The Journey Back by Priscilla Cummings Page B

nearby tree. Piece of cake, I thought, untying the knot at the base of the tree and slowly letting the rope out. When the backpacks were on the ground I fumbled with the knot on the rope, but it was too complicated so I pulled out the knife I stole from the trucker, opened the big blade, and sawed through it.
    After pausing to listen again, I folded and slid the knife back in my pocket. I picked up one backpack and was about to explore what it had inside when I stepped on a big stick that snapped in half with a loud
crack!
    Immediately, I heard a voice from one tent—then two voices—then a click—then light spilled out of one of the other tents!
    Quickly, I put the backpack on, dashed for the bike, and hopped on.
    â€œHey!” someone called after me. “Stop!”
    I slammed my feet on the pedals and pedaled like a madman, twisting the shifter forward to put the bike into a harder gear so I could cover more ground. But the gears went crazy and the pedals spun around with no traction at all!
    â€œCome back, you thief!” one of the campers called out.
    Finally, the gears caught. I practically jumped on the pedals to get the bike going and pumped hard. Zipping into the black tunnel, I had to imagine the path when it disappeared. Imagining wasn’t good enough ’cause right away I smashed into the brick wall dripping with water and got scraped off the bike. I hit my head hard and sat on the ground, stunned.
    Forcing myself up, I grabbed the bike’s handlebars and started running while pushing the bike beside me. I kept it between me and the wooden railing, hoping the railing would stop me from falling into that murky canal.
    A little glimmer of light up ahead gave me something to aim toward. I hopped back on the bike and pedaled furiously again, flying out the other end of that tunnel like a guy whose pants were on fire.
    With only moonlight it’s a miracle I stayed on that towpath as long as I did. I leaned forward and kept pedaling. I covered a lot of ground this way, too—maybe as much as a mile—before the accident.
    I don’t know what I hit, but all at once I was off the towpath, in the air, and crashing hard against the ground. When I got my bearings I realized the backpack was gone and that in another inch I would have been over the edge into that stew pot of a canal.
    In a panic, I patted the ground all around me, found the backpack, and threw it back on. I lifted the bike by the handlebars, but when I hopped on it, it wouldn’t go and I could tell the front tire was punctured. That bike wasn’t going anywhere anymore. With both hands, I picked up the bike and heaved it deep into the brush. Then I took off running into the woods.
    I paused once to listen and when I heard voices and saw a tiny headlight approaching, I threw myself flat on the ground.
    Seconds seem like minutes when you got your face pressed into a bunch of dirt and wet plants that had who-knew-what kind of insects crawling all over them. But—this is a weird thing to say—I also kind of liked it. I bet the Marines did stuff like this all the time. It was a challenge, but it was saving me and I knew I could live through it—that I could
endure
it.
    Boy, and I knew that word
endure
. It was on a sixth-grade spelling test once.
Endure
means to “harden the heart . . . to hold out, to last.” I remember when my teacher read the definition for that word out loud, how I dropped my head and slid down in my chair. Even my face got hot ’cause that teacher could have been talking about me! That word
endure
applied to like my whole life. I had hardened my heart all right. I stopped crying in about the fifth grade. And some nights, the whole night, when I was a kid, I slept in my own backyard at home so my dad couldn’t find me during one of his rages. When we still had the big truck, I’d curl up in the sleeper. But he found me there once and whupped me good. So I