Cut and Run (Lucy Kincaid #16) - Allison Brennan Page 0,14

I don’t a choice, I have to.”

Divorce. Just like his friend Rafi two years ago. Rafi’s parents got divorced and Rafi moved to Austin with his mom and Ricky only saw him when he visited his dad and it was weird. It wasn’t the same, and Ricky didn’t want anything to change. He didn’t want to see Joe and Ginny only a couple times a year. He didn’t want to change schools and find new friends. He didn’t want to move. He wanted everything to go back to the way it was before his mom and dad started fighting.

That morning, he’d left for school early even though he didn’t even really like school. Sure, he was good at tests and stuff, but he was bored. Joe made school fun, and if he moved he wouldn’t ever find another friend like Joe, who could make him laugh when he drew funny pictures of Vice Principal Jenkins or the biggest bully in the school, Monica Brazzno. Or when Joe put a frog in Mrs. Perez’s desk drawer.

It made him feel all weird to hear his mom cry and talk about leaving. He was going to cry and he was not a crybaby. He didn’t want his mom to leave. He didn’t want his dad to leave. He wanted everyone to stay. Even Tori, who was sometimes mean to him.

After school he’d gone home with Joe and Ginny, which he did almost every day. They were twins, which was cool, and Ginny wasn’t a girl like Becky and Tori. Well, she was a girl, but she liked baseball and dirt bikes, so she wasn’t a girl girl. Joe and Ginny’s dad worked and their mom was always at her church volunteering for this and that, so they had the house to themselves. Ricky called his mom, and her phone went right to voice mail. He left her a message that he was at the Youngs’ and he’d be home by six. He did the same thing almost every day, so he didn’t think much about it. And she wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye.

She’s not leaving.

He’d feel better when he talked to Becky, but Becky had volleyball practice every day after school and he’d much rather be here with Joe and Ginny than alone waiting for everyone to come home. Waiting and worrying.

They made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then went out back to the tree house. The twins had the coolest tree house ever. They had this humongous yard, and three years ago when they moved here their dad had built a tree house in two trees that had grown together. It even withstood a huge storm that took out lots of trees and telephone poles and they didn’t have power for two whole days. But the tree house was safe. They played cards and ate and talked about stuff. Ricky didn’t really talk about his parents, but his friends knew he was upset and didn’t make him talk about it. And what could he say? He didn’t want them to feel sorry for him or anything. He just wanted things to be normal.

After a while Mrs. Young called out, “It’s six o’clock! Ricky, are you staying for dinner?”

“Jeez, I’m late again,” Ricky said. He said good-bye to the twins and climbed out of the tree house and ran into the house to grab his backpack. “Sorry, Mrs. Young.”

“I’ll call your mom, let her know you’re on your way.”

“Thanks.” He hopped on his bike.

Being late was a bad habit according to his dad, but neither his mom nor dad had called, and Tori—who just got her license at the beginning of the summer and loved driving around—hadn’t come over to get him. It wasn’t that the Youngs lived all that far, it was less than two miles, but it was a steady slope uphill, so by the time he got home he was sweating.

He dumped his bike on the back porch and tried the door—it was locked.

Okay, that was weird. They never locked the back door. He knocked. “Hey! Open up!”

No one came to the door. Both his dad’s car and Tori’s car were out front, and his mom usually parked in the garage. It was really quiet—he couldn’t hear the television or the radio his mom listened to when she cooked. Or his dad watching baseball, if there was a game on.

He went in search of the key that was under a brick in the flower bed, but it took him