Free Dew Drop Dead by James Howe

“you’re thirteen, a long way from understanding the world and what it does to people. I wish you might never know, but that would be a waste of a wish. So what can I wish for you instead?” He thought for a moment, then said, “You look athletic. Are you a runner?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen let me wish for you that you always run toward something, never away.”
    Corrie wanted Raymond Elveri to tell her what he was running away from. But she didn’t want to ask. And she knew it wasn’t any of her business, really.
    She was trying to think of something else to say, something that would bring his smile back, make him forget whatever it was he had succeeded in forgetting but for her reminding him. She took her mind back to school, thinking there might be something in her day to interest him.
    Before she’d found anything, the man called Abraham rolled over on his cot and cast a disdainful eye on Raymond’s hunched back.
    â€œThe sins of the father,” he said.
    Raymond lifted the Bible to his heart and gripped it tightly.

22
    â€œYOU REALIZE we’re looking for a needle in a haystack,” Sebastian said as the boys moved their search deeper into the woods.
    â€œYeah,” said David, “a needle dipped in blood.”
    â€œGive me a break,” Sebastian said. “You’re beginning to sound as melodramatic as—”
    â€œAs you used to?”
    Sebastian frowned. “I was going to say your sister.”
    â€œDo you want to give up?”
    â€œNo way. Do you?”
    David shook his head.
    The wind didn’t stir. The evergreens had ceased their whispering. No secrets, it seemed, would be revealed on this still and stillborn day.
    Then Sebastian heard something. “Listen,” he said.
    David felt his pulse quicken, but he heard nothing. What was he listening for? Voices? Footsteps? What did danger sound like?
    He tried again, but still he heard nothing.
    Seeing his puzzled look, Sebastian said, “Water. There’s a creek nearby.”
    â€œWhat are we, Indian scouts?” David asked. “I can’t believe you got me all psyched just to tell me about a stupid babbling brook. I mean, it’s poetic but—”
    â€œThe point is,” said Sebastian, interrupting, “that the bed of a creek might have footprints. We sure aren’t going to find any here.”
    David smiled meekly. “Right,” he said. “I was just going to say the same thing.”
    The boys followed the creek for fifteen minutes, searching for footprints and finding none. When they came to a pool of water and what looked like the end of the creek, David said, “Do you have any idea where we are?”
    â€œNope,” said Sebastian. “And it’s getting dark. Maybe we should head back.”
    â€œOkay. But can we rest for a minute? These new sneakers are killing me.”
    â€œStrangled ankles?”
    David grunted. “Feels like it. I brought an apple. You want half?”
    â€œSure,” Sebastian said, resting on a rotted log that gave way under him. David laughed, then settled himself on a rock nearby, and the two boys fell silent.
    Each held half an apple in his open hand, neither eating nor biting into it—not wanting, perhaps, to disturb this perfectly soundless universe in which they’d suddenly found themselves. The air was so still, the woods so devoid of any noise save their own breathing, that Sebastian said, although he thought he was only thinking it, “Fall’s a kind of lonely time, isn’t it?”
    Then he glanced up and saw something. “There!” he shouted. “Look over there!”
    A footprint, or three-quarters of one, wasn’t ten feet away. They ran to it, careful not to get so close they’d smudge it, and bent down to take a look. But before either of them could say, “It might mean nothing; it’s only a footprint,” David reached out