Read Online Dead Ends by Erin Jade Lange - Free Book Online Page A

the bottom of the page, at a single line of neat handwriting—too neat to be Billy’s own.
    â€œWhat is that?”
    â€œMy dad wrote it. There are lots of them.” Billy flipped through the pages, and here and there, one of the maps would have its own footnote, inked in that same uniform print. There were at least a dozen of them. “They’re clues,” Billy said.
    â€œClues to what?”
    â€œNew towns. See?” He held up the atlas so I could read the line written under the map of California.
    It’s better than two in the bush.
    I stared at it for a second, then shook my head. “I don’t get it.”
    â€œMom always says ‘A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.’”
    â€œYeah, I’ve heard that,” I said, still confused.
    Billy flipped fast through the pages as he talked. “I looked it up on the Internet. My dad showed me how. There’s a place called Bird-in-Hand here.” He let the atlas fall open to a map of Pennsylvania and pressed his finger to a spot where he’d written
Bird-in-Hand.
    I raised my eyebrows. “That’s really smart, Billy D.”
    He beamed at me, but a second later, a shadow passed over his face, and he went back to staring at the book. “But I don’t understand all of them.”
    I watched Billy for a moment and felt things clicking into place. “So … you think if you can figure out all those clues, one of them will tell you where your dad is?”
    Billy sat up, his eyes wide. “You think so, too?”
    No, not really.
    But I knew my job: keep the kid happy, keep my ass in the warden’s good graces.
    â€œCan’t hurt to figure out the clues, right?” I pulled the atlas into my lap. “Do you know this one?”
    The page was still open to Pennsylvania, and at the bottom, the handwritten line read:
Here, Mom and I both met and married. Different, but the same.
    Billy read the clue out loud, using his finger to follow the words and sound them out. He stumbled in the middle over “married” and “different,” and I finished for him.
    â€œThat’s easy enough,” I said. “Where’d your parents meet and get married?”
    Billy shrugged, his face blank.
    â€œYou don’t know? Just ask your mom.”
    â€œMom gets mad when I ask questions like that.”
    I nodded, wondering what had happened between Billy’s parents to make them split up. It obviously hadn’t been pretty, but it also wasn’t fair of Billy’s mom to not even let him talk about his dad. I felt a surge of empathy for Billy. Whatever beef my own mom had with my dad, she got even by never tellinghis son who he was. What was it with these moms and their misdirected punishments?
    â€œWell, it’s still easy,” I said, getting to my feet. I held out a hand to drag Billy up, too. “You and me—we’re going on a scavenger hunt.”
    â€¢ • • X • • •
    There wasn’t much to scavenge. Billy’s house was pretty bare—just a couch and a coffee table with a small TV in the living room, a foldout table and chairs in the kitchen, and mattresses flat on the floor in the bedrooms. Everywhere else was a sea of boxes still waiting to be unpacked.
    â€œWhat are we looking for?” Billy asked, dragging one of the boxes into his room on my orders.
    â€œPhoto albums,” I said. “Pictures from your mom and dad’s wedding.”
    Billy scrunched up his face. “Mom would be mad.”
    â€œGood thing she’s not here, then,” I said, cracking open the box.
    It was a Saturday, and Billy had promised that his mom was gone all day working on weekends. He didn’t know what she did, which I thought was weird, but I didn’t press. I wasn’t all that interested, and I could tell by the sparse furnishings it wasn’t anything too impressive anyway.
    Billy helped me dig