PART ONE – Escape from Abuse

Chapter 1: Ignorant Genius

I never set out to become a billionaire. In fact, I came from the humblest of beginnings imaginable. Even now, it’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea that my boyfriend and I were once among the richest people in the world. It’s humbling to think that we were viewed by many in the same light as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Barlow, people I used to view with disdain. Hell, even now, Jeff Barlow is one of my closest friends. Jeff-fucking-Barlow, the executive director and founder of Applazon, purveyor of everything a person could want, producer of the most popular phones, tablets and computers, provider of cloud services to most of the world and space entrepreneur. Yeah, that Jeff Barlow.

Yet Jeff credits me with having made him a better person, and I’d like to think I’ve become a better person, too. I wasn’t born with much, and I came from nowhere. The one thing I had going for me was a brain and the vision to foresee what others had missed. Sometimes it even seemed that maybe I had a guardian angel. I wasn’t sure if I believed in god, and I certainly didn’t believe in organized religion, but I always seemed to end up in the right place at the right time. It might be something as trivial as turning right instead of left, but it put me in places where I not only survived but thrived. Ultimately, it put me in places where I could make a real difference.

Climate change was to humanity what an asteroid had been to the dinosaurs, but with a difference; we knew it was coming for decades and knew how to stop it, yet even still we did nothing. What good would it do to have billions if humanity didn’t survive? I didn’t need my billions, but I’d learned that money was an invaluable tool that could be used to open doors, to invest where others saw as a lost cause and to convince others to throw their support behind my ideas. I invented the technology that would save the planet. That wasn’t just an idle boast – it was a fact – but it would mean nothing if it wasn’t deployed. Thanks to my guardian angel, I was always in the right place at the right time, again and again. I was where I needed to be to learn what I needed to know, to develop the right technology and to meet the people who could make things happen.

Looking back, no one would’ve ever foreseen the role I’d play. My life growing up was one fucked-up disaster after another, and then it went from horrible to impossible. By all rights, I shouldn’t have survived; I should’ve ended up on the streets of some ignominious city, begging for change, resorting to prostitution and strung out on drugs. Instead, I found love, generosity and a new start. Like I said, I had a guardian angel.

I left home the day I turned thirteen, or so I thought. I’d never had any reason to doubt that Alan Farmer was my dad or that my name was Adam or that my birthday was on February 22, 2005.

It had been just me and my dad ever since I could remember. He never did tell me the full story other than that Mom died in childbirth. He never even told me her name. Something about a placental abruption and internal hemorrhaging that wouldn’t stop. In most cities, with their large hospitals and state-of-the-art equipment, they can handle that. At the worst, the mother ends up with a hysterectomy, but she lives, and so does the baby. That doesn’t happen in dinky towns like the one where I grew up, with their tiny hospitals and out-of-date facilities, especially when the family’s poor and the mother hasn’t had prenatal care. Dad always said it was just plain lucky I didn’t die.

I’m not sure my parents were even married, not that it mattered much. If there were any grandparents, Dad never said. My father wasn’t much more than a kid himself when he found himself saddled with a kid and a hospital bill he couldn’t begin to pay. I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t just leave me at the hospital or on someone’s doorstep and take off, but the truth of the matter was, we’d have both been better off if he had. He could’ve started his life over and I’d have ended up in foster care. I’ve heard all kinds of horror stories about foster care over the years, but nothing could’ve been any worse than what I went through in life with Dad. He was a mean bastard with a temper to match and an uncanny ability to take it out on his kid without leaving marks. Some of the damage was physical, but far more of the damage was mental; in any case, I got used to it.

The thing I never got used to was the sexual abuse. Dad was a horny guy with an oversized libido and an undersized dick, but fuck, did he have a temper. He never did keep a girlfriend very long, and truthfully, I think he’d have rather had a boyfriend. I’d long ago figured out I was gay, and I was fine with it. I’d never fit in, so bein’ gay didn’t change things all that much.

