Chapter 1
“If I were an animal, what kind would I be? Well, thats a really interesting question, Josie. I have a lot of favorites. Obviously, no animal is nobler than the dog.”
Josie, who is running ahead of me, glances back and gives me a knowing look.
“But I think Id be a falcon. They can dive at speeds up to two hundred miles an hour. How cool would that be? Falcons fly and hunt wherever they please. They rule the sky.”
Josie gives a yip and takes off after a squirrel. Okay, I admit it, Josies my dog. Im talking to my dog. Maybe its pathetic, but I dont have anyone else to talk to.
And Josies terrific company, let me make that clear. I have great respect for dogs in general and Josie in particular. We got her when I was five, and shes always been my best friend. Since we moved here when school ended in June, shes my only friend.
Here is upstate New York, in what everybody calls the Finger Lakes region. Thats because there are eleven long, narrow lakes that look like skinny fingers. Most of them have Iroquois Indian names, like Seneca, Canandaigua, Keuka, and Cayuga. I cant remember them all.
The lakes were made by glaciers during the Ice Age, but theres an Iroquois legend that says they were formed when the Great Spirit reached down and pressed his hands into the earth. Which is kind of cool to think about, except I cant help wondering if theres another legend that explains why the Great Spirit had eleven fingers.
I like to picture those giant hands reaching down from the sky. In my mind, theyre always hairy, with five fingers on one hand and six on the other.
Anyway, Im not saying I was Mr. Popularity at my old school, but I had buddies. I miss Kevin Bowen the most. He and I did practically everything together. We were known as “Owen and Bowen.” Im Owen, obviously. Owen McGuire.
Take it from me, you dont want to move at the end of the school year. Because then there you are in a new place where you dont know anybody, and youve got the whole summer ahead of you.
We only moved a few hours away, but it feels really different here. In Buffalo, our house was in a neighborhood with a lot of kids. But now we live in what youd have to call the boonies. Theres Seneca Lake to the east, the highway to the west, and everywhere else, nothing but woods and farm fields. I like living in the country and seeing all the deer and turkeys and woodchucks, but it would be nice to see some people, too. Especially another twelve-year-old kid.
When we first got here at the end of June, I rode around on my bike to check things out. Thats when I discovered the trail Im running on now. Its seven miles long, and follows the path of a stream that runs between our lake, Seneca, and Keuka Lake. The stream has cut steep cliffs through the woods, and its cool and shady down there. That makes it a perfect place for running, which Im doing every day. The school Ill be going to in the fall has a soccer team for grades seven and eight, and I plan to be on it. I decided I might as well use this long summer on my own to get in shape and practice my footwork.
So Josie and I have been running every day for three and a half weeks, going about three miles up the trail and three miles back, sometimes even more. Weve seen a lot of amazing stuff. Like one day Josie came toward me howling like a crazy thing, chasing a wild turkey. It flew down the trail right at me, madly flapping its wings, and just missed the top of my head. I could feel the rush of air from its wings in my hair.
Another day a black bear was standing in the trail ahead of us. Josie and I both stopped dead in our tracks.
We looked at the bear, and the bear looked at us. I glanced down at Josie, and every hair on her body was standing out so stiffly she looked a lot bigger than her normal size.
“Easy, girl,” I murmured. She gave a funny little growl, and the bear ambled away. It didnt seem to want anything to do with us, but we headed back the way we had come, just in case.
Then, two days ago, Josie ran ahead and started barking at something on the path. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw it was a snapping turtle as big as home plate. Josie was dancing all around it, lunging in and out, yipping with excitement.
“No, Josie!” I cried, but she didnt stop. “Josie! If that thing clamps its jaws onto your nose, you are going to be very sorry!” I warned.
Finally, I was able to grab her collar and drag her away, but I could tell she wanted to go back there in the worst way. There are some things shes not real smart about.
I dont know the names of every single tree and plant and bird and animal weve been seeing on our runs, but I know a lot of them. When I was little, my mom gave me a set of field guides. She and Josie and I used to take long walks, and when we got home, wed look up everything wed seen in the books. I have guides on birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, wildflowers, rocks and fossils, insects, and stars. The one on stars and planets is my favorite. It was Moms, too.
