Sap Rising by Christine Lincoln

Author:Christine Lincoln
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307427601
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Boag reached the narrow road aptly named Schoolyard Lane just as the smaller children were arriving. Their glances seemed an accusation as they skipped by him to the one-room schoolhouse nestled at the end of the path. A congregation of children had already gathered around, awaiting the bell that would tell them it was time to begin their day. But Boag couldn’t bring himself to follow them in all their cheerful, childish blindness.

Instead he turned and headed back in the direction he had come from. He knew only that he could not stomach the thought of sitting in the rear of the classroom, alone and left behind. Nor could he go down to the woods and wait until it was time for school to let out; it was too damp and cold for that.

He crossed the two dirt roads that marked Grandville’s main intersection, praying that no one’s mother or father would see him as he made his way to the westernmost end of the Mason property, the side that faced the Fullers’ place. That way he could sneak back unseen, letting the house block his approach from his father’s view in the fields.

Boag stood on top of the slight incline of land that overlooked the farmhouse and the now-empty garage and realized his mother had left to get her hair done. And before he could talk himself out of what he was about to do, he ran at full speed for the garage, which was really nothing more than a shack of weathered planks. He hid his books and lunch in the mulberry bushes and pulled his bike free from the dark, musty shed. He pushed the bicycle into the front yard, all the while checking to make sure his father hadn’t come around the side of the house. Once he had cleared the end of the driveway, Boag jumped on his bike and took off for Ariel, the next town over from Grandville. He needed to see his uncle Jimmy, who owned a hardware store there. Boag would tell his uncle about this mess with his parents and the deer, and his uncle would tell him how a person could wake up one day and find his whole world somehow changed.

He had never defied his parents so openly. And none of the other boys had ever dared, either. Boag saw a car at the end of Charles Way; his stomach skipped in fear of his being seen. He couldn’t afford for that to happen, because then his parents would know all about his adventure even before he could make it back home: word spread like seeds on a strong wind in a place like Grandville. So he kept his eyes trained on the path ahead and behind. Anytime he saw anything that resembled a car or truck, he jumped off his bike and crouched within the thicket of bushes and rows of cornfields that lined the edge of the road.

Boag made the whole trip like this, stopping every few minutes, too, to hide from maples that looked like scrawny Mrs.

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