One of the soccer girls leaned close to Roy. "Listen, Mouth, you best get outta here while you can. This is so not cool."
Roy stood up calmly. "Beatrice, are we straight on this? If anything's bothering you, now's the time to tell me."
Beatrice the Bear dropped the remains of her sandwich on the plate and wiped her hands with a wad of paper napkins. She didn't say a word.
"Whatever." Roy made a point of smiling again. "I'm glad we had this chance to get to know each other a little better."
Then he walked to the other side of the cafeteria and sat down, alone, to eat his lunch.
Garrett snuck into his mother's office and copied the address off the master enrollment sheet. It cost Roy a buck.
Roy handed the piece of paper to his mother as they were riding home in the car. "I need to stop here," he told her.
Mrs. Eberhardt glanced at the paper and said, "All right, Roy. It's on our way." She assumed the address belonged to one of Roy's friends, and that he was picking up a textbook or a homework assignment.
As they pulled into the driveway of the house, Roy said, "This'll only take a minute. I'll be right back."
Dana Matherson's mother answered the door. She looked a lot like her son, which was unfortunate.
"Dana home?" Roy asked.
"Who're you?"
"I go to school with him."
Mrs. Matherson grunted, turned around, and yelled Dana's name. Roy was glad that she didn't invite him inside. Soon he heard heavy footsteps, and Dana himself filled the doorway. He wore long blue pajamas that would have fit a polar bear. A mound of thick gauze, cross-hatched by shiny white tape, occupied the center of his piggish face. Both eyes were badly swollen and ringed with purple bruising.
Roy stood speechless. It was hard to believe that one punch had done so much damage.
Dana glared down at him and, in a pinched nasal voice, said: "I am not believin' this."
"Don't worry. I just came to give you something." Roy handed him the envelope containing the apology letter.
"What is it?" Dana asked suspiciously.
"Go ahead and open it."
Dana's mother appeared behind him. "Who is he?" she asked Dana. "What's he want?"
"Never mind," Dana mumbled.
Roy piped up: "I'm the one your son tried to strangle the other day. I'm the one who slugged him."
Dana's shoulders stiffened. His mother clucked in amusement. "You gotta be kiddin'! This little twerp is the one who messed up your face?"
"I came to apologize. It's all in the letter." Roy pointed at the envelope clutched in Dana's right hand.
"Lemme see." Mrs. Matherson reached over her son's shoulder, but he pulled away and crumpled the envelope in his fist.
"Get lost, cowgirl," he snarled at Roy. "Me and you will settle up when I get back to school."
When Roy returned to the car, his mother asked: "Why are those two people wrestling on the porch?"
"The one in the pajamas is the kid who tried to choke me on the bus. The other one, that's his mother. They're fighting over my apology letter."
"Oh." Mrs. Eberhardt thoughtfully watched the strange scene through the car window. "I hope they don't hurt each other. They're both rather husky, aren't they?"
"Yes, they are. Can we go home now, Mom?"
FIVE
Roy zipped through his homework in an hour. When he came out of his room, he heard his mother talking to his father on the phone. She was saying that Trace Middle had decided not to take disciplinary action against Dana Matherson because of his injuries. Apparently the school didn't want to provoke Dana's parents, in case they were considering a lawsuit.
When Mrs. Eberhardt began telling Mr. Eberhardt about the wild tussle between Dana and his mother, Roy slipped out the back door. He wheeled his bicycle from the garage and rode off. Twenty minutes later, he arrived at Beatrice Leep's bus stop, and from there he easily retraced Friday's ill-fated foot chase.
When Roy got to the golf course, he locked his bike to the pipes of a water fountain and set off jogging down the same fairway where he'd gotten clobbered. It was late in the afternoon, steamy hot, and few golfers were out. Nonetheless, Roy ran with his head down and one arm upraised for deflection in case another errant ball came flying in his direction. He slowed only when he reached the stand of Australian pines into which the running boy had vanished.
The pine trees gave way to a tangled thicket of Brazilian peppers and dense ground scrub, which looked impenetrable. Roy scoured the fringes, looking for a trail or some human sign. He didn't have much time before it would get dark. Soon he gave up trying to locate an entry point and elbowed his way into the pepper trees, which scraped his arms and poked his cheeks. He shut his eyes and thrashed onward.
Gradually the branches thinned and the ground beneath him began to slope. He lost his balance and went sliding down a ditch that ran like a tunnel through the thicket.
There, in the shadows, the air was cool and earthy. Roy spotted a series of charred rocks encircling a layer of ashes: a campfire. He knelt by the small pit and studied the packed dirt around it. He counted half a dozen identical impressions, all made by the same set of bare feet. Roy placed his own shoe beside one of the prints and wasn't surprised to see they were about the same size.
On a whim he called out, "Hello? You there?"
No answer.
Slowly Roy worked his way along the ditch, hunting for more clues. Concealed beneath a mat of vines he found three plastic garbage bags, each tied at the neck. Inside the first bag was common everyday trash-soda bottles, soup cans, potato chip wrappers, apple cores. The second bag held a stack of boys' clothing, neatly folded T-shirts, blue jeans, and underpants.
But no socks or shoes, Roy observed.
Unlike the other bags, the third one wasn't full. Roy loosened the knot and peeked, but he couldn't see what was inside. Whatever it was felt bulky.
Without thinking, he turned the bag over and dumped the contents on the ground. A pile of thick brown ropes fell out.
Then the ropes began to move.
"Uh-oh," Roy said.
Snakes-and not just any old snakes.
They had broad triangular heads, like the prairie rattlers back in Montana, but their bodies were muck-colored and ominously plump. Roy recognized the snakes as cottonmouth moccasins, highly poisonous. They carried no rattles to warn in advance of a strike, but Roy saw that the tips of their stubby tails had been dipped in blue and silver sparkles, the kind used in art projects. It was a most peculiar touch.
Roy struggled to remain motionless while the fat reptiles untangled themselves at his feet. Tongues flicking, some of the moccasins extended to their full lengths while others coiled sluggishly. Roy counted nine in all.
This isn't good, he thought.
He almost leaped out of his sneakers when a voice spoke out from the thicket behind him.
"Don't move!" the voice commanded.
"I wasn't planning to," Roy said. "Honest."
When he lived in Montana, Roy once hiked up Pine Creek Trail into the Absaroka Range, which overlooks Paradise Valley and the Yellowstone River.
It was a school field trip, with four teachers and about thirty kids. Roy had purposely dropped to the rear of the line, and when the others weren't looking, he peeled away from the group. Abandoning the well-worn path, he angled back and forth up the side of a wooded ridge. His plan was to cross over the top and quietly sneak down ahead of the school hikers. He thought it would be funny if they trudged into the campsite and found him napping by the creek.
Hurriedly Roy made his way through a forest of towering lodgepole pines. The slope was littered with brittle dead logs and broken branches, the debris of many cold, windy winters. Roy stepped gingerly to avoid making noise, for he didn't want the hikers down below to hear him climbing.