Can't Hurt Me Now

Meet Jamie Strings., a thirteen-year-old boy born and raised in the tiny town of Broken Creek.  A farm boy through and through, he enjoys spending his days in the woods, hunting, fishing and teaching himself to be able to live off the land.  He lives a pretty sweet life with his parents on their family farm.
Meet Billy Scrubbs, also thirteen.  Billy has had a rough life, moving from town to town, never staying anywhere long enough to make friends because his dad is a mean, dishonest drunk who makes life hell for his wife and kids.  What money they manage to scrape together, he spends to feed his alcohol addiction to the neglect of his hungry, ill-clothed family.
The new school year starts back with in-person learning after the prior school year switched to remote learning at the beginning of the pandemic.  Along with face masks and sanitizer, the school year brings problems with egotistical bullies and nasty teachers in cahoots to micromanage the students to absolute misery. Billy and Jamie form a formidable alliance where they experience fun, adventures and a few close calls in things such as backwoods survival, self-defense, crime solving, and even blackmail. They find that secrets can be fun to keep, while certain facts can eat away at a person's soul.
When the darker side of life in Broken Creek reveals itself, the boys find themselves tasked with using their wits and grit, pushed to the very limits, in their fight not only for justice, but even their very survival!