It was Mom who really taught me to notice things. So I keep my eyes open on my runs with Josie. I recognize the teeny heart-shaped tracks of fawns and the handlike prints of raccoons. By now I know the squawk of the great blue heron that we scare out of its favorite minnow-hunting spot, and the musky smell foxes leave behind. I like to look for trout and suckers in the pools of the stream, and Josie keys me in to every squirrel, rabbit, and woodchuck we pass by.
When youre running along through all that nature, its easy to see how everything belongs. Every animal and plant has its place in the big picture. So things that dont belong really stand out, like a soda bottle, or candy bar wrapper, or a deflated Mylar party balloon. It ticks me off that people throw stuff like that around, and Ive made it my mission to pick up trash I see and carry it out if I can.
Up ahead, I see something white lying off the path near a patch of raspberry bushes. Josie goes over to it, sniffs, then picks it up and runs along with it in her mouth.
“Josie, come!” I shout. Shes always finding stinky dead animals and scraps of food people have left behind, stuff she thinks is wonderful. This looks like a paper towel or a napkin, maybe. At least it doesnt look like anything too disgusting, not that that would have stopped Josie.
She comes and I say, “Sit, Josie. Drop it.” Josie is a German shorthaired pointer, a hunting dog, so shes supposed to surrender whatever she retrieves to me, her owner, the mighty hunter.
Amazingly, she sits at my first command and drops what I see now is a piece of white cloth.
“Good dog!”
Theres red stuff on it. I start to pick it up, wondering what the red is. Paint?
Whoa. Gross. Quickly, I throw it back to the ground. The red stuff is, Im pretty sure, blood. The cloth is soft and stretchy, and has a ragged edge. It looks like it was torn off the bottom of somebodys T-shirt.
Yuck. Im not carrying that out, never mind my good intentions about trash removal.
I start running again. Being on the trail makes me think of all the outdoor things Mom and I used to do together. I remember a clear winter night when I was eight years old. Dad was working late. Mom got me all bundled up in my snowsuit and hat and mittens and boots, and we went outside and lay down on our backs in the snow and stared up at the sky. I barely even felt the cold because I was really noticing for the first time how enormous the sky is.
Mom told me how far away the stars are and I couldnt believe it. I asked, “Where does it end?” Mom said she didnt know. I kept trying to picture where the universe stopped, but I couldnt do it. You cant picture nothing, because as soon as you do, its something.
Then Mom said, “There are eight hundred thousand galaxies and billions of stars and planets out there. I like to imagine that one of them is the sun in a solar system similar to ours.”
I liked imagining it, too.
When we finally got cold and went inside, we read in the field guide to stars and planets that the number of stars is so huge that “the statistical possibility of other solar systems definitely exists.” I memorized that sentence. The book also said that telescopes have shown that there are millions of galaxies beyond ours.
Mom said, “Nobody knows exactly what happened to create the Earths solar system, Owen. But I dont see any reason to think it happened only once. Its such a small view of things, dont you agree?”
I did. I certainly didnt want to be the kind of person who had a small view of things. To me, it was logical to think there would be life beyond our one little planet. Actually, it seemed crazy to think there wouldnt be.
After that night, I read everything I could about space, spaceships, space travel, peoples accounts of their encounters with aliens, you name it. I became convinced that not only is there life on other planets, but that theyve been trying to contact us. Mom thought so, too.
Thinking about Mom is making me miss her, so I take a pretend head shot and resume my conversation with Josie. “Yes, Josie, youre right. I learned all my cool soccer moves from Dad. You know the goal we have set up in the yard where we practice taking shots after dinner? Im getting pretty good, dont you think? I cant wait for our trip to Alaska in August. Yeah, you can come, too. Didnt we take you along when we camped in the Rockies and went fishing in the Everglades?”
Josie sniffs when I say this. She knows its all a lie. Dad and I never go on cool trips together. Theres no soccer goal in our yard. Im just learning to play, and Dad doesnt. Play, I mean. Not soccer, not anything. Today is Sunday, and where is Dad? At work. Hes always been the Worlds Most Dedicated Accountant, but it seems to me he started working even more after Mom died.
It was a car accident. A snowy January night a year and a half ago. She skidded into a tree on her way back from work. I was home when it happened, watching the storm out the window, urging the snow to come down faster and heavier so school would be canceled.
I dont even remember if it was or not.
For Dad and me, a huge, jagged hole suddenly opened up in our lives. We just tiptoed around it, as if maybe it would go away if we pretended hard enough.
