Tracks

By Vanessa Acton

Nick and Ava have become friends over the fact that they're the only upper classmen who still ride the bus to school. And every day, they see the same boy—who they call The Kid—walking along the train tracks, even when the weather is terrible or when he's clearly fighting a bad cold.

When Nick notices the mysterious boy practically sprinting along the tracks one day and he doesn't show up the next, Nick and Ava begin to wonder if something might be wrong. But how can they help when they don't even know who The Kid is?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781541517714

Vanessa Acton

Vanessa Acton is a writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She enjoys stalking dead people (also known as historical research), drinking too much tea, and taking long walks during her home state's annual three-week thaw.

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Copyright © 2018 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

Darby Creek

A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

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Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

Cover and interior images: AlenKadr/Shutterstock.com (texture); iStock.com/Vectorfactory (skyline); iStock.com/bubaone (tracks); iStock.com/Fosin2 (shutter icon).

Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.5. Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Acton, Vanessa, author.

Title: Tracks / by Vanessa Acton.

Description: Minneapolis : Darby Creek, [2018] | Series: Mason Falls mysteries |

Summary: When The Kid that high schooler Nick sees from the bus every day disappears, Nick and former friend Ava investigate to learn if something is wrong.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017029927| ISBN 9781541501126 (lb) | ISBN 9781541501218 (pb) | ISBN 9781541501225 (eb pdf)

Subjects: | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Friendship—Fiction. | Missing children—Fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.A228 Tr 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029927

Manufactured in the United States of America

1-43784-33636-9/21/2017

9781541517707 mobi

9781541517714 ePub

9781541517721 ePub

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Chapter 1

The Kid looked unhappy this morning. Nick watched him from the window of the school bus as it rumbled along the road that ran parallel to the train tracks. There was something about the hunch in the Kid’s shoulders, the way his head ducked so low that his chin almost disappeared into his neck. Looks like the Kid is already having a bad day, Nick remarked to Ava, who sat next to him.

Ava looked up from scrolling through the playlists on her phone. Glanced past Nick, out the window, toward the scrawny boy walking along the train tracks. Then she looked back down at her phone. Don’t be so creepy.

I’m not being creepy. We see him every day, twice a day. Sometimes I get curious.

Ava just grunted. Nick had known her most of his life, but he still couldn’t always tell what her grunts meant. To be fair, they hadn’t spent much time together during the years between first and tenth grade. It was only this past year that they’d started sitting together on the bus again, now that all their real friends had cars or got rides to school. And they still didn’t talk that much. Usually they just listened to music or texted their actual friends. Still, Nick sometimes wished he had a clearer idea of what she was thinking. Like now, for instance: had her grunt meant Fair enough, curiosity’s natural or I still think you’re creepy?

By the time Nick looked out the window again, the bus had left the Kid in its dust. Nick had to crane his neck around to see the Kid’s shrinking form. There wasn’t anything very distinctive about the Kid. He was skinny and small, maybe in seventh or eighth grade. He had glasses, wore a lot of gray and brown and camo-green, and carried a navy blue backpack that usually looked painfully heavy. Nick had seen him walking along those tracks, to and from school, every school day since last September. Always alone.

There had always been something vaguely sad about it, Nick thought. But the Kid had never looked downright miserable until this morning.

I don’t even know his name, Nick thought. Ava’s right. I’d better dial back the stalker thoughts.

He slipped his headphones on and listened to music for the rest of the ride to school.

/////

That afternoon when classes were over, Nick headed across the school parking lot to the spot where the bus waited. When he climbed aboard, he saw that Ava was already sitting in their usual spot, behind Jacob and Hannah. The four of them were the only high school students who still regularly rode the bus. The rest of the seats were taken up by students from the middle school attached to Mason Falls High School. Ava always got the window seat on the way home, and he had it on the