Luke stood up and threw the stone he was holding overhand into the Kawashiwi River. It was a good throw, he thought. The stone almost made it to the other side before it disappeared into the dark water with a little plink. He heard it from all the way over here. Neither Van nor J.P. said anything, though. Van was eating Cheetos; J.P. was smoking a Camel.
Luke sat back down on the riverbank. It was steep here, about a hundred yards from the Route 10 overpass where they’d spray-painted the graffiti. Their tagging was gone now; someone had cleaned it off. Van and J.P. were supposed to have done it for their community service, but Officer Sawyer had decided it was too dangerous; he’d told them they’d have to volunteer at a food bank sometime instead. It didn’t sound that bad to Luke, but J.P. had still made a big deal out of it, like it would be so terrible to have to put cans of peas on a shelf or something.
Luke heard a rumble of thunder in the distance. There was a storm coming; he’d seen the weather alert on Margot’s iPhone. It was why she’d let him leave Nature Camp early today. Usually they did an outdoor activity before pickup—Margot liked to say she was doing the parents a favor by making their kids run around and tire themselves out—but today she’d been worried about lightning, and she’d had them all sit inside and watch a nature film called Wings of Life instead. Luke knew this movie. It was about butterflies, hummingbirds, and bees, and he’d seen it about five times when he was a camper there. Right as it was starting, though, Margot came over to him and whispered, “Go. Now. Before you die of boredom.” And Luke had laughed. Because Margot was cool that way. He’d never tell Van or J.P. this, but he liked her. Liked hanging out with her. She was pretty old—in her midthirties, at least—and she wore socks with her sandals, which made Luke feel kind of embarrassed for her, but still, she could be fun.
After he’d left the Nature Museum, he’d gotten on his skateboard and headed over to the library, but then he’d changed his mind and went to the Quick and Convenient for a Sprite. That was where he’d seen Van and J.P. They were just kind of hanging out there. J.P. thought Jody, the girl who worked the register, liked him. But Luke doubted it. He’d seen them together, and he thought she was actually kind of rude to him. Luke didn’t know, though. Maybe this was how some girls flirted. Anyway, Van and J.P. had already been there for a while, because when Luke paid for his Sprite and left, they left, too, and Van asked him if he wanted to go down to the river with them. Luke still had a while before he had to be at the library, so he’d said okay, and he’d skateboarded, and they’d ridden their bikes, and here they were. It had been a little weird at first. It had been three weeks since Luke had seen them, and J.P. kept making fun of Luke’s “mommy,” and saying how Luke had to report to her all the time and get her permission to do everything. Luke had stayed, though, because J.P. had said he was going to leave soon to see Jody after her shift ended, and Luke thought maybe then he could talk to Van about other stuff, like his dad and Alaska and the plans he’d been making to find him there.
Luke picked up another stone and started to throw it, but some kayakers were passing, so he waited. J.P. and Van talked about how cool their Fourth of July was; they’d set off a bunch of their own fireworks on the town beach and stayed out until two A.M. Luke, on the other hand, had to work yesterday at the Nature Museum picnic, and then he’d seen the official town fireworks with his mom and the rest of Butternut at the fairgrounds last night. He’d been sort of half listening to what Van and J.P. were talking about. But he heard them saying a name now, Michael Grey, and he paid attention. He was the kid Van had gotten into a fight with, and he and J.P. talked about him a lot, about how much they hated him, and about how they were going to steal his bike and everything. Luke didn’t really like him, either. He was kind of a bully, and his family had a lot of money, so he was always bragging about all the things he had. Like, once he got a jet ski for his birthday. There weren’t that many rich people in Butternut, so basically, Michael Grey’s family was it.
“He’s not even going to be at home,” J.P. was saying. “My dad’s cousin is, like, their cleaning lady, and she says all their kids go to camp in the summer. Like, away to camp, where you stay overnight. Can you believe people actually do that? It’s like . . . what was that movie that was on the Disney Channel when I was, like, nine? What was that called?”
Camp Rock, Luke thought but didn’t say. He didn’t want to admit he’d ever heard of it before. Besides, he hadn’t told Van or J.P. yet, but he was going away to camp in about ten days. Not that North Woods Adventures was an overnight camp, because it wasn’t, not exactly. But it was sort of similar, and he knew they would think it sounded lame. Van and J.P. would never backpack or go hiking and canoeing or anything like that. The only thing they thought was cool was hanging out and playing video games. Still, his mom had been pushing this North Woods thing pretty hard, and even though he hadn’t said it to her, it did look like it might be kind of cool.
