Small Fry
by
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The sheriff inspected me closely, his stale cigar breath turning my stomach. “We got us four men out shooting the escaped captives. Meanwhile,” his eyes bored into my face, “shoot this little piece of crap.” The sheriff turned away. “Gol dern, Sheriff. He ain’t nothin’ but a boy.” My captor had whiskey breath that could have turned a match into a blow torch if it was struck close enough. He wore faded overalls over a camouflage shirt and a gold hoop earring in one dirty ear. The sheriff stopped and slowly pivoted back toward us. He focused his fury on the man still holding me up off the ground. “That tadpole got himself a mouth, T-Bar?” “Well, yessir.” “Then he’ll use it if we let him go. He’s a liability we can’t afford. Shoot him. Do it now.” My heart thudded against my chest like a caged bird. Did it hurt to get shot, or would I die without feeling it? Were Logan and Dad already dead? T-Bar lowered me onto my feet and released my throat. He pushed me slightly away, fisting a handful of my hair. Men loading meth into the cars and pick-ups paused to watch my execution. Petrified, all the strength left my body. I would have collapsed had it not been for T-Bar holding me up by my hair. “Shut your eyes, boy. You don’t have to watch this,” he said. I heard the handgun’s hammer click back
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About the Book
Twelve-year-old Ryan Morrison is social kryptonite. He’s much too short and way too intelligent for any kid in his eighth grade to want him for a friend, and his freakishly small size attracts every bully in school. Unable to forge a healthy relationship with his troubled father who scoffs at Ryan’s dream of becoming a famous paleontologist who discovers an unknown species of dinosaur, Ryan feels miserably detached from school and family. Until, that is, the day Ryan unearths a seven-foot silver canister from a river bank and hides it in his bedroom. Of alien technology and design, it opens to reveal a perfectly preserved “fossil”—a 34,000 year-old Ice Age caveman. Incredibly, Bahntouka is very much alive. With Ryan’s help, he adjusts to modern life with curiosity and surprising intelligence. His gift for insight and gentle wisdom helps Ryan’s dysfunctional family begin to bond and heal, even as Bahntouka desperately yearns for his lost wife and baby, entombed in another silver canister somewhere in Oregon or Washington. But when the corrupt Marion County Sheriff and his drug-running accomplices threaten his new family in an escalating life-and-death struggle, Bahntouka reacts with extraordinary courage and sacrifice to rescue them, unleashing man-sized courage in the boy everybody calls Small Fry.
About the Author
Anita Grimm has been an award-winning teacher, a full-service music store owner, a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused and neglected children), a horse trainer and guitar instructor, and the survivor of a deadly typhoon on the Tasman Sea. Her first Young Adult novel, A Certain Twist in Time, has delighted adults as well as young adults. She lives in southern Oregon with her husband and an intuitive rescue dog who can read her mind.