Dead Ends by Erin Jade Lange Read Free Book Online Page B

you saw him?”
    â€œAt home,” Billy said. “A couple months ago. Or …” He screwed up his face, thinking. “Maybe a lot of months ago.”
    â€œDidn’t you just move here?” I asked.
    Billy went back to flipping the pages of his atlas. “We went some other places first.”
    â€œSo your dad’s not back in—where did you say? Oregon?”
    Billy shook his head. “No. I called our old house. I memorized the number. But it’s someone else’s number now.”
    â€œCell phone?”
    A faint shade of pink filled Billy’s cheeks. “I don’t have it anymore.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œMom deleted it from my phone.”
    â€œOh! Nasty divorce or something?”
    I’d had a buddy go through that in junior high. His dad wouldn’t pay child support, so his mom stopped letting him see his dad on the weekends. He was the first of my friends to get booted from Twain over to the alternative school after the warden busted him with drugs.
    Billy picked at the corner of the atlas, ignoring me.
    I crossed my arms and tilted my face up to the sky. “Man, I know you want me to help you with this dad-hunt-whatever, but you have to at least give me a place to start.”
    Billy held up the atlas and finally met my eye. “Start here.”
    â€œMakes more sense to start in Oregon,” I said.
    â€œHe’s not there.”
    â€œYou’re so sure—”
    â€œEven Mom says he’s not there. She says he moved. And I know he would only move to one of
our
towns. But it wouldn’t be Boring, because Dad said he’d
never
live somewhere called
Boring
—”
    â€œWhat’s your dad’s name?” I asked.
    â€œPaul Drum.” He twisted his head to look at me, his eyes squinted. “Why?”
    â€œBecause we can look him up on the Internet—find out where he is.”
    Billy rolled his eyes. “Duh. I tried that.”
    â€œDude, I told you to stop saying ‘duh.’”
    â€œThere are, like, a billion people named Paul Drum,” he said. “And they’re all in Detroit or San Diego or places you’ve
heard
of. My dad would never live anywhere you’ve heard of.”
    â€œSo you haven’t even tried to call—”
    â€œNo. He’s not in those places.” Billy snapped the atlas shut and hugged it to his chest. “He’s in one of these places.”
    He rocked back and forth, hunched over the book.
    Instinctively, I reached out to pat his back. It was an awkward gesture, and my hand wasn’t used to it, so I hit him a little too hard, and he had to kick out a foot to keep from going headlong into the sandbox. I gripped the back of his shirt to pull him upright.
    â€œOkay, Billy D. If you say he’s in one of those funny-name places, that’s where he is.”
    When Billy looked up at me with a small smile, I didn’t regret lying to him. If it made the kid feel better, then let him think his dad was hiding in that atlas.
    It had been a long time since I’d scoured old photo albums looking for shots of me as a baby in some guy’s—
any
guy’s—arms and even longer since I’d entertained silly dreams of a dad showing up to claim me, but I still remembered what it felt like. And I couldn’t deny—back then, if I’d had an atlas, or any sort of treasure map that might help me find my dad, I would’ve clung to it, too.
    â€¢ • • X • • •
    The walk home felt longer after the fighting lesson, so about halfway between the playground and our street, we parked our butts on a bus stop bench, agreeing to let wheels carry us the rest of the way. A smelly drunk was slumped in the corner of the bus stop shelter, snoring loudly. I stared at him—like I stared at a lot of strangers—searching for something familiar.I always looked harder at the bums and thugs, afraid one of