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knocked on her door, she didn’t answer. After the third knock, I broke one of her rules and opened it.
    She was gone, and so was her famous suitcase. I ran to the back door.
    It was partly open, and Mackenzie was nowhere in sight.

Chapter Eight
    I put Ozzie on his leash, and we spent three hours looking for her. She wasn’t in the park. She wasn’t at the coffee shop. I asked other kids on the street, but no one had seen a girl with rolling luggage. I was cold and tired by the time ten o’clock rolled around.
    I went home—or the place that had once been my home. I lay down on my bed and drifted into a restless sleep. I kept hoping I’d hear the front door open and she’d be back. But it didn’t happen.
    I cut school the next day and went searching again.
    The day ended with another failed attempt and another fitful night’s sleep. I felt alone and deserted. And scared.
    I knew that if Mackenzie didn’t want to be found, I wouldn’t be able to find her. So I went back to school, heartbroken, tired and already feeling like the old Cameron—pissed off at everything.
    I came home that day to find a padlock bolted onto the door, a lot of stuff from the house out on the lawn and Ozzie tied to the railing. I sat down on the front steps beside him, put my head between my legs and took a deep breath. I felt like I was going to puke. I guess I could have tried calling my mom—or Nick, even. Or my dad’s cell phone. But they were the ones who’d gotten me into this mess. At this moment, I hated them all.
    Anger replaced the fear, I guess. Ozzie was nervous. He was actually shaking, and I’d only seen him like that a couple of times before, when he was threatened by some big nasty dogs. I gave him a good hug and told him it was all going to be okay. Then I emptied my backpack of schoolbooks and rooted through the piles on the lawn until I found some of my clothes and a flashlight, and I stuffed them into the pack.
    If I’d had a cell phone, I would have taken a picture of me and the junk scattered on the front lawn. A portrait of what it looks like when your life falls apart. When everything goes down the toilet. But my phone had stopped working awhile back, and I didn’t have the money to get a new one. All I had was a five-dollar bill in my pocket. That was it. My backpack with some stuff, my dog and me.
    Maybe I should have broken a window at the back and crawled back into the house. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I only had one thought.
    I had to find Mackenzie. Maybe she’d given up on me, but I hadn’t given up on her. And now I needed her more than ever.
    Ozzie looked worried. Worried about me. “It’s okay, boy. Now it’s just you and me.”
    My legs felt funny as we began to walk down the street. It would be dark soon, and I’d have to figure something out. But I couldn’t stay here. This was no longer my home. And, as far as I was concerned, I no longer had parents.
    Ozzie seemed to know where we were going—to the park, then to the street that led downtown. I hit the coffee shop where I’d found Mackenzie sleeping and then went and talked to some of the kids I’d seen panhandling.
    Most were pretty wary of my asking questions about Mac. I couldn’t tell the ones who might actually know her and lied about it from the ones who really didn’t know her. Then, as it got later, I realized I needed to start figuring out where I was going to spend the night. I doubled back to the coffee shop, but it was empty. I asked some of the kids on the street where I could crash for the night, but they didn’t know. I guess they didn’t trust me. I didn’t look or act like them. And they were used to all kinds of weirdos asking questions. Some of them didn’t trust the dog.
    So Ozzie and I kept walking, away from the bright lights and stores, until we came to an empty storefront that had once