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Rite Aid. He drank before school, the hot licorice liquid burning his throat, but it numbed him, eased the pain, and now he was buzzed most of the time.
    Then one morning in homeroom, Jordan Falby, a lineman on the football team, grinned and said, “Hey, McCall, been deer hunting lately?”
    Luke, outweighed by sixty pounds, got up from his desk and swung the edge of Algebra II into Falby’s cheekbone and blood spurted and Falby yelled and brought his hand up to his face and Luke swung at him again and then kids were grabbing him, holding him back as Miss Hyvonen, their teacher, came in the room and freaked.
    Luke was suspended indefinitely pending an inquiry, the assistant principal, Helen Parks, a plump nervous woman with red hair, said.
    Luke had to call his mother and had to wait till she came and picked him up. When they were in her Land Rover pulling out of the school parking lot, she looked at him and said, “What’s going on?”
    What’d she think was going on? She open her eyes this morning and forget what happened?
    “What did Jordan Falby say that set you off?”
    Luke told her.
    His mom said, “I probably would’ve done the same thing.”
    Luke couldn’t imagine his mother hurting a fly.
    She said, “I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about you. I want you to see someone.”
    Luke had been thinking about killing himself for a few weeks. The pain he felt wouldn’t go away. It was there in his head before he opened his eyes in the morning and stayed with him till he fell asleep at night, if he could.
    He considered sleeping pills. Take a handful, nod off and it was all over. Or he could shoot himself. Load one of his dad’s shotguns, put the barrel in his mouth, and boom . It might be effective, but he didn’t want his mom finding him on the basement floor with his head blown off. That wasn’t right. Carbon monoxide was another possibility. Drive in the garage, close the door and let the car run. After giving it a lot of thought, sleeping pills seemed like the best option. But where would he get them? Did you need a prescription?
    His mom said, “When were you going to tell me you quit tennis?”
    Her voice brought him back. “Didn’t I?”
    She glanced at him and looked angry. She turned away, staring through the windshield.
       
    First light. Luke could see now, walking behind his dad along a ridge that sloped down through big Michigan timber and thick cover. They stepped overa fallen birch tree and maneuvered through tangles of alder and fern, boots sloshing on wet leaves. They’d walked a couple miles, at least. His ears were cold and he could see his breath, wide awake now after a slow start.
    His dad stopped and took out binoculars and glassed a stand of oak trees in the distance, a place where whitetail liked to hang out and eat. He lowered the binoculars and looked at Luke. “What happened with Lauren?”
    “She said she wanted to be friends. We both kind of decided.”
    “You’re probably better off. Having a girlfriend’s a lot of work.”
    “She’d get mad if I didn’t call her every day, and sometimes, even if I did.”
    “Girls are different, in case you haven’t figured that out yet.”
    “Yeah, they seem a little odd at times.”
    His dad smiled.
    “Just wait. You haven’t seen anything.” He handed the binoculars to Luke. “Have a look?”
    Luke gripped them, brought them up to his eyes, and panned stands of oak trees and birch and aspen and cedar, the leaves still green, and followed another ridge up to a stand of maple. No deer, but the lightwas coming and he could make out the shapes and contours of things. A black squirrel darted across the trail and disappeared.
    They kept moving through thick cover, feet unsteady on the slick terrain, approaching an area where the leaves were matted down.
    Owen said, “Looks like they just got up from a nap.”
    Luke said, “Check this out.” Pointing to tracks that went uphill to a stand of oak trees on a ridgetop