I never really thought of my old man as a pedophile, even though we had regular sex. I didn’t know any other life, and because we lived in an isolated shack in the woods, I didn’t have any contact with other kids until kindergarten. I just figured all boys had sex with their dads and that’s the way it was. Dad made sure I knew not to tell anyone about what we did, though. He told me what we did was very private – that sex was private – and that people just didn’t talk about it. He made it clear, however, that if I ever told anyone what we did, he’d throw me into the deep cave that was behind and under our house and leave me to rot, and I believed him.

He probably started molesting me when I was younger, but ever since I can remember – ever since my hands were big enough to go around him – he made me jerk him off. As I got older, he made me do more, to the point I was giving him blowjobs at least every day. But that was the least of it; he got off on demeaning me. Other than for sex, Dad made it clear I wasn’t good for much of anything else. Like I said, you can get used to anything, but the sense of worthlessness never went away. Eventually I got past it, but by then the feelings of inadequacy were a part of who I was. By then, I was well aware that what we did wasn’t right, but if Dad went to jail, what would happen to me? I had every reason to keep it to myself, ’cause from everything I heard, foster care was even worse. Although Dad threatened it often enough, he never tried to fuck me, probably ’cause that would’ve left physical evidence and could’ve gotten him in real trouble. Nevertheless, the combination of the physical, mental and sexual abuse took its toll.

The one thing I had going for me, although at the time I thought it was a curse, was that I was much smarter than my teachers, let alone my peers. I survived by spending as much time as I could in the library, and I became a voracious reader. The ostracism I got from always having the right answer was unbearable, and it didn’t take long to learn to keep quiet and never give the appearance of showing off. However, my fifth-grade teacher tricked me into taking a test meant for eighth graders rather than the one for kids my age, and I ended up skipping middle school entirely. Of course, the freshmen in high school welcomed me with open arms. Yeah, sure they did! I went from experiencing hell at home to experiencing hell at school, too. Again, I took refuge in the library. The library became my true home, my one and only safe place.

One of the librarians at school took a particular interest in me, and although she tried her best, I resisted her attempts to get me to open up about all the bullying and abuse. She couldn’t possibly understand, nor could she actually do anything about it. Instead, she encouraged me to take advantage of the resources the library had to offer, both in the stacks and online. For a rural backwater, Jennings County High School had decent resources, and the library was up-to-date and had state-of-the-art equipment.

She taught me to learn from history, from the civilizations that predated even ancient Greece and the Roman empire and from the explosion of knowledge that came with the discovery of the New World. She opened up my mind to the literature of Shakespeare and Dickens and even the classic sci-fi authors. She revealed a universe of art that could be explored in books and in the great museums of the world, all available online. However, nothing could have prepared me for the world of music she revealed to me, all of it accessible from listening carrels with headphones. At home and on the school bus, I’d been exposed to nothing but country music. In the library I experienced classical music, opera, jazz and even classic rock and roll.

The greatest gift the librarian gave me was perhaps the most elusive in my little rural corner of America. To most everyone else in my small town, science and technology were things to be feared. They were seen as tools used by atheists and elitists to subvert religion and turn our youth against god. Everyone might have a smartphone and be on Facebook or Twitter, but otherwise they had no use for science and technology in their daily lives. I grew up with a father who reveled in his ignorance; he was proud of it. The librarian made me realize I didn’t have to be like my father.

Imagine how my world was turned upside down by the realization that science wasn’t the enemy; ignorance was. Science was knowledge. It was truly agnostic when it came to religion, neither favoring nor dismissing any of them. Science only sought the truth, wherever it might lead. I discovered online math, science and engineering resources I never knew existed and, by the end of my freshman year, was solving calculus problems and writing my own computer programs. I read about solid-state physics, semiconductors and super­conductors, quantum states, energy bands and band gaps, as well as the curious phenomenon of tunneling. I learned how to design integrated circuits, even though I lacked the means to build them.

