Eddie Granger stood on the muddy shoulder of the highway, a miserable expression on his face as the rain fell steadily, pounding the fields and open country on both sides of the road. He was soaked through and through, yet he wore a curiously pleased expression on his face despite the rain and the bone-chilling wind. His wide, expressive dark eyes flashed with his excitement, and his smooth adolescent cheeks were tinted with color from the wind as well as from eagerness.

Just a few hundred miles more to San Francisco, he thought. Just a little while longer and I'll be with my mother, where I belong.

Then suddenly a horrible feeling of frustration came over him, because he realized it had been a long time since a car had passed, and he had been certain that he would easily have found a ride at least into Reno and maybe further if only some cars would come along. There had been only a huge oil truck and a little old lady in a 1947 Ford, who gave Eddie a disapproving look as she whizzed by, during the entire time the boy had been standing there.

Eddie Granger was a clean-cut youth with dark hair that fell lankly over his forehead, but in blue jeans and with a knapsack on his back, he knew a lot of drivers would take him for a hippy and be reluctant to offer a ride. He also hoped that none of the people who offered him a ride would guess his age, which was fourteen, and call the authorities because he was a runaway. So far he'd been lucky. He was tall for his age and well built, but he had just recently begun shaving and only needed to do it twice, a week or so.

Standing there in his rain-soaked clothes on the deserted highway, a feeling of defeat suddenly came over him causing tears to well up in his eyes along with a bleak feeling of fear in his heart… What if his mother didn't really want him… What if she sent him back home to his dad? He pushed the thoughts from his mind and sat down on his back pack, elbows on knees and face in hands.