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“That doesn’t help our situation, son.”

  “Sorry. I don’t think there is one. She lives out in the

  middle of the woods. There’s no street. So how can there

  be an address?”

  “Middle of the woods, you say?”

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Log cabin? Tin roof?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Right. I know it. That’s Zoe Dinsmore’s place. I

  figured it must be. If we have more than one lady living

  all by herself out in the middle of those woods, it’s news

  to me. Okay, son. I’ll go see what’s what with her.”

  And he hung up the phone.

  I looked up to see my mother leaning in the kitchen

  doorway, watching me with sleepy eyes.

  “Everything okay?” she asked. But not like she really

  wanted to get too deeply into things.

  “Yeah. Fine. I was just on my way to school.”

  “In sweats?” she asked, looking down at the lower

  parts of me.

  “Oh. No. I was going to go change first.”

  I ran upstairs and did that.

  * * *

  When I got out onto the track for my 11:00 a.m. tryout,

  there were two other guys there. Juniors, I think. So,

  older. I didn’t really know them. I mean, I’d seen them.

  But why would juniors want to be anywhere near a mere

  freshman like me?

  We took our places with one of them on either side of

  me, which felt vaguely intimidating. There were starting

  blocks in place, and I’d never used them before. They

  looked simple enough, but a guy isn’t born knowing how

  to brace his body to push off against a thing like that.

  Looking back, I know I should have asked. But I was

  too embarrassed.

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  One of the guys, the one on my left, was staring

  straight ahead down the track, perfectly focused. All ser-

  ious intensity. The other guy was watching me struggle

  with the blocks and my starting position, snickering.

  The coach made short work of that. He stepped up

  from behind us and whacked Snicker Boy on the back of

  the head with the flat of his open hand.

  “Ow!” the guy said, and rubbed the spot where he’d

  been struck.

  “Stop acting like you’re better than everybody else,

  and show him how to use the blocks.”

  So I took a quick lesson while the coach loomed over

  us to be sure there would be no more trouble. I could

  actually see the great shadow of him falling over us the

  whole time. My mind kept straying back to the lady in

  the cabin, as it had all morning, but I had to push the

  image away just long enough to do my run and do it right.

  We lined up, ready to go, but then the coach came

  around and adjusted my position some.

  He stepped back and raised his starter’s pistol. Fired it.

  The guys on either side of me launched down the track.

  I stumbled badly.

  I was a good twenty feet behind them, but I knew I could

  find more inside myself. It was just a matter of wanting it, I think, for me. I had to want it so badly that I just did it, whether I was really able to do it or not. Sounds weird, but that’s how it felt. And I wanted it that day. Enough. Not

  because I liked the way I felt running on a track. Not because I wanted a place on the team. Because the guys who were

  beating me would still be snickering when they beat me, if

  they beat me, but just on the inside where Coach couldn’t

  see or hear it. Which meant nobody could stop them.

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  As I came around the bend I pulled close enough to

  reach my hand out to where I needed to be. I mean, I

  could’ve. I’m not saying I did.

  I barely made up the distance coming down the final

  stretch, running almost completely on heart.

  I could see the tape coming up, and my chest was not

  the closest to it, so I put on an extra surge. I passed Focus Guy, who had lost a step, pulled an inch or two ahead of

  Snicker Boy, and hit the tape.

  Then I slowed and stopped, and leaned on my knees,

  panting.

  “Okay, Painter,” Coach Haskell said. He had crossed

  the infield and was standing beside us at the finish line,

  staring at his stopwatch. “You’re on the team.”

  I straightened up and looked him right in the face. “I

  don’t want to be on the team,” I said. I was surprised to hear myself say it out loud. I tended to bow to authority

  at that age. But Connor was nowhere around to hurt.

  And I think it had not yet dawned on me that my tryout

  would be anything but a blessed flop.

  “Too bad,” he said. “Because you already are.”

  I shook my head and said no more about it. I knew it

  wouldn’t do any good. At least I had the whole summer

  to figure a way to wriggle out.

  “How long you been training?” Coach added.

  “Training? I’m not sure I really train. I just go out

  and run.”

  This time both boys sneered at me. They were standing

  behind the coach’s back, breathing hard. They laughed at

  me as though I had just said the stupidest thing imagin-

  able. But they were smart enough to do it silently.

  “How in the Sam Hill do you think a runner trains,”

  Coach bellowed, “if it’s not by going out and running?”

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  “Oh,” I said. “Okay. About two weeks, then.”

