"I said, move along!" she shouted, scowling.

Ryan got back on his bike and continued down the street. It seemed that someone always had an eye on him. No one trusted him. They told him to move on, get lost, beat it. They assumed he was up to no good, that he was a bad kid. It was all because of that old saying, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree," which meant that a son (the apple) is usually a lot like his father (the tree). Ryan wanted to hop off his bike and say, "Hey, I'm not like that. I know you think the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but the truth is, this tree was planted on a very steep hill, and when this apple hit the ground it rolled, and rolled, and kept on rolling clear into the. next county. And it didn't stop rolling until you could make a pretty good argument that my father and I were no longer members of the same species, let alone related as father and son, or tree and apple, or whatever else you wanted to call us."

But he knew he'd be wasting his breath. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, and the tree was in jail. People just figured that the apple wasn't far behind. Both of them, rotten to the core.

Ryan stopped at the traffic light. A red convertible pulled up beside him. It was a perfect day to ride around town with the top down, sunny and mild, the kind of weather people craved in south Florida. Ryan was admiring the old Mustang when he suddenly recognized the high school kid in the back seat. He tried to ignore him, but the kid spotted him.

"Hey, Coolidge!" he shouted.

Ryan refused to look.

"Are you deaf, kid?"

Ryan wished he would just go away. Teddy Armstrong wasn't the coolest kid in high school, but he sure thought he was. His father was a hotshot lawyer, a hard-nosed State Attorney who had been re-elected to his post three times. Some said he might run for Congress someday. Ryan hoped he would run, and he hoped to be old enough to vote against him when the time came. Mr. Armstrong was the man who had prosecuted the criminal charges against Ryan's father.