Small as an Elephant - Jennifer Richard Jacobson [12]
Scooting up in the sleeping bag in slow, carefully measured increments, Jack reached for his backpack, stretching out his whole arm. But just as his fingers grazed the fabric of the strap, the backpack jerked away.
Robbed. He was being robbed! Whoever it was knew he was here on the ground (had he been seen going into the woods?), knew he had a backpack, knew it and wanted it.
Dang it! He’d already lost a mother and a phone. He couldn’t afford to lose anything else. He sat up and yelled, “Hey!”
Yelled at the thief, yelled at the . . . at the raccoons who had confiscated his cheese, leaving his backpack on the ground, and were now scrambling away in the bright moonlight.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It wasn’t a man or a bear. Just some silly raccoons.
But his cheese. His last bit of food. He could have sworn his stomach growled in protest. Growled at the thought of not eating again, of having no food and too little money to purchase more.
It was barely light when he woke, and he was freezing. No way was the earth’s center a ball of fire. At this moment, Jack was certain that the core was an ice cube and that it was sending frozen daggers to its surface. He pulled on his Windbreaker, hoping it could stop the cold from penetrating, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
So he got up. He rolled up his sleeping bag, put on his backpack, and headed into town.
First line of order was breakfast. Fifty-three cents wouldn’t even buy something on the McDonald’s Dollar Menu, a menu he knew by heart. He’d have to find a grocery store. And even then, what would a handful of change buy? Cereal bars were a lot more than this. Were doughnuts? He wasn’t sure, but, looking down, he came up with a solution: soda cans and bottles.
He’d seen ME next to MA on cans all his life, so he was pretty sure that in Maine, just like in Massachusetts, they were returnable. That meant he could get five cents for every drink container he took to the store. He picked up the Diet Coke can at his feet. It was crushed and had been on the side of the road for so long, the label was fading away, but he hoped they’d take it anyway.
On Mount Desert Street, he found a couple of plastic bottles. Fifteen cents in bottle returns gave him sixty-eight cents in all. He hoped to find enough drink containers to bring him to a dollar.
He had his head down, searching, when he nearly bumped into an old man wearing a plaid hunting jacket.
“Look out, son,” the man said, not unkindly.
“Sorry!” Jack blurted. “Hey, could you tell me where the nearest grocery store is?”
The man stopped and studied Jack. “You’re industrious this morning, aren’t you? Go down Roberts Avenue,” he said, pointing to the side street next to an inn that looked like a wedding cake. “When you get to the end, turn left.”
Roberts Avenue had several houses with signs out front, bed-and-breakfast places. His mother was always telling him how much she loved B&Bs — how the rooms were all different and old-fashioned. “It’s like going back in time, Jack,” she’d say. “You can imagine that you’re someone else altogether.”
Jack had never wanted to stay in these places, which looked (at least on the Internet) more like fussy homes than hotels. Besides, they never had swimming pools or cable TV, and those were the best things about traveling.
But . . . maybe? Maybe his mother had walked down this very street, and the pull of puffy bedding, lacy curtains, and not being Becky Martel for a while had been too strong to resist. He stood on the sidewalk and tried to imagine which of these places would call to her: The Maples Inn? Canterbury Cottage? Aysgarth Station? He had no idea what an aysgarth was, or why they’d call a house a station, but he bet his mom would pick that one. It had the most unique name, and his mother was drawn to anything that promised a story.
Jack decided his search would start there.