It was, as I approached my twelfth birthday, that she blew me away by asking me if I’d be interested in taking on tutoring some kids who needed a little help with their studies. What self-respecting fourteen or fifteen-year-old would let a twelve-year-old tutor them on anything? Maybe on tying their shoes, but not on things that mattered, like math, science or literature. Then she explained that she wanted my help with some of the middle-school students. Now that I could see, ’cause I was closer in age to them. I could certainly spare a few hours every night and maybe ten or twelve hours on the weekends, and parents were willing to pay me good money for it. Dad didn’t care where I was as long as I was home when he wasn’t drunk or stoned or when he wanted to get off.

It turned out I was good at tutoring, and I enjoyed it. As a result of years of learning to sit through classes that bored me and to keep quiet as a defense against being seen as different, I was patient with the kids I tutored. I took the time to explain things in a way they could understand. I made learning fun for them and their grades all improved, significantly. I ended up earning hundreds of dollars a week, all in cash. Better still, it got me out of the house, and the money I earned bought me a degree of freedom. I just needed to be sure Dad never found out about it.

As the money accumulated, however, it became increasingly difficult to keep it hidden from my dad and to keep it safe. I would’ve opened a savings account, but that meant getting Dad involved and I couldn’t risk it. I looked into purchasing savings bonds, but I would’ve needed an adult to purchase them, and that adult could cash them, so that wasn’t an option, either. A minor could buy postal money orders, but if Dad found them, there wasn’t anything I could do to prevent him from cashing them. I even looked into Bitcoin, but the exchange didn’t take cash. There were no Bitcoin kiosks in my little town and going to a bank to add or remove funds from my Bitcoin account was not the best way to stay under the radar.

Then I had the idea of purchasing gift cards – the physical ones you buy at a convenience store – not the ones you buy online. I could buy them from a third party, so they couldn’t be traced, and even if Dad found them, he couldn’t use them without knowing the PIN, which wasn’t on the card itself. Gift cards are activated at the time of purchase but don’t become associated with an account until actually redeemed. Until then, they’re as good as cash. I did hafta pay attention to the expiration dates though, as I quickly discovered.

I chose to use Applazon gift cards because they were ubiquitous and could be purchased just about anywhere. Even their fiercest competitors sold them. I could even transfer value from one card to another without having to actually redeem either one, so I consolidated my cards into a stack of five of them, which I hid in plain sight among the other cards in my wallet. I memorized the serial numbers and PINs, which I’d need in order to use them or to replace them if my wallet was ever lost or stolen. Overall, it was an ingenious solution. Who would’ve ever thought that Applazon gift cards could be used for money laundering by an underage kid?

With the arrival of summer, Dad expected me to help him out in his painting business. In the past, I’d spent my summers in the library, stayin’ outta his hair. However, now that I was physically strong enough to be more useful than in his way, he expected me to help out. In Indiana, a parent could make use of a twelve-year-old kid in a family business, so long as the work wasn’t dangerous. One could debate whether working with mineral spirits, using power tools, and climbing ladders on a job site were dangerous, but Dad didn’t care, and none of his customers seemed to question it. Not that he even paid me, claiming that the money he was paid for a job was for both our expenses. What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was learning valuable skills that would one day save my life.

That fall, I entered high school as a senior. Yeah, I actually skipped two more grades. If I thought the bullying was bad before, that was nothing compared to what I endured from kids who were five years older than me and significantly dumber than barnyard dogs, as my dad used to say. It didn’t help that I was a late bloomer who looked more like he was ten than twelve. Once again, the library was my refuge and the tutoring my salvation. I also found that parents were willing to pay me more now that I was a senior. I began to think that maybe I should start spending some of the money on things I could use, like a new high-end laptop. After all, Dad wouldn’t know the difference between a Applazon ProBook and the cheap Chromebook I got from the school, but then I thought about the bigger picture and realized I might need the money for other things someday – maybe just to survive.

That got me thinking about what would happen after I graduated. I could probably get a scholarship, but I’d still only be thirteen and I’d need Dad’s permission to go away to school. There was no way he’d give me that. I asked him about taking college courses online, but he nixed that idea. I tried to convince him I’d be worth more to him if I had a college degree instead of merely helping him paint houses. As he saw it, he’d be supporting me, only to have me go out on my own the moment I turned sixteen, so he’d never get any return on his investment. He was right; that was exactly what I’d intended. I wanted a life of my own and I wasn’t gonna have one if I stayed with my abusive old man until I reached adulthood – if I reached adulthood. With his drinking, his worsening temper and all the sexual abuse, that was doubtful. And if he ever started porkin’ me, I didn’t know what I’d do.

