It’s the height of the pandemic, but sixteen-year-old Austin Charles Hardy and his friends aren’t going to let that stop them. The adults of Oak Cove have turned over the town’s namesake oak and the park that surrounds it to a developer, and the teens must do whatever it takes to stop the destruction and save the tree — even if it means being hauled away in handcuffs.
The Last Oak: Page 1
I got out of bed at 1 a.m. and opened my door, listening into the hallway. Everything was quiet, except for my dad’s snore which came through my parents’ closed door like a Harley with a bad muffler. The sound would cover up any noise I might make.
I stuck some pillows under the blankets on my bed to look like my body. Then I got a pillow case I’d glued hair on from the haircut my mom gave me one month after the shelter-at-home order went into effect. I put a basketball inside the case and smushed it into the pillow at the top of my bed. Altogether, Mr. Basketball did look like me sleeping with my face buried in the pillow. Sort of.
This being the middle of the pandemic, I grabbed my mask and my rolled-up sleeping bag, opened my window, climbed out onto the Sycamore beside the house, lowering myself to the ground. The air was cool and damp. A heavy fog had rolled in from the ocean a few miles away, hiding the moon, which would be full tonight. A line of old-fashioned street lights, which the adults of Oak Cove love to boast about, did their best to stand in for the moon.
As I dropped to the ground, Lexie drove up in her red Honda. She has a driver’s license that says she’s eighteen, although she’s seventeen and a half…