John Brandon - Citrus County

Mr. Hibma was sure Toby was lying. Toby was testing Mr. Hibma, seeing if he would call him on his fake history, but there was also a chance Toby didn’t know a thing about his father’s family. Toby may never have met the man. Or maybe Toby’s history was nothing anyone would want to know. Maybe making a history up was the wisest option. Well, Mr. Hibma would give Toby an A+.

“My father was a snake researcher who drove a big Cadillac,” Toby said. “He met my mother while driving across the country. He only slept with her because he’d promised himself he’d sleep with a woman every night of his road trip, and she was the only woman not spoken for in Farmington, New Mexico.”

Toby sat and Mr. Hibma replaced him in front of the class. He told the kids to give themselves a hand, then to line up and receive a poster.

“I’ve got Mermaids ,” he said. “ Fletch II . Except you, Thomas.”

Thomas, a kid with a widow’s peak whose parents farmed fancy tomatoes, gaped at Mr. Hibma.

“In your notes you had pages printed from the internet. I could see the site info at the top and bottom. You’ll be getting a C. Everyone else gets an A-. Toby, you get an A+. Best presentation of the year.”

Alone in the classroom, Mr. Hibma returned to his binders. He wondered if they would take the job away from him if the team performed dismally enough. He wondered if he could be stripped of his whistle for encouraging dirty play. He wondered if he was expected to hug the girls, if he was supposed to give pre-game talks in the girls’ locker room. He hoped they were all ugly; that would make things easier. He flipped the last page of the last binder, which detailed something UNLV used to run called the amoebae defense. He found a single folded sheet tucked in the binder’s pocket. The paper was stiff. In red ink were the words twin towers, and a game plan that called for the other team’s good player to be triple-teamed while the two remaining defenders stayed under the basket, one on each block, to rebound the misses of the other team’s bad players. Hyenas and Twin Towers required two enormous girls who didn’t mind being the girls who stood under the basket. Mr. Hibma wondered if the previous coach had ever implemented this strategy. There were two girls at the school who fit the bill, the girls who’d failed, who threw the shot and the discus. Mr. Hibma liked the idea of a game plan. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had one, for anything.

Toby chose Friday. He wasn’t shying away or questioning himself. Friday evening was the correct evening and now it was here and Toby found that he was up to it. This didn’t surprise him. In fact, he left Uncle Neal’s way too early and had to wander circles around the woods. He put his supplies down and sat near a clotted creek and watched tadpoles dart about. He picked up a handful of dead leaves and smelled them; he didn’t know why. Clouds were gathering tentatively. Toby picked some berries off a bush and ate them and they were dry as sand.

He made his way to the railroad tracks and progressed one tie at a time. The tracks went to places Toby would never see. They went past herds of thin, dusty cows who must’ve believed they were the last of their kind. The tracks wound past landfills swarmed with thousands of vultures. The tracks cut through miles and miles of peaceful palmetto beds. They skirted a subdivision full of gleeful young couples, came together with other tracks, found the shadows of the old factory buildings where stray dogs crossed back and forth. The tracks veered off when they neared the bay and the long bridge where every other week someone jumped off and hoped to die on impact with the water, hoped not to be alive long enough to have to worry about drowning. The tracks went on forever, under eerie lightning unaccompanied by thunder.

As night fell, Toby sat himself down in a copse of struggling cypress trees near the Register house, the dark form of the school looming. Toby hoped it was going to rain. A good rainfall would wash away tracks and obscure scents. It would dampen the spirits of the searchers. The shoes Toby had on were three sizes too big — gray Velcro sneakers that all the stores carried. He was wearing four pairs of socks. He carried a rucksack with air holes poked in it and a roll of duct tape, with notches cut into one edge at even lengths. He had a side view of the house; he could see the front porch, where father and older sister and kid sister were having a grand and cozy old time, and he could monitor the bedrooms, which were in the back of the house. He knew he had to stay open to the prospect that a chance to take Kaley might not shape up. He couldn’t force it. He had to keep in mind that the house might have an alarm, or motion lights, or a dog.

It was Register family board game night. It was an adorable little scene and it could have included Toby. He could’ve been sitting in that fourth chair. Shelby had invited him. She’d matched his stride on the way to lunch and wrapped her thin fingers around his arm and told him that if he came over and hung out and played a few games, then her dad would let them stay up and watch cable. “Cable,” she’d said, ribbing him. “It’ll be a whole new world for you.” She’d told Toby they might be able to take a walk and be alone. Then she’d tossed her hair and shuffled off in her boots, leaving Toby to stand there rubbing his biceps like a little kid who’d just gotten a flu shot, like Shelby’s fingerprints had been burned into his tender flesh, like he had no idea who Shelby really was. Toby had felt angry, toyed with. Shelby had been so sure of herself. She’d walked right up to him. Nobody walked up to Toby. It was absurd, the thought of Toby included in this kind of scene, playing board games and giggling, chumming around with someone’s dad. He’d done the right thing, telling Shelby he couldn’t make it. He had his own porch. He had his own plans. He didn’t want to hear anyone’s life story or receive any advice. That’s what dads did, as far as Toby could tell; they told old stories and dished out advice.

Toby watched the Registers play cards with an oversized deck. They played a game which required them to make sketches, then a game with a plastic bubble that popped the dice. The father was working on a pitcher of something yellow, and kept threading his fingers behind his head like a businessman reviewing robust profits. Shelby was running things. She’d bring out a box and set everything up, instruct Kaley and let her win, place everything back in the box, stand and hike up her army pants, then go in for another game. Toby wished Shelby had never moved to his county. He was too thirsty to spit. He’d filled a thermos with soda but had left it sitting on the kitchen counter. Toby could see his uncle discovering the thermos, taking it out to his rocking chair, and sipping it for hours. Being thirsty was no big deal. Toby could handle thirst. He could handle the nighttime noises of the woods, the spider that had dropped on the back of his neck and had him feeling crawly all over. He removed his shoes and tapped the sand out of them, then put them back on as snug as he could, tugging the Velcro strips. He reached into the rucksack and put his hand on the tape.

The father loosed a yawn. He spoke to Shelby and she took Kaley inside. In a moment, the nearest bedroom lit up. The father, in his seat on the porch, picked up the pitcher and drained the last of the yellow beverage. Maybe he’d stay out awhile, leave the girls sleeping inside. Toby didn’t even know if Shelby and Kaley shared a room. His lungs felt made of glass, fogged. He flexed his knees. This was it. Toby felt strange, like he had at the track tryout. He was watching himself from above.

The light in the bedroom died, and after a time Shelby came out onto the porch and handed her father a beer. Kaley was in there, in that dark bedroom. She was in there alone. Toby folded his rucksack under his arm. His courage had flagged and roared back and flagged and now it was back again. He did not feel alone. He felt egged on by something greater. It wasn’t Kaley’s fault, and it wasn’t even Toby’s. He would be different now; he would be new. He would possess a secret that put him above his uncle and his teachers and Coach Scolle and all the convenience store clerks and all the nameless punks of Citrus County who thought knocking over mailboxes and stealing cigarettes would save them.