Tom Finder Read Online Free

streetlight.
    â€œAre you a ghost?” the old man asked Tom.
    â€œNo,” Tom said. At least he didn’t think so. Ghosts didn’t feel this thirsty. “Do you have somewhere else you can go?”
    â€œNowhere to go, just like them,” the old man said. He had a small head, shrunken, as if it had been left out to dry too long. He wore a red cap that said, I F YOU THINK I’ M CUTE YOU SHOULD SEE MY MOMMY . He looked around a lot, as if he felt himself being touched.
    â€œI’ll take you home,” Tom said.
    The man looked at him in terror. “You are a ghost. You’ve come for me, to take me. But not yet, not yet . . .”
    The man scurried away, looking back twice to see if Tom was chasing him. The streets echoed. Tom was alone, but he didn’t feel alone anymore. He could feel his body hair itching his legs and arms and neck.
    He went back to the bridge, but a bottle smashed at his feet. Tom turned around and clumped back to the river.
    He wondered if Samuel Wolflegs would still be there. The guy creeped him out, but at least he could sleep safely there.
    Wolflegs had been right about one thing: the streets hadn’t taken him anywhere he wanted to go. But that was today. Tomorrow . . . Clump, clump. His feet burned. Strange that all these flat streets and level roads could bend to a round earth. There had to be places where it ended, where a road traveler had to fall off the edge, then begin again until the curve became too much.
    At the bridge he stopped and looked down at the river for a long time. Wolflegs had said he wanted to give his son Daniel the river. You couldn’t own a river even if you were rich, but at that moment Tom wished he could. Just looking at the river made him feel better, made his thirst less angry, and his blisters less sting-y. He hadn’t noticed that about rivers before, how they flowed through you and washed your heart and head from the inside. It was like giving his brain a drink. Or maybe he had noticed before, and he’d just forgotten.
    Tom walked over the bridge without seeing Wolflegs. He walked to the far side of the park, out of the carefully landscaped grounds into the brush. He’d come to another branch of the river. He was on an island, created by two arms of the river. Tom explored his island. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he was earnestly seeking it.
    He found a blanket hanging in a tree.
    He went closer. There were spiderwebs attaching it to the branch it hung on. It must have been there for a while. He took it down. It was thick and soft, and not so used. Tom shook it out and lay it in the underbrush by the river. He took out his notebook and pen and wrote, Tom lives on Prince’s Island. Just in case he forgot. He could write a story if he wanted, about how he was a prince, about how he would find a fair maid to rescue. Tom wrote it down.
    Weird.
    He was starting to creep himself out now.
    â€œLoser,” he said to himself.
    The sound of it frightened him. There was so little of him to know that that one word took up a lot of room in himself. He took out his notebook and read his previous entry: Finder. Not a loser. A Finder. Wolflegs had said.
    He wrapped himself in his blanket and tried to sleep.

Chapter 3
    If he isn’t going to be afraid of me soon, I will run away.
    â€“ Act 1, scene 2
    What? Am I to feed on stones?
    â€“ Act 1, scene 3

    â€œHey, Tom Finder. Sleeping rough again, eh?”
    Samuel Wolflegs was sitting beside him. He was the first thing Tom saw when he opened his eyes. “Did you find my boy, Daniel?”
    â€œNo,” Tom said. He clutched the blanket around himself, rolled over, and closed his eyes.
    â€œDon’t feel bad. He is a wolf, wild on the streets, lone, a little dangerous. You found a blanket, though. Good.”
    Tom had had enough sleep to see how finding the blanket could have been a coincidence. He kept his eyes closed. As for the pen,