  Three mouths dropped open. The two boys shook

  their heads and turned away from me, shuffling off to-

  ward the locker room. Focus Guy shot me a dirty look

  over his shoulder.

  Coach and I just stood a moment, staring at each other.

  “Did those other guys not make the team?” I asked,

  hoping to understand what I had done to offend them.

  “Those other guys have been on the team for more

  than a year,” he said. “You just beat my two best guys.

  On a couple of weeks of training.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  My dream of wriggling out of the commitment more

  or less abandoned me in that moment.

  * * *

  I ran back to the cabin the minute school let out, my

  stomach jangling from my track experience and lack of

  sleep, but more from the general awfulness of my morn-

  ing. And the not knowing. The not knowing how awful

  things might have turned out to be while I was gone.

  The dogs were lying on the porch, listless. They tapped

  their tails on the boards when they saw me but didn’t

  bother getting up.

  The door was ajar. I could see about a three-inch gap,

  through which I could look in at the unmade bed on the

  other side of the single room.

  I stepped up and knocked, just to be sure there was

  nobody there.

  Nothing.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing.

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  I looked at the dogs and they looked back. Their eyes

  told me that my morning had been a damned picnic

  compared to theirs.

  I wondered if they had eaten.

  I
walked around the property for a few minutes.

  Taking stock. There was an old-fashioned well that worked

  on a hand pump. A tiny building that I realized with a

  shudder must be an outhouse. A shed that I was hoping

  might contain dog food, but which—when I cautiously

  opened the door—only contained tools and such. There

  was an aluminum water bucket against the side of the

  doghouse, its handle secured on a hook so the dogs

  couldn’t upend it. It was less than half full. They each

  had a plastic food dish in front, but both bowls were

  dead empty.

  I carried the bucket over to the well and hung the

  handle on the pump nozzle, and cranked until it filled

  up with water. It wasn’t easy. I was out of breath by the

  time I was done. I figured that middle-aged lady must

  have arms like a wrestler and the stamina of a mule.

  I secured the bucket back into place and decided the

  dog food must be inside the cabin.

  I rapped on the door again, just to be safe, then pushed

  the door partway open and peered in. It wasn’t much for

  a person to call home. A woodstove right in the middle

  for heat. An ancient cookstove, a porcelain sink standing

  free. Nothing much in the way of counters. A little half

  refrigerator like the kind people put in their travel trailers or fallout shelters.

  There was a floor-to-ceiling cupboard that looked like

  a pantry, so I walked to it and opened the door. I found

  canned soup, and rice, and spaghetti, and tins of pork and

  beans. And a fifty-pound sack of dog kibble.

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  The dog food had a saucepan inside to be used as a

  scoop, so I figured that was more or less what each dog

  was supposed to eat. I filled the pan. Carried it out and

  poured it into a bowl. Repeated.

  The dogs paid no attention to the food, and very little

  attention to me. They were caught up in full-on mourn-

  ing. It was written all over their faces.

  As I left, I tried to shut the door behind me. But its

  lock had been broken, and part of the door frame molding

  that held it had been torn away. It gave me a little shiver, because I realized the sheriff’s guys had literally broken

  down the door to get the lady out of here.

  I found a dish towel hanging over the oven handle

  of the cookstove. I folded it up and used it to wedge the

  door shut.

  I looked at the dogs and their full bowls of food and

  realized I’d have to come back before sundown to see if

  they’d eaten. If not, I’d have to take up the food over-

  night. Otherwise it would attract raccoons and heaven

  only knows what other variety of wildlife, and the last

  thing I wanted was the dogs fighting it out with raccoons.

  They could be vicious little beggars.

  The dogs looked back at me with eyes that said, “Can

  you believe how bad this is? Have you ever seen a day

  this awful in your life?”

  “I’ll come back,” I said. “You won’t go hungry.”

  They turned their eyes away and set their chins down

  on their paws, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that they

  were disappointed in me. Because they couldn’t seem to

  make me grasp that food was not the problem.

  I walked home. I did not run.

  * * *

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  When I got home, my mom was not there. She’d left a

  note on the table that said, “Gone grocery shopping. Eat

  cookies.”

  Under the note was a small dessert plate with six

  chocolate chip cookies covered in plastic wrap. I shoved

  one into my mouth whole and dialed the sheriff’s office

  again while I chewed and swallowed.

  “Taylor County Sheriff,” the same high voice said.

  “Hi. It’s Lucas Painter. Can I please talk to Deputy

  Warren again?”

  “Hold please,” she chirped in a singsong voice.

  Then Warren was on the line. Just like that. With

  hardly any pause.

