The Honest Truth

by Dan Gemeinhart

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 1½

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 2½

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 3½

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 4½

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 5½

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 6½

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 7½

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 8½

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 9½

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 10½

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 11½

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 12½

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 13½

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  The mountain was calling me. I had to run away. I had to.

  And I didn’t need anyone to go with me.

  I tightened the straps on my backpack and held the front screen door open with my foot. “Come on, Beau!” I called, and my voice didn’t shake one bit. It was strong. Like me.

  Beau came rocketing out the door, his tail slapping my legs. He danced on his front paws on the porch, his mismatched eyes smiling up at me, his tongue hanging out happy. I bent down and scratched him behind his ears the way he loved, the way only I knew how to do. “You’re always ready for a walk, aren’t you, buddy?”

  He panted out a yes.

  “Well,” I said, grabbing the handles of my duffel bag and standing up. “You’re in for a doozy.” I looked out to the horizon, to the white-topped mountains in the distance. “The biggest walk of all. That’s the truth.”

  I slammed the door behind me and I didn’t look back even once. I didn’t worry about a key. I might not ever be coming back.

  Beau walked right up against my leg the whole ten minutes down to the station. My camera swung and thumped against my stomach, dangling from a strap around my neck. When I saw the station up ahead, I ducked around a corner and crouched down in an alley. My breath came in nervous puffs. “All right, Beau, now just like we practiced.” I unzipped the duffel bag and spread it open. It was mostly empty. I patted the inside of it. “Come on, Beau. Get on in.”

  Beau stepped right in, spun around a couple of times, and then flopped down. He looked up at me. “God, you’re a good dog,” I whispered. His tail tried to wag inside the duffel. I fished in my pocket for a biscuit, and he snuffled it out of my hand in one chomping gulp.

  I zipped the duffel almost all the way closed. Beau disappeared into the darkness inside. I stood up and Beau’s weight pulled my shoulder down. I tightened my grip. “I’m glad you’re not a Saint Bernard,” I whispered down to the duffel bag, then walked out around the corner and up to the ticket window.

  The man behind the window squinted up at me from the magazine he was reading. I straightened my bright red baseball hat and cleared my throat.

  “I need two tickets,” I said.

  “Bus or train?”

  “Bus. To Spokane.”

  “You traveling alone?”

  The word alone rang like a broken bell. I licked my lips. “My dad’s in the bathroom,” I answered. “He gave me money for the tickets.”

  The man nodded and yawned. People are lazy. That’s what I was counting on.

  “Okay. One adult, one child, Wenatchee to Spokane. That’s forty-four dollars.”

  I pulled the money out of the pocket of my blue jacket and handed it to him.

  “Bus leaves in ten minutes from right over there.”

  I took the tickets and walked the way he’d pointed. A couple of buses were rumbling next to the curb. One said Spokane on the front, just like my tickets. I looked over my shoulder. The man behind the window had his eyes back down on his magazine. I walked right past the bus and around the corner of the building.

  To the train platform.

  There was the little covered seating area I’d seen when I’d made my plans. The one with the garbage can chained up behind it, mostly out of sight. I ducked around to the garbage can, took a quick look to make sure no one was watching, then slipped off my blue jacket and stuffed it into the garbage. My red hat and the two bus tickets went in after it. I grabbed the dark green wool winter hat out of my backpack and pulled it on.

  When I turned to go, I felt the bulge in my pocket. I took a shaky breath and pulled out the watch. It was an old-fashioned silver pocket watch with a round glass face. A present from my dead grandpa. I bit my lip, hard. I could feel it ticking in my hand. Tick. Tick. Tick. Time, running out.

  Here’s what I don’t get: why anybody would want to carry something around that reminds you that your life is running out.

  I threw the watch to the ground as hard as I could. It smashed against the concrete. The glass cracked but didn’t break. My jaw clenched and I stomped on it, so hard my foot hurt. The glass shattered, and I stomped again, and the clock hands bent. I stomped again, and again.

