Full Court Press by Todd Hafer

Author:Todd Hafer [Hafer, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, Book
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Keep up—will you, please?” Robyn called impatiently over her shoulder. “I’d like to get there before dark.”

Cody quickened his pace, trying to keep up with Robyn’s brisk steps without having to break into a jog. That would be uncool.

They had left downtown Grant—with its antique shops, shoe stores, donut shop, and Merv’s Men’s & Western Wear store—behind them. They were headed southeast, toward what Cody had heard people call “the wrong end of town.” As they moved, Cody noted how patches of crabgrass and weeds pushed their way up through cracks in the sidewalk. They walked past a pawn shop, a rent-to-own furniture store, and three consecutive boarded-up storefronts, which used to house a dry cleaner, a pipe and tobacco shop, and the Log Cabin Chinese Restaurant, which Dad could never mention without rolling his eyes.

Once they were past the El Dorado Motel, whose weather-beaten sign proclaimed “NO ACANC,” Cody and Robyn crossed the oil-stained asphalt of Chuck’s Used Cars and veered due east toward Clear Creek. They followed the creek as it meandered out of town and into a land of high weeds and thick trees. The aspen leaves had already turned. The brilliant rusts, gold, and red were fading, and soon the winter winds would strip the trees bare until they looked like white skeletons.

Suddenly, Robyn held up her right hand, like a scout in an old western movie. “Be quiet now,” she ordered.

“I haven’t said a word since we left the school,” Cody observed.

Robyn whipped her head around and narrowed her eyes at him.

Tentatively, he held up his fingers in a peace sign and gave her what he hoped was an endearing grin. She rolled her eyes, turned away, and resumed threading her way through a patch of tall wild grass. They crossed under Highway 7 and began a slow, steady descent. Cody had explored his share of Grant since moving there in second grade, but he was in unfamiliar territory now.

“Robyn—”

She turned to him and shushed him like a kindergarten teacher. “It’s over there,” she said quietly, “on the other side of the creek, about fifty yards north.”

Cody leaned forward, squinting his eyes, because that’s what those TV scouts seemed to do at times like this.

His eyes found it almost immediately—a battered yellow school bus, which looked as if it had been dropped from above into a clearing amid aspen trees and an assortment of mutant-sized weeds.

“What’s that bus doing here?” Cody asked.

“Serving as Greta’s home.”

Cody studied the scene. “Is it even legal to live like that?”

“I don’t know, idiot. But that’s not really the point, is it?”

“Why is she living out here?”

“It’s a long story. Greta won’t tell me all of it. Let’s just say it involves her mom’s suicide, her dad’s getting fired, and their house getting repossessed.”

Cody started to speak, but he was cut off by a sudden burst of robust barking. A thick-necked, mud-brown dog charged into view, ears flat against its huge skull.

Is that a Rottweiler or a pit bull? Cody wondered.

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