CHAPTER 11

THE KID LEADS US TO A NARROWER PATH OFF THE MAIN TRAIL that ends in a clearing. The pine needle floor gives way to a bed of ashes surrounded by the charred trunks of young trees and a canopy of dead, bare branches, all black against the cloudless sky. The kid stops about ten feet from the ash and holds out his tattooed arm, keeping us behind him.

I suck in my breath. “Wow! A forest fire.” I’ve never seen one this close up. Sometimes when the band traveled, we’d pass sections of forest that had burned. But then, we were going sixty-five miles an hour. Now I’m standing right in the middle of one. I step toward the ash.

“Get away from there,” the kid says. “It’s full of poison.”

“What happened?” I ask. It doesn’t smell like poison. Or a fire. Instead of the rotting-leaves odor of the rest of the woods, it doesn’t smell like anything.

“You don’t know?”

“N-no.” It occurs to me that those bottles I didn’t even know I was carrying might also be full of poison.

Sweat beads on Chad’s face and his throat moves up and down, like he’s about to throw up.

The kid folds his arms across his chest. I stare at his LIVESTRONG tattoo. His muscles. His tattoo again. “Six months ago, some loser was riding through the neighborhood on his mountain bike with a bunch of chemicals in two-liter bottles. Like yours.”

“Wasn’t me. I just moved here,” Chad says.

“Didn’t say it was. It was an older dude. Cops chased him in here. He crashed, a bottle busted open, and . . . kaboom!” The kid spreads his arms wide.

“Can t-these b-b-bottles b-b-blow up?” I ask.

“Yea-uh. Loser ended up in the hospital. Then in jail.”

“You idiot.” Chad glares at me. “Can you shut up? For once?”

“Don’t talk to her like that.” The kid pokes his finger into Chad’s chest. Chad steps backward and almost trips on a root.

“She’s retarded. She has nothing to do with this,” he says, hands out in front of him as if to protect his already-bruised face.

I nod. “He told me he wanted to see the mountain bike trail. So I brought him here. He didn’t tell me he had this . . . this shake ’n’ bake, or whatever you call it, in the bags.”

The kid approaches me, blocking my view of the ruined clearing. “What grade are you in?” he asks.

Was in. “Eighth,” I answer.

He turns and looks Chad up and down. “And you?”

“Seventh.” Chad stands up straight and pushes his shoulders back, as if trying to make himself taller.

“Okay, I get it,” the kid says. “No one would think twice about kids on bikes. Cops wouldn’t stop you.”

“You’re n-not g-going t-to call them?” A bead of sweat rolls down the side of Chad’s face. And my knees are knocking together. It was bad enough when I got suspended from school. What will Dad say if I get arrested? Will I end up in reform school because I’ve already been in trouble?

A scream rushes up my throat. “Don’t!”

The kid takes a step back and holds out his hands. “Whoa. Calm down.”

But panic has seized my voice. “I can’t go to juvie!”

“Why would you go to juvie?” The kid nods at Chad. “This little turd put you up to it. And whoever he works for.”

“Don’t call the cops, okay,” Chad says quickly. “We’ll leave.”

“Wait a minute.” He squints at me. I notice my UVM lanyard, twisted around my index finger, cutting off the circulation. My finger is swollen and red.

I shake my finger loose and rub it with my other hand.

“That a UVM thing around your neck?” the kid asks.

“Yeah,” I mumble, eyes fixed on the ridges the lanyard cut into my skin. I wish he’d let us go because, like Chad said, we’ll never come here again.

“Lemme see.” The kid holds out his hand and adds, “I’m starting there this fall.”

I take the lanyard from around my neck, key dangling from the end, and hand it to him. Now he knows I’m a latchkey kid wandering the town, getting into trouble . . .

But then he says, “Hey, I know you. You’re Max’s sister.”