by Tim Greaton
twelve more bags with mostly old newspapers and paper bags, but there were also quite a few smooshed donuts, many with maggots crawling all over them. The smell was terrible. By the time they finished and carried the first two bags out to the street, Bret’s complexion had turned almost as green as Zachary’s hair.
“You shouldn’t make yourself sick,” Zachary said.
“I-I’m okay,” Bret insisted. He took several deep breaths of the afternoon air but then returned to the hallway to grab his next bag. It took them six trips in all with Zachary needing only one good hand to carry each bag but Bret straining with both hands to carrying his.
“I really appreciate all the help,” Zachary said when Bret followed him up to Madame Kloochie’s disgusting mess of living room, which was obviously going to take hours to clean, “but it’s not your job.”
Bret’s sudden firm expression made him look a lot older.
“H-How many friends d-d-do you have on this street?” Bret asked.
“One,” Zachary said truthfully.
“Me too,” Bret said before kneeling down to begin gathering dirty clothes.
They worked steadily for the next few hours until they ran out of both bags and spray cleaner. Though the living room couldn’t yet have been considered clean, you could at least see the floral carpet and that the large room had two only overstuffed chairs not three. The last mound in the corner turned out to be a stack of old women’s shoes that had been covered with years of trash. Zachary held up several shoes of different colors and determined that either Madame Kloochie used to be much smaller or they belonged to someone else entirely. He knocked on her closed bedroom door, where she had disappeared shortly after closing her store.
“Yeah, what?” she barked.
Come clean your own damned mess, Zachary wanted to say but, “What should we do with these shoes?” was what came out of his mouth.
“Toss them in the woods for the other girls,” she said.
Zachary and Bret gave each other the she’s-crazier-than-we-thought look.
“Maybe we could throw them in the trash instead,” Zachary suggested.
“I said TOSS THEM INTO THE WOODS!”
Knowing it would be useless to argue, they retrieved a large box that Zachary had found blocking the attic stairway and filled it with shoes. Once filled, however, neither boy could pick it up—Zachary because of his cast and Bret because he wasn’t strong enough—so they instead carried the shoes, a few pair at a time, down the back stairs and out to the woods behind Madame Kloochie’s house. Knowing it was insane, they threw dozens of colorful heels, pumps and sneakers into the thick woods. Soon, it became a game about who could make the most shoes stick up in the trees. By the time they were done, moonlight illuminated dainty shoes of every color peppering the upper branches of the forest.
“L-L-Looks like Chr-Christmas,” Bret said.
Both boys were laughing as they returned to their respective homes.
For Zachary the good mood didn’t last long. He collapsed into bed with a worry-filled mind. If Krage had already managed to kill off most of the Pill family, including Zachary’s grandfather who had apparently been a powerful wizard in his own right, what chance did his father have? He tried to convince himself that Uncle Ned was right, that his father was one of the most powerful wizards alive, but Zachary’s memories were filled with a weak man who never dared to stand up for himself. The barrage of doubts and fears made Zachary’s head hurt. He tossed and turned for most of the night, and only dozed off when his body was too exhausted to stay awake any longer.
By the next morning, as Zachary—late—made his way downstairs with a sticky chocolate stain on the shoulder of his tee shirt, he felt as though he hadn’t slept in a month. Fortunately, Bret arrived at the front door early to keep him awake. He didn’t want to imagine what Madame Kloochie could do with donuts if she ever caught him sleeping on the job. Bret was dressed in a neatly ironed pair of dark dress slacks and his typical button-up shirt. Zachary wondered if he even owned a tee shirt. The blond boy brushed particles from the orange overstuffed chair beside the front counter before he sat down. Unfortunately, his weight sent a puff of dust into the air. For a minute it looked as though he was going to sneeze, but then he squeezed the tip of his nose and waved the dust away.
“If I can find a vacuum cleaner, I’ll try to use it down here tomorrow,” Zachary offered.
Bret shook his head. “I-I’m okay but you look l-l-like you didn’t sleep.”
Zachary blinked and rubbed his tired eyes.
“I kept thinking about my dad being in danger all night.”
