Free On the Run by Tristan Bancks Page A

together. Ben remembered this from a school excursion to the maritime museum in third grade. He’d seen a giant raft that had been across the Pacific Ocean. It had a sail and cross-bracing.
    He worked as sunrise turned to daylight, wondering if the physical work and the hunger were making him any less fat. He hoped so. Nobody called for him, and he heard no other human sounds for a long time. He sawed a branch into three equal lengths, gnawing away at it with the tiny saw blade on his knife. He carved grooves in the longer branches and laid the shorter pieces across to brace the raft. He lashed his new raft together with the vines, working quickly, his body moving constantly to keep the mosquitoes away. They ate his ears and ankles for breakfast.
    It.
    Wish we hadn’t done it.
    Sold the business? Ben wanted to believe it, but he couldn’t. He knew how much his parents hated the wrecking business. They’d started losing money the second Dad bought it.
    Ben had done well to record their conversation, but now he needed to discover where the money came from, why they needed passports, where they were going. He needed to interrogate his father, to pry and uncover more evidence. He had somehow become a detective years before he ever expected to. It was scarier and less fun than he had imagined.
    He pulled a vine tight and knotted it. The raft was finished.
    Bang!
    He ducked, pressing himself into the rough bark of his raft. He had never heard a real gunshot before, but that was what it sounded like.

 
    THE HUNT
    Ben watched, eyes alert, pupils black and big as marbles, glaring through the gloom of the pine forest. His father skulked through the trees higher up the hill, kicking pine needles and turning over rotting logs with a brown-booted foot. He twitched and spun at the slightest sign of movement. He was carrying the rifle from the cabin.
    Ben had played millions of hours of games, and he wouldn’t have thought that seeing a person with a real gun would bother him, but it did. Dad seemed nervous and unnatural with it. Ben wondered if he had ever held a gun before. He didn’t seem to be holding it the right way. Not that Ben knew what the right way was.
    He wanted to call out from behind the tree but he was struck silent. He thought of his camera and notebook and bent down to gather his things, throwing the notebook into his backpack and slinging it over his shoulder. He turned the camera on, hit “record,” and poked the lens out from behind the tree. What was Dad hunting for?
    Me. That was the answer that came to him. But the voice came from the same part of Ben’s mind that told him to run when he was walking back from the bathroom in the middle of the night. It was the same part of his mind that his stories came from. The fear place.
    Dad zigzagged down the hill, about ninety feet away. Ben kept the camera trained on him. Dad tucked himself in behind a large fallen tree and crouched. He pointed the rifle out into the forest, deadly still. Something moved to his right. Bang! Another shot and the movement was gone.
    â€œDad!” Ben called without thinking, training the lens on his father. Dad turned. Ben put a hand out from behind the tree in surrender and lowered the camera. Dad shook his head. He motioned silently, impatiently, for Ben to come toward him. Ben wanted to cover his raft but he was afraid of bringing attention to it, so he left it lying there on the ground between the tree line and the river. Ben tucked in beside Dad at the fallen tree. It was crawling with green ants.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Dad whispered.
    â€œJust … hangin’ around,” Ben said.
    â€œWhat time’d you get up?”
    â€œEarly.”
    â€œWell, you’re lucky you’re still alive, scaring me like that.”
    Ben stared at the rifle in Dad’s hands. He couldn’t help it.
    â€œDid you fix it?” Ben whispered. The weapon was made of dark brown