Luke waited until the sounds of sleep overtook the house. Then he rolled his skateboard from under his bed, popped the screen out of his window, and dropped his skateboard onto the ground. He climbed out after it and stood there for a minute outside his bedroom window, listening to see if he’d woken up his mom or Murphy. But he didn’t hear a sound. His mom was a deep sleeper, and at night, Murphy rarely budged from his dog bed. Luke started walking gingerly over grass still wet from the sprinkler, stopping to give the tire swing in the backyard a push. Its chain creaked in the quiet night, and there was something so lonely about it swinging like that, without anyone on it, that he looked away and kept walking. He cut through the Hansons’ backyard and looked reflexively at the window he knew was Annabelle’s. Her lights were off. No surprise there. She’d probably been asleep for hours.
He continued on to the next backyard, and the one after that, and the one after that, using the moonlight to navigate an entire block of backyards, edging along shrubbery, swerving around children’s toys—a bicycle, a Hula-Hoop, a wading pool—and slowing down outside the houses where he knew dogs lived. At the last house, the Kimballs’, he skirted around the side yard to the front and then, still carrying his skateboard with him—its wheels were too loud for a residential street—headed down the sidewalk. This part would be trickier. The other two times he’d done this, he hadn’t seen any cars. But you never knew. Still, he figured if he listened carefully, he’d be able to hear one in time to hide behind a tree before it drove by.
As it turned out, there were no cars, and no lights on in any of the houses, either, except occasionally a faint light in an upstairs bedroom, or a TV on in an otherwise dark living room. When he came to the end of that block, he turned onto the first of two commercial streets that anchored the town. “Downtown Butternut,” his mom had heard someone call it after they’d moved here; at the time they’d both thought that was funny. First he walked down Main Street with its painted wooden benches, striped awnings, and window boxes filled with flowers. His mom had once described Butternut’s Main Street as “circa 1950,” but he’d forgotten what “circa” meant. Then he turned down Glover Street, staying close to the buildings as he passed a series of businesses: a pet groomer’s, a chiropractic clinic, a knitting store. Another block of this and the buildings grew farther apart, the businesses bigger. He passed a plant nursery, an electric co-op, and an auto body garage. Finally he turned onto Northern Lights Road, dropped his skateboard, stepped onto it and, pushing off the concrete, cruised down the sidewalk.
The sky seemed to open up above him, black and starry, with a big yellow moon hanging low and looking like the rubber ball he’d seen lying in the wet grass of someone’s backyard tonight. He pulled a deep breath into his lungs and felt the wind on his face, the board humming beneath his feet. It felt good to be out here after being inside all day, grounded because of his suspension. And he could have kept going, too, all the way out of town, but he knew the longer he stayed out the more likely he was to get caught. So when he reached the recreation center, which took up a whole block on one side of the street, he stopped, tried the gate and, when he realized it was locked, tossed his skateboard over the fence and went clambering after it. So much for keeping people out, he thought, getting back on his skateboard and cutting through the parking lot to the back of the building, where there was a playground, a grassy lawn with some picnic tables on it, and a sand volleyball court.
The volleyball court was the stupidest thing ever. Back when he was in sixth grade, his mom had been one of the parents who’d wanted the town to build a skate park here, but in the end, the town council had decided it was too dangerous and put in a sand volleyball court instead. Nobody ever used it. It wasn’t even near an actual beach. But that was a small town for you, he guessed. You had to make your own fun. It was why he liked hanging out with his friend Van. He knew how to have fun. And plan stuff. They were always talking about things they were going to do. Places they were going to go. Like tomorrow, for instance, Luke and Van and Van’s friend J.P. were going to do something cool. Something big. Thinking about it, though, made Luke feel kind of nervous, so he thought about what it was like being out here alone at night instead. He liked it, he decided. It was weird, but it was weird in a good way.
He reached the end of the parking lot and, picking up his skateboard, walked across the lawn to one of the picnic tables. He stowed his board under it, climbed up on it and, after hesitating for a second, lay down on it, and looked up at the sky. It made him feel small, just for a second. He remembered that when they’d moved here from the city, he’d been surprised at how much bigger the sky seemed, how easy it was to see the stars. He tried to pick out some of the constellations now, but he could find only the Big Dipper. Pop-Pop had known all the constellations: their names, where they were, the stories behind them. How had he known so much? Luke wondered. How had he had time to learn it all? And he didn’t know just about stars, either. He’d been a structural engineer; he’d known about building things, too, big things like bridges and tunnels and roads.
Luke had that feeling now. That feeling like something was swelling up in his chest. He got that feeling, sometimes, when he thought about Pop-Pop. His mom was always trying to make him talk about him, like that would make him feel better or something. And it wasn’t like he’d forgotten about him, anyway. He hadn’t. Like now, he wished he were here. Not right this second, but the last couple of days, when he’d gotten suspended and his mom had made such a big deal out of it. Pop-Pop had understood how to calm his mom down, how to make her laugh at stuff, even stuff she was upset about. Who cared about him smoking under the bleachers, anyway, other than the principal, Mr. Gilmore? Even the PE teacher, Mr. Barry, who’d found them smoking, didn’t really seem that shocked. It was more like he was pretending to be, because he knew he should be. And here was the thing that was so unfair: Mr. Gilmore smoked! It was like this big secret that everyone already knew. Once when he’d given Annabelle and two of her friends from the volleyball team a ride to one of their games, Annabelle had said his car positively reeked of cigarette smoke, and that his Christmas tree air freshener thingy had only made the smell worse.
Luke took a deep breath, then another one. He was mad now, and that bubble in his chest was still there. He knew if it got hard enough, it would start to hurt, and worse, it would make him cry, which he hated doing. Because what exactly was the point of crying? For a little while he lay there and breathed, and didn’t think about anything, and then he thought about his dad. It was hard to think about someone when you didn’t know that much about him. He didn’t even know what his dad looked like, except what his mom had told him, and it hadn’t been enough, except the part about him having one blue eye and one brown eye. That was cool, and sometimes Luke imagined that when he did find him, in Alaska, which was where his mom had met him, that was how he would know him, because how many people had two different-colored eyes?
Luke yawned. For the first time tonight, he felt tired. He took another deep breath. The bubble was almost gone now. It wasn’t going to hurt, after all. He’d think about his dad and Alaska on the way home, he decided, rolling off the table and grabbing his skateboard out from under it. And he’d have the whole town to himself while he was doing it.