Madison arrives at the forbidden shortcut and stops, staring at it uncertainly.
The tall wooden fence looms above her like an impossible fortress wall stretching down the road in both directions across the yards of multiple homes edging this street. The eight-foot fence has been here for as long as she can remember, blocking access from the sidewalk on this road to the alley on the other side.
She looks down its width in both directions, then up at its height.
Madison is having second thoughts about taking the shortcut. She always feels nervous using this shortcut. She has always been told not to go into other peoples’ yards uninvited, and the shortcut means cutting through the yard on the other side of the fence.
“I don’t get why I’m not allowed to go that way. Mom and Dad said it isn’t safe and only made vague comments about buildings there. Maybe they are scared of Old Man Hooper and his dog. Who isn’t scared of Old Man Hooper and Caesar?”
“Everyone knows about Old Man Hooper and Caesar,” she thinks. “Mr. Hooper is flat out weird. He is as crazy as crazy comes and even meaner. He hates everyone. There are all kinds of rumors of Mr. Hooper locking people in his basement or killing them. And Caesar is the biggest, loudest, and meanest dog around. Caesar is kept chained up in the yard and it’s a good thing too. He tries to attack anyone who walks past. Everyone knows Caesar eats any squirrel, rabbit, or neighborhood cat dumb enough to enter his yard too.”
Madison leans closer to the fence. She peeks through the cracks between the fence boards, spying on the alley on the other side. There is no sign of life or movement. She looks up and down the sidewalk again.
The shortcut is blocked by the tall fence. “That’s the trick part of the shortcut. The shortcut is to go through the fence. Only those who know its secret can use the shortcut and I know which one is the loose board.”
She finds the little notch mark in a board and counts three boards over, swinging the board on its rusty nail. She squeezes through the hole in the fence. It’s a tight squeeze with her bulky winter coat on and she gets stuck halfway through. She sucks in a breath, trying to suck everything in and make herself skinnier. She panics for just a moment.
“Come on, you can fit. You know you can.”
You have to be skinny enough to fit to be able to use this shortcut. Not everyone in her class can do it. She feels the pressure of the fence against her, wishing she had a thinner coat, and squirms past it, popping out the other side. The board swings back into place behind her when she lets go of it.
Madison glances at the house nervously, hoping no one is home to see her, and quickly runs across the back yard to the alley bordering the other side of the yard. Stopping there, she pretends she is just walking down the alley and only just stopped. She looks up the alley towards her destination.
On the other side of the fence she squeezed through and just past this corner of an odd shaped backyard, the back alley runs behind the back yards of homes on two other streets running parallel to each other. Down the length of the alley are short driveways, half of them with old garages. Most of the garages look like they should be painted or replaced. Garbage cans clutter the end of most of the driveways, the homeowners taking their trash out to the cans instead of bringing the cans in. They are usually full whether or not the garbage trucks have come by recently.
Today there is a yellow-stained mattress leaning against one of the garages. It makes her stomach turn at the sight of its ripped and stained top side. A few houses past this, Madison sees an old couch missing two of its three cushions. It is an ugly plaid fabric that looks like it must have been from a hundred years ago.
“Maybe even a thousand,” she thinks wryly. It is stained, holes worn in the back and arms, and the frazzled arms and sides look like a cat probably used it for a scratching post.
Four houses past the chair there is a short road branching off midway down the alley. The road is the distance of a single house and yard and spits you out on the next street on that side. The road has no name as far as she knows.
That road is her goal. Once she reaches it, she gets to the next street. One of the two houses bordering that little road without a name is Old Man Hooper’s.
This is the other part of the shortcut that makes her nervous. The thought of passing Mr. Hooper’s house makes her whole body cold with dread.
Madison stops a few houses away and studies Mr. Hooper’s yard, looking for any sign Caesar might be outside. “Probably even the grass is too scared to be in that yard,” Madison thinks.
At the moment, all the junk cluttering the yard is mostly uneven bumps in the snow, the larger stuff like a rusting metal kitchen chair skeleton missing its back and seat, stick up from the snow. Large paw prints have trampled the snow down in crazy criss-cross patterns around the yard, especially along trails that must be Caesar’s favorite path to take through the yard.
“I don’t know how that dog manages to get through the yard without getting his chain tangled up in the junk.” Madison sees no sign of the dog. She swallows and tries to push down her fear of the yard.
“It’s just an empty yard and if he’s out Caesar is chained. It doesn’t even bother you,” she tries telling herself.
Madison heads down the alley, slowing as she approaches the short access road and Mr. Hooper’s house. She pauses and listens for Caesar, searching the yard for any sign of the black and brown dog. The dog is big. He looks like he probably has Rottweiler, Doberman, German Shepherd, and she suspects he probably has some Tyrannosaurus Rex in him too. And he is meaner than anything.
She does not see him and is filled with relief. “The dog must be in the house.”
Nervously, she starts walking past Old Man Hooper’s yard.
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