Small as an Elephant by Jennifer Richard Jacobson

to wilderness — wilderness where he could hide for the night. Decision made. He’d get off at Narrows Too.
    Unfortunately, the campground wasn’t at all what Jack had imagined. It was on the main highway and wide-open — a place intended for RVs rather than small tents. It would be difficult to sneak into and even more difficult to hide in. He decided to walk up and down the road to see what else was in the surrounding area.
    The smell of steamed lobster drew him toward the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound. Outside were six wood-burning vats with steam rising from them. Oh, how he wished he could have a plate of steamed mussels or a lobster right now! He could taste the warm butter and tender meat. Or a roll! Even just a roll!
    After pitching the potatoes into the woods on his walk back to Bar Harbor — he’d have had no way to cook them, and he didn’t think you could eat them raw — Jack had finished a green pepper and another cereal bar, but these didn’t satisfy him after so much walking and carrying. He wished he were a mangy dog right now that could crawl under one of the outdoor picnic tables and beg for scraps.
    Maybe he should have kept the potatoes. He probably could have bartered for something. Would they have thought it cute if he’d offered to trade some homegrown potatoes for a lobster roll?
    It seemed like every decision he made had good consequences (his bag was lighter) and bad (he had nothing to offer anyone else). He’d have to do a better job of thinking things through.
    While standing there, taking in the torturous smells, Jack began reading the license plates of the cars parked off to the side. It was an old habit. Since his mom did so much driving, she played the license-plate game over and over again. She’d seen all fifty states three times now. Not many people could claim to have seen a Hawaiian plate three times. Well, OK, if you lived in Hawaii, you could. Jack’s favorite was the one from Tennessee — it had an elephant on it.
    There wasn’t a single Maine plate in this parking lot. There were two cars from Connecticut, a minivan from New Jersey, and a pickup truck from Massachusetts.
    Massachusetts? He looked around as if the faces of the people going in and out could reveal their state identity. What if the driver of the pickup was heading south? He could ride with them. He could be home tonight! He imagined the conversation in his head.
    “Hey, are you on your way south? Me too! Would you mind giving me a ride?”
    He was being stupid. No one was going to willingly transport a kid without his parents’ permission. They’d guess he was a runaway. They’d call DSS in a nanosecond. Still, it was an idea that was hard to let go of.
    Jack went inside the lobster shack, allowing the screen door to slam behind him. It was a friendly place, with mint-green walls and bright-red benches. Fishing nets cradling colorful glass balls and starfish hung from the ceiling. There was a chips rack right next to the door — what Jack wouldn’t do for a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips — and he hung back by the rack to see if he could figure anything out.
    In the dining room to his left was a couple, probably in their eighties, Jack guessed, seated at a table, waiting for their order. At the table next to theirs were an Asian mother and daughter, speaking a language Jack couldn’t understand.
    A woman with curly gray hair was standing at the counter, placing an order, asking if they had a traditional lobster roll. A teenage girl with braces tried to answer politely, but she was clearly confused by what the woman meant.
    “Ours is the traditional,” said another woman in an apron — probably the owner of the lobster pound. “Everyone ate lobster salad on bread before the hot-dog bun became so popular.”
    Jack took a deep breath and walked over to the older couple like it was the most natural thing in the world and asked, “Excuse me, are you from Massachusetts?”
    “What’s that?” asked