No, I was gonna hafta leave home, but at thirteen, how could I make it on my own? It would make a world of difference if I were sixteen. A sixteen-year-old wasn’t yet an adult. A sixteen-year-old couldn’t sign for a loan, buy a car or do a host of other things without the co-signature of an adult, but they could legally live on their own without their parents’ permission. Somehow, I was gonna hafta hold on until I was sixteen and could leave home legally. Either that, or I was gonna hafta somehow fake my age. Once I was sixteen-and-a-half, I could get my provisional license in Indiana, and then I could get a car, but even if I spent all my money on a decent used car, there was still the cost of insurance, maintenance and the little matter of needing Dad’s signature to register the car. It might be easier with a motorbike, but the law still required insuring and registering it, and taking it off-road would only get me so far.

Unlike a lot of homeless teens who resorted to hitchhiking across the country, I had enough money to take the bus, but I was young and looked vulnerable. There were adults who would try to take advantage of me. I knew that. I’d read about such things. A pedo could rape me, slice and dice me and bury me six feet under and no one would be the wiser. I had a switchblade that Dad bought me when I was ten, and I knew how to use it. In a pinch, I could defend myself with it, but then I’d be picked up by the police and either be returned home, incarcerated or placed into purgatory, euphemistically known as the system. The best thing was to remain as independent as possible and to keep to myself, avoiding situations that would put me in close contact with adults.

I did have a bicycle that Dad got me for Christmas when I was nearly nine. It wasn’t like he got me Christmas and birthday presents very often, but on Christmas morning, there it was. It wasn’t much to look at, since it was obviously used and pretty beat up, but to me it was beautiful ’cause it meant freedom. Finally, I could go to the library whenever I wanted, get about town on my own or stay after school to work on the computers at the school library if I wanted. No longer was I dependent on the school bus or on Dad for transportation.

I’d outgrown that bike a long time ago. I still used it, but I looked pretty ridiculous on it, especially as I approached my teens. Besides, it was a single-speed kid’s bike with a clutch break and maybe a top speed of ten miles an hour if I was goin’ downhill. That bike couldn’t get me across town very well, let alone across the country. What I needed was a real bike – one that could get me far away from home. Just the thought of having a means of escape was liberating. It was scary as hell, too, but liberating, nevertheless.

What I needed was what they called a hybrid bike – a dirt bike that was also a decent road bike ’cause I could take it off-road. A good mountain bike would be fine too. It just couldn’t be an urban or commuter bike, ’cause those aren’t suitable on dirt or gravel. With a decent bike, I’d be able to cruise at maybe twenty miles an hour. Maybe even twenty-five. It would take me three times longer to get anywhere than by car, but I wouldn’t need to worry about registration or insurance, nor would I need to buy gas.

I’d need a helmet – Dad had never gotten me one – but it was just plain smart, and I’d need spare tubes and tires and a spare chain. I’d need a bicycle pump, a refillable water bottle, a pannier rack with saddlebags and a decent rain poncho. Most of the stuff I could pick up along the way at a Target or Walmart, after trading in some of my Applazon gift cards. The bike itself was another matter. A decent BMX dirt bike would run in to the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Sure, I could pick up a cheap, brand-new model for under a hundred, but it wouldn’t be fast, and it wouldn’t go the distance. The better bikes all had serial numbers and were registered so as to thwart theft. Further, a lot of good bikes were flashy, but my bike couldn’t be so flashy as to stand out. It needed to look common enough to fit in with thousands of other kids’ bikes. Trouble was, I was beyond using a kid’s bike, but not yet tall enough for an adult bike. An extra-small adult bike would be ideal, ’cause it would fit me now, but I could better grow into a small adult bike, even though I’d hafta stretch to reach the pedals.

