Off the Grid Read online

  Copyright © 2015 Lesley Choyce

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Choyce, Lesley, 1951–, author

  Off the grid / Lesley Choyce.

  (Orca soundings)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0926-0 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-4598-0928-4 (pdf).—

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0929-1 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca soundings

  PS8555.H668O34 2015 jC813'.54 C2014-906677-5

  C2014-906678-3

  First published in the United States, 2015

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014952062

  Summary: Homeschooled and naïve, Cody must attempt to fit in and stand up for what he believes when he moves to the city.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover image by Getty Images

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, Stn. B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4 ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  18 17 16 15 • 4 3 2 1

  For my brother, Gordon Choyce

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  It all happened so quickly. When my dad got sick, we had to move to the city so he could get treatment in the hospital. None of us had seen this coming. Especially me.

  So I traded the wilderness for the city. My home for some crappy apartment. My life alone in the woods with my family for this insanity of city life and going to a big high school. Nothing could have prepared me for it. Nothing. It was like a bad dream. But it wasn’t a dream. It was real. Too real.

  On my first day at Citadel High, I felt like I was on another planet. I was a freak, a sixteen-year-old freak who had grown up in the woods. Off the grid, as my father liked to say. The clothes I wore were secondhand, given to me by the Cancer Society, which was taking care of us. My regular clothes would have made me stand out even more than I already did. I hated what I had to wear. My mom said I didn’t have a choice. I had to go to school. My dad wasn’t well enough to continue with my homeschooling, and my mom said she was too upset to help me with my schoolwork.

  So I arrived at school on my own, first thing in the morning on our third day in town. The hallways were filled with kids shouting and bumping into each other. They all looked at me and they could tell I was lost and hopeless in this zoo. I’d been lost before in the forest, but it was never like this. I could always find my way home. The wind, the sun, even the birds could guide me. But here I had no guides. This was lost lost.

  And I hated to admit it, but I was scared.

  I didn’t even know where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do. I was about to bail on the whole crappy thing when someone walked up to me. A big guy, maybe a head taller than me and thick around the neck. He stood in front of me and just looked at me, a smirk on his face. “Holy Christ,” he said, staring at me. “Where did you come from?” He sniffed the air. “When was the last time you had a bath?”

  Some other students were watching. They began to laugh. I wanted to run. I just didn’t know where to run to.

  Then this girl who had pink hair and a piece of metal stuck across her nose walked up and jabbed an elbow in the gut of the tough guy in front of me. “Leave him alone, Austin,” she said. “I know you can’t help being a jerk, but lighten up.”

  I couldn’t help but notice she had some words painted on the back of her neck: Wild at Heart. I think maybe she scared me more than big Austin, but at least she was trying to help.

  Austin snorted once, just like a bear I had met in the woods one summer. Then shot me a look that said this wasn’t over. But he left.

  The girl looked at me. “You must be autistic or something,”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Oh, so you do speak English. Got a name?”

  “Cody,” I said. “Cody Graham.”

  Kids were still looking at me, at us.

  She didn’t seem to care, but I felt like I had bugs crawling on me.

  “I gotta get to class. Where do you need to be?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been here before.”

  “I’ll take you to the office.”

  “Thanks.”

  In the office, I saw a kid with a nose-bleed and a girl who was crying. She kept repeating, “But I lost my iPhone,” over and over.

  There was this loud noise and I jumped. The girl shook her head. “It’s just the bell, Moonboy. I gotta go. See that guy in there?” She pointed to a small inner office. “That’s Mr. Costanzo, one of the vice-principals. Talk to him. He’ll know what to do.” She squeezed my arm and then left.

  I stood in the doorway to his office. Mr. Costanzo was sitting at a desk, staring at a pile of papers. He finally looked up. “What?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. That girl said I should talk to you.”

  “So talk. Who are you? I don’t recognize you.”

  “Cody Graham,” I said. “I was told I had to come here. To go to school.”

  Then something seemed to click. He smiled. “Oh, right. The kid from the woods.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The kid from the woods.”

  “Welcome to Citadel High. I looked at the record of work you’ve been doing on your own. Very impressive. I’ll set you up with a schedule and get you into some classes. What do you think of the school so far?”

  I just shrugged and tried not to scream.

  Chapter Two

  Mr. Costanzo rattled off a lot of stuff that I didn’t really follow. Then he led me down the empty hallways. We ended up in a room where about thirty kids were sitting at desks in rows. He introduced me to a teacher and left. The teacher told me to take a seat, and the kids all watched as I looked around. I took a seat in the back but had no idea what I was supposed to do or how I was supposed to act.

