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Rodney Southhall satin his bedroom of the mansion his parents owned on the hill just south of the small town of Strawberry Sands.
His dad was a prominent attorney who had made millions in Chicago as a corporate lawyer, and his mom was a pharmaceutical exec.
They’d built the big mansion overlooking Lake Michigan and now commuted to Chicago, working from home as much as they both could. His mom was currently doing a video board meeting, and his dad was holed up in his office, probably writing a brief.
Rodney was bored out of his mind, because he was grounded for deliberately spiking the punch at the fancy gala his parents had insisted he attend with them the night before.
He’d gotten the whiskey from his dad’s cabinet in the den, and the only fun of the evening had been seeing Mrs. Doolittle, drunk, trailing toilet paper on her shoe, as she asked everyone she ran into where her dentures were.
It was the best time he’d had in a long while and totally worth being grounded today.
He had the TV on, but he wasn’t really watching it. He was just imagining what life would be like when he was finally out of the house. He hated it here. His parents were only interested in work, and they dragged him along to whatever functions they could, in order to present the illusion of being the ideal American family.
Except, instead of having two point five children, they just had one.
It used to be in the summers he’d go to his grandparents’ farm in the UP, but since they both died, and their farm had been sold, he didn’t even have that to look forward to anymore.
An odd noise outside the sliding glass doors caused him to lift his head off the pillow where he lay on his bed and look out.
Did he see something red moving in the bushes? Was that a bird?
He narrowed his eyes, then laid his head back down on his pillow.
Then, figuring he didn’t have much to lose, he lifted himself off the bed and strode to the sliding glass door, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans and squaring his shoulders under his T-shirt.
His parents took his cell phone when they relegated him to his bedroom, or he might have missed the noise.
But as he looked down, he could see that there was actually movement.
And it wasn’t a bird.
His dad’s office was on the other side of the house, and if his mom was in a board meeting, she always had the curtains closed in hers, which was just down the hall from his bedroom, with one window looking toward the bushes where he was now staring.
The board meeting would last all afternoon.
He didn’t give it much more thought but opened the sliding glass door and stepped down. He almost thought that it looked like a person. Although he wasn’t afraid. It was Strawberry Sands after all. There was never anything going on. It would actually be a little exciting if it was a person and they were there to rob the house. Or... Whatever people did when they snuck around bushes.
This person was really small.
Its movement stopped as soon as he stepped out, like whoever it was had heard him open the door.
He narrowed his eyes. Maybe he should just go back into his room and pretend he never saw anything. But he didn’t have anything else to do. So, he moved a little to the side so that whatever it was would end up trapped in the corner made by the two sides of the house.
The bushes shook as the red shirt moved. He could be wrong, but it looked like a kid.
“Hey, there. Stop what you’re doing and look here.”
“I bet,” the person said, and Rodney got the idea that it was a scrawny little boy. “You don’t need to call the cops. Look the other way and forget you ever saw me.” The words were spit out, in a low voice, like the kid was used to running from people, being quiet, and not wanting to be seen.
“Hold up. I never said anything about the cops. Maybe I’m just as wanted as you are.” Hardly. Spiking the punch was the worst thing he’d done in his entire life, and honestly, he felt like it wasn’t that bad. Why were his parents upset about it? They drank alcohol at home. There was alcohol at the party. So what if one more thing had a little alcohol in it? It wasn’t that big a deal.
“Whatever, Rich Boy,” the kid said, and the way it said “Rich Boy” made him think that...maybe it was a girl.
He walked a little closer.
“I’m warning you. I bite. I don’t have my shots.”
“Me, either.” A lie, since he had every single shot known to man and then some. His mother saw to that. If something new came out on the market, they jammed it in his arm.
