Chapter 13
Lightning Boy and the Trail of Skulls
It was never good when Flora was waiting out in the driveway, especially when she was wringing a dishtowel.
“Miss, miss…. Patrick…. No school…. No Patrick… no children… all no children…”
She said much more than that. I just didn’t understand the rest. All of it was in Spanish. It was enough. My son was missing. Patrick was his own special kind of child. But when things go wrong with Patrick—they go really wrong.
“Flora, you…” I pointed to the ground. “You stay here and wait for Patrick if he comes home.”
“Si, Patrick… casa.”
That part was covered. But my son was out there, missing. Where do I start? The school.
Don’t take your bike. He’s on foot. You go on foot.
I hurried to school scanning the park. There were kids everywhere. There were never so many kids roaming free after school. Each child had a maid or a mom. Something feels very… off.
My son is missing.
I made it to the back door of the school where they release the kids. The principal was there.
I hate her. Don’t hate.
Breathless from the situation—not the walk—my words were rushed.
“Patrick is missing!”
She looked at me, entirely unbothered. “No, we just released school fifteen minutes early.”
Why would you do that? Was there a fire?
“Why would you do that?”
“We had an assembly, and it was over. It was easier just to release the kids.”
“Excuse me? That’s the most irresponsible thing I’ve heard.”
There was a crowd around me now—other parents and maids without children. They looked furious. They were nodding, completely agreeing with me.
“Well, at the time it seemed like the best thing to do,” the principal stammered, finally looking defensive.
“The parents aren’t here to get the kids that walk! The maids aren’t here yet. Patrick could be anywhere out there!”
“Why would any child go toward the gates?” she asked, as if children were predictable, logical creatures.
“Because he’s PATRICK!”
Just then, another mom grabbed me tightly by the arm. “He took off with Brant Staffer.”
That got the principal’s attention really quickly. Brant’s dad was a high-ranking Colonel on base.
“What way?” I asked.
She pointed toward the park. I took off for the gate.
“Wait!” the mom called out. “I said they went the other way.”
“Yes, but— Those guards need to know that kids are unattended. If they are on base, they are probably safe. Out there? Past the gates?”
I didn’t finish the sentence, I just took off running.
The main gate was close enough to see and getting there was fast. I spotted a familiar face at the guard shack.
“Short Straw!” I yelled.
Yep, there’s the red hair just under the back of the cap.
“Short Straw! The kids were let out fifteen minutes early. The maids weren’t there, and the kids went home unescorted.”
He stood at the corner of the yellow box painted around the official guard shack area. His posture instantly shifted to high alert. “What? Why?”
“It’s that principal. She thought it was a good idea. My son’s somewhere on base—I have to go find him. I just need to know he can’t make it outside past you.”
“We’ve got this covered,” he said, his voice dropping into full military authority.
I turned around to head back. As I did, I noticed two dudes just staring at the chaos. They looked like they just left the bar, completely out of place. Whatever, I thought, There are unsupervised kids everywhere, the gate guards will figure it out.
I took off running straight to the front of the school. Patrick loves walking down the big stairs.
I tracked across the driveway and toward the park.
There! He was there.
I started reading tracks on the ground. It may sound unbelievable to people who don’t know my son—but I have learned his footprints. It wasn’t something I set out to learn. It happened by accident one Memorial Day.
We were at a family graveyard with my in-laws. My mother-in-law nearly had a heart attack right there among the headstones. She was white as a sheet, pointing wildly toward the ground.
“I thought I was imagining things—but these skulls keep turning up in the dirt!
Come look! There are more than there used to be. It was only one to begin with.”
Everyone went to see. Sure enough, there were skulls in the dirt. Four or five of them, scattered across different graves.
I looked closer and paused. Wait a minute. That’s a pattern. These prints are everywhere Patrick had just walked.
“Son, come here,” I called out.
It took Patrick a minute to get anywhere, because he firmly believed in taking the most interesting route possible.
“Show me the bottom of your shoes.”
He lifted his foot, revealing his brand-new Goosebumps tennis shoes. There, molded into the rubber tread on the bottom, a skull. Relief washed over the family. Granny felt instantly better.
Back in Panama, I felt that same sense of relief relax my shoulders when I found the first skull print in the sand.
He had run toward the swings. I ran toward the swings. Skulls everywhere. I needed to find a single clear pair spaced far apart. The sign of Patrick running.
There they were. He went to the chin-up bars next. Then the slide. The prints led toward the grass, giving me a clear direction. He wasn’t heading home. He was going toward Brant’s house.
I ran to the Staffer home and rang the bell. The colonel’s houses on this side of the base were massive. I could hear Brant’s oldest brother upstairs; he didn’t go to school with the others because his mother homeschooled him. He was shouting a muffled “Hello!” from the third floor window.
The heavy front door swung open, and Brant’s mother answered with a warm, “Hello!”
“Hi—is Patrick here?” I gasped out.
“No, he dropped Brant off. Wasn’t that sweet? He said that he didn’t want his friend to get lost.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“He took off for your house. I’m surprised you didn’t pass him.”
“I didn’t come from that direction. I’ll head there now.”
I took off running. I knew he was safe now, but I ran anyway.
“Call me and let me know he’s safe!” she shouted after me.
I threw a thumbs-up over my shoulder and kept my stride.
When I finally rounded the corner to my house, I saw Patrick standing in the driveway. He was pacing back and forth. I slowed down and walked up to him, trying to catch my breath.
“Hey! You had quite an adventure!”
“Mom! They let me out early and I got to walk all the way home from school by myself!” he beamed, practically bursting with pride.
“They sure did. Did you come straight home?”
“Yeah, I dropped Brant off—he’s smaller than me. I didn’t want him to get lost.”
“You did great.”
Flora was still standing in the driveway, looking between the two of us. Patrick looked at me, a little confused. “The maid wouldn’t let me go find you! I was scared you were lost.”
“Well, I thought I was picking you up from school.”
“Me too! But you should have been back before me. And you came up the other side of the street. What took you so long?”
“I didn’t know where you were, so I was following your shoe prints.”
He looked down at his feet. “But I went straight to Brant’s house!”
“Not really. You went by the swings… the pull-up bars… and a few other places.”
He stopped and thought hard, processing this. “I did, didn’t I.” He seemed surprised by himself. Then, his face fell. “I thought I did like you told me—come straight home if something happened to Flora.” His shoulders sagged.
“Son—you did come straight home,” I said gently, pulling him close. “Those things were just on the way.”
“They were right there!” he said, his confidence returning as he stood a little taller. Then he looked at me with a smirk. “What took you so long?”
I smiled, looking down at the little trail of skulls in the driveway. “I haven’t learned how to ride a lightning bolt like you.”