  I had my foot raised for another stomp when I heard Beau whine from the duffel. My lungs were heaving. My breaths were hard and fast, and my stomach was starting to feel sick. A thin ache had begun to poke in my head. Beau whined again.

  “It’s okay, Beau,” I panted, and lowered my foot. I reached down to throw the watch into the garbage can, but stopped. I looked at the garbage can, looked at the ruined silver watch. I straightened up and felt the camera against my body. I lifted it to my eye and snapped a picture of the broken pieces of watch lying scattered on the ground. Then I kicked them behind the garbage can.

  When I walked around the corner I saw the train waiting. It was sleek and silver and rumbling like a bottled earthquake. I fished in the pocket of my gray hoodie and found my train ticket, the one I’d ordered online the night before with the credit card I’d snuck out of my mom’s purse. My belly lurched.

  “Heading to Seattle?” the lady asked when she took my ticket. I nodded and started to climb aboard. I didn’t want her to remember me. “All by yourself? You need help with your bag?”

  I tried not to give her a dirty look. “No,” I said without looking at her, and climbed up the stairs onto the train, my legs and fingers burning with Beau’s weight.

  The train was mostly empty, and I found a seat in an empty row at the back of the car. Outside the big window was Wenatchee, the home I was leaving. The sky was getting dark. The low buildings and warehouses around the train tracks threw long shadows. The clouds were dark and heavy. A storm was coming, and so was night.

  Somewhere out there in that darkness was Jessie, my best friend. And my mom, and my dad. Their faces floated into my mind. They had no idea I was leaving. They had no idea where I was going. They wouldn’t be able to find me. They wouldn’t be able to help.

  I blinked my eyes hard and shook my head. “I don’t need them,” I whispered, squinting out at the town, the shadows. “I don’t need anybody.” It was true, maybe, but I didn’t like how my words sounded more mean than strong. I touched the cold glass with my fingers, looking off into the distance toward the empty house my parents would come home to. “I’m sorry,” I said even softer. “I’m sorry.”

  I pulled a little notebook and pen from the outside pouch of my backpack. I flipped past my homework and doodles and opened to the first empty page, then thought for a minute. I felt around in my head, trying to find the words for the moment. An idea came, slow and shy. I nodded. I counted a couple of times on my fingers, my mouth moving silently with the words. Then I wrote them down.

  Outside, I heard the call: “All aboard!”

  Then the rattling crash of a metal door closing.

  I looked down at the words I’d written on
the paper. Three lines:

  Alone, leaving home.

  A new journey, a new road.

  Off to mountains now.

  I slid my hand into the duffel bag on the seat beside me and found Beau’s head. He licked my fingers. His tongue was wet, and his breath was warm. He felt soft. He felt like a friend. I scratched him behind his ears and tried not to cry. I tried hard to remember that I wasn’t scared. Of so much.

  I let my head fall back on the seat and tried not to think about anything but mountains.

  In a couple of hours, my mom would get home.

  A couple of hours after that, the police would start looking for me.

  Her voice was shaky.

  Like the last leaf in a tree.

  Trying to hold on.

  “Jessie, honey, is Mark over there? Is Mark with you?”

  Jessica Rodriguez shook her head into the phone.

  “Uh, no. I haven’t seen him since school. What’s the matter?”

  “Oh,” Mark’s mom said, trying to laugh. Her laugh sounded more like a choke. “It’s nothing, I’m sure. I was just surprised he wasn’t home is all, and the house was so dark….” Her voice trailed off. “Beau is gone, too. Let me know if he shows up there, would you?”

  Mark never showed up.

  The police don’t usually come running when a kid’s only been missing a couple of hours. But when his mom told them about Mark, about his story, they started listening a little more seriously. When they heard what the doctors had said, they listened real seriously. When they found the note he had left, they were completely serious.

