“Mr. Sorenson?”
The troop leader turned, both hands buried in his pack as he stared through his rectangular glasses at Nico.
“What is it, Nico?”
Nico’s fingernails dug into his palms again. It was now or never. “Can I be excused for a few minutes?”
“Why?”
Nico lifted the plastic trowel in explanation, and Mr. Sorenson looked back down into his pack.
“Bury it deep,” he muttered.
Nico walked back over the wooden bridge and down the trail, risking just one quick glance over his shoulder to make sure the eleven boys and Mr. Sorenson were all occupied before rounding the curve in the path.
The second he was out of sight; he broke into an all-out sprint.
It was three-quarters of a mile back to the remote Ingleside Trail, which led in a northbound offshoot around the summit, and he needed to make it at least a few hundred feet down that trail to plant the sneakerand the torn and bloodied piece of shirt tucked in his pocket. It was a mile-and-a-half round trip, and he had no time to waste.
He’d timed himself on the track after wrestling practice the week before, the same wrestling practice where he’d faked a bloody nose and snuck into the locker room to lift Daniel Barela’s driver’s license from his backpack. After practice, he’d hit the track behind the baseball fields for eight timed laps and discovered that he could run two miles in twelve minutes and fifty seconds. The trail he was running now was hillier and rockier, but with half a mile less distance, it should equal out.
Twelve and a half minutes to get there and back. Long enough to maybe raise an eyebrow at his absence, but not so long that he couldn’t explain it away as an unfortunate bathroom delay.
Nico’s legs were burning by the time he reached the Ingleside Trail and charged up it. He ran for another lung-busting half minute, then stopped, scanning the terrain for the best place to plant the evidence. A boulder jutted out from the forest, interrupting the path, which swung wide around it. A pine grew atop the rock with the roots exposed and dangling. Perfect.
Sucking in wind, Nico wedged the stained fabric under a root and stood back to inspect it. It worked. It looked as though he had scrambled up onto the rock and it had been torn from him there. Any casual hikers passing by would miss it, but someone who was looking carefully for signs of a missing Boy Scout would not.
Pulling the sneaker from his waistband, he hauled his arm back and chucked it hard into the woods behind the boulder.
Once they noticed the scrap of fabric, they would search the area thoroughly. They would believe he had left the trail and vanished into the wall of forest, chased by an animal, or wandering off by accident, dehydrated and lost.
Nico hesitated, his eyes on the rock. Was it enough? No. It was too neat. Too contained.
He didn’t have time to waste. If he wasn’t back in the next seven or eight minutes, questions would be asked and this little outing wouldbe remembered, logged in Mr. Sorenson’s mind when the timeline was gone over by searchers later.
Quickly Nico slipped the switchblade from his back pocket and flicked it open. Holding it over his palm, he squeezed his eyes shut and pulled.
Sharp pain exploded across the inside of his hand and Nico cried out, closing his fist around the blood that was pooling there.
He let a few drops fall onto the trail, then led them in a wavering path up and over the boulder. He climbed up after them and plowed through the woods in the direction he’d thrown the shoe, sweeping his hand back and forth to leave blood on ferns and bushes and a sizable smear on the slender trunk of a tree.
That was it. That was all he had time for. It would have to be enough.
Nico kept his fingers pressed tight to the thin gash across his palm as he raced back, giddy with adrenaline. That should do it. That should convince whoever came looking for him that he had gone west from the overnight spot, then north on the Ingleside Trail before running into trouble there, when in reality, as soon as everyone was asleep tonight, he’d pack up and head due east, then south for miles and miles to Warner Lake. After that, it would be as simple as hiking up and over Lewis Ridge, then dropping down to the forgotten little lake he’d read about in the tattered library book detailing the history of Mount St. Helens. Lake Lumin, home to strange bioluminescent plankton that glowed blue at night, the location of a pricey restaurant that had burned down decades before, leaving only a small boathouse behind on unclaimed land that no one had laid title to in years.
That’s when the plan had clicked, when he’d read about the abandoned clearing that had belonged to a family with the last name Barela. It felt like fate, a beautiful coincidence, that the only student in Nico’s school with that last name was a boy a year older than he was with a vague-enough resemblance, dark hair, olive skin, and muddy hazel eyes, that Nico was almost passable as the person in the driver’s license photo, if he smiled widely and tilted his head the way that Daniel had.That license was his ticket out, and there, in that abandoned boathouse, he would start over. Once the noise about the missing Boy Scout died down, he would pick up his new life as Daniel Barela. He would be free forever from Gary Dunn.
Nico reached the wooden bridge and slowed to a walk, forcing his ragged breathing back into a slow and steady rhythm as he rounded the corner and came upon the troop, still eating lunch.
Not one of them glanced up as he returned, taking his seat beneath the hemlock and opening his pack. Carefully, he smeared a dab of antibiotic ointment over the cut on his hand and closed his fist around it again.
He wasn’t hungry. He was full to the brim with triumph, and he felt at this moment that he could live for days on this victory alone. Besides, it made more sense to ration every last bite of food in his pack, to eat only what was absolutely necessary to keep him moving forward for now.
Nico slid his uninjured hand into his pack and lifted out his drawing pad and one of his pencils. So far, there was only one half-finished sketch on the first page. Grace Dunn, as he saw her last, through the smudged glass of the school bus window two days before.
Nico brought the pencil to the paper and continued shaping her hand, held in the air in a wave of farewell. He’d started the drawing on the long ride up and had somehow managed to capture the look of regret in her eyes and the sad smile that barely lifted the corners of her mouth.
He met her charcoal gaze now, like she was staring right at him through the paper.
