Small as an Elephant

Jack reaches the end of the bus route, and the driver asks him where he’s going. He saw no signs of his mother along the way but gets off the bus and finds himself at Bar Harbor, a town that was on his and his mother’s travel list. He decides that he must formulate a plan, but the sun is going down, and sleep must come first. Jack finds a spot in some nearby woods and crawls into his sleeping bag. Awakening a couple of hours later, he reacts in terror at the sounds of something rustling nearby. After a moment of panic, he sees that it’s just a group of raccoons. Jack is both relieved to be safe and distraught to find that they ate the last of his cheese.

When Jack awakens the next morning, he’s freezing cold and decides to walk back into town to find breakfast and start looking for his mother. Realizing that he has only 50 cents left, he collects three cans off the street to redeem for an extra bit of money. He finds himself on a street filled with bed-and-breakfast homes and remembers how much his mom wanted to stay in one because it felt like living someone else’s story.