Read Online You Don't Know About Me by Brian Meehl - Free Book Online

was pointing me to a town: Hunter, Kansas. The treasure he wanted to give me, the bad book, was there.
    Just one problem: the bus was headed east on I-70, across Missouri, away from Kansas. And another: Hunter could be a big town; a book could be anywhere. If geocaching was like Ben said, with longitude and latitude, there had to be more clues.
    I kept flipping pages. I found highlighted letters, numbers, syllables, and punctuation. I wrote each one down in the Bible. They added up to
N 39 14.011 lat, W 098
23.679 long.
“Lat” and “long” had to be short for “latitude” and “longitude.” They were the exact coordinates in Hunter, Kansas, of where my father had hidden the book!
    Back to mondo problem #1: I was getting farther away from Kansas. And new, mondo problem #2: I didn’t have a GPS device, much less know where to get one or how to use it.
    I was at a fork in the trail and had to choose a track. Take the safe one: go to Bible camp, go home, save up till I could fix my bike, buy a GPS device, jump on my steed, and ride to Hunter, Kansas? Or take the gonzo track: leap off the bus, buy a GPS device with my camp money—if I had enough—and hitchhike to Hunter? I liked the gonzo track except for the hitchhiking. I’d heard so many horror stories from Mom, I thought hitchhiking was another word for suicide. And what good was treasure if I ended up being an organ donor in some pervert’s trunk?
    Then it hit me. Maybe God had something to say about it. I went for one of Mom’s providence checks. I shut my eyes and prayed till I felt the Spirit. I opened the Bible, finger-planted on a page, and looked. I choked back a laugh. My finger touched a verse in Mark.
Honor your father and your mother; and Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death
. Talk about a weird sign. If I honored my father and ran away to Hunter, I’d dishonor my mom. If I honored my mom by going to Bible camp, and ignored my father and the inheritance he left me, I’d dishonor my father. If God was telling me anything it was
I’m on the fence, kid. Your call.
    I knew the track I had to take. It was just a matter of waiting for the right moment to make my move.
    As I waited, I started reading
Huck Finn
, picking up where I’d stopped in Chapter 4. It was kind of freaky. Huck’s father shows up out of nowhere, like my father had. But the similarity ended there. Huck’s dad, Pap, is a drunken bum who beats his son. He kidnaps Huck and holds him prisoner in a log cabin until Huck escapes, and then Huck fakes his own death so nobody will come after him. I wasn’t going to fake my death, but I was going to make sure nobody came after me.

3
My Getaway
    After
Narnia
ended, Brother Jeremy announced that we were stopping at a truck stop. He told us to buddy up with someone and stretch our legs. We were to stick with our buddy and return to the bus in ten minutes. Ben and I buddied up. When I grabbed my backpack, he asked me why I needed it. I told him I was carrying so much money I took it everywhere.
    â€œYou didn’t take it to the bathroom,” he said.
    â€œThat’s ’cause I knew you’d watch it for me,” I said. We got off the bus.
    Inside the truck stop, I steered Ben to the DVD racks and told him I wanted to buy him a DVD for lending me his player. I gave him fifteen bucks and said I was going to therestroom. When he brought up the buddy system I told him it was for little kids. He gave me a “whatever” shrug and went back to the DVDs.
    I found a side door and slipped outside. In the parking lot there was an SUV with a tangle of bikes on a rear rack. I undid two straps and pulled down a Diamondback. The seat was too low; it didn’t matter. As I ripped across the lot I was out of the cockpit and pumping hard.
    My plan was simple. Find a small highway heading west and ride until I could do two things: (1) Buy a map and a GPS