I spent some time looking at various bikes online, and I hit a number of sites that were marketplaces for used models. An older used bike that was already on its second or third owner would be hard to trace back to my home. As the Christmas season came and went, there was a dramatic increase in listings for used dirt bikes, most likely because kids were getting rid of their old bikes after getting new ones. I spotted one in particular, a Raleigh, that was a really sweet ride. That bike was so sleek, it looked like it could practically propel itself. It had an unusually small frame for an adult bike, yet it could accommodate riders who were over six-feet tall. It was a bike I could ride now, yet it was truly a bike I could grow into.

New, it was well beyond what I would’ve spent, but it was a twenty-year-old model that the owner claimed had been well-maintained. Using an anonymous email address, I contacted the seller and confirmed all the details, including that his old man had bought it used for him and he had no idea how many owners had had the bike before him. Perfect. I negotiated with the seller to gift him $200 in Applazon gift cards as a deposit on the bike, with the remainder to be paid as $40 in cash. I told him my dad would contact him separately to make the arrangements.

Now came the tricky part. If I bought a bike on my own, Dad would find out about it and all hell would break loose. If I asked him to buy me a new bike for my thirteenth birthday, he’d either get me a total piece of shit, or he’d balk at it. So, I approached my father with trepidation and told him I wanted a new bike for my upcoming birthday, and that I’d found a used one we could afford. Predictably, Dad asked me why my current bike wasn’t good enough, so I patiently explained how I’d outgrown it and how it wasn’t safe anymore. Now that I was gonna be a teenager, I needed to be able to go places, like other towns nearby. Until I was old enough to get my license, I couldn’t drive his truck, let alone get my own wheels.

I showed him the bike I’d found on Craig’s List for $250, told him I’d negotiated the price down to $40 and showed him that a new bike like that was over a thousand dollars. Not only was Dad impressed that I’d negotiated such a good price, but he contacted the owner himself and paid the $40 that night! I’d read Dad just right. If it’d been more money, Dad would’ve said it was too much to spend on my birthday – never mind that I’d given him far more than that in free labor over the summer. Never mind that he’d been sexually abusing me ever since I could remember. Forty dollars was an amount he’d consider reasonable for a birthday present for me becoming a teenager, but it wasn’t so low that he’d become suspicious of the deal. A week later, I had my bike, just in time for my thirteenth birthday. Unbelievable.

Then all hell broke loose. Included in the shipping container with the bike was a receipt that listed the full price paid as $240. How stupid I’d been not to make sure they listed the purchase price as $40! Dad found it when he was breaking down the box while I was out riding around on my new bike. I’d barely had time to put the bike away and slip outta my clothes, when he confronted me. He was furious, he was drunk, and he was as angry as I’d ever seen him. I expected it to be bad, but I didn’t realize just how bad it could be or that he might actually try to kill me. He started to strangle me with his bare hands. At first, I thought he would eventually let go, but I could see it in his eyes that he had no intention of letting go. He was gonna squeeze the life outta me and keep squeezing until I was a rotting corpse. Unable to break free of his hands around my neck, I couldn’t think clearly with no blood gettin’ through to my brain. I did the only thing I could think of and kicked him in the nuts. That bought me some time, but only a little. My dad kept a gun under the headboard of his bed; he never kept it locked up. I could only hope it was loaded.

I’d never fired a gun before, but there’d be no second chances. If he caught me, it’d be all over. All the planning and preparations I’d made to run away wouldn’t mean shit if I was dead. Sure, Dad would probably go to prison. He might even be executed, but that wouldn’t bring me back. Either I’d kill him or he’d kill me.

Just as he barged in, I remembered that there was something called a safety, and I figured out where and what it was and released it. I pointed the gun straight at the center of his chest, slipped my finger inside the trigger guard. I warned him not to come any closer. I knew he wouldn’t stop, though, and he didn’t. Dad wasn’t used to me challenging him, and it probably never even occurred to him that I wasn’t bluffing. He was too enraged to stop. Just before he got close enough to take the gun from me, I pulled the trigger. What happened after that was permanently etched into my brain. Time literally seemed to stop as I felt my heart pounding in my chest.

