Small as an Elephant Read online

  “Excuse me,” he said suddenly, jumping up and walking back up the boardwalk, in the direction of the restrooms. He didn’t stop. He walked right past them and ducked into the woods. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, his heart pulsing with hope, and —

  “No!” he shouted. No! No! No! How could he have been so stupid? He had forgotten. Forgotten that his phone was in his pocket. Forgotten and gone swimming! The phone was totally soaked. He pushed a few buttons, but it didn’t even make its familiar beeping sounds. He held the On button for what seemed like three minutes with no luck at all. Totally soaked and totally dead.

  The battery! He remembered that cell phones have a patch that tells whether they’ve been damaged by liquid. Whether the phone can be saved. He turned his phone over and slid his battery out. The patch was red. Ruined.

  “No!” Jack threw the phone — screamed and threw it as far as he possibly could.

  It was one thing to be able to leave his mom messages and wonder if she got them. But now she’d have no way of reaching him. What if he got kicked off the campsite tomorrow? How would his mom know where to find him? How would they possibly connect?

  Jack lay down at the base of a tree and bawled.

  Jack could tell that Aiden’s parents knew something was wrong when he returned to the picnic. He tried to stay as close to the truth as possible, saying he was worried about his mom — her not feeling well and all.

  “What was I thinking?” said Aiden’s mom, whose name, Jack had learned during lunch, was Diane. “I should have checked in on her, asked her if she needed anything.”

  “Oh, that’s OK,” Jack said quickly. “It was just a migraine . . . I think.” He had added that last bit, the “I think,” because he didn’t exactly know what a migraine was. But he’d seen commercials on TV, and it seemed like a sort of headache, but a really bad one.

  “Well, I’ll definitely check on her when we bring you back,” Diane said.

  Great, Jack. Now what?

  It was impossible to have fun for the rest of the afternoon. He hated being away from the campsite now that he didn’t have a phone. What if his mother returned and he wasn’t there? What if she tried to call? He doubted she’d be able to reason, to stay put, to wait patiently as he had.

  And then there was Diane’s determination to check up on his mother. There was no way she’d keep his mom’s disappearance a secret, no matter how hard he tried to convince her. She’d be just like the social workers and the guidance counselor and everyone else who thought they were helping when they were just making things worse.

  He thought the veins in his head were going to burst as Aiden and his mother walked him back to his campsite.

  “Huh. The car’s gone,” Jack announced as soon as they were in sight of his tent, hoping he sounded genuinely surprised. “She must have gone to get more medicine. She said she would probably have to do that.”

  “That’s your tent?” Diane asked.

  Jack could hear the other questions in her voice. None of the other sites looked like his — just a little Hubba tent and nothing else.

  “She got sick as soon as we arrived,” said Jack. “We never even bothered to unpack anything.”

  “You poor thing. Tell her that I’m making dinner tonight. I’ll bring over soup — and other good things.”

  “Oh, that’s OK.” Jack suddenly felt as if he was on a speeding train, heading for a collision. “She’ll probably bring us back some takeout.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Diane said. “Soup goes with everything. Tell her I’ll be back to see what she needs.”

  “OK.” Even though he was getting used to lying, he couldn’t figure out what to do next.

  “Do you want to hang out till your mom gets back?” asked Aiden.

  Diane smiled at Aiden. You could tell she thought he was doing the right thing.

  “Thanks,” said Jack, “but I’m good. I’ve got comics; I think I’ll just read for a while.”

  After they left, Jack crawled into his tent to think. What would he say when they returned? Maybe he could pretend that his mom had just disappeared. That wasn’t as big a deal as her having been gone since — when? Friday night? But what good would that do? There would be a big search. The story would be in the papers, just like that story about the missing girl. And he’d be taken from his mom for sure.