  Austin, the big guy from before, was in this class. He turned around in his seat and gave me a dirty look. The teacher, a tall man with glasses, began speaking and writing words on the board. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I just sat there and looked out the window at a maple tree. There was a squirrel in that tree, and the squirrel kept me sane.

  And then the bell rang again. Everyone closed their books, packed up and left. I was still sitting there looking at the squirrel when the teacher said, “Didn’t you hear the bell? You can leave.”

  I had no idea where I was supposed to go next. I left and went outside and sat under that tree, wondering what the hell I had been thrown into.

  A while later, the bell sounded again and kids started walking out of the school. I saw the girl from the morning coming down the steps. She saw me and waved. I waved back, and she walked over and sat dow
n.

  “Cutting classes already, Moonboy? Not good.”

  “I guess not,” I said. I shrugged. “I’m not sure what I am supposed to be doing. She laughed and tapped me on the knee. “No one does. We all just play games. So forget about trying to do what anyone expects. Be yourself. It’s Cody, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cody, I’m Alexis, but you can call me Lex.”

  I nodded. “You can tell I look lost, right? I’ve just never been any place like this before.”

  “You mean you’ve never gone to school?”

  “No. I was homeschooled.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “A long way from here.”

  “I mean, what town?”

  “Not a town. Just a place.”

  “The place must have a name.”

  “We just called it home.”

  “That’s original.” I thought she was going to get up and walk away, but instead she leaned closer. “Okay, now you’ve got me curious. Tell me what it’s like, wherever home is.”

  I took a deep breath. I had promised myself not to reveal too much about my past life to anyone, but I was so freaked out by this whole new school thing that I felt I needed to explain it to someone. So I told her. “Okay. Up until recently, I lived with my mom and dad a hundred miles east of here. We lived in the woods about twenty miles from the closest road. My parents cleared the land and built the house there about four years before I was born.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  I shook my head. “My parents were very idealistic. They wanted to live off the grid, as they called it.”

  “No friends even?”

  “Just my parents. And they were very cool. They taught me. We had books. I never went to school, but my dad made me work every day on schoolwork.”

  “But no friends to hang out with, no girlfriend?”

  I probably blushed. “Just us.”

  “If I’d had to have no contact with anyone but my parents, I would have killed myself long ago.”

  “It wasn’t like that. We had a good life. We had a wind generator and solar panels. So we could listen to music, and we had light. Woodstove for heating and cooking. My dad said that if everyone lived like we lived, it would solve most of the problems of the world. We weren’t hurting anyone or anything, and he taught me that was important. We saw other people when we came to town for supplies once a month. We visited some of my mom’s family a few times. It wasn’t complete isolation.”

  “What did you do for food?”

  “We had a garden. We grew our own food. And we hunted.”

  Something changed in the way she looked at me. “Wait a minute. Did you say you hunted?”

  “Yeah. We had a bow and arrows and a couple of rifles. I learned to shoot a gun when I was about twelve.”

  She seemed angry. “You mean you killed animals yourself.”

  I nodded. “I only killed a creature that we would use for food—spruce grouse, rabbits, deer, mostly. I got to be really good at it. And my dad taught me the proper way to gut and skin the carcass and preserve the meat.”

  Alexis stood up. Her attitude toward me had suddenly changed. “You killed and ate rabbits and deer?” She was almost shouting. I didn’t know what to say.

  She shook her head, turned and walked off. I was stunned. Other kids were looking at me and laughing.

  I wanted to run, but I saw that guy, Mr. Costanzo, heading my way, walking really fast. He must have been watching from inside the school. He came right up to me. He must have seen the confusion on my face, because he said in a friendly voice, “Don’t worry. You’re not the first person to feel the wrath of Alexis.”

  “Can I go home now?” I asked. I didn’t really mean home, just the crappy apartment where my mom and I were staying while my dad was in the hospital.

  “I really think you should finish the day. Look, I know you missed some classes, so I found a student with the same schedule as you. He said you could shadow him for the rest of the day.”

  I didn’t know what else to do. So I said okay.

  Chapter Three

  Mr. Costanzo led me to the library and introduced me to a black kid sitting at a table and reading a magazine. “Cody, this is DeMarco.”

  DeMarco smiled and held out his hand. I shook it. Mr. Costanzo said, “I’ll let you two get to know each other. I’ve got work to do,” and then he left.

  DeMarco looked me up and down and shook his head. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you gotta get some new threads.”

  “Threads?”

  “Clothes. Look, I know Mr. C. says you’ve been living in the woods and all, but if you don’t want to look like 1962, you better get with the program.”

