Dead Ends by Erin Jade Lange (review)

Dane Washington, a sixteen-year-old with serious anger management issues, is just a detention away from alternative high school, but he finds his last best hope in the unwanted friendship of Billy D., a student with Down syndrome who latches onto Dane for protection. The administration cuts Dane a deal: keep Billy D. safe and content, and they’ll blink at his past offenses. The problem is that Billy D. is no dummy; he’s a master manipulator and a skillful if judicious liar, and he has his own important agenda—to locate his missing father, whom Billy D’s mother is determined to keep him from finding. Dane’s also curious about the identity of his own dad, a man who is probably somewhere in the neighborhood, and whom he’d enjoy the opportunity to punch out. Billy D. essentially blackmails Dane into helping him trace the clues in an old atlas he’s sure will lead to his father, and on a mission that culminates in a dangerous road trip, the boys figure out there’s a very good reason why Billy D.’s father should not be found. The odd-couple story deftly pairs Billy D.’s cleverness with Dane’s inability to keep his itchy fists out of trouble, and it gains considerable momentum from the atlas clues and the mysteries behind each of the boy’s fathers. Dane, however, fails to become the likable, or even redeemable, character readers are expecting, and the romance plot between Dane and an edgy, skateboarding blonde never quite gets off the ground. Still, it’s a fast-moving tale tailor-made for reading in study hall, when a road trip of any kind sounds really good.