  Once, when he was about seven, he and his mother were down in the subway station, waiting for the Forest Hills train to take them home. He was sitting on a bench, reading the advertisements on the wall across the tracks. His mom, who was wearing lots of silky scarves, was bouncing around, talking to people in the station. When he glanced over, he saw her whispering something into a homeless woman’s ear. The woman smiled, rocked on her heels, and shouted gibberish.

  “That’s right!” his mother had said. “You’re absolutely right! Jack!” she’d shouted. “Come here!”

  Her voice had grown more — what? Jangly. Urgent. It was his mother’s voice, but it wasn’t his mother — at least, not the mother he loved best. He’d wanted to protect her, to pull her away from the strangers who had begun to watch her cautiously, and back to him. He’d gone over to her and, after a couple of attempts, caught one of her waving hands. “Mom,” he’d said. “Come tell me what this word on a sign means.”

  She’d leaped out of his grasp. “Answer this riddle, Jack,” she’d said, pulling a red scarf from around her waist and holding it up to the light. “What can burn in space?”

  “The sun,” he’d said quickly, wanting to get this over with.

  “Oh, my smart, smart boy!” She’d rubbed the top of his head. “That’s because the sun is made of oxygen. But can other things burn?”

  He’d tried to think of an answer.

  Then the homeless woman had reached out and grabbed his mother’s scarf. Mom had snatched it back, laughed, and then bent down to wrap it around the woman’s neck. “Burn, baby, burn!” his mom had said.

  She’d danced around the station, demanding to know: “What can burn in space?”

  Lots of people just turned away or put their hands up as if to say no to what she was selling. He’d followed her, trying to think; she might stop racing around if he could come up with the answer.

  “What can burn in space?” she’d called out.

  “A rocket?” a tall bald man had guessed, trying to play along.

  For some reason that answer had made his mom frustrated. “Jack, help me. They won’t listen,” she’d said.

  He’d tried really hard to figure out what it was that she was thinking, wanting to show her he understood. There was a song, she’d said, a song about a fire, they didn’t start the fire, but they had to put it out . . . and she wanted to tell people, warn them. He’d kept asking questions so that she’d look straight at him.

  But she’d jumped away from Jack and had begun to pull on people’s clothing to get them to pay attention.

  “Lady!” a man had yelled.

  “Mom, please,” Jack had said, wrapping his arms around his mother’s waist, trying to hold her in place.

  The Forest Hills train had pulled in.

  “Mom, look! Our train is here.” The doors had slid open, and Jack had put his hands on her back and tried to drive her into the train, but she’d turned around fast, knocking him to the ground.

  Soon after that, the police had come. They took his mom to the hospital, and he went first to DSS and then to his grandmother’s.

  Jack had heard of DSS. He knew they took kids away from bad mothers. What he didn’t know until then was that his grandmother would try to take him, too.

  She’d kept asking him questions, one after another. Mom had warned him about questions like this. Told him not to answer them from anyone — not his teacher or the social worker or his grandmother, especially his grandmother (“She can be evil, Jack,” his mother had said) — and he had tried to keep quiet, tried not to say anything, but his grandmother wouldn’t stop.

  “You
talk too much!” he’d finally shouted at her. And for a while she seemed to stop. But still she was there, watching him, staring at him, thinking about the questions she wanted to ask — he could tell. Eventually, he’d found places in her big house where he could hide from her until finally they let his mom go and she came to get him.

  He couldn’t let that happen again.

  Springing to a crouched position, he rolled up his sleeping bag and stuffed it into his backpack. He added the flashlight, three comic books, and the cheese. He tried to add the few items of clothing he’d brought along, but there was no way it would all fit. He couldn’t carry the tent or the borrowed air mattress he’d slept on, and now he’d have to leave clothes as well. Should he wear shorts or jeans? Shorts would be easier to walk in, he decided. But he grabbed one long-sleeved shirt and his Windbreaker and tied them around his waist. Then he rushed to collapse the tent around the remaining belongings and dragged the bundle into the woods, where, hopefully, it wouldn’t be found for days.

