Small as an Elephant - Jennifer Richard Jacobson [35]
Fortunately, the computer was not password protected. In no time at all, he was checking both his YouPage (No messages from Nina — weird) and his mom’s. Still no cyber signs of her. So he held his breath and searched for missing boy maine. He was dying to know if the reports were about him and, if so, who had gone to the police.
His picture came up immediately on a Bangor news website. Not only was it his picture staring back at him, but it had the word Play written across his chest. He clicked on it to watch a video of the actual broadcast.
He watched it three times in a freaky kind of amazement. His grandmother (his grandmother?) had gotten a call from a man en route to the Bahamas, and although she couldn’t understand much from the call, she’d figured out that his mother was headed there and he was not. So she called the only other person she could think of: Nina. Nina had told Gram that he and his mother had been vacationing in Maine and that Jack hadn’t returned for school. Nina. The only person on this planet other than his mom who knew him from the inside out. Who knew that the last thing he’d want was for anyone, especially his grandmother, to know where he was and what had happened.
His grandmother had called the Maine State Police, who reported having found a tent and an air mattress in the woods. After the news story aired yesterday, Mrs. Olson reported seeing Jack at her farm. The food-pantry guy, the woman from Sherman’s (who mentioned his broken finger to the reporter), the Island Explorer bus driver, and one of the women from the Lamoine General Store had also come forward.
He got up and paced around the small room.
Concentrate! he told himself. Just because people were looking for him did not mean he would be found. He just had to think.
He took his wet sleeping bag out of his backpack and placed it over the table to dry. He retrieved his still-damp clothes from the dressing room and hung them off the chairs. He looked in the refrigerator for any food that he could carry with him. He selected some packaged veggies and dip, a slice of pepperoni pizza, and a questionable-looking piece of birthday cake, and packed them in the outside pockets of his backpack. It was like the time they predicted a really big blizzard in Boston. He and his mom went into preparation mode, buying canned goods and water, getting out the candles. He knew he was preparing now; he just didn’t know for what.
Streetlights lit up the store well enough for Jack to see without the flashlight. He grabbed one of the dry L.L. Bean sleeping bags and began to curl up on the couch in the staff room. That’s when he noticed it: BO — his own! Even though he’d been out in the rain all day, he was really beginning to stink. Maybe it was time to take a sponge bath.
About twenty scratchy, soapy paper towels later, he crawled into the sleeping bag and turned the TV on, but he didn’t hear a word that was spoken. His mind went in circles.
He knew that the moment he came out of hiding or was found, his life would change forever. He would no longer live with his mother. He would no longer live two bus stops away from Nina, and maybe no longer even go to Curley Middle School. He thought of Nina — Nina, who should have known that even hinting that his mother wasn’t taking good care of him, hinting to his grandmother, of all people, could ruin everything.
His thoughts turned to his grandmother. She had looked older — older and worried. But the worried part, that was probably just for show. His mother had told him that ever since she was a little girl, her mother had tried to control her, tried