The next morning, Ma sprang my cage. “Lincoln!” she called from the bathroom. “Why are there bits of Snickers wrappers swimmin’ around the toilet?”

I was in the middle of a dream, trapped inside the corner market by a decrepit old man who was trying to tase me for sneaking Snickers to homeless folks. His Taser was slick and could shoot from a distance, but his aim was all shaky and he was shufflin’ along like a zombie in short red socks, wearing a hospital gown that was gaping wide open in back. “Don’t you know it’ll kill ’em?” he was shouting as I dodged him. “Send ’em straight into a diabetic coma!”

“Lincoln!” Ma hollered again. “What’s a Snickers wrapper doing in the toilet?”

I was glad to shake off the zombie in red socks, but now my mind was dodging around for another escape route. How could there be wrapper left in the toilet? I’d seen it go down! And I’d used the toilet since! Had some pieces stuck to the sides? Had they made their way back upstream? How could this be?

“You sure it’s not somethin’ else brown?” I called back.

“Lincoln Jones, I know the difference between somethin’ else brown and a candy wrapper.” Her head popped out of the bathroom. “And I’m guessin’ no ‘No’ means you got some explainin’ to do?”

It was early, the clock said we were running late, and she was dropping g’s left and right, which all spelled trouble. “Let me see,” I said, buying time.

“Mm-hmm.” She stepped aside with hips fisted and a look that said hot water was coming to a boil and she was fixin’ to dunk me.

“Maybe it’s like the alligators in Florida,” I said, sweating over two scraps of Snickers wrapper floating in the bowl. “You know the ones that fight their way upstream ’til they pop up someone’s toilet?”

“And maybe you best quit the bobbin’ and weavin’ and answer me.”

In class, Ms. Miller taught us about the Great Divide. It’s the crest of the Rocky Mountains, where rain either rolls down west to the Pacific or east to the Atlantic. An inch one way or the other and a raindrop ends up in a completely different ocean.

During the lesson Ms. Miller was already moving on to something else when I raised my hand and asked, “What if you were a raindrop and you landed smack-dab in the middle?”

I could see her mind doing a slow step back. “Well…eventually you would roll one way or the other.”

“But what if you balanced right there on the Divide? Then what?”

“Then other raindrops would join you and pull you one way or the other.”

“Well…what if they didn’t?” The rest of the class was starting to whisper, but something about being a single raindrop on the very center of the crest of the Great Divide was messing with my head.

Ms. Miller nodded and said, “Then the sun would evaporate you, and you’d condense and join a cloud, and the cloud would drop you again. Eventually you would have to go one way or the other.”

So maybe what I said next to Ma was on account of knowing I couldn’t stay on the Great Divide forever. Or maybe it was wanting to take down the Zombie in Red Socks, who was still staggering around in the corners of my mind. But probably it was because I couldn’t take another second of feeling like I was the bad guy who needed lockin’ up.

“Do you think Levi’s dead?” I asked, cringing.

“What?”

“I think I might’ve killed him,” I confessed, gazing into the tattletale toilet.

“Child, what are you talking about?”

“I’m not a child, Ma. I’m a murderer.” I turned to face her. “I gave him a candy bar. A big one.”

I could see Ma’s brain shifting gears, pressing the gas, then lettin’ up, trying to figure out what to say. “A candy bar can’t kill a man,” she finally said.

“What if he’s diabetic? Ms. Miller told us that—”

“Lincoln!” She was full throttle now, like the city bus gunning it into traffic, dark exhaust puffing out all around. “What were you doing with a candy bar in the first place? And more important, why were you down on the street?”

Before I could stop it, a confession came spurting out of me. It felt like I was heaving up my guts, spraying all over Ma. And just when it seemed like I was done, more would come blurting out until finally my gut was empty. Empty, and glad to be rid of the secret.

Ma just stood there, pie-eyed, like anyone would if they’d just been hurled on. And when she was sure I was done spraying the ugly truth all over her, she gave one good, hard blink and took a mighty breath.

I hunkered down, expecting the worst, but I guess what I’d spewed was too big a mess to clean up right then, ’cause she swallowed that mighty breath, squared her shoulders, and said, “I appreciate you tellin’ me the truth, Lincoln. We’ll sort through this tonight. Right now we best get movin’ or we’ll miss our buses.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, grateful to be escaping for now.

“Eat something,” she hollered over her shoulder as she scurried to get ready for work.

“Yes, ma’am!” I hollered back, ’cause all of a sudden I was starving.