CHAPTER 1

Hey, Alibi! You tired yet?" Albert looked up and saw Nick glance back, grinning, from the lead position. Despite snickers from the other bike riders, Albert ignored him. He was used to Nick by now.

"Huh, Alibi?" Nick said. "Those skinny legs of yours need a rest?"

"Wiry," Albert said. "I call them wiry. As in steel." More snickers. "How's your mouth, Sponge Brain?" he said. "Tired yet?" He heard Yuno force a laugh. Not much of a laugh, but better than nothing.

Nick accelerated. As usual, everyone else followed their leader, strung together like boxcars behind a runaway engine. Albert leaned forward, pedaling hard, staying close but not moving out of the order. He knew his place by now, earned over the hundreds of miles they'd put in during the summer. He was content that he wasn't last. And he wasn't about to let Yuno, who was struggling noisily to keep up, move past him in the pecking order — ever.

Albert turned his baseball cap around to keep it from flying off and tried to concentrate on the ride.

Nick, the self-proclaimed leader, had dreamed up nicknames for everyone else; he hadn't given himself one. Albert had dubbed him Sponge Brain, but it hadn't caught on.

Behind Nick was Mike "Princess" Dye, who had come all the way from England. Mike wasn't very fond of royalty — or his nickname.

Next in line rode Joey Zemo, who'd grown up in Wyoming. On the day Joey'd moved into the apartment complex, Albert and Nick saw him being chased onto the hood of a parked car by a shoebox-sized dog with legs the length of pickles. Nick soon had a name for Joey: Small Dog.

Albert thought "Alibi" wasn't the worst of the lot, although he wasn't happy with the reason he got the name. So what if he liked to read? So what if his excuses for staying in his apartment hadn't been real good? It wasn't that he didn't like to horse around or get into sports. It was just that reading was an inside, solitary kind of thing.

Behind Albert was Lester "Yuno" Lambert, who had pretty much earned his own alias. Nearly every sentence from his mouth contained at least one "you know."

By now this trip was a ritual. The first time, two months ago, it had been just a spur-of-the-moment idea. On one of the first nice days of summer, Nick had asked Albert, Princess, and Yuno if they wanted to ride their bikes to a pool on the Stillaguamish River for a day of swimming. Albert wasn't too sure at first. Fourteen miles, mostly uphill, sounded like a long trip, especially on legs more accustomed to traveling in a car. But he wanted to make friends — his old friends were two hundred miles away in Portland — so he said yes.

They saw the countryside and swam and explored. They built a raft that sank like a submarine. Mostly, they laughed a lot. They had such a good time that they went back the next day. And the day after. And the day after that. They'd hardly missed a day since.

A week after they started going, Joey moved in, and Albert asked him if he wanted to come along. He did, and that was it; that was the group. Five boys whose families had just moved to this small Washington town had come together to make the most of their situation.

And they were doing it, even though none of them would have chosen to be here if they'd had a choice. They'd given up friends and familiar schools and homes of their own. They'd come to a place of strangers and strange schools and temporary, company-sponsored housing in the Riverbend Apartments, where everything was clean and modern but nothing seemed like home. They were here because their dads or moms had taken jobs with SoftEdge.

The giant software company had pulled up its shallow roots from the congestion of Seattle's eastern suburbs and moved north to Granite Falls for fresh air and growing room. SoftEdge built its sprawling facility just outside the old city limits.

The boys left trees and pastures behind them and reached the original section of Granite Falls. They sped past the quiet storefronts of the old business district, past old houses in old neighborhoods, and rounded off a sharp "L" in the road. They whipped past Granite Falls Middle School, Albert's everyday destination in less than a month. He tried not to look at it. He wasn't ready to think about school yet.

If they had been biking here before SoftEdge arrived, they already would have been out of town. Now they just changed neighborhoods, old to new. Wide streets branched off the main highway. The entrance to each street had the name of a housing development on a big, rustic sign. WHISPERWOOD, the first one said; MOUNTAIN VISTA, the next one. Houses and condominiums and apartments could be glimpsed through the trees.

They pushed on, and Albert felt himself running out of gas. He shouldn't have tried to finish that book the night before. But he wasn't about to tell Nick to slow down. It was the kind of complaint that Nick would turn into a nasty barb in no time. No, Albert would keep his mouth shut. He could maintain this pace as long as any of the other guys could.

He glanced behind him, making sure Yuno hadn't gained any ground. Head down, Yuno was pedaling furiously, his shorter legs and pudgy body working as hard as they could. "I think I can," Albert heard him say between gasps.

Albert could see the entrance to the last housing development a block away. A woman was hammering something onto the streetsign post.

MOVING SALE, the sign said. Nothing important. But he was tired, and that made up his mind for him.

"Moving sale, Nick!" he yelled out, trying to sound excited rather than exhausted.

"So?" Nick shot back, easing off on the pedals.

Albert had to come up with something good — something other than he needed a break. He thought for a moment, his mind racing.

"Baseball cards!" he blurted out. If anything could make Nick stop, that was it.

Nick stopped ten feet from the woman. The others coasted up.

"Baseball cards, huh, Alibi?" Nick said, barely breathing hard. "Or did you just need a rest?" He looked at Albert, waiting for an answer, while the other boys glanced back and forth, not sure whose side to take.

Albert decided that he wasn't the only one who was tired.

"Or did you just want to look for some books?" Nick made the word sound like some slimy, smelly, unrecognizable object that the dog had dragged in. Certainly not something any normal person would like.

"There really could, you know, be some baseball cards, Nick," Yuno said.

Having Yuno stick up for you was about as cool as letting Nick catch you reading a book, or belonging to the Chess Club.

But books, now. The idea of a treasury of used books was something that definitely did appeal to him.

"I have some," she said softly, looking at Albert curiously. He stared back at her, wondering how she'd known what he was thinking. She brushed a wisp of brown hair from her forehead and pushed her shirt sleeves up.

"Books?" Nick said. "You've got books for sale?"

"And baseball cards," she said.

Nick grinned, but avoided looking at Albert. "Yes!" he said.

"You really do have baseball cards?" Small Dog asked.

"A whole tackle box full," she said.

"A big tackle box?" Nick asked.

"A very big tackle box."

"For sale?" Small Dog said.

She nodded. "For sale."

Albert glanced at Princess, who was watching the conversation with amusement. He still didn't understand the fascination with...