Wreath Read Online Free

gravel forced her wide awake.
    Clarice had pulled off the main highway onto a side road and stopped the car. “Sleepyhead, I’m getting close to my house and don’t know where to drop you. Would you like to come home with me for a bite of supper?”
    Wreath sat up straight and tried to shake off her grogginess. She could think of nothing she would like more than a home-cooked meal and a place to wash up, but she had already risked more than she should have by accepting the ride. For her plan to work, she had to survive alone and make quick and good decisions.
    “My family’s expecting me, so I’d better move along,” Wreath said. “I’ll get out here. This’ll be great.”
    Clarice gave the kind of laugh a friend makes when another friend says something stupid. “Here? In the middle of nowhere?”
    “My cousins don’t live far.” Wreath began to sweat, despite the air-conditioning blowing on her face. “This is good.”
    “I can’t leave you here,” the woman protested. “You must be turned around. There’s nothing around here but a junkyard and the state park.”
    Wreath practically leapt from the car, jerking on the back door and panicking when she realized it was locked. She couldn’t leave her backpack! “Just a second, honey,” Clarice said, hitting a button. “Now try it.”
    Wreath yanked the back door open, dragging her pack out and catching the trash bag on the door, tearing it down the side. Her clothes and stash of food spilled into a ditch next to the road.
    Humiliated, she scooped the items up, wrapped everything in the blanket, tied it into a knot, and stuck the trash sack, which was her tarp, rain cover, and suitcase, into her pack. At this point, she could afford to get rid of nothing.
    She lifted her hand for a quick wave and felt a familiar lump in her throat. Her fear, along with Clarice’s kindness, air-conditioning, and the thought of a real meal, made the departure harder.
    “Thank you for the ride,” she said through the open window. Something about the woman made her want to use her best manners.
    “Are you sure you won’t let me take you to your kinfolks’ house?” Clarice asked.
    “I’m good.” Wreath backed away from the car, tripping over her own feet.
    “At least let me give you this.” Clarice held out a twenty-dollar bill.
    “I’ve got plenty,” Wreath said. “Thanks anyway.”
    She started walking purposefully, as though she had been here a thousand times and knew just where she was going. She fought the urge to look back.
    “Godspeed, Wreath,” Clarice called out and slowly drove off. Wreath waited until the car disappeared and leaned against a tree, scooting away from a hill of ants.
    She pulled out her map and tried to figure out where she was.
    Clarice had mentioned a junkyard, and the teenager hoped that didn’t mean locals paid attention to the overgrown spot. She wished the woman didn’t know it existed, didn’t know
she
existed. She wished she’d taken the twenty dollars.
No, I don’t
.
    Her thoughts whirled.
    Stepping into dense woods, she squirmed to arrange the trash bag as a cushion and plopped down. She fished around for her notebook and a pen, her hand brushing against the crackers. She wanted to eat them, but they needed to last. She had so little of everything.
    After making eye contact with Big Fun at the house and catching the eye of the old couple in their backyard—and, oh my, now hitching a ride—she wanted to add “avoid notice” to her list of goals. Her words were printed carefully in a small brown binder, bought for a quarter, including extra paper, at a garage sale. The journal was her treasure and felt like her only friend. In elementary school, she had named it Brownie—and at the moment it comforted her.
    “It’s just you and me now, Brownie,” she wrote in the book, patting it as though it were a pet. “The journey has begun.”
    She tried to remember the date. June 3, she decided it was, wishing she had