“Draco won’t hurt me. He won’t hurt you either, Aunt Ash,” I said.
“And you’re knowing this how?”
“I wrote his spells to always help us,” I said.
“Well, that’s jest great lad, as long as he listens to his spells,” she said.
***
“Aunt Ash, Trey is here,” I called out.
“Aye, and you’ll be listening to his father now, lad, right? No slipups, ye hear?”
“Aunt Ash, I haven’t slipped up in like forever,” I said. It had been more than a few years, actually, and no one had ever connected the level four earthquake to a small boy in Castlebury, Vermont who had just learned that his mother was dead. And small earthquakes sometimes happened even in Vermont.
“No, no ye haven’t, but now is not the time to start, lad. Now give yer old aunt a hug.”
I didn’t begrudge my aunt hugs, not in private anyway. After a fierce squeeze, I was released to grab my bag and run out the door of Rowan West. Trey and his father waited in the fancy BMW SUV and I was quick to climb in the back and buckle up.
“All set, Declan?” Mr. Johnson asked with a smile. He was tall and confident, often smiling, but it was a superior kind of smile, like he knew stuff that you didn’t. I wondered if he would smile if he knew the kind of stuff I knew.
A half hour later, we were in Burlington, roaming around Mr. Johnson’s office building while he handled some special meeting that couldn’t wait. We were supposed to get ice cream down by the shore of Lake Champlain, but as often seemed to be the case with Trey’s dad, something had come up.
I had met Trey in second grade, playing kickball in gym class. He was a team captain and took a chance on me when he was picking his team. I wasn’t a big kid but having an aunt who favored soccer as the king of sports meant that nothing was wrong with my kicking abilities. Our team won, and a number of my kicks had helped that result come to be. We became friends after that, Trey convincing his parents to have dinner at my aunt’s restaurant. They were immediately impressed with her culinary skills, and Trey and I hung out. That’s how I met Jessica Connors, the really pretty girl whose parents were close friends with Trey’s. I was still friends with Rory, but having more friends was a new experience for me, and hanging around with Trey and Jessica seemed exciting.
“Hey, Dad just handed me a twenty and said we could go down and get ice cream,” Trey said, coming back from a huddled chat with his father, who had stepped out of the conference room a minute before.
Soon enough, we had big cones of soft Vermont creemees as we call them, mine chocolate, Trey’s a chocolate and vanilla twist with sprinkles, and we were roaming the waterfront. It was early summer, late afternoon on a Wednesday. The colleges were out, summer school not yet started, and there wasn’t a whole lot of foot traffic on the normally packed boardwalk that ran alongside Lake Champlain.
When our cones were done, we rock hopped on the shore, then found an abandoned lacrosse ball and started to throw it around one of the parking lots. A man with a dog saw us but he just nodded and smiled at us. His dog was a cute little mutt, kind of a ragamuffin, the kind of dog my aunt’s deputy friend Darci called a purse dog. The man’s right arm was in a big plaster cast. We ignored them both and went on with our game.
Ten minutes later, we heard the man calling and looked up as his dog raced toward us, the leash dragging along behind him. The dog came right to me and Trey grabbed its leash while I petted it.
“Oh thank you, thank you, boys. He pulled right out of my hand,” the man said, holding up his left hand as he approached. He seemed old to my eyes, maybe thirty, with blond hair and a really bright smile of exceptionally white teeth. “Do you think you could help me get him into my van over there? The little scamp likes to run and my arm makes it difficult,” he said to us.
The dog seemed really happy to be with us, almost avoiding the man, which in hindsight should have been a clue. But Trey and I just exchanged a shrug and followed the man to his white GM van. He opened the back door one-handed and I reached down to scoop up the dog. “What’s his name?” I asked, and then something hard hit the back of my head.
I woke up as my body rocked into someone else, and I heard a grunt that sounded like Trey. My head hurt and my arms were twisted behind me, stuck there. I pulled and felt the burn of adhesive tape pulling on skin and hair. I was duct taped. The body beside me was moving and shifting around as well and making enough sound that I was sure it was my friend. I tried to speak but found my mouth was taped shut as well.
Shifting and rolling around separated us and let me lever myself up to a sitting position. A few feet to my left, Trey did the same.
We were inside the white van, which was moving, the man with the dog at the driver’s wheel, although he seemed to have use of both arms just fine. His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror and he grinned. Reaching his right arm down between the front seats, he lifted a familiar-looking cast, except it was split open, revealing white Velcro straps that had held it in place.
“Gotta hand it to Vermonters. They raise such helpful kids,” he said, smiling happily