There was a deafening explosion. I’d never heard anything that loud in my life. At least there weren’t any neighbors close enough to have heard it. I could only hope that someone happening by didn’t hear it go off. A look of shock spread across Dad’s face as a hole slowly opened in the center of his chest. Bright-red blood spurted out and splashed all over my chest, my neck, my face and my arms. I was dressed only in boxers and could feel the warmth. Even as numb as I felt, I was able to reason that I’d hit his heart and was covered in freshly oxygenated blood from his left ventricle. That was a part of my brain I just couldn’t shut off – the part that reasoned.

Dad still had momentum, and even after I fired the gun, he continued forward, landing right on top of me. Dad was way heavier than I was, and so I could do little more than crawl out from under him, and when I did, I was covered in his blood. My boxers were soaked in it, and everyplace else, my skin was smeared with it. Instinctively I knew he was dead, but if there was any chance to save him, I had to try. Rolling him over onto his back, there was a large hole in his chest that even still was oozing bright-red blood.

However, it was the eyes I noticed. I’d never forget those eyes. You read about things like glassy eyes in detective stories, and I already knew that the eyes are typically open in death, but the eyes were something I could never forget. The idea that the eyes are the window to the soul takes on a whole new meaning once you’ve seen the eyes of a dead person. You can literally see that the life has gone out of them – it’s not just that the eyes aren’t moving or focusing or that the pupils aren’t reacting. It’s not just that the eyes don’t appear to be seeing anything. The whole shape and texture of the eyeball looks different. The eyes truly look lifeless.

Even with those eyes, I felt for a carotid pulse, but there was none. I considered doing CPR as we’d been taught in school, but in the center of his chest was a gaping hole, right where you’re supposed to place the heel of your hands. What good would it do to do CPR on a heart with a gaping hole in it? What good would CPR do when administered to a lifeless corpse? Dad was dead, and I’d killed him.

I’ve never been one to panic, but I was pretty close to panic at that point. At thirteen, I could be tried as an adult. I probably would be. I could claim self-defense, but without physical evidence or a pattern of abuse, who’d believe me?

The county sheriff wasn’t very bright, and the DA was known for closing cases, sometimes at the expense of solving crimes. Chances are, I’d be tried at the state level, which would be even worse. I’d be found guilty of second-degree murder at least, and probably first degree, and spend years in prison being subjected to physical and sexual abuse the likes of which I’d never before imagined possible.

My life would essentially be over. I had to get out of there right away.

As soon as the body was discovered, the police would come looking for me. I couldn’t go back to school, and I couldn’t go to the library. Hell, I had to get out of town altogether. I had to get out of the state. I had to get as far away as possible. I ditched my boxers right then and there, but then I thought better of it. The gun and the boxers together would tie me to the crime scene, but without them, the evidence was at best circumstantial. I had to get rid of them in a way that could never be found. I needed to be careful not to step in the blood that was pooling on the floor. If I did, my footprint could be incriminating. I reapplied the safety, and then wrapped the gun in my blood-soaked boxers and slipped outta my dad’s bedroom, blissfully unaware of the casing that had rolled under the bed. Thank god the thought of taking the gun with me never even crossed my mind. It could have offered some degree of protection, but there were to be several times ahead when having it would’ve gotten me in serious trouble.

Being careful not to touch anything else, I grabbed a Ziploc bag and placed the gun and boxers inside of it and then sealed it up. I grabbed a second Ziploc bag and placed the first inside of it, then I sealed it up, too. I had the perfect place to dispose of the gun and my boxers, but first I took a shower and scrubbed myself clean. I couldn’t take a chance that the scent of Dad’s blood could lead police dogs to the murder weapon. Afterwards, I wiped the shower down with dilute bleach. It wouldn’t stop a professional CSI unit from detecting the presence of blood, but it might be enough to thwart the local yokel who called himself the sheriff.

