Free When I Found You by Catherine Ryan Hyde Page A

uncomfortable position. Across the street, a car was parked. An older station wagon, with its motor softly running. He couldn’t see the color because of the darkness. And he couldn’t see either the front or rear license plate because it was so directly across the street.
    A man was walking across to his house, carrying a parcel.
    He glanced at the clock. Five minutes after eleven.
    He raised the binoculars and sighted through them. Trying to get a good look at the man’s face. But he was wearing a brimmed hat, and by now he was more or less directly below the window. He disappeared from view, too close to the house to be seen from Nat’s vantage point. Then, a second later, he reappeared on his way back to the car. But now his back was turned.
    He stepped back into his car, shifted into gear and drove.
    Nat first tried to see the man’s face, but it was too dark in the passenger compartment. Then he turned his binoculars to the license plate, but too late. He had only read the letters DCB when the car disappeared from sight.
    Nat sat a minute, nursing his own frustration. That’s not much progress, he thought. And he would only get two chances a year.
    •  •  •
     
    He tiptoed downstairs and out on to the front porch to retrieve his present. A medium-size box. He shook it a few times, but it only made a series of dull and not very telling thumps.
    He carried it up to his room. Tore through the paper.
    Boxing gloves.
    And a punching bag of some sort, but not the kind Nat was familiar with. Not an inflatable speed bag that pops back and forth when you pummel it with both hands. It must be the big, heavy kind you hang from the ceiling. The kind that absorbs huge blows as if it were a person, a real opponent. But it was hard to tell, because it was only the leather and fabric shell of a bag. It wasn’t filled with anything.
    It had a chain at the top, presumably to hang it by.
    Nat put on the gloves, not knowing how to lace them at his wrists.
    “Well, old man,” he said aloud to the empty room. “Now we might be on to something.”

1 October 1974   
Nope
    On his way to math, Nat thought seriously about cutting class. He had the boxing gloves with him, in his book bag. And they were burning a hole.
    The plan had been to bring them along and then go straight from school to the gym downtown. See if there was any way to get some instruction. Which seemed unlikely without money. But maybe he could just talk to somebody about them. Look at the way they laced theirs. Or the way their bag was filled.
    On the way to math, he almost cut the rest of the afternoon’s school and went straight to the gym. But he sagged inwardly, thinking how long he would have to listen to the old woman’s railing. It didn’t seem worth it.
    He sighed, and went to class instead.
    •  •  •
     
    “OK. Take out a sheet of paper.” Nat’s math teacher — whom Nat didn’t like, and vice versa — always seemed gleeful when announcing tests. The whole class groaned, as if a single body with one voice. “Now, this time you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I told you yesterday there would be a test.”
    Nat briefly searched his memory. There was nothing there about a math test. He might not have been listening. Or he might just have forgotten. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that he didn’t care, not the tiniest little bit.
    The teacher wrote the problems on the board. One through ten.
    The minute the rest of the class began working on problem one, Nat craned his neck to pick up the answer from the paper of Sarah Gordon, just to his right. She was decent at math, and didn’t block her answers with her arm like so many of the kids who sat near him.
    The teacher whipped around and caught him immediately.
    It felt almost like entrapment, Nat thought. Like the teacher turned away just long enough to let Nat Bates get himself into trouble, and then turned back just in time to gleefully nab him.
    “Mr. Bates. Front