  Just then something on the table buzzed, and DeMarco looked at it. It was a mobile phone. There were words on a tiny screen. DeMarco nodded and started tapping it with his fingers. I was amazed how kids seemed to spend so much time on their phones. I had never had one.

  DeMarco read the look on my face. He smiled again. “Tell me you’ve never seen someone texting before.”

  I shrugged.

  “Never had a cell phone?”

  “I never had a reason to use a phone.”

  That made DeMarco laugh. But it wasn’t a nasty laugh. He gave me a gentle slap on the shoulder. “Well, this is going to be interesting. Welcome to the twenty-first century, cowboy. I’m just gonna have to bring you up to speed. Time to get your white ass to your next class, Code.”

  I decided to keep my mouth shut for the rest of the day, fearing I’d say something wrong, like I’d done with Alexis. The plan worked well enough until the final bell rang.

  “End of the day, Code,” DeMarco announced. “Let freedom ring.”

  But as we were walking out the school door, we passed Alexis, with a couple of other girls. Alexis gave me a look like I was something on the sole of her shoe and pushed past us.

  DeMarco had no idea what was going on. “Just keep walking, bro.”

  We walked in silence for a couple of blocks before he asked, “What was that all about? How’d you make girl enemies on your first day of school?”

  I tried to explain as best I could. DeMarco’s eyes went wide. “So let me get this straight. You meet a nice girl like Alexis and try to impress her by telling her you’re good at shooting bunny rabbits and stripping the skin off a deer?”

  DeMarco registered that look in my eyes. I guess it had been my trademark look all day—dazed and confused and not having a clue. “Codeman,” he said. “We’ve got some serious work to do. Serious work.”

  But DeMarco had a part-time job at a coffee shop that he had to get to. He said goodbye and left me on my own to walk down a city street full of busy people, all walking and talking on their little phones or tapping away on them like it was the most important thing in the world.

  I almost got hit by a couple of cars while crossing the street, and a few people yelled at me. I longed for the quiet and solitude of the forest. I just wanted to sit by the little brook and listen to it. I suddenly realized, too, just how hungry and thirsty I was.

  I saw a fountain in front of a big building, with a pool of water around it. I leaned over the concrete edge and drank deeply from the pool. It tasted different from the well water at home and the stream I sometimes drank from when I was in the forest. But it helped.

  Once again I noticed people looking at me in an odd way. What was I doing wrong? The more I looked at their faces, the more I realized they thought I was crazy or had something wrong with me. One young man with long hair walked by and nudged me and said, “Easy on it, my friend. I think you’re takin’ the wrong drugs.” But I had no idea what he meant.

  In spite of all that, I took another drink from the pool. When I looked up and around, I realized I had no idea which way to go to get back to the apartment. I was totally lost in a city I didn’t understand. And I wanted to cry.

  Chapter Four

  My mother has always s
aid that crying doesn’t help, but it also doesn’t hurt. And I had cried plenty of times in my life, sometimes in pain, sometimes out of loneliness. But I wouldn’t cry now. It was clear I was in a world I knew nothing about. A world where people walked around like zombies staring at their phones and where you were not supposed to drink water in public. I didn’t know how to get back to the apartment. And there was no way I would walk back to the school.

  I sat on the edge of the pool, remembering what my father had said about getting lost in the woods. When you get lost, stay lost for the time being. Stay put. Don’t just wander. It will make things worse. Sit down and think. Come up with a plan.

  I had my head down, staring at the concrete. And then this old guy sat down beside me. He had a smell about him. Nothing I was familiar with. Not body odor, but something else. Something strong.

  “Looks like you need some kind of help,” he said.

  I nodded and looked at him. He was maybe sixty, unshaven, and in old clothes like my dad would wear chopping wood. He had a bottle in a brown paper bag, and he held it out. “Want some?”

  I didn’t know what it was, but I accepted the bottle and took a sip. The liquid burned like hell, and I spit it out.

  The guy looked offended. “Shouldn’t waste good sauce,” he said, putting a cap on the bottle and shoving it into his pocket. I was coughing and trying to get my breath. “Just trying to ease the pain, kiddo.”

  I took a gulp of air. “I’m lost,” I said. “Think you can help me find my way home?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I know all about lost. Been that way most of my life. I’d go home too if I knew where home was, but I don’t. But I bet I can get you where you need to go. Where you from anyway?”

  So I gave him the short version of my tale. Wide-eyed, he pulled out the bottle and took a deep gulp, but he didn’t offer it to me this time.