The Kingdom of Childhood

without any particular idea of where he was headed, following the curve of the road as it roared past office buildings and storage facilities, broken-down ranch houses and an electrical substation. After a while he took an exit and the road grew narrower, flanked by forest. The sky, glowing a deep hazy blue but streaked with rose and yellow, looked like the painting on Judy’s classroom wall blurred by distance. On an impulse as immediate as the one which had led him on the journey, he pulled onto the shoulder and shut off the car.

His brain was tired, but the drive had turned the nauseated gloomy feeling into one of shallow exuberance, and he gamely wished to follow that thread wherever it took him. With his bag of almonds in hand, he crunched through the russet leaves into the woods. The mild hill was slick with pine needles, but he dug his toes in deeper, touching the trees for balance, and made the climb. Farther in, a tall chain-link fence marked some border that seemed to make no sense at all; the woods continued beyond it, and no sign announced an owner or reason. He clasped the bag of almonds in his teeth and clambered over the fence, taking the eight-foot drop in easy stride.

The forest. It felt good to be here. He breathed in the piney air and hiked up the crest of the hill, where it leveled off and stretched into a few acres of sweetgum and fir before flattening into farmland. Upon sight of the yellow fields he understood where he was. He had driven past this place with his friends before; it was an agricultural facility of some sort, a practice farm where they tried out new plant hybrids and fertilizers. Still, he had trees and space and he was blessedly alone. He sat down beside a spruce and ate his almonds, then lay on his back to watch the last of the darkness slip from the sky.

The November trees, their contorted branches nearly bare, made it easy to catch the subtle shifts that marked the sunrise. In his home state it would be far too cold to lie in the woods in nothing but street clothes and a down vest, but here he felt barely a chill. The leaves crackled beneath his back and, above, the last remaining ones shuffled softly to the earth, a sound best heard with his eyes closed.

Beautiful, he thought.

He breathed in the clear air and felt the living woods surround him, the ground buoying him on a litter of leaves, the sunlight a pale, narrow beam that promised warmth yet to come.

When he awoke, a county sheriff was glaring down at him, hands on his belt.

Zach’s mind, most recently settled into the depth of the word beautiful, rose to the state of oh shit.

“You damn runaways always gotta show up here,” the officer said. “You kids ever hear of the mall?”

Already pushing himself up on his arms, Zach mumbled, “I’m not a runaway.”

“Get up. You got ID?”

Zach fumbled for his wallet, handed over his driver’s license, and rubbed the sleep from one eye with his palm. “I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to be here.”

“Of course you’re not allowed. This is a federal facility.”

“I thought it was a farm.”

“It is—USDA. Licensed personnel only.” The officer held up Zach’s driver’s license. “New Hampshire. Not a runaway, huh?”

After drifting off following nearly twenty-four hours without sleep, his body begged to be allowed to return to the forest floor. Even the presence of a police officer could not stop him from nearly falling asleep on his feet. Shaking his head groggily, he said, “I moved to Sylvania last summer.”

“So what are you doing all the way up here?”

“Visiting my girlfriend.”

The side of the officer’s mouth lifted in a peevish smile. “Don’t see her around here, do you?”

“No. I stopped here just to—see the woods. I like the woods.”

“You walked from Sylvania.”

He shook his head again and wavered on his feet. God, he needed to sleep. He couldn’t even figure out how to put the words together to explain how he had arrived here. When he thought about Judy’s car on the shoulder at the bottom of the hill, his thoughts melted into a puddle. He blinked several times in an attempt to clear his head, and the man asked, “How much have you had to drink?”

“Drink? Nothing. Just some tea.” Coffee would have been a good idea, he realized now. He still wasn’t used to choosing it, with one of his parents normally around.

“You expect me to believe that? Your eyes are bloodshot from here to hell and back.”

“It’s my contacts, that’s all. Look at my license. I’m sixteen. I can’t drink.”

“Like that’s ever stopped you kids before.” The sheriff took him by the upper arm and led him toward a sand- colored car between the forest and the field. “You got a parent at home?”

The momentary prickle of fear that seized him quickly gave way as his mind finally kicked into gear. “Yeah,” he muttered. “My stepmom.”

By the time Judy appeared at the door of the security station, Zach felt considerably less agitated than he had in the first moments after being escorted into the officer’s car. First, he gradually realized the man was not, in fact, a county sheriff, just some rent-a-cop who worked for the agricultural center and wore a brown uniform. Second, Judy’s shrieking in his ear included a rant about how she hated driving Russ’s car, which reassured Zach that he could count on her to bail him out, however grouchily. As the minutes ticked by and he scratched at a mark on the officer’s desk with his fingernail, he grew to feel almost cocky. What was she going to do—report him to his parents? Ditch him? Refuse to let him tank up her car again? No—the power was all his. He had spent the past ten hours pleasing the living hell out of her. She was just fortunate that when he found himself being dragged along by a guy in a uniform, he had the good sense to keep his version of their relationship G-rated.

She caught his eye as the officer came toward her. She wore one of her baggy kindergarten-teacher jumpers over the T-shirt she had slept in, but her coat disguised the strange look. Her hair was back in a loose, messy ponytail. He shot her a smile and was rewarded with a venomous glare.

“Said he was visiting his girlfriend,” the officer told her. “Staggering around like he’s three sheets to the wind.”

Judy responded with a few short shakes of her head directed at Zach. “I told you to stay away from that