  He hesitated for a single moment, wishing more than anything that Mom would appear, would drive right up and say, “Hey, Jackie, where’re you headed?” But it didn’t happen.

  So he threw on his backpack and hustled down the road to catch the Island Explorer again.

  “Did you miss your stop?” the driver asked when Jack had reached the end of the bus line. He’d been riding the bus for almost an hour. The island was much bigger than he’d imagined, and he realized that searching for his mother would be harder — a lot harder — than he thought. Each time the bus stopped at a dock, or lake, or town, he wondered if this was the place where he should look first, but the bus always moved on before he made a decision.

  “Son?”

  What to do? Suddenly, he felt so tired. And now here he was in Bar Harbor — a town that had been on their list for all its fun shops and restaurants. A town that may or may not hold his mother.

  I have to start my search somewhere, he figured, and got off the bus.

  Standing in the village green, he realized that “searching” was not a plan. You couldn’t just walk around a big island, hoping to find someone. He needed to do this logically. The sun was setting, and while he could try searching some of the shops and restaurants, he knew he had to be realistic, and being realistic meant finding a place to sleep while there was still some light left.

  Obviously, he’d have to camp. Not at a campground, which cost money, but in the woods. He’d seen plenty of woods on the bus ride in. With one last look at the bustling streets, Jack turned and walked back out of town.

  He walked for about ten minutes down Mount Desert Street, where he passed a stone church, a graveyard with lots of unmarked graves — or so the sign said — and the town library, to Kebo Street. On Kebo, he ducked into a patch of woods. Right away he found a mossy area in the roots of a tree, a soft place for sleeping that was far enough from the road that no one would notice him, but not so far in that he would get lost. He unrolled his dark-green sleeping bag and crawled in. Mom had said they might sleep under the stars one night, and now he was doing it. Check two things off the list!

  He tried to come up with a plan. Maybe he should get a map of the town and comb all the streets. He could ask people who worked in the galleries and restaurants and shops if they’d seen her. Or ask at the grocery store — chances were, she’d stopped for something.

  Thinking about Mom and the next steps made his brain hurt. So he let his heavy eyes shut, let snatches of dreams about winding roads, pine trees, anchors, and telescopes turn his mind inside out, grab hold of him and pull him down, down, down. Sleep had become his only way out of worry.

  But not for long.

  A noise woke him — a snuffling noise. Rustling. It took a moment for him to remember that he was not in his tent but out on his own in the woods. And there was someone or something in the dark — nearby. Did other people camp in the woods? Homeless people, maybe?

  Jack’s breathing slowed, at times stopped altogether. Buried in the sleeping bag, he didn’t dare pop his head out. He wished, oh how he wished, he had his tent to act as a barrier. He thought of rolling over and flattening himself against the ground — it seemed as if he would be less vulnerable, more capable of springing up and running, in that position — but he couldn’t risk being heard.

  Whatever it was made a clicking noise followed by a low rumbling, and Jack thought he’d die of a heart attack before he was discovered. Should he continue to play dead or run? If it was a man or a bear, it was likely he’d be chased. He remained frozen.

  It was coming closer, definitely closer. If it was an animal — and, from the snorting sounds, Jack was now pretty certain it was — it no doubt smelled him. What could be in these woods? Bear, moose, coyote. Jack didn’t think a moose would intentionally hurt a boy, at least not one stretched out on the ground, but he was definitely less certain about bears and coyotes. Or wolves. He’d forgotten about wolves.

  His flashlight was in his backpack. What would happen if he shone a light in the eyes of a wild animal? Would light frighten it away? Anger it? Jack supposed it would depend on the type of animal. He uncurled his fingers, testing their ability to reach for his backpack. To grasp. Why hadn’t he thought to tuck the flashlight into his sleeping bag with him?