“Is he in the military?”
“Sort of.” Zachary remembered what his uncle had said about his father taking on Krage’s entire world. He tried to block out images of his father being taken prisoner and tortured.
No one came to shop at Madame Kloochie’s hopeless junk shop that day, but neither of the two new friends noticed because they spent their day talking. Bret explained how he and Kevin Stemson had become enemies, which mostly amounted to Stemson being a constant jerk and doing things like throwing him into the river or tying him to his front porch until his parents got home from work and found him. Zachary revealed his own history of being teased, which included a long list of green hair nicknames like seaweed brain, spinach top, army cap, and of course Billy Timkin’s most recent: snot hair. They also talked about the way Bret’s parents, both doctors, were gone for long hours nearly every day, and how Bret usually spent a month or more in the hospital every year because of severe asthma, allergies, and several other maladies he could barely pronounce. Zachary shared the story of his mother’s disappearance and how much he missed her. Though he never actually gave away the secrets of his family’s magic or their dangerous enemy Krage, he was able to hint about those things without Bret digging for more answers. After a while, they both realized that no matter how different their lives had been, they had both lived through difficult challenges. Somehow, for Zachary at least, having someone to share those experiences with made him feel better.
They had moved on to less serious subjects and were discussing some of the New Hampshire teachers Zachary would be having when the stairs creaked with Madame Kloochie’s descending weight. Glass rattled and dust fell like dandruff throughout the store as she trundled through the aisles and slid a box of donuts on the shelf under the register. Thumping a bottle of cherry cola down on the counter, she settled onto the stool. Having cooked up an afternoon plan, both boys were already standing by the front counter.
“How’d we do today?” she asked.
“No customers,” Zachary said. He paused, trying to figure out the right wording to ask for a few hours of freedom. He cleared his throat, but couldn’t think of exactly how to say it.
“You two going to block my view all afternoon?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
“I was hoping Bret could come up to my room for a while,” Zachary said.
Her eyes flitted from one boy to the other. “You still have laundry to do, and that kitchen’s not clean.”
“I can do it after,” Zachary said.
“After what?” Madame Kloochie asked, suspicion oozing from her expression.
“T-To look at c-c-comics/To play videogames,” they lied at the same time.
“W-We’re going to check out s-s-some comics to see if th-the games have all the s-s-same characters,” Bret said, impressing Zachary with such a quick cover story.
Madame Kloochie’s thick, ring-laden pointer finger punched the register’s cash key. The drawer shot open with a loud ring. Scrooge-like, she snapped up the bills and smelled them.
“Okay,” she said, pointing at Bret. “But you’re out at seven. Zachary has dishes, laundry, and a few rockets to clean upstairs.”
Zachary groaned as he led his friend back through the store to the hallway.
18) Casket and Snakes
Zachary pulled his videogame system out of the closet and started hooking the wires to
the ancient TV he and Bret had found under one of the piles of garbage in the living room. He and Bret had decided to leave a game on just in case Madame Kloochie checked on them later. Though Zachary didn’t actually own any comic books, he found two gardening magazines and tossed them onto his bed. Chances were she’d never notice the difference. Bret leaned down to rub at a smudge on the toe of one black leather shoe.
“S-So what’d you want to sh-sh-show me?” he asked.
“I hope you have an open mind,” Zachary said. He had decided that in order to help his father he needed to learn more about magic. He had also decided that Bret could be trusted to help. He brought out the box of his father’s items and pulled out the green wand that had been sticking out of the slot at the top of the closed box. Just as it had the night before, the wand erupted into brilliant yellow symbols all along its length as soon as his fingers came in contact with its smooth surface. He held it out to Bret.
“Wh-What size batteries d-d-does it use?” Bret asked. He didn’t make any effort to touch it.
“I doubt it uses any,” Zachary said.
“S-So it’s like a disposable fl-fl-flashlight?”
It had never occurred to Zachary that Bret wouldn’t recognize the wand for what it was. But, come to think of it, he probably wouldn’t have guessed it himself if he hadn’t seen his father use a black one just like it.
“It’s a magic wand.”
“Can you pull