  So, a little after seven o’clock, two police cars raced into the parking lot by the bus station and train platform. They didn’t have any real reason to think he’d gone there except that it looked like he was running away, and the only two ways for a kid to run away from Wenatchee were on the bus or the train. One of the cops jumped out of his cruiser and ran to the bus waiting there, a bus heading south to Oregon. He scanned the bodies in the seats, looking for a kid traveling alone. A skinny kid, with pale skin. A kid wearing a hat.

  He didn’t see one.

  The other cop ran to the little window of the bus station and knocked on the glass. Behind the glass was a bored-looking man reading a magazine. He looked a little less bored when he saw it was a cop knocking.

  The cop asked some questions, quick and sharp. The man licked his lips, scratched his chin, gave some answers. The cop nodded and walked back toward his cruiser, where he met his partner coming back from the bus. He opened his door and reached for the radio.

  “Got him,” the cop said.

  “He’s on the bus to Spokane.

  “Wearing a red hat.”

  I got off the train around nine o’clock. Alone in Seattle, with a whole dark night to get through. It was raining.

  Once I got out of the station I set the duffel down and unzipped it. Beau came bounding out, his claws clattering on the wet sidewalk. His whole body was wagging.

  “We got a long night ahead of us, Beauchamp.” I scratched him behind the ears and slapped his ribs. “Our bus doesn’t leave till tomorrow. There’s a lot of time to kill.” I slipped the backpack on. Beau scampered around, sniffing the strange city smells and going to the bathroom everywhere. Then we started walking.

  The city was dark. It wasn’t bright lights, lit-up buildings, cars, and people walking around like I’d imagined. The train station in Seattle was in the middle of empty warehouses and abandoned buildings. The streetlights were broken, mostly. The only people I saw looked homeless, curled up in doorways or coughing from the darkness of alleys. Beau growled at them and walked closer to my leg. Everything smelled like old cars and garbage.

  In an hour I saw only a couple of cars go by. When I glimpsed the flash of their headlights and heard their tires crunching on the street, I ducked into whatever deep shadow I could find and tried to hold my breath. I gripped Beau’s collar tight and whispered in his ear to calm him. The cops could be after me already.

  As we passed a Dumpster, a crash sounded from the darkness behind it. A loud, metal crash like a garbage can getting knocked over. I screamed and jumped, my heart hammering. I almost dropped the empty duffel bag. Beau barked and the fur on his back raised. I almost started to run, but there was nowhere to run. There was a rustling sound in the darkness, like someone or something trying to get up. A scraping. Beau growled, low and deep in his throat, and backed up, his eyes on the noise. “Come on,” I said, and my voice was shaking. We kept walking, faster. I looked back over my shoulder. Beau did, too. But whatever it was never left the shadows.

  Block by block my legs got shakier. My stomach started getting wobbly and I kept swallowing spit. The little pain in my head got sharper. The backpack straps dug into my shoulders. I was too tired. I needed to rest. I needed to try to eat.

  Beau wasn’t wagging his tail anymore. His head turned back and forth, sniffing at every strange sound and looking at every black shadow. A growl lived down in his throat all the time. Everything felt like danger.

  Ahead I saw the glowing windows of an all-night restaurant. It was a crappy place, the kind that has plastic ashtrays on the tables and serves breakfast all day. I felt the little bulge of money in my pants pocket. I didn’t have extra, but I had just enough.

  I dropped the duffel and spread it open. “Come on, buddy,” I patted the bag. My words came between panting breaths. Beau’s ears went back and his doggy eyebrows scrunched together. He whined and wagged his tail low. “I know,” I said. “It sucks. But I’ll get you some bacon.” His ears perked up at the word. He tapped his toes a couple of times on the sidewalk and then stepped forward and curled up in the duffel. I scratched behind his ears before zipping him up.

  My hands felt weak, like I couldn’t make a fist, but I managed to lift the duffel. I looked at the darkness around me and walked into the restaurant.