  Scooting up in the sleeping bag in slow, carefully measured increments, Jack reached for his backpack, stretching out his whole arm. But just as his fingers grazed the fabric of the strap, the backpack jerked away.

  Robbed. He was being robbed! Whoever it was knew he was here on the ground (had he been seen going into the woods?), knew he had a backpack, knew it and wanted it.

  Dang it! He’d already lost a mother and a phone. He couldn’t afford to lose anything else. He sat up and yelled, “Hey!”

  Yelled at the thief, yelled at the . . . at the raccoons who had confiscated his cheese, leaving his backpack on the ground, and were now scrambling away in the bright moonlight.

  He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It wasn’t a man or a bear. Just some silly raccoons.

  But his cheese. His last bit of food. He could have sworn his stomach growled in protest. Growled at the thought of not eating again, of having no food and too little money to purchase more.

  It was barely light when he woke, and he was freezing. No way was the earth’s center a ball of fire. At this moment, Jack was certain that the core was an ice cube and that it was sending frozen daggers to its surface. He pulled on his Windbreaker, hoping it could stop the cold from penetrating, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

  So he got up. He rolled up his sleeping bag, put on his backpack, and headed into town.

  First line of order was breakfast. Fifty-three cents wouldn’t even buy something on the McDonald’s Dollar Menu, a menu he knew by heart. He’d have to find a grocery store. And even then, what would a handful of change buy? Cereal bars were a lot more than this. Were doughnuts? He wasn’t sure, but, looking down, he came up with a solution: soda cans and bottles.

  He’d seen ME next to MA on cans all his life, so he was pretty sure that in Maine, just like in Massachusetts, they were returnable. That meant he could get five cents for every drink container he took to the store. He picked up the Diet Coke can at his feet. It was crushed and had been on the side of the road for so long, the label was fading away, but he hoped they’d take it anyway.

  On Mount Desert Street, he found a couple of plastic bottles. Fifteen cents in bottle returns gave him sixty-eight cents in all. He hoped to find enough drink containers to bring him to a dollar.

  He had his head down, searching, when he nearly bumped into an old man wearing a plaid hunting jacket.

  “Look out, son,” the man said, not unkindly.

  “Sorry!” Jack blurted. “Hey, could you tell me where the nearest grocery store is?”

  The man stopped and studied Jack. “You’re industrious this morning, aren’t you? Go down Roberts Avenue,” he said, pointing to the side street next to an inn t
hat looked like a wedding cake. “When you get to the end, turn left.”

  Roberts Avenue had several houses with signs out front, bed-and-breakfast places. His mother was always telling him how much she loved B&Bs — how the rooms were all different and old-fashioned. “It’s like going back in time, Jack,” she’d say. “You can imagine that you’re someone else altogether.”

  Jack had never wanted to stay in these places, which looked (at least on the Internet) more like fussy homes than hotels. Besides, they never had swimming pools or cable TV, and those were the best things about traveling.

  But . . . maybe? Maybe his mother had walked down this very street, and the pull of puffy bedding, lacy curtains, and not being Becky Martel for a while had been too strong to resist. He stood on the sidewalk and tried to imagine which of these places would call to her: The Maples Inn? Canterbury Cottage? Aysgarth Station? He had no idea what an aysgarth was, or why they’d call a house a station, but he bet his mom would pick that one. It had the most unique name, and his mother was drawn to anything that promised a story.

  Jack decided his search would start there. He left his backpack, the two bottles, and the can on the lawn of the B&B, behind a little picket fence, and then bravely walked inside.

  No one was in the entryway, so he rang a little bell. A woman popped her head out from around a doorway.

  “Is there a Becky Martel staying here?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she said, but she didn’t seem sure. She wandered over to a book and put her glasses on to check. “No, we don’t have a Martel. . . . Does she go by her own name?”

  The question startled Jack. Was she asking if his mother might have registered under a different name? Which seemed possible, what with her wanting to feel like someone else and all.