It didnt go away. It just got bigger and deeper.
Dad and I dont talk about it. Its just the way it is.
I dont want to think about all that, and besides, Josie has gone racing ahead—too far ahead. Shes really fast. For every mile I go, I bet she does five or six. She needs the exercise. As long as she gets a nice, long run every day, shes what Im sure anyone would agree is the perfect dog. Shes good even if she has to be cooped up for a couple days, but its hard for her.
I can relate. After all, Ive told her, I have to go to school.
I whistle and she comes back—with another scrap of the same T-shirt-like material in her mouth. It has a smear of bright red blood on it. When blood is still red instead of brown, its, like, fresh, right?
I look around uneasily, but theres nobody else in sight. This is starting to freak me out. Lets face it; blood is creepy stuff.
Josie has taken off again, and I shrug and follow her. I wonder if its a person or an animal thats bleeding and then realize its a stupid question: animals dont rip up their T-shirts to blot their cuts. Probably somebody sneezed and got a bloody nose, or got scratched while picking raspberries. But what if its something worse? I wonder if I should get help.
When we moved and it looked like I was going to be on my own for most of the summer, Dad gave me a cell phone. I could call him now. Or 911. But is this an emergency? Im not sure. I take the phone from my pocket and turn it on. No reception. It must be because of the high cliffs on both sides of the stream.
I put the phone away and scan the ground. The trail is soft and moist here and I see footprints. Feeling like a real tracker, I stop to study them. They have the pattern of sneakers or running shoes, like the ones Im wearing, but since theyre only partial prints I cant get a sense of the size. Josie comes over and examines them, too, but doesnt seem to find them very interesting. Theyre not animal tracks, after all.
Then I notice that the person who made the prints has left the trail. There is an old, dilapidated mill ahead on the left. On the right is a meadow of tall grass, and its clear someone has recently moved through it. I follow the path of broken, mashed-down stalks of grass, wondering what in the world Im doing, but doing it anyway.
Josie apparently thinks this detour from the trail is great fun, because she bounds ahead of me, making her own path through the undergrowth. The meadow ends at a steep shale slope, and I can see an avalanche of thin, crumbly stones that were sent cascading down it by the person ahead of me, who Im beginning to think of as “the bloody guy.”
So I climb the slope, too, annoyed by the ease with which Josie manages the slippery shale incline that has me on all fours, panting and clutching at anything that looks solid. Its like climbing a sand dune, so with each step I slide back half a step.
When I get to the top of the hill, I see a house that seems to be abandoned. There are no cars, and the grass is overgrown. Beyond the house is a cornfield, a monster cornfield, and alongside that is an equally huge wheat field. Both of them stretch as far as I can see into the distance.
The guys track leads right to the edge of the corn.
Its late July and weve had a lot of rain, and the cornstalks are already higher than the top of my head. They are planted right up to the edge of the yard, crowding the house, standing in silent rows and shimmering in the hushed, hot, humid air. I stand at the edge of the field where the bloody guy went in, wondering if I should bother to follow him.
I take a few steps into the corn, and thats all it takes to feel as if Ive been transported to an entirely different world. The plants are so high and so thick that things look the same in every direction. I feel swallowed up by the corn. I fight back a panicky claustrophobia and realize that Id never be able to find the bloody guy in here if he didnt want me to—and its pretty obvious he doesnt want me to, since he seems to be purposely hiding from me.
I want to get out of that cornfield as fast as I can. Im about to turn and retrace my steps when I hear a sound coming from out of the greenness growing all around me. I cock my head and listen closely. There it is again. Breathing. Hard breathing.
The bloody guy is in the corn, and not far away. He has to know Im here, and yet he isnt saying hello or asking for help. Hes hiding. And panting.
A breeze stirs the corn. The tops sigh gently, and the lower, more dried-out leaves make a clacking sound against each other. Suddenly Im more spooked than Ive ever been in my life. I turn and run out into the open air and across the farmyard. “Josie! Come!” I call. I slip and slide down that shale cliff, land at the bottom in a tangle of limbs and loose rock, then get up and run, run, run back down the trail, wanting nothing but to put distance between me and whoever is breathing out there in the corn.
Excerpted from Signal by Cynthia C. DeFelice.
Copyright © 2009 by Cynthia C. DeFelice.
Published in 2009 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.