Looking out the windows to make sure no one had come to investigate the sound of a gunshot, I slipped out the back door and climbed up the small hill behind our house, which was nothing more than a shack in the woods. It was already getting dark, and I had to be particularly careful as I crouched down and made my way on the uneven terrain. It was freezing cold and I was naked, but that didn’t matter. There was no one to see me out there and I could live with the cold. Deftly making my way among the trees, I felt my way on a route I knew by heart from years of exploring the land behind our house. I wasn’t supposed to be out there alone, and Dad would have beaten me raw if he knew I was out after dark, but there was no choice.

Soon, I came to the outcrop I was looking for. There was a depression in the land next to the outcrop that looked more like a ditch, and by wiggling my body into what looked like a dark spot in the stone, I could enter a narrow crevasse that led into darkness. It was a bit harder to crawl into than it used to be, which was probably an indication that I was growing. The land overlaid an outcrop of unstable, limestone shale. Southern Indiana had an extensive network of limestone caves and there was one right under the house.

Dad forbade me to come back here, which was why I’d done so, so many times before. It probably was dangerous as hell, but what boy doesn’t like to explore? The cavern was so large that even with a flashlight, you couldn’t see the bottom. More recently I’d timed how long it took for a rock thrown over the ledge to hit bottom. It took 3.7 seconds. I timed it during five throws and took the average. Earth’s gravitational acceleration is 32.2 feet per second per second. That meant the vertical distance fallen was 15.6 feet times time in seconds squared. That was just differential calculus. Thus in 3.7 seconds, a rock would fall 214 feet. I tossed the bags with the boxers and gun and listened for them to land with a loud splash. There was a chance they would be carried downstream into another cave, where they might be discovered, but that was extremely unlikely. No one knew the cave was there, and even if they brought dogs to look for the gun, between the plastic bags and the distance down, it was unlikely a dog would find it.

Returning to the house, I dressed in fresh clothes and then grabbed the large duffel bag from the hall closet and filled it with as many clothes and toiletries as would fit inside. I left my bookbag and all my schoolbooks behind and ditched my phone, which could easily be tracked. It wasn’t much of a phone, and it was on a cheap-as-shit prepaid plan, but without it, I’d be lost. That couldn’t be helped. I packed light- and medium-weight jackets, and donned my winter jacket, but then I had a thought. What if the police plastered my mug all over the police networks? What if they put out an APB on me? Now, it was clear. Not only did I need to lose my identity entirely, but I needed to literally disappear.

I loved my long, blond hair, but it was too easily recognized. Dad liked to save money by cutting our hair himself, and he had an electric razor in his bathroom. I hated to go back into his room, but I had no choice. I tried my best not to look at the body, but that was virtually impossible, given the smell. His bowels had let loose, and the smell of shit was overpowering, and there was something else. Perhaps it was the smell of rotting flesh, but I just didn’t know, and so I looked. Nothing could have prepared me for the grayish bluish color of his skin. It was the stuff of nightmares.

I made quick work of entering his bathroom and retrieving his electric razor. I closed his bedroom door behind me and headed to my bathroom, removing my shirt along the way. I proceeded to give myself a buzz cut and dumped the hair into the toilet, flushing it down and flushing twice again so as to leave as few clues as possible. I made sure there were no stray hairs on my body or on the floor, and then put my shirt back on and stowed the razor in my duffel. I ditched everything in my wallet except my cash and gift cards, grabbed what little cash my dad kept in the house, donned my winter coat again, turned out all the lights and exited the house. Eventually, someone would come looking for dad or me, and then the police would discover the body. All hell would break loose, but hopefully I’d be hundreds of miles away by then.

Just as I was locking the door, however, I had another thought. If the police found the place locked up, they’d probably realize that I’d shot my Dad and then they’d come looking for me. Why not point them in another direction? If there was evidence of a break-in and I’d just disappeared, they’d more likely think I was abducted, maybe by a sexual predator. Better to think that than the unthinkable – that a kid had killed his dad – so I unlocked the door and went back inside.

