Max Quick: The Pocket and the Pendant (Max Quick #1)

One: A Very Strange Boy

     MAX QUICK hunched forward as he walked along the sandy seaside road.  He looked as if he were trying to smuggle his heart through the world. 

     It was exactly 8:15 AM on the morning of March 14th.

     He was angry.

     For lots of reasons.

     His tangle of dark hair bounced with each step, partially covering watery eyes.

     He was on his way to the center of Starland, California.  Under a sky dabbed with creamy clouds, Max forced his burning legs forward. 

     Just.  Keep.  Walking.

     He was headed to the center of town because there was nowhere left to go.

     Behind him was the Starland Home for Boys.  Behind him was Mr. Blistierre.  He couldn’t go back. 

     The Home was where they sent the bad kids and the misfits.    

     “This one’s trouble,” Blistierre had snarled when Max first arrived at the Home.  He’d shaken his head and tsk’d while reading Max’s file.

     “Pickpocket.  Vagabond.  Thief.  You’ve caused a lot of misery, haven’t you Master Quick?”

     It was true, Max had to admit.  He was an amazing pickpocket.  It was one of many such skills that he did not recall ever learning.  He seemed to just … know how.

     Prior to the Home, Max had been living on the streets for as long as he could remember.  He’d survived by eating out of garbage cans, mostly.  But when he could find nothing, and he was so hungry it felt like his belly would eat itself, he’d fallen back on his skill picking pockets.  

     And of course the Police had eventually caught him at it. 

     During his hearing in juvenile hall, the authorities had tried to work out exactly who Max was.  But there was no record of his birth.  No photo, no fingerprints.  The boy Max Quick seemed to have been conjured from nowhere. 

     And Max couldn’t help them.  He didn’t know who his parents were.  His memory was simply blank.   

     In the end, the court had placed him in the Home. 

    “Well, we’re going to change all that.  My name is Mr. Blistierre.  That’s French.  It’s pronounced Bliss-tee-air.” 

     But Max soon learned that everyone called him the inevitable Mister Blister.

     And for good reason.

     Mister Blister saw nothing wrong whatsoever with ‘tough love’.  It’s not the boy that is bad: it’s the behavior, Mr. Blister would say with his best Genuinely Concerned face.

     But it was always the boy who got the beating.

     Max sighed.  No, he couldn’t go back to that place.  He would be in trouble again for missing the school bus this morning.  It hadn’t been his fault.  The resident bully of the Home, Jack McNulty, had prevented Max from boarding.  The bus driver had simply popped her minty-green bubble gum and looked at her nails, ignoring the entire incident.  And then they left – without him.

    Blister would find out, of course.  When Max turned up absent, someone from the school would call.  In fact, it had probably happened already.  And thus, he was in trouble again.