The Day Before by Micol Ostow

Author:Micol Ostow [Ostow, Micol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781338289473
Google: u2FFDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B078TNHQXS
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2018-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

DILTON DOILEY’S FIELD NOTES:

A blood moon.

Tonight my Scouts will hike to our campgrounds under the light of a blood moon, a full lunar eclipse that paints the sky in muddy red streaks. And while the event has no astrological importance, to me it’s undeniably a harbinger. The people of Riverdale want to believe that no bad could ever happen here, despite the insistence that history has of proving us wrong. Evil doesn’t cease to exist merely because we refuse to see it. I learned that at too young an age.

My father said he was doing me a favor.

Before the favor, before things changed—before we learned how the world truly is—Dad was an Adventure Scout himself, growing up. He was our troop leader when I was young.

About eight years ago, we had our annual weekend camping trip. But he had an important business trip that week, so he couldn’t go. He left my uncle in charge of me for the weekend, and we all went out to Buffalo Flats as planned.

We spent the first day working on our adventure badges, doing arts and crafts, archery—simple stuff. The next day was the real event of the weekend—the annual whitewater rafting excursion. My uncle came with me in my raft.

It had been a long, snowy winter, and the river was full and fast. It was all we could do to stay upright. It was exhilarating, a huge rush—until …

We went over a giant rapid, one our guide didn’t know was there. In a moment, most of us were underwater. My head was spinning from whiplash. I yelled for my uncle, but couldn’t see him. It was all I could do to get to shore.

We couldn’t pull together a rescue attempt. We didn’t even have a rope—nobody had thought to bring one. Some Scouts we were.

My dad was … well, he’s not very emotional. But I could tell he was upset. He had lost his only brother. He was not going to lose me … No matter what it took.

“Son,” he said. “You will never be unprepared again.”

He meant it—never. Not for any of the inevitable horror that awaits us all.

And so, he trained me. A series of tests began. Hours, days, weeks spent alone together, Dad showing me all types of survivalist skills: knot tying, knife throwing, how to identify poisonous flora, how to purify any water source. How to spot a predator from any and every approach.

He even had me defusing IEDs—unsuccessfully.

“If that had been a real bomb, we’d both be dead,” he told me that time.

“I’m sorry. I can’t—” I was just a kid. I was terrified, ashamed. I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.

The “trials” kept escalating, until one day, we were leaving the grocery store. He handed me a necktie. “Put this over your eyes, son.”

We drove a long time. An hour, maybe two. I lost track. The asphalt and smoke in the air—smells of Riverdale, of the town—gradually faded away.

He took me out into the woods—so

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