Yesterday's Gone: Season One

Mrs. Engler’s, the first place he tried. It looked mostly the same, though it didn’t have the peeling Transformers sticker that Johnny Bryson put on the back when Mrs. Engler wasn’t looking.
    Luca split the square into a rectangle, then made a pile of the stuff people used when ambulance men were saving people in the movies. He finished cleaning his wounds and suddenly felt hungry. A little at first but then the hungry grew really, really big. It grew into the kind of hungry his dad called “alligator hungry.”  
    He made a bowl of ice cream and a big sandwich. He didn’t eat enough ice cream to get sick later, like he had at Billy’s birthday when he ate so many scoops he threw up in the pool. He ate just enough to know his mom would be happy if she was sitting right beside him. After all, maybe she was.
    Maybe everyone else is here and I’m the one who’s not?  
    He removed the one bike without a lock, the red one with a white stripe, then swung on the seat and looked into the sky. Sure enough, the rainbow was back. Luca started to pedal, leaving the eyes behind him.

    **

    Luca stayed on the bike, but the next several hours were mean.  
    His leg looked like it had a layer of Rice Krispies coated in blood. His head felt like when he hung upside down on the monkey bars and fell, and his tummy was like the time Greg Moore punched him in the stomach because he had accidentally dropped and cracked his Super Soaker. Except worse.  
    He stopped four times, seven counting the places that were locked. The entire time he still hadn’t seen a single person. Probably about 500 cars, though that stuff was hard to count. All the empty made it easy to feel the something following behind him. A lot more animals were here than at the ice cream shack, maybe times two. But Luca didn’t mind. They felt like less alone. And besides, they probably knew a lot of stuff he didn’t. Like where his mom and dad might be. If the rainbow knew, maybe they did too.  
    It was only after his fifth stop when Luca finally realized he had a hard time seeing the rainbow when he was thirsty. The rainbow had started to flicker alongside a roll in his belly when he saw another one of the shacks that looked busy like it was open but was empty like it was closed.
    A few yards from the front of the shack, Luca’s bike hit a sharp rock jutting from the dirt. The bike’s front tire came to a dead stop while the rear wheel lifted from the back. Luca’s short stint as Superman lasted only a second.  
    He hurt. A lot. A million galaxies worse than when Greg Moore had punched him. He wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t. The big rainbow was back, leapfrogging over the little one.  
    I’m supposed to go. I’m supposed to go now.
    Luca stood. But only for a moment. His knees wobbled, then quit. His cheek met the thin side of a rock on its way to the dirt and a little river of blood ran toward the highway.

    **

    Luca woke in another small clearing. He felt different. Looked different, too. His mottled arms had returned to their normal olive color and his legs were free of their bloody Rice Krispie layer. His face, which he remembered falling on, didn’t hurt either.
    The Husky was there, looking at Luca with large, sad eyes that looked even larger and sadder beneath the bright light of the full moon. In front of Luca sat a small pile of broken twigs and brittle leaves, gathered like the mini-mountains Dad made for the family campfires, just smaller.
    And water was there. A lot of it. All the bottles were warm, but at least 20 were sitting in a big pile of plastic just a few feet away.
    Luca looked at the sky. The rainbow was gone.
    “It’s coming back,” the dog said, though its mouth didn’t move.
    Luca shivered. That was un-possible. Dogs didn’t think loud enough to hear.  
    “Sometimes we do.”  
    This doesn’t feel like my pretending reading mind imagination. This is different. Like someone scratched me on my thoughts.  
    Luca didn’t like his thoughts being scratched. At least not without being asked first. Mom and dad wouldn’t like it. So he refused out-loud dialogue with the dog, but was willing to follow the husky as it trotted back toward the highway. He grabbed two bottles of water and opened one. Warm, but refreshing.
    Luca followed, hearing the rustling of more padded feet slapping the dirt behind him.
    He walked for hours, feeling stronger the entire time. He was still warm, warmer than he should be, but a