Free You Can Run by Norah McClintock

after him. “Hey, wait a minute.” But he didn’t wait for even a second. He strode back into the school. I scurried after him—no way was I going to let him treat me like I didn’t exist. I was going to follow him until he said something—anything—to me.
    He disappeared through a door halfway down the hall. I was close behind him, my hand out to push the door open and go after him. But I dropped my hand back to my side when I read the words on the door:
Boys’ Locker Room
. I backed up a few paces and waited. I must have stood there for nearly ten minutes before two thoughts occurred to me: one, if a guy like Kenny Merchant didn’t want to talk, he wouldn’t, even if it meant he missed all of his classes for the rest of the day; and, two, there was another door in and out of the boys’ locker room, the door to the gym. I checked it out. Kenny wasn’t there. He was probably long gone.
    Â 
    . . .
    â€œSo let me get this straight,” Morgan said when I caught up with her in the second floor girls’ washroom. She was working hard, but without much success, to get a vegetarian chili stain out of her khaki pants. “You dumped my tray on me so you could go chasing after Kenny Merchant?” She rubbed at the stain with a wad of wet soapy paper towel.
    â€œI needed to ask him something,” I said.
    â€œSince when do you even know Kenny Merchant?” she said. She was scrubbing so hard that the paper towel began to disintegrate.“The guy’s so weird. He and Trisha are the king and queen of bizarre. I saw them together one time, sitting on the floor.” She stopped scouring the stain and looked thoughtful for a moment. “You think I should have mentioned that to your dad when he asked me about Trisha?”
    â€œYou talked to my father?” I said. “How come you didn’t tell me?”
    â€œHe was here yesterday, asking people about Trisha and who she hung out with. How come you didn’t tell me that he’s looking for her?”
    I apologized and filled her in on Trisha and her stepfather.
    â€œSo you think I should tell him about Kenny?” Morgan said when I had finished.
    â€œHe already knows,” I said. “He tried to talk to Kenny.”
    â€œTried to?” She frowned. Then she grinned at me, her eyes sparkling. “That’s why you went after Kenny. You’re working for your dad, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re spying for him.”
    â€œI’m not
spying
,” I said. “And I’m not working for him. I just said I’d ask around, that’s all.”
    â€œYou think Kenny knows where Trisha is?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWhat did he say?”
    â€œNothing,” I said. “Not one word.”
    Â 
    . . .
    One thing about going out with—well, maybe going out with—a guy who’s in open custody is that you always know where he’s supposed to be. Whenever Nick leaves Somerset, he has to carry a pass that’s signed by Somerset’s director. He has a pass that gives him permission to go to school. On Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, it says he has to be back at Somerset one hour after school is over to do homework and chores and to take part in group sessions. On Wednesday afternoons and evenings, he has a job delivering community newspapers door to door. He gets a pass that says he has to phone Somerset when he gets to the place where he picks up the newspapers, he has to call again a couple of hours later, and he has to be back at Somerset by his eight o’clock curfew. He gets another pass on Saturdays so that he can go to his second job, which is walking two, sometimes three, dogs, including a massive beast named Orion. He got hired for that after all the time he spent sort-of volunteering at the animal shelter. And now, because he’s been doing so well, he can usually get a pass for a couple of hours on