Page 3 of Moved
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They’d found no sign of Chuck, and Dad’s overprotectiveness hadn’t just skyrocketed; it launched into outer space and collided with a comet in a splendiferous explosion of cursing and panic. His immediate reaction was to relocate me. At first, I’d put my new adult foot down and told him that I didn’t need to do what he said anymore. He didn’t try to bully me. He simply dangled a carrot he knew I couldn’t resist.
“Your mother has family all over the states. It would be better if you stayed with some of them for a while.”
I’d been begging to know more about her and her family since I found the letter. So, part of me was okay with Chuck’s stalkerish tendency. Because of it, I would finally meet some of my mom’s family. In short order, I found myself calling my roommate to explain I wouldn’t be back for a while—for a very long while if Dad had his way—and making plans where to stay.
“Aim carefully,” Larry said from somewhere behind me.
Behind my blindfold, I rolled my eyes. How had finding a relative gotten to this?
I rolled the dart—currently named “compromise”—back and forth between my fingers. If Mom had family all over the place, I wanted to go somewhere cool and exciting. Dad wanted to move me somewhere safe. But, I didn’t want to be stuck in a cabin in the woods, and he didn’t want me in some big city like New York. This was my chance to make the best of an increasingly ridiculous situation. The dart would settle the location. Simple, random fate.
I took a deep breath and flicked my wrist, hoping I’d hit something other than wall. There was a long moment of silence then the dart hit the board with resounding finality. I grinned. Pulling the blindfold from my eyes, I rushed to see where it had struck. Dad followed closely behind me. He and I eyed the board while Larry stayed where he was on a stool at the back of the room.
The dart had flown to the upper Midwest, not the East Coast as I’d wanted. Putting on a sad face, I looked up at Dad.
“There’s not a town in miles. I want to try again.”
“No way. A deal’s a deal,” he said completely unmoved by my puppy eyes.
“When you said you wanted me to quit college and move into hiding—”
“Seclusion,” he corrected.
“Fine, seclusion. Did I throw a fit? No. I didn’t say one word of complaint—”
“No, you said several words,” he said, giving me a mock stern look, which I ignored.
“All I asked was to have influence regarding the location. That isn’t a location, that’s the middle of nowhere. Why can’t I just pick somewhere?”
Dad shook his head and crossed his arms. I threw my hands up in the air. “Darts was a stupid idea.”
“The dart was my idea,” Larry said.
I rolled my eyes at him and removed the pins holding the map to the den’s panel board wall. A hole punctured a rural area of Montana. Land of sun and sky. Sky and mountains? I had no idea what it was the land of. I’d been trying for New York, but my aim had been way off. Staring at the map, I wondered what Montana had. It didn’t really matter. I knew what it didn’t have. Chuck. As long as he wasn’t there, Dad would like it.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm down. “How long?”
“Till this settles down.”
This meaning Chuck. Until they found him and convinced him to leave me alone.
“Not good enough. It’s not like this is a hurricane whipping around our heads. It’s one boy. I’ll give you two weeks.” It would give me enough time to meet my mom’s family, hopefully, and still not miss out on too much school.
He snorted. “It’ll take as long as it takes,” he insisted.
“I’ll give you two weeks,” I repeated.
“Nine months,” Larry said. “You can finish off school online this semester. Wait out the summer and do another semester there. It’ll be done by then.”
I wanted to pull at my hair. “Nine months is ridiculous. You’re both overreacting.”
Neither man budged.
Chapter 2
Shivering in the passenger seat, I moved closer to Dad. Wind and rain whipped through the open window on my right. The plastic he’d tried rigging had blown away ten minutes before. Water saturated my red hoodie, and the seat squished as I moved. He had the heat blasting in an effort to compensate.
