A few days later, The Man started making some solid conclusions about Packard and his family.  They were all a lot of fun, and they got along very good.  Lucy was a little sick the first week he was there, but she took to him and followed him around the room with her eyes whenever he was there.  She always begged to be held by him, and he was afraid at first, but he made peace with the situation, and soon the two of them were inseparable.  Lucy was a true friend and she always looked him square in the eyes when he talked, to size him up.

Garth was a nine-year-old nerd, lazy, and didn’t ever want to go to school or do anything but play on his computer.  There was a chess game on there he liked to use to see if he could win the computerized opponent.  He usually won.  Garth watched television, and ate a lot of fruit, usually oranges.  The Man had a problem with him knowing he was a year older, but so much more immature.  Lucy had more in common with him than Garth.  Maybe it was because he had life too easy, and wasn’t ever beat up.

As for the runaways, two 16-year-olds and one 17-year-old, they were the coolest people The Man had ever met.

“I’m Brett.”

“Spyglass.”

“Ed.  Course those aren’t our real names.  You have to remember we’re on the run just like you are, and we don’t ever use our real names.”

“Not even to each other?”

“Nope.”

“I’m The Man.”

Brett laughed.  “Good name, I like it.”

“Yeah, had it since I was six years old.  My dad always treated me like one, so I became one.  Then he beat me up a lot, and my mom didn’t want me because she wanted her boyfriends instead.”

“Yeah, we know how it is.  We been there, done that,” said Spyglass.

The Man wondered how Spyglass got his name, but he thought he’d get to know him a little better before he asked him.

“Want to take a walk?  There’s a long path that leads to a creek, and you can catch crawdads there.  Got any smokes?”

The Man politely said, “No, but I got some money.  Is there a store around here somewheres?”