Thinking through a likely scenario, I went back to Dad’s bedroom and opened the door. He was in his boxers like I was, which was perfect. The police would assume Dad was surprised when he was in bed and had gotten up to investigate but hadn’t gotten very far. A forensics team would realize he’d been shot from the other direction, but the sheriff wasn’t that smart and would contaminate the crime scene before the experts got near it. I went back to my bedroom and totally trashed it. I made it look like there’d been a struggle – that I’d defended myself as best a newly minted, thirteen-year-old boy could but ultimately lost the struggle. Should I make it look like my abductor tried to cover his tracks with arson? It would be easy enough to do that. The house would go up like the tinderbox it was, but why draw attention to my so-called abduction? A fire would only draw attention and heighten the search for me. Better for them to discover Dad’s death in a week or two when I failed to show up for school. Exiting the house for the final time, I left the door ajar.

Now, I had a dilemma, I’d bought the bicycle with the intent of using it to escape, but that was before I killed Dad. Having a bike meant I wouldn’t have to hitchhike or take the bus, and that was worth a lot to me. The question was, would the bike make it easier for the police to find me? Was it an unacceptable risk? I knew that these bikes all had serial numbers, but could that serial number be traced to me? People who bought these bikes new usually registered them with the police, in case they were stolen, but I had no way of knowing if mine had been registered before. I knew I wasn’t the second owner, nor was I probably even the third. The kid I bought it from had all of Dad’s information, including our address, but would the police contact the seller? Would the seller be able to provide any information that could be used to trace it to me?

An abductor would’ve left the bike, but then no one even knew I had a new bike other than my dad and the kid who sold it to me. My old bike was still there against the side of the house, so why would the police even suspect I had a new one? The forty dollars had been paid through a third-party site. My eyes flew open wide when I remembered what had set off Dad’s rage in the first place. Running back into the house, I found the original receipt for the bike and pocketed it. I’d burn it later, along the way. That thought reminded me, however. I grabbed a new butane lighter from the closet and threw it into my duffel, and then I grabbed the switchblade from my desk drawer and pocketed it too. How could I have forgotten to take my knife? I was so unprepared for this.

Heading back outside, I used my knife to remove the shipping label from the carton in which the bike had arrived. Fortunately, it wasn’t the original one the bike had come in, and so there were no distinguishing features on the outside. I quickly finished the job Dad had started, breaking the box down, and I placed what was left of it in the dumpster with the other trash waiting for the next trip to the landfill.

There were still a lot of things I’d need to buy – and very soon. I’d need a helmet for sure; otherwise, sooner or later someone would stop me and maybe even ask to speak to my parents. I needed a lock, saddlebags, a headlight, a rear-view mirror, a flagpole, a bicycle pump and a water bottle. My bike still used inner tubes, so I’d certainly need some spares in case I got a flat. I probably needed extra tires too, in case I ran over glass or something. I needed a spare chain, a toolkit, a poncho… and food. A sleeping bag and a small tent probably wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Also, I needed maps. Without a phone, I needed maps. All of those things could be purchased from Applazon, and I had a ton of money in Applazon gift cards, but the closest Applazon Boutique was in New York, which was about the last place I wanted to go. I was pretty sure there was an Applazon Shoppe in Bloomington, but they only sold high-end consumer electronics like laptops, smartphones, watches, media streamers, headphones and smart speakers, all featuring the ever-present, often helpful and always listening Alesia digital assistant.

If I could get access to a computer, I could set up a bogus Applazon account using a random physical address and an anonymous email address. I could make an anonymous purchase using my gift cards and have the merchandise sent to an Applazon locker, but there was still a risk the police could figure it out and track me to the locker. Besides which, without a phone, I couldn’t even open the locker.

No, my best bet was to wait until I found someone I could trust and then exchange one of the gift cards for cash. In the meantime, I had enough cash in my wallet to buy some basic supplies at Walmart or Target, and that’s what I’d do. I couldn’t take my bike on the Interstates, but I knew how to get to both State Road 7 and old U.S. Highway 50, either of which could take me out of the state. I shouldered the duffel bag as best I could and balanced it on my back, and then headed out into the night.