  The place smelled like stale cigarettes and coffee and frying eggs. Pictures flashed on a TV hanging in the corner, but the sound was off. My mouth started to water and my stomach woke up. Most of the tables were empty. There was an old couple chewing without talking at a corner booth, and a man with a long beard and ponytail sitting by himself at the counter. I wondered if he was homeless. A gum-chewing waitress was leaning against the counter, watching the TV. Everyone seemed tired and unhappy. The waitress looked me up and down.

  “Just you?” she asked. Her voice was scratchy and rough. I nodded. “Pick any table you want, honey.”

  I slid Beau in his duffel into a booth and sat beside him. I left one hand on him to keep him still and opened a plastic menu with the other. I kept my backpack resting against my leg under the table. The city didn’t feel safe. I was so tired the words on the menu blurred in my eyes.

  “It’s almost eleven o’clock.” The waitress’s voice in my ear made me jump. Her eyes glared questions at me. Through her caked-on makeup I could see the shadow of a black eye. Her mouth never stopped working on her gum. I blinked fast and nodded.

  The chewing stopped. “So?” She raised her eyebrows and dropped her chin to look at me. “Whatcha doing out by yourself so late?”

  My brain fumbled around for a good lie, but it was too tired; everything slipped out between its fingers. “I’m — not alone. My dad’s, uh — out there.” I nodded my head toward the window. The waitress squinted out into the darkness. Up the street, a neon sign glowed.

  “What, at Barney’s?” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Eleven at night and the guy’s at a bar and his kid’s eating at a diner. That’s real sweet. Sounds like my dad.” She looked down at me and her eyes were softer. Her teeth started in again on the gum. “Whatcha wanna eat, honey?”

  “Toast. And scrambled eggs.” I remembered Beau beneath my arm, lying in the darkness of the duffel. “And a side order of bacon. Please.” The corners of the waitress’s mouth curled up for just a second in what was probably supposed to be a smile.

  “You got it.”


  My stomach growled and flopped while I waited. It was empty, but it wasn’t exactly hungry. I was used to the feeling. The ache in my head had grown. It stabbed at my skull. I squinted my eyes against the pain, then reached into my coat pocket. My fingers closed around the plastic prescription pill bottle. I clenched my teeth, then pulled it out and opened it and rattled three of the pills into my hand. I got all three down with one gulp of ice water. I was a pro. I knew they’d make my head feel better.

  But I hated the pills.

  I slipped my hand inside the duffel to scratch Beau’s ears. His soft, warm tongue licked my palm. He was such a good dog. Zipped up in a duffel bag, smelling food with an empty stomach, and he licks my palm. Tears burned uninvited into my eyes. Beau’s love somehow stirred up all my sunken sadness. I bit my lip and looked out the window into darkness and tried to remember the last time I’d been happy.

  I had to go back. Way back. Every memory for years was stained now, even the good ones. I had to go all the way back to before.

  It was summer. Seven years ago. I was five.

  Jess was over at my house, and we were playing in the backyard with Beau. He was just a puppy then, small and yippy and always tripping over his paws.

  I’d felt good. Better. I didn’t have a headache or anything.

  We were running through the sprinkler. All the world was green grass and blue sky and shoulders hot with sunshine. We didn’t have to have a reason to laugh.

  Little kids are so dumb. They don’t know anything yet. That’s the truth.

  My mom was on the back porch, sipping a glass of lemonade and watching us, a small smile on her face. I wonder if it was her last happy memory, too.

  We laid down on the wet grass to catch our breath. We giggled and looked at the clouds. We compared belly buttons. Mine was an outie, pale and white. Jess’s was an innie, a little crater in her light brown skin. Beau flopped down happily between us, filling our noses with the smell of wet dog.

  “Look,” Jess had said, propping herself up on one elbow. “Beau’s kinda us put together.”

  I’d giggled.

  “No, really. See?” She poked her fingers in his fur. “He’s got two colors of fur. Brown, like your hair, and black like mine.”