1 Elijah The day of the disaster Elijah was bored out of his mind He was supposed to be on a camping trip with his friends not sitting at home with a dog who hated him and an uncle who treated him like a kid For the past forty-eight hours Marco had kept Elijah busy with chores This is character building Elijah Marco’s favorite phrase When your uncle is your legal guardian you can still argue with him but it won’t get you very far This morning Marco was giving Elijah a break The lawn was mowed the floors were 1
mopped the laundry was done Elijah figured his character must be built enough for one weekend Which meant he could spend today doing what Hayden Nevada was best known for nothing So now Elijah sat on the living room couch watching Storage Locker Makeover Serafina the overweight dog lay on the floor in front of the game cabinet with one suspicious eye open That mutt must be at least half-cat If you hugged her petted her even rubbed her ears she’d look at you like Come on Aren’t we both adults After a year of living with Marco Elijah had figured out that Serafina just wanted to be left alone He respected that He often felt the same way in Marco’s house Elijah wondered when Brenna and Keegan and Nicole would get back from Topaz State Park Probably tonight since it was Sunday School didn’t start for three more weeks but his friends all had summer jobs He’d had one too until this Thursday It hadn’t been his fault getting fired He’d arranged for a coworker to cover his Thursday 2
shift so he could pack for the trip When the coworker didn’t show up the manager blamed Elijah Never mind that people flaked on their shifts all the time the manager had never liked Elijah It had something to do with the fact that serving concessions in a movie theater wasn’t Elijah’s dream job And the fact that Elijah got bored sometimes messed around sometimes ate patrons leftover popcorn sometimes In the manager’s mind that added up to being a lazy unreliable worker Elijah’s uncle was on the manager’s side You gave up on that job long before now Marco had said You stopped trying That’s just as bad as if you’d quit In Marco’s mind quitting was worse than some federal crimes And even though Elijah hadn’t technically quit the punishment was the same Which was how a weekend of camping with friends became a weekend of character building Elijah shifted on the couch Like most of Marco’s furniture the couch was old It had seen better times and fewer lumps Elijah 3
remembered sitting on it as a little kid when Marco still lived in a trailer years before he built this house The camping trip had been his idea in the first place his and Brenna’s They had been friends since the sandbox stage of their lives and both their families loved the outdoors How many times had they all gone hiking or camping together at Topaz State Park At least twice a year for as long as Elijah could remember And now with both Elijah’s parents gone he’d looked forward to this trip more than he liked to admit Keegan would be there to crack jokes Nicole would be there to get excited and amazed by every magical moment And Brenna would be there to plan it all out get them from Point A to Point B and just let him be himself Instead he was home dealing with his un-built character When the others got back they’d tell him all their stories from the weekend Nicole would say that they’d missed him that it was a shame he couldn’t come 4
