Prodigal

Chapter 1

1

Traitor, she thought.

The school bus slowed, and a young girl stood and lurched down the aisle. Her heavy backpack swung wide with every step, swaying into alternating seats. There was no one left to clobber (hers was the last stop), but today she wouldn’t have cared anyway. She gave an extra stutter-step and grabbed a seat’s metal frame to keep from stumbling when the bus finally stopped.

“Have a good weekend, Rachel,” the bus driver said, opening the accordion door with a screech that cut through the rumble of the diesel engine.

The girl stared down at the treads of the steps as she exited, staying to the right to avoid stepping on gum. “Goodbye, Mr. Dewey.”

At the bottom, she took the final long step to the ground in a big hop, landing decisively on both feet. It was, after all, Friday. Even if Evie had betrayed her.

Rachel paused just long enough to free her long, dark hair from a backpack strap, then started up the hill, hunched forward like a turtle. There were three homes on the dirt road—a trailer, followed by Evie’s house and Rachel’s house—then a long stretch of nothing but vegetation until the route looped around and joined up with another back road. The steep incline and the few leaves remaining on the trees (some orange and yellow and red, but mostly brown) still shielded Rachel’s house from sight. She kicked stray bits of gravel from the road as if they’d insulted her, until the breeze caught a cloud of the roused dust and sent it toward her eyes.

Well, booger butt.

Rachel didn’t stop, just ducked her head even more as she rubbed at her eyes. Would she have gone to Melanie’s sleepover—without Evie—if Melanie had invited her instead? No. Because Rachel and Evie were best friends, and best friends don’t do that to each other.

Except… if Rachel were honest with herself, she knew she would have gone, too. And she knew Evie would tell her all about it tomorrow, with funny stories of who said and did what, stories that would make Rachel feel better, that would remind her that she was better off with Evie than with Melanie and her friends any day.

Rachel also knew that she’d be lost without Evie. She’d be eating lunch alone, sitting—

Evie’s dog was barking. A lot.

Rachel opened her mouth to yell at Trooper to stop (he listened to commands), but when she lifted her head, there was a man. Standing right in front of her.

Tall and old like her teachers, he didn’t speak. Just stared at her with a funny expression that wasn’t quite a smile.

Rachel tried to smile at him, but she couldn’t get her face to move. She couldn’t speak either. She knew she should, that there was something wrong, but she was so scared, she couldn’t make a sound. Except the noise of her breath starting to whistle in her chest. She reached toward her jacket pocket.

Suddenly the man moved in a blur, slapping a hand over Rachel’s mouth and throwing her under his arm in one quick movement, as if she were a football. An eleven-year-old football.

Rachel’s backpack bounced painfully. She wanted to scream for help, to bite his hand or kick him, but more than that she wanted to breathe. She needed to breathe.

The man was in no particular hurry now that he had her in hand, but spots appeared in front of her eyes and she couldn’t see where he was going. Was there a car? Her chest grew tighter.

I can’t breathe! she screamed inside her head.

Trooper was going crazy. She couldn’t see him either, but she could hear him snarling, lunging against his chain and pawing at the ground.

Help me, Trooper.

Then the spots in front of Rachel’s eyes disappeared in blackness and a roaring sound filled her ears, so loud she could barely make out the man’s voice when he spoke.

“Well, that was easy,” he said, bruising Rachel’s ribs as he hitched her higher on his hip. “And so it begins again.”