Small as an Elephant - Jennifer Richard Jacobson [27]
While standing there, taking in the torturous smells, Jack began reading the license plates of the cars parked off to the side. It was an old habit. Since his mom did so much driving, she played the license-plate game over and over again. She’d seen all fifty states three times now. Not many people could claim to have seen a Hawaiian plate three times. Well, OK, if you lived in Hawaii, you could. Jack’s favorite was the one from Tennessee — it had an elephant on it.
There wasn’t a single Maine plate in this parking lot. There were two cars from Connecticut, a minivan from New Jersey, and a pickup truck from Massachusetts.
Massachusetts? He looked around as if the faces of the people going in and out could reveal their state identity. What if the driver of the pickup was heading south? He could ride with them. He could be home tonight! He imagined the conversation in his head.
“Hey, are you on your way south? Me too! Would you mind giving me a ride?”
He was being stupid. No one was going to willingly transport a kid without his parents’ permission. They’d guess he was a runaway. They’d call DSS in a nanosecond. Still, it was an idea that was hard to let go of.
Jack went inside the lobster shack, allowing the screen door to slam behind him. It was a friendly place, with mint-green walls and bright-red benches. Fishing nets cradling colorful glass balls and starfish hung from the ceiling. There was a chips rack right next to the door — what Jack wouldn’t do for a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips — and he hung back by the rack to see if he could figure anything out.
In the dining room to his left was a couple, probably in their eighties, Jack guessed, seated at a table, waiting for their order. At the table next to theirs were an Asian mother and daughter, speaking a language Jack couldn’t understand.
A woman with curly gray hair was standing at the counter, placing an order, asking if they had a traditional lobster roll. A teenage girl with braces tried to answer politely, but she was clearly confused by what the woman meant.
“Ours is the traditional,” said another woman in an apron — probably the owner of the lobster pound. “Everyone ate lobster salad on bread before the hot-dog bun became so popular.”
Jack took a deep breath and walked over to the older couple like it was the most natural thing in the world and asked, “Excuse me, are you from Massachusetts?”
“What’s that?” asked the older man, squinting at Jack.
“Are you from Massachusetts? I noticed a truck outside with Mass. plates. I’m from Jamaica Plain,” Jack said.
“Melrose,” the woman said, leaning toward Jack.
“North of Boston,” said the man. “About four and a half hours from —”
“These for here?” the girl behind the counter interrupted.
“Come again?” asked the woman.
The girl repeated the question.
This time the woman understood. “Oh. No. We’re going to take them back with us,” she said, preparing to leave.
Take them back. They were going home. Home to Massachusetts. He had to think fast. “Have a good trip!” he called, and hurried outside. Vehicles had begun to park directly in front of the lobster pound, but he knew exactly which truck belonged to the older couple. It was the gray Silverado parked on the side. He brushed by a family with young children and went directly to the truck, acting as if it belonged to him, as if he had decided to wait for his parents, or his grandparents, outside.
The truck was fairly high off the ground and had one of those extended cabs with the little seats in the back. Could he hide back there?
Think, Jack. Don’t be too quick this time. They’d have lobsters. They’d put them behind their seats. They’d see him when they did. Besides, he could clearly see that the cab was locked.
The bed. He glanced at the other parked vehicles to make sure no one was seated inside and watching him. All were empty. Then he stepped right up on the truck’s bumper and took a good look in the back. There were lots of wood chips and a crumpled tarp. Could he hide beneath