than the man’s creepy dog—he could only stammer out a response, “I just . . . I am . . . school,”
before the boy ran away.
“See you later, Christopher,” Dr. Newman yelled in response. Christopher kept running,
through the doctor’s office parking lot, down the street, and to the crosswalk. He anxiously
bounced from one foot to another waiting for the crossing guard, and didn’t feel safe again until
he was in his classroom.
After that morning, Christopher went back to following the route his mother had shown
him until he found an even better shortcut to follow. Across the street from his house was a
creek. On weekends, he and the other children in the neighborhood went go to the creek to play.
They tied pieces of dog food onto strings, and feed them down holes they found along the banks
until they felt a snag at the other end. This snag meant they had caught a crawfish. Some kids
took them home and tried to keep them as pets, though they would usually die within a few days
or weeks. Christopher was content to catch and release them, fascinated by their strange, bulging
eyes, and tentacles.
One day he took his dog, Athena, with him, and decided to follow the banks of the creek
to see where it led them. It took him into a culvert that was cavernous enough his father could
have walked through it without stooping. Something about that culvert seemed magical. It was
like a portal. Anything could be on the other side, Wonderland, or Narnia even. He was
overjoyed when he reached the end to discover the destination the culvert led to was even better
than what he conjured up in his imagination. It was the other side of the street! Now he would
only have to cross at the crosswalk once on his way to school.
The first morning he followed this shortcut Christopher was ecstatic. When he arrived at
the crosswalk needing only to cross one street the guard appeared confused. Christopher felt as if
he had triumphed in some lengthy battle, and gotten the better of his formidable opponent. A few
days after Christopher started to follow his new shortcut the old man asked him about the
change, “Did you move, boy?”
Christopher, too proud of his ingenious solution to the crosswalk problem to