hesitated. He should take off, try to blend in with the stragglers leaving the school grounds. But the rest of the team had left this kid to bag up the equipment and walk back alone, and Peter knew how that felt. He picked up a couple of balls and handed them over. “Hey.”
The boy took the balls with a cautious smile. “Hey.”
“Nice play. The last liner? That ball had hair.”
The boy looked away and scuffed at the dirt, but Peter could see he was pleased. “Yeah, well, the first baseman made it look cleaner than it was.”
“Nah, you planted that ball. Your first baseman would be lucky to catch a cold by himself. No offence.”
The boy gave Peter a real grin. “Yeah. Coach’s nephew. You play?”
Peter nodded. “Centre field.”
“You new here?”
“Oh … I don’t live here, I …” Peter nodded his head vaguely south.
“Hampton?”
“Yeah, Hampton, right.”
The boy’s face closed. “Scouting before Saturday’s game? Jerk.” He spat and walked back to the dugout.
As he left the school grounds, Peter congratulated himself on his quick thinking, covering his runaway tracks. But somehow he felt kind of bad anyway. Somehow he felt lousy, actually.
He shrugged the feeling off – what was it his dad said about feelings, something about a quarter and a cup of coffee? – and checked his watch. Four fifteen. He’d lost over three hours.
Peter pressed faster, but when he came to the town square again, he crossed to the opposite side from the hardware shop and forced himself to walk at an even pace past a library, past a bus station, past a café. Then he counted off a thousand steps before he risked lifting his head.
When he did, he checked his watch again. Four fifty. His grandfather was probably packing up his stuff now. Peter imagined him walking to his rusty blue Chevy, fitting the key into the ignition.
And with that image, his anxiety struck, knocking the breath right out of him. He scaled a low wooden fence and dropped into scrubby brush. He pushed in a good safe thirty feet, until the saplings rose up taller than he was, until his anxiety let him breathe right again, before turning to parallel the road. It was rougher going now, but fifteen minutes later he reached it: the highway.
Peter shadowed the entrance ramp, crouching low, then, at a break in traffic, ran down the culvert, scaled the chain-link fence, and dropped to the other side, his heart beating hard. He’d made it.
He loped into the trees, keeping an eye out for a likely place to cut west. And in just a few minutes, he found one: a dirt road running perpendicular to the highway. Well, not much more than an old wagon path, to be honest, but it was heading in the right direction and would be easy walking even at night. He turned in.
For a short while the trees beside him grew denser as he walked, and only birdcalls and squirrel rustlings broke the silence. Peter realised he might have seen the last of civilisation for a while. The thought lifted him.
But a few minutes later the road turned a corner and began to run along an old pasture dotted with gnarled fruit trees in ragged bloom. A stone wall bordered the field, and a low barn stood at the far corner. There were no lights on in the barn, no car or truck beside it. Still, Peter’s heart crashed. The barn looked freshly painted, and some of the roof shingles were the raw pink of new wood. This was the road to someone’s home. Worse, it might lead to a bigger road the atlas had been too old to show. In any case, it wasn’t a shortcut across the hills.
Peter dropped his pack and sank into a narrow jog in the stone wall, exhausted and starving. He tugged his boots off and peeled down his socks. Two bad blisters throbbed on each heel. They were going to kill when they broke. Peter dug out his extra pair of socks from the bottom of the rucksack and worked them on over the first pair. He rested his head back against the rough stone, still giving off a little warmth from the day’s sun, which was now hovering just over the line of trees, bathing the field in a peach-coloured glow.
He pulled the raisins out and ate them one at a time, taking small sips of water in between. Then he opened two packets of string cheese and took four crackers from the sleeve. He ate as slowly as he could, watching the sun over the orchard, surprised to find that he could actually mark its sinking movement. How had he lived twelve years and never known this about sunsets?
Peter laced his boots. Just as he started to rise, he caught sight of a deer, which bounded into the orchard from the woods beyond. He held his breath as the orchard filled – fourteen deer in all. They began to graze, and a few nibbled delicately at the low branches of the trees.
Peter squatted back down, and the closest one, a doe with a spindly spotted fawn beside her, turned her head to look directly at him. Peter raised his palm slowly, hoping to let her know he meant no harm. The doe moved between Peter and her fawn, but after a while she dipped her head into the grass again.
And then the clear twilight air was split by the screech of a saw biting through wood from behind the barn. The herd startled in unison and peeled away into the darkening woods, their white tails flashing. Before she bounded off, the doe sent another look straight at Peter, one that seemed to say, You humans. You ruin everything …
Peter took off. Back at the highway, half the cars had their headlights on now, and it seemed they were all trained directly on him. He ducked off the road.
The ground there was spongy and smelled of peat. He was just debating about risking the flashlight when his foot sank with a splash. He grabbed an overhanging branch and pulled himself out, but it was too late – he could feel cold swamp water seeping into his boots. Peter cursed. Not bringing more socks – another mistake. It had better be the last of the trip.
And then, clambering back to higher ground, he made another, much worse, mistake.
His right foot caught on a root and he fell. He heard the bone break – a soft, muffled snap – at the same time he felt the sharp stab. He sat panting with the stunning pain for a long moment. Finally he pulled his foot free and unlaced his boot, wincing at each motion. He eased down the wet socks, and what he saw made him gasp: his foot was swelling so fast that he could actually see it.
Peter rolled his socks back up, nearly crying out at the pain it caused, then gritted his teeth to work his foot back into the boot before it could swell any more. He crawled to a tree and pulled himself upright. He tested his weight on his foot and nearly collapsed again. The pain was far worse than anything he’d felt before – it made the broken thumb feel like a mosquito bite in comparison.
He couldn’t walk.
Pax squirmed in pleasure at the solid, warm weight of another’s body nestled against his. Half awake, he sniffed to draw in the comforting scent of his boy. Instead of human, though, he found fox.
He