Now Luke threw the stone he’d been holding, but it didn’t go that far this time. Should he tell Van he was going away, he wondered, looking for another stone, or should he just leave and not say anything? Maybe Van wouldn’t even notice he was gone. It was only for a couple of weeks.
“So, what are you saying?” Van asked J.P. then, stuffing more Cheetos into his mouth.
“I’m saying that no one is home there in the summer, not during the day,” J.P. said. “The loser kids are at summer camp, the dad’s at work, and the mom does stuff. She, like, volunteers or something.”
“And you think we can just walk in there and take them?” Van asked.
“Yeah, pretty much. They keep them in the barn. And they leave the keys in them. I mean, who’s that stupid? Who leaves keys in an ATV? You’re, like, asking people to take them.”
“I still don’t get it, though,” Van said. “How do we take them?”
“We just drive them out of the barn,” J.P. explained. “Nobody sees us because nobody’s there to see us. We drive it around on the ATV trails until it runs out of gas, and then we kind of, you know, wreck it and leave it. That’s it. They’ll get it back eventually.”
Luke shook his head just a little bit. He didn’t mean for J.P. to see it, but he did.
“What?” J.P. said to him. “What’s your problem?”
“Nothing,” Luke said, picking up another stone. “I just think . . .” He didn’t throw the stone this time; he just kind of tossed it. He didn’t want it to go far. He wanted to hear it land in the water. He liked that plink sound.
“You just think what?” J.P. challenged.
“I just think there’s a lot of stuff that could go wrong,” Luke said finally.
“Like . . . ?”
Like everything, he thought, but what he said was, “Like, how do you know the barn’s not locked? Or doesn’t have an alarm or, like, a security camera?”
“Who puts a security camera in a barn?” J.P. said scornfully.
“The same person who puts an ATV in there,” Luke shot back. He didn’t tell Van and J.P. this, but he’d been there before, to the Greys’ place. Their Little League team used to go there for barbecues after games. And here was the thing: the Greys’ barn wasn’t really a barn. It only looked like one on the outside. On the inside, it was more like a garage. And there weren’t just ATVs in there. There was tons of other stuff, too, like snowmobiles and jet skis.
Luke thought J.P. was going to try to get into an argument with him, but all he did was put his cigarette out in the dirt and say, “Then don’t go with us, if you’re so scared. Go have . . . Popsicle time at your little day care center.” Then he turned away from Luke and slid his phone out of his pocket. “Do you want to see a picture of Jody where her boobs are kind of hanging out?” he asked Van.
“Sure,” Van said cheerfully. He wiped his hands, which were covered with Cheetos dust, on his pants, and took the phone from J.P. “They look nice,” he said, staring at the picture. “Do you want to . . . ?” he asked Luke, holding the phone out to him, but Luke shook his head. He didn’t think Jody was that hot, and right now, he hated J.P. anyway.
Luke watched as Van handed the phone back and crumpled up the empty Cheetos bag. He ate a lot of junk food, but he was still always hungry. Luke wondered about him sometimes. He was so skinny, you could count his ribs, and so pale it looked like he didn’t even go outdoors, even though he went outside sometimes when he wasn’t playing video games. Still, did anyone worry about him? Worry about stuff like whether he ate vegetables or went to bed or did his homework during the school year? Luke didn’t think so. Luke knew his mom didn’t like Van. Or she didn’t think she liked him. She didn’t know him. But she’d decided he was a bad influence on Luke. The truth was, though, Van wasn’t a bad person. He could be really nice. He just seemed like someone had . . . kind of forgotten about him.
Van and J.P. starting talking again about stealing one of the Greys’ ATVs, but Luke didn’t say anything. He just kept throwing stones. He didn’t think they were ever going to do it, anyway, but then, when they started talking about specific things, like days and times and what was the best route to take after they stole the ATV, he got kind of nervous. They were talking about it like it was definitely going to happen. He started to think about leaving. He was getting that weird feeling he got in his stomach sometimes, mostly when he was worried about stuff.
“What do you say, Luke?” Van asked him now, surprising him. “Like, are you coming with us?”
“You mean, if you really do it?” Luke was looking for another stone to throw.
“I’ll do it if you do it,” Van said.