  “What can I do for ya, son?”

  “I just wondered how she was. Is she okay?”

  “Not so okay,” he said. “No.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Overdose. Prescription meds.”

  “You mean, like … accidentally?”

  “Son, I have no idea,” he said, in a voice sharp enough

  to close off that area of questioning. “But I will tell you this. You did a damn good thing to call it in. She’d gone

  over into a coma, and if you hadn’t found her, I can’t say

  I’d like her chances much. You probably saved her life.

  Or … well, what I mean is, if she survives, it’s because

  of you. So tell me something. How exactly did you hap-

  pen to be out there in the middle of nowhere to notice?”

  “Oh,” I said. “I was going there to see those dogs. I

  really like those dogs.”

  “Folks won’t get you a dog of your own?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, if you like ’em so much, you might want to

  go by and see they got food and water.”

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  “I already did.”

  A long silence on the line. Then I asked the obvious

  question. Even though I already knew he didn’t have my

  answer.

  “Is she gonna be okay?”

  “Son, I may be many things, but one thing I’m not is

  a doctor. You’ll have to call over to the County General

  Hospital for information like that.”

  “I forgot her name already.”

  “Zoe Dinsmore is who she is.”

  It was a strange sentence, and he said it in a strange

  way. As though being Zoe Dinsmore were truly note-

  worthy in some way, and the way did not sound good.

  There was subtext. But I could not imagine how to dive

  into it. There seemed to be no entry point.

  I thanked him and hung up the phone. Then I got

  the number for County General, and called, and got

  exactly nowhere. They wouldn’t tell me a thing about

  her condition because I wasn’t family to Zoe Dinsmore.

  I wondered if anybody was.

  * * *

  I had to run back out there at sunset, lock up the uneaten

  dog food in the shed, then go back to my life not knowing.

  I had to go to bed that night not knowing.

  I thought it would be a wonderful thing to have

  saved somebody’s life. Something I could feel good about.

  Something even most grown-ups couldn’t say.

  But I didn’t know if I had saved a life or not. For that,

  the person you tried to save has to survive.

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  CHAPTER THREE

  Any Family

  I was out at the cabin again at dawn, putting down kibble

  that I knew the dogs wouldn’t eat.

  They were lying on the porch, heads down but eyes

  open, as if they had no choice but to feel every terrible

  thing. I guess they didn’t have a choice. They were dogs.

  I was a human boy with a variety of methods to avoid

  the emotions I didn’t care to feel. Yet those options seemed to fail me in that moment.

  I found myself lying on the porch beside
them, sharing

  their sense of despair. I wondered what would happen to

  them if the lady never came back.

  I would have taken them home with me in a heart-

  beat if my parents would’ve allowed it, but I knew they

  never would. Maybe they could keep living out here in

  their doghouse, and I could come out and feed them and

  care for them and run with them. But I couldn’t shake

  the sense that I would come out one day and find that

  someone had swept them away. Animal control, or some

  member of the lady’s family. Which made me wonder

  again if the lady had any family.

  I picked up my head and looked the female dog in the

  eye. She tilted her head slightly without lifting her chin

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  off the porch boards, her signal that she didn’t understand

  what I wanted.

  I pushed to my feet against the boards and took off

  running. Just four or five long strides. Then I stopped and

  looked back over my shoulder at her. She allowed me to

  catch her eye, then carefully averted her gaze.

  I walked back and sat on the edge of the porch and

  stroked her silky ears.

  “Worth a try, I guess,” I said.

  I patted the boy dog on the head and he sighed.

  I wanted to tell them something encouraging. That

  she’d come home. That they’d be okay. But I couldn’t

  bring myself to lie to them. So I had nothing.

  * * *

  My mom was in the kitchen when I got home. Doing

  up a few dishes. Probably the ones from the breakfast

  she undoubtedly would have made for my father before

  sending him off to work. I was surprised that any dishes

  had survived that much time around my parents. Or,

  anyway, that was the dark joke I told myself in my head.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked me, sounding only

  half-interested.

  She was wearing a faded flower-print apron. Her

  hair had been pinned up but was now trailing down in

  a number of places.

  “I like to go out and run in the morning.”

  “Since when?”

  “Couple weeks now.”

  “Why haven’t I noticed?”

  Good question, I thought. Why haven’t you?

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  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Probably because I went right off to school afterward.”

  “Oh. Right. Have you had breakfast?”

  “I could eat,” I said, to avoid telling her that I had

  scarfed down a ton of cereal but I still wanted more food.

  “Sit down,” she said. “I’ll make you some eggs.”