Small as an Elephant - Jennifer Richard Jacobson [40]
All Jack had left was a water bottle, the clothes on his back, and one small, plastic elephant.
Jack curled up on a clump of pine needles outside the fort and cried. Not softly, not with the silent tears that had rolled down his face when his mother had said they would not see Lydia. Nor with the frustrated tears that came when he’d ruined his cell phone. No, this cry came from deep in his gut and heaved out of him, causing his chest to hammer against the earth. He moaned between sobs, not caring who heard him now, and let the snot pour down his face.
He was worn out, sunburned, hungry, and lonely, and everything he needed, everything he had counted on, had been stolen.
When the sobs subsided, he remained curled on the ground, hiccuping. He wondered briefly if his things had been taken by people who were searching for him, but that didn’t make sense. If they were searching for him, they would have gone into the fort and found him. It wouldn’t have been hard. No, it seemed his stuff had been stolen by someone who just wanted the stuff. He’d stolen the bike, and now someone had stolen it from him.
He was tired of thinking of the next step and the next. He wanted this whole trip to end — for it to be one long, bad dream. He wanted to wake up in his own bed and have his mother shout from the kitchen, “Do you want strawberry French toast or an everything omelet for breakfast?”
He wanted someone else to be in charge.
And then, lying there in that pine-needle patch, staring up at the boughs above him, he suddenly didn’t want anything at all.
Nothing.
He didn’t want to get up. He didn’t want to eat. He didn’t want a ride back to Massachusetts. He didn’t want to see Nina, or Gram — ever. Didn’t want to see his old apartment. He didn’t even want a free boat ride to the Bahamas.
Or to ever see his mother again.
Tears rolled down his cheeks once more.
Jack would have stayed there, stayed right there, until some unsuspecting person tripped over him, if it weren’t for the setting sun and the onslaught of mosquitoes. He tried to ignore them, like he was trying to ignore the rest of his troubles, but their needle-like mouths pierced his cheeks, his neck, his exposed arms and legs. Their insistent squeal and the increasing stiffness he was feeling from his sunburn forced him to get up and get walking.
He didn’t have a plan. Didn’t know where he was going or what he was going to do when he got there. He was just heading south, out of habit now more than anything else.
He missed his long-sleeved shirt, not because it was cold, although it was getting cooler, but because it would have given the mosquitoes one less place to suck. He wondered why the bugs, which had been nearly nonexistent on Mount Desert Island, were such a nuisance now.
It was kind of a relief not to be carrying the heavy backpack, but without a bike and helmet, he was fairly conspicuous; anyone passing would wonder whether he was the missing boy. But he no longer cared.
He saw headlights approaching, and he kept his head up, staring right at them. You too can be on the news tomorrow night. You can be the heroes that find me.
The Volkswagen Beetle whizzed by. Seemed they didn’t care, either.
Neither did the man on the motorcycle.
Jack didn’t know why he had bothered trying to go home in the first place. It had been a stupid plan. Even if he could walk like this all the way to Jamaica Plain, even if he could get back to his apartment, how was he going to pay for things? Not just food, but the rent and the electricity bill?
You could get a job, said the ever-hopeful voice in his head.
Sure, he could get a job. Maybe they’d let him wash dishes or something at Ten Tables. Or he could work for Mrs. Harris, downstairs. She always had jobs for