Tod liked his neighbors. He didn’t like many people, but they were a nice exception. After moving so often and getting to know what to expect from your average neighbor, anyone who left him alone and didn’t call the cops on him for existing was about as good as he thought he could get. The Anderson’s changed that. They seemed to care about him and what he had to say, even if they seemed to miss some of his clues to turn it down, but that was something he could easily live with.
Normally he wouldn’t talk to people he didn’t feel obligated to, but he and the Andersons has something in common that he hadn’t been able to relate with anyone until them; they were runaways.
Todd ran away from his family at fifteen because he knew he couldn’t do the things that they expected him to. They made their money at the expense of others, and that’s not to say they were politicians. They were a whole different kind of criminal. He saw what they did and it nearly killed him to know that they wanted that from him, so he left. Nearly no one knew of his existence back then anyways, so he wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t anyone looking for him.
The Andersons on the other hand, weren’t runaways by choice. After years of support from one another that they couldn’t find anywhere else, Jessica and Veronica developed a bond that went beyond a simple friendship. They knew that their relationship wouldn’t be accepted where they lived. Jessica was afraid, but Veronica knew not to ignore one’s feelings; that doing so only brought misery. When it was inevitably learned by those around them how close they really were, they were forced to leave.
And so, the seventeen year old city boy Todd, and the nineteen year old country girls Jessica and Veronica lived in the same patch of woods in western Maine.
Todd didn’t have what one could really call a home. It was a hold in the ground about the size of you average hotel room, but shallower. It was insulated with layers of pine needles and rocks held in place by silty clay, with a roof made of a lattice of sticks supporting a mesh of ground clutter. That was, until the Andersons found him. They...