Nathan’s Run

Chapter 3

Twelve-year-old Nathan Bailey tried to press his thin frame below the surface of the damp mulch and wedge in closer to the brick wall. Try as he might, he couldn’t disappear entirely.

Despite the night’s oppressive heat and stifling humidity, he couldn’t stop shaking. Like the time two years ago—a whole lifetime ago—when he had an ear infection and a high fever; except this time, he didn’t think he was sick. Just scared.

His efforts to blend in with the surroundings only made him more aware of how much he stood out. Everyone from the outside world wore shorts and T-shirts in the summer night, while he swam inside his ill-fitting orange coveralls, emblazoned across the back with the letters “JDC.” The letters were supposed to arc across his shoulder blades, but in his case, they drooped above the small of his back. Ricky had told him on his first day that Medium was the smallest size available. It was a lie, of course. Ricky was such a jerk.

Nathan had no idea where he was. Once he was free of the JDC building, he’d just started running as fast as his bare feet would allow. At first the sticks and rocks had hurt as he ran over them, but once the fireworks started with all the explosions and lights, Nathan stopped feeling anything but his fear. He just kept running, with no idea where he was going. The only thing he knew for sure was that he was not going back there again.

Sharp explosions popped to his right.

Someone was shooting at him. Nathan jerked violently at the sound and reflexively clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from screaming out. His instinct was to bolt out of his hiding place, but a voice deep inside told him to stay put.

If they were shooting at you, you’d be dead now, he reasoned. His heart pounded in his temples.

By pressing the left side of his face further into the mulch and closing his right eye, Nathan could see through the bottom of the boxwood that served as his shield against the world. There were no gunmen. Just a bunch of kids, five of them about his age, setting off firecrackers in the street. Ladyfingers, it looked like. As Nathan watched, the tallest of the kids lit another pack and dropped it casually onto the curb, moving back a couple of steps for safety. Another extended ripple of explosions followed, sending sparks and paper dancing randomly along the pavement in the dark.

Nathan’s mind played back a scene of his father and him lighting off their own ladyfingers out in front of their own house. The scene in his head had all the clarity and detail of a Panavision movie. He remembered his dad assuring him, “They won’t put you in jail for playing with firecrackers, son.”

No, just for getting beat up.

A thousand thoughts and pictures suddenly flooded Nathan’s mind. Life sucked. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right how his dad went off to heaven and left him in hell, alone with Uncle Mark; how people treated you like shit when there wasn’t a grown-up around to help you; how everything you said was a lie just because you’re a kid, and every lie a grown-up told was the truth just because they’re a grown-up; how sometimes you had to kill…

For the first time, the enormity of what he had done came crashing down on him, with all the force of a rupturing dam. He’d been in trouble before, but never like this. They’d be looking for him. He had to get away, but he had no place to go.

He started to tremble again, his breathing becoming rapid and noisy. Even as he realized that he was making too much noise, he also realized that he couldn’t stop it.

Nathan took a giant breath and let it out slowly.

Calm down, he commanded himself silently, but his breath shook just like the rest of him, making a steam-engine sound as he exhaled. You’ve got to calm down. He tried another breath, and it was a little better. The third time did the trick. He knew that if he panicked, he’d do something stupid, and that his only chance of survival depended on his being smart. Panic was right there, though, always a single thought, or a single noise, or a single encounter away.

He needed a plan. More than that, he needed sleep. He couldn’t remember ever being this tired. He found himself drifting off where he lay, and he shook himself back to alertness. No, he told himself, not here.

He also needed better shelter and proper clothes. He needed food. Every house within his sight could offer him exactly what he needed, yet he was locked out of those houses just as tightly as he was locked out of every kindness and every bit of normalcy he had ever known.

Wait a minute. Just because the doors and windows were locked didn’t mean they couldn’t be entered. An idea began to take shape.

Soaked from sweat and dew, Nathan pressed his belly against the mulch, and elbow-crawled along the narrow tunnel between the hedge and the side of the house to get a better view of the street. A branch snagged his ear and broke off, carving a gouge out of his flesh. Sharp, bright pain brought tears to his eyes. He brushed them away with a filthy hand. Stopping long enough to blink his vision clear, he inched forward a little more.

By pivoting his head, he could see the length of the block. It was a nice neighborhood, not unlike his own. Well-kept houses, all brightly lit, with well-kept lawns. The neighborhood was crawling with people. They talked in their yards. They played badminton—in the dark, for crying out loud. Kids down the block a little ways had punks in their hands, using the glowing tips to pretend they were smoking cigarettes. And cars. Jesus, there were a lot of cars moving up and down the street. Nathan guessed they were filled with people coming home from the fireworks.

One house, though, stood out from the others. The place directly across the street was neither well-lit nor well-kept. The grass was too long, the flowerbeds unmanicured. Only a porch light was on. A dozen or so newspapers, all rolled up and unread, lay scattered on the driveway. Nathan figured that the occupants must be on vacation.

That meant that the house was empty, and that he could safely stay there, at least for tonight.

He’d have to cross in the open, though, and if he tried that now, they’d catch him for sure. He told himself that he could be patient if he had to.

He settled back into his tunnel to begin his wait, forcing his mind to think about anything but sleep.