Luke looked at him, surprised. Was he serious? He was, he decided. Van was staring at Luke, waiting to see what he was going to say. Which was weird, because Van didn’t usually take things that seriously. It was one of the things Luke liked about him.
“Are you going to come or not?” Van asked in a real quiet way, like it was just the two of them talking and J.P. wasn’t even there.
“I . . . I don’t know. Do you, like, really want to?” Luke asked.
Van nodded. “I think it’d be cool.”
“But the thing is . . .” Luke said, rubbing some dirt off the stone he’d found. “If you get caught . . . it’s pretty serious. It’s a felony, I think.”
“What do you know about felonies?” J.P. interjected.
Luke shrugged. “Officer Sawyer. The day he picked us up, he told me about misdemeanors and felonies. Stealing an ATV, that would be a felony, probably. You could go to a juvenile detention center for that.”
“It’s called juvie,” J.P. sneered. “And why do you always have to talk like that? Like you just go around reading books all the time?”
Luke ignored him, but his face felt hot. God, he hated J.P. He wished he’d leave already and go see Jody. But Van acted like he hadn’t even heard J.P. He kept talking to Luke like it was just the two of them. “I don’t think we’d get caught,” he said. “And if we did, I don’t think it’d be that big a deal. We’d just say we were messing around.”
I don’t think the police would see it that way, Luke thought, but he didn’t say anything. He kept looking at the rock in his hand.
“Come on, let’s do it,” Van said, giving him a friendly push on the shoulder.
Still Luke said nothing. He was thinking about Pop-Pop. Most of the time he tried not to think about him. Most of the time he just kind of pushed him out of his head. Because what, really, did thinking about him do, other than make him feel worse? Now he let himself think about him, though. About a conversation they’d had. They’d so many of these over the years, and the good thing about them was . . . they just happened. He and Pop-Pop just talked. Pop-Pop hadn’t lectured him the way Officer Sawyer and his guidance counselor did. Pop-Pop hadn’t told him what to do or what not to do. He let him figure it out for himself. Sometimes, when they were doing something, like fishing, or working on Luke’s model town, or just walking someplace, Luke would ask him a question, and Pop-Pop would tell him what he thought. Like once, Luke had told him about a bully who was in his third-grade class. He wasn’t bullying Luke—he was bullying another kid, and Luke felt bad for that kid. He’d told their teacher, but she hadn’t really done anything about it, and the truth was, Luke didn’t want to do anything about it, either, at least not if it meant getting in a fight with the bully. Plus, all of the other kids were going along with it. Anyway, he’d told Pop-Pop about this, and Pop-Pop had said something like, “Luke, I can’t tell you what to do. You’ll have to learn to listen to yourself. You already know what’s right. It’s who you are. It’s how you’re made. Sometimes, maybe, you’ll get confused about it, but the more you listen to yourself, the more you’ll hear that voice inside you, telling you what’s right or wrong. When you really know what that voice is saying, what other people think about you won’t matter as much.”
Luke threw the stone he was holding. It plinked into the water. The sky was getting darker. The water looked almost black. He heard thunder again. It didn’t seem closer yet, but it was a long, slow roll this time.
“I’m not gonna do it,” he said suddenly, turning to Van. “The other stuff we did”—he meant the smoking and the tagging—“that was different. We didn’t, like, hurt anyone. But this . . . I don’t want to steal things, even from people I don’t like.”
Van looked away from him and shrugged, but J.P. scowled at him.
“I told you we shouldn’t tell him about it,” he said to Van angrily. “I told you he’s only going to snitch on us.”
“I’m not going to snitch,” Luke said, getting up. He saw the first raindrops on the water, and in the distance, he saw lightning. He started walking up the riverbank, but J.P. caught up to him, put his hand on his shoulder, and got his face really close to his, so close that Luke could smell cigarettes on his breath. “Remember, snitches get stitches,” he said to Luke.
He pushed J.P.’s hand away and kept going. He thought J.P. would follow him and start a fight, but he didn’t. When Luke got to the place where he’d left his skateboard and they’d left their bicycles, near the road but behind a tree, he stopped and turned back. They were still sitting there like nothing had happened. Like it wasn’t even starting to rain.
“Van,” he called down. “Are you coming?”
Van didn’t turn around or say anything.
“Get lost, loser,” J.P. called up.
Luke grabbed his skateboard and carried it over to the road. He got on it and pushed off, hard. And as he headed into town, he started shivering, even though the rain wasn’t that cold.