Free Scumble by Ingrid Law

nodded.
    â€œNeed a pillow?”
    I paused before nodding again, not wanting to seem too demanding.
    Rocket’s final question came with a baleful look:
    â€œDo you snore?”
    All I could do was shrug and repeat over and over inside my head: Don’t snore, Ledge . . . Don’t snore . . .
    As Rocket disappeared to grab a pillow, I glanced carefully around the room. He’d taped maps and pictures of motorcycles to every wall and stacked travel magazines and books about adventure on every surface. There were photographs too, pictures of family, and people I didn’t recognize. Rocket may not have left the ranch in years, but he obviously dreamed about it.
    Shaking out the sleeping bag, I accidentally knocked down a bunch of his photos. I’d rushed to pick them up and stick them back on the wall. But one kept slipping down—a photo of a much younger Rocket holding hands with some girl. The girl was tall, with blond hair, long bangs, and a pink gum bubble the size of a grapefruit hiding half her face.
    If I hadn’t been afraid Rocket would light me up like an X-ray skeleton, I might’ve asked for tape to re-hang the picture. But I’d been pretty sure it would’ve been safer to ask an angry grizzly bear to dance.
    Â 
    Autry might not have stopped me from running from the Flying Cattleheart, but I soon realized he hadn’t let me go alone. A tight group of cobalt dragonflies zipped beside me like a squadron of Blue Angels. Executing coordinated loops and rolls, the insects jetted so close, I could feel the vibration of their wings against my skin.
    Halfway between my uncle’s ranch and town, I stopped. On the south side of the road, a salvage yard sprawled beyond a low hill, nearly hidden by a stand of dark pines. The sign for Neary’s Auto Salvage Acres was overshadowed by a foreclosure notice, just like the ones I’d seen in town. It seemed as though the people in these parts were having trouble making the payments on their loans. But I knew times were tough all over.
    Looking between the trees at the sea of crumpled cars and trucks, I wondered if a junkyard would be the best spot in the world for me . . . or the worst. Was I looking at my life to come? I shook my head, and picked up my pace.
    Sweat-soaked and parched, I reached the town of Sundance twenty minutes after I left the ranch. Ignoring the inner voice hollering at me to turn around, I made one last push past the heavy equipment yard of a building whose sign read: CAD Co .— Cabot Acquisitions & Demolitions . The name on the sign made me think of Sarah Jane. In a town the size of Sundance, there couldn’t be too many Cabots.
    When I reached the Welcome to Sundance sign, I stopped, my mind still full of Sarah Jane Cabot. Cars moved along I-90 in the distance, and a low mountain rose up above the rolling hills. Autry’s dragonflies landed near my feet, taking up resting positions along the white line on the pavement, tiny aircraft queued up on a four-inch-wide runway.
    Pacing beneath the sign, I pulled the Sundance Scuttlebutt notebook from my pocket. Unable to sleep, I’d glanced at some of Sarah Jane’s crazy notes the night before. The girl had a way with words, that was solid. In the dead of night, I believed every one of them, until the light of morning came and common sense returned. It was hard to stay convinced for long that Sundance was being overrun by Axehandle Hounds—small dogs that ate the handles off unattended axes—or that there was a race of tiny people who lived in the stacks at Crook County Public Library, coming out at night to shelve books for the librarians.
    I slapped the notebook against my palm, still pacing beneath the Welcome to Sundance sign. She’d written her name and address on the paperboard cover. The longer I paced, the looser the bolts holding the sign to its post became, until the sign lurched, swinging like a pendulum from a single remaining