I walked home through the woods.
I didn’t really have a purpose to my walk, I was just meandering and wasting time. I suppose I was avoiding facing my mother and having to come up with some reason why I wasn’t in school. Especially since as far as Mom was concerned, I'd just run off to South America without permission. If what Principal Bob had said was true, that the police had questions for me, then some form of the truth was going to have to spill sooner or later.
I was voting for later.
I hadn’t meant to walk past the hidden entrance to the Ancient Tomb Near My House, but of course it existed more or less right on my usual path, so soon enough I found myself standing over the spot. Or standing over a spot in the general vicinity, it was hard to tell exactly where the opening had been.