Free Searching for Candlestick Park by Peg Kehret

plenty of fast-food places between where I was and Candlestick Park. Maybe I could scrounge enough food each day to keep myself going.
    I couldn’t find another park to sleep in, so I settled for a schoolyard. I figured it would be quiet at night,and there was a soccer field where I could walk Foxey.
    Foxey gobbled up the little girl’s hamburger and then refused his cat food. I should have given him the cat food first, and saved the hamburger for dessert. I had refilled the water jar at McDonald’s and he was glad to get a drink.
    He seemed glad to explore the schoolyard, too. He trotted along, as if he knew where he was going, stopping once to sniff at the bottom of the slide.
    It was almost dark by then, but a streetlight allowed me to see where we were going.
    There was sand under the swings and Foxey decided it was the world’s largest litter pan. When he finished, I used the napkin from the hamburger to pick up his deposit and throw it in the trash barrel. I didn’t want some kid stepping in it the next day.
    We bedded down against the back of the building. I had kept track of the days, and I knew the next day was Saturday. With any luck at all, no one would arrive at the school until I was wide awake and out of there.
    For once, everything went as I had planned. I did not open my eyes again until daybreak. Foxey was already up, rooting around and trying to get in the backpack. He probably smelled his cat food.
    With no hamburger to dull his appetite, he was plenty happy to eat the cat crunchies, and I gave him a long walk before I put him back in his box and started off.
    I was more hungry than I had ever been in my life. I used to ask Mama for a snack before dinner and when she said
no
, I complained that I was starving to death. But I had never experienced true hunger before, and believe me, it isn’t much fun. The leftover French fries seemed a lifetime ago.
    I walked my bike through the business section of town, hoping for another fast-food restaurant where I could be the unofficial busboy. I didn’t want to go back to McDonald’s. I had ridden at least a couple of miles beyond that, and the last thing in the world I needed was to go backward.
    When I reached the outskirts of town without spotting another restaurant, I went into a Quick Stop gas station/grocery store and looked around, hoping to find something I could afford. I saw nothing. There was a display of cookies on the checkout counter and I longingly eyed the individually wrapped chocolate chip cookies. They were huge—about four times the size of the ones Mama made. They were also seventy-nine cents each.
    “May I help you?” asked the young man behind the counter.
    “Do you sell anything for twenty-seven cents or less?” I asked.
    He thought for a moment. “Just these,” he said. He pointed to a fishbowl filled with chocolate-covered mint creams. “They’re two for a quarter.”
    It would have to do. I took two mints and he rangup the sale. Including sales tax, it came to twenty-seven cents. I handed it over and walked out.
    I took tiny bites of mint and sucked each bite until it dissolved, making the candy last as long as possible, but my stomach did not even realize it was being fed. When the last piece of mint was gone, my belly hurt just as much as it had before I spent my money. My right leg felt okay, though. At least only one part of me hurts at a time.
    All right, I told myself. There will be a McDonald’s or a Burger King or something else in the next town.
    It was time to put some miles on the bike. I rode hard all morning, stopping twice for water and to let Foxey out.
    At the city of Longview, I crossed the Columbia River. The high, narrow bridge had no separate bike lane, so I had to ride on the shoulder. I pumped hard to get up the steep approach to the bridge and rode nervously across with cars whizzing by on my left and the long drop to the river on my right. By the time I reached the other side, I was dripping with