twitched like it didn’t know it was dying.

“Don’t look at it,” his mom said.

“Sorry,” he replied and looked away.

She didn’t like him to see bad things. He had seen them too much in his life. Especially since his dad died. So, he looked away and studied her hair under her scarf. The one she called a bandanna, but the little boy liked to think of it as a scarf like the ones in the old movies they watched on Movie Fridays. He looked at her hair and his own brown hair like his dad’s in the one picture he had from Christmas. He didn’t remember much about his father. Not even his voice. Just the smell of tobacco on his shirt and the smell of Noxzema shaving cream. That was it. He didn’t know anything about his father other than he must have been a great man because that’s what all fathers were. Great men.

“Mom?” the little boy asked. “Are you okay?”

She put on her best smile. But her face was afraid. Like it was eight hours ago when she woke him up in the middle of the night and told him to pack his things.

“Hurry,” she whispered.

The little boy did as he was told. He threw everything he had into his sleeping bag. When he tiptoed into the living room, he saw Jerry passed out on the sofa. Jerry was rubbing his eyes with his fingers. The ones with the tattoos. For a moment, Jerry almost woke up. But he didn’t. And while Jerry was passed out, they got in the car. With the money in the glove compartment that Jerry didn’t know about. Jerry had taken everything else. In the quiet of night, they drove away. For the first hour, she looked at the rearview mirror more than she did the road.

“Mom? Will he find us?” the little boy asked.

“No,” she said and lit another cigarette.

The little boy looked up at his mom. And in the morning light, he finally saw that her red cheek was not from makeup. And this feeling came over him. He said it to himself.

You cannot fail.

It was his promise. He looked at his mother and thought, I will protect you. Not like when he was really little and couldn’t do anything. He was bigger now. And his arms wouldn’t always be flat and skinny. He would do push-ups. He would be bigger for her. He would protect her. For his dad.

You cannot fail.

You must protect your mother.

You are the man of the house.

He looked out the window and saw an old billboard shaped like a keystone. The weathered sign said YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND IN PENNSYLVANIA. And maybe his mother was right. Maybe it would be different this time. It was their third state in two years. Maybe this time, it would work out. Either way, he knew he could never let her down.

Christopher was seven and a half years old.