Chapter Two Excerpt:

At midnight the wind in the trees can sound like the ocean. The moonlight can make a road appear as endless as the sea. Martha noticed this as she climbed out her window, stopping to tack a note for her father on the door before she headed to meet the McGills. She had her backpack in which she had stowed crackers and peanut butter for herself, sardines for the boys, along with a change of clothes and her mother’s yellow shawl.

Being out so late reminded Martha of the way her mother sometimes would wake her unexpectedly to bring her out onto the lawn to dance beneath the stars. Standing in the dark and thinking about her mother and the way she would laugh as they sneaked out of the house, as if they shared the best secret in the world, did something strange to Martha. Her mother suddenly seemed present in some deep way. Martha didn’t know if she could take another step. But then she heard Trout whistle, and she started running. Before she knew it, she was halfway down the road, to the place where Trout and Eel were waiting beside the mailbox that Hildy Swoon had cleaned with a stiff metal brush to get rid of every bit of dust and grime.

"We have a compass and thirty-five dollars," Eel told Martha as they started down the road. "We charted the route to Ocean City, and if we walk eight hours a day we’ll be there in ten days."

"Ten days?" Martha was surprised. "I only brought enough food for one night." "You don’t have to go." Trout didn’t look at Martha as he spoke. She knew he was giving her the chance to change her mind.

"Of course I do." Martha wasn’t about to lose her best friends. If they were gone, there would be no one to talk to. No one to trust. "You’d be lost without me," she said.

People went searching for their dreams all the time, didn’t they? Still, Martha dragged behind the boys in the moonlight. She was thinking about how sad her father was and how he would feel when he went to wake her for school and discovered she was gone. All he would find was her open window, along with the note on the door. I’m sorry, she’d written. I love you, but I don’t feel I belong here anymore.

"Race you to the town line," Eel called.

The friends ran as fast as they could, with Eel, always the fastest, out in front. They raced down Main Street, past the shuttered grocery that Martha’s father owned, past the bakery and what was once the dance studio, past Charlie McGill’s construction company. They turned onto Elm and ran along the dried-out bed of Penman’s Creek. They hurried through the dark, raising clouds of dust, laughing until they reached the sign that said OAK GROVE. HOME SWEET HOME.

Martha stared at the words. Her throat and eyes felt hot, as if this silly sign could make her cry.

"Which way?" Eel said softly in the dark.

The moon was behind a cloud, and Martha and Trout felt tentative as well. They were both thinking of people who’d disappeared and were never found again, and of how hard it was to leave behind the people you loved, even if the life you wanted wasn’t the one they could give you.

Trout took out the compass, then pointed down the road. "East to the ocean. We just keep going."

They told themselves they weren’t runaways, they were run-tos. But running is running either way. After a while, they all felt as though they had eaten spoonfuls of lead, and that made running even more difficult. After the first mile they had the shivers. A mile more and they had the shakes. Oak Grove seemed very far away, and when they walked through the woods they could hear things moving. Owls and shrews, bobcats and raccoons. Deer so startled to see the three friends cutting across the meadows, they froze in place.

When Martha’s feet began to hurt and the boys’ eyes grew blurry, they stopped to make camp beneath a twisted oak tree, one of the oldest in the county. Tomorrow, school would start at exactly eighty-thirty, but they wouldn’t be in attendance. If they hadn’t had other concerns they might have begun to worry about what people would think when they didn’t show up for their classes, but for now, all they could concentrate on was their growling stomachs. Martha unpacked the food she had brought along, and Eel produced a Thermos, although too much salt had been added to the water for Martha to take more than a sip.

In the moonlight the McGill brothers’ complexions turned faintly blue, and the webbing between their fingers was iridescent.

"What’s the matter?" Trout asked when he caught Martha staring. "Afraid you’re out here with freaks?"

"I’m out here with my two best friends," Martha said.