Chapter 53

He sweet-talked one of the street vendors into a few squares of fresh, hot gingerbread right out of the oven. He packed half of it away to share and ate the rest.

A gaggle of kids, all staring at their phones, nearly ran him over in their attempts to chase down a rare Pokémon.

Scooter got to the green, checked around in case anyone was watching, and then hauled himself up into the enormous oak that shaded the southern half of the lawn. The tree was huge, smooth-barked from decades of kids and college students playing on and around it, with plenty of finger and toe holds. It was a good tree. Better than the swamp-survivors down at Sandbridge, scrub-pines and tiny poplars. Being so close to shore, the salt water did a number on trees, and the ones that remained had to suffer through hurricane season every year. The few trees in Sandbridge were survivors, but they didn’t have the majesty of the old inland trees like this one.