The long way home

PART TWO
CHAPTER TWELVE

Homecoming I woke up in the dark. After weeks on the run, I'd taught myself to do that. When you're a fugitive, you can't waste the dark. It's precious. In the dark, you can travel. You can go from place to place unseen. If the sun catches you sleeping, you can be discovered. Once the sun rises, you're exposed, you're a target. You have to take advantage of the dark.

I was shivering with cold as I stumbled back to the bathroom. I washed up as best I could and got ready to go. As I stepped out of the church into the chilly darkness, I realized that I knew exactly where I was headed. An idea had come to me while I slept. I guess that was the answer to my prayer.

I knew now where I could go, where I could hide out in Spring Hill from both the police and my friends.

I traveled quickly, skirting the woods, crossing the fields. As I got closer to town, the buildings grew closer together. I passed a small airport, then a school, then a housing development with plenty of empty lots full of overgrown grass. I was still staying off the roads, but I couldn't get very far from them anymore. They were always visible, the headlights rushing by in the dark. The whisper of moving traffic reached me everywhere.

I'd drunk my fill of water in the church bathroom before I left, but the hunger came back to me now and it came back full force. I had to find something to eat in a big hurry or I wasn't going to be able to go on much longer.

I had money-the two hundred dollars I'd taken off the knife-man in the library. But spending it wasn't going to be easy. My run-in with the police in Whitney would've been on the TV news and in the morning papers. There'd be pictures of me all over town. It was too risky for me to try to go into a store. The chances I'd be recognized were just too great.

So I looked for a vending machine. I remembered there were some outside a bowling alley I'd been to a few times. Sure enough, they were still there. I stocked up on peanut-butter crackers and chips and chocolate bars. Not exactly health food, but it was all they had and I was starving. When I thought I had enough, I took it all out into the darkest part of the parking lot and sat cross-legged on the pavement and stuffed as much of it into my face as I could. What was left-not much, a chocolate bar or two-I saved in the pockets of my fleece for later.

I traveled on. As I got closer to the edge of town, everything began to be more familiar. I saw a mall I used to hang out in sometimes. I saw a movie theater I used to go to. There was a gas station I sometimes used.

It was a weird feeling to see these things and remember. I felt as if I were my own ghost haunting the places I used to live. It made me ache inside. When I had lived here, when I'd had my ordinary life, believe me, I didn't wake up every morning and shout hooray or anything like that. I didn't thank heaven every day for how lucky I was. I would've felt like an idiot doing stuff like that. It was just home to me. It was just life. It was just ordinary.

But now, shivering out here in the dark, with the whole world my enemy-now every memory had a sort of golden light around it. I felt as if every minute I'd lived here had been beautiful and blessed. There was so much I couldn't remember-a whole year gone. But there was so much else, so many other years, and they all came flooding back to me.

I passed streets where I used to ride my bike when I was twelve years old. I passed a ball field where I used to watch Alex play Little League so we could grab an ice cream after the game. I saw my elementary school, a long, low gray building that hadn't changed in all the years I'd lived here. I saw a pizza place where Josh and Rick and Miler and I used to meet to plan our strategy for mock trial class.

It was all just ordinary when it happened. But now I ached for those days. It was like a weight inside me, like an anvil or an anchor sitting in my midsection. I felt heavy and slow as I dragged it along with me, moving closer and closer to the center of town.

Soon I was nearing my old neighborhood, moving past familiar houses in the darkness under the trees. I had a tremendous urge to go visit my own house. I don't know why. It wasn't really mine anymore. My parents weren't there. They had moved away after I was sent to prison. Whoever had moved in after them had probably changed everything. Painted it a different color or whatever. It would probably be a pretty depressing sight to see. All the same, I wanted to see it so badly, the pull was almost irresistible.

But I couldn't go. I couldn't risk it. The sky was still dark, but I knew the dawn was coming. You can smell the dawn. You can feel it in the air, hear it in the way the birds start singing. That was another thing I'd learned in my weeks on the run.

So I turned away, headed in a different direction.

I went through more residential neighborhoods. They were empty at this hour, all the houses dark. I moved from front lawn to front lawn, keeping off the sidewalks in case a police car passed by, but keeping out of the backyards, too, because some people keep their dogs back there- another thing I'd learned about being on the run.

I passed into a sort of run-down section of town. The houses were smaller here, and they weren't kept up so well. There were places that hadn't been painted in a while and others with plastic covering the windows. Some of the porches were practically crumbling. Some of the lawns were littered with garbage and old appliances and car parts and so on.

A little farther, I came to some lots with no houses on them at all. Places where there used to be houses but now nothing was left but foundations and rubble, grass and garbage. Beyond these, there was an empty field with an old road leading through a stand of pines. The macadam on the road was practically broken to rubble. It crunched beneath my feet as I walked under the trees.

At the end of the road was the iron gate. Beyond the iron gate was the Ghost Mansion.