One Way Ticket to Anywhere

RICH'S mother kicks him out of the house in a drunken fury when he refuses to eat kidney beans. The sixteen year old is put on a bus and rides cross-country to meet his father, whom he had been conditioned to fear as the monster who abducted him as an infant. Two months later, his step-mother offers him a one-way bus ticket to anywhere he wants to go. After perusing a road atlas for a place to finish high school, the protagonist devises a plan. He'll "Go Greyhound" from Idaho to his former hometown, Lindale, Texas. He'll build a fort in the woods behind the high school where he'll sleep until he can land a job, cash some paychecks, and find a room to rent. As he steps onto the bus and into adulthood, he counts his belongings as twenty dollars cash, fifty dollars of food stamps, and a garbage bag full of...