by D. C. Akers
He tried to talk the principal into letting him go home early or wearing his gym shirt the rest of the day. Both ideas were shot down. The gym shirt was school-issued and needed to be turned in that day. Leaving early was not an option, not without written permission or a phone call from a parent, or having his mother pick him up at school. All of which were never going to happen. The last thing Sam wanted to do was tell his mother about his KISS t-shirt lying in several pieces at the bottom of a toilet.
Unfortunately, gym would be the highlight of his day. School seemed to drag on. Thank God it’s the last day, Sam thought.
He made it through the rest of the morning unscathed. By lunch time he was starving. As he approached his locker with his stomach growling, Sam recalled the first thing Travis had said to him that morning: “Hey, your mom said pack a lunch”. He never had.
Sam slowly stopped walking, took in a deep breath and told himself, Just breathe, Sam, just breathe. He turned and grudgingly walked back in the direction of the lunch room.
He only had fifty cents to his name so he got a carton of milk for lunch. It would have to hold him over till he got home, if he made it that long without starving to death. He spent the entire lunch hour waiting for Travis, but Travis never showed up. He had gym right before lunch. Travis was always late, but never missed lunch. Sam knew that was not a good sign.
When the school bell finally rang at the end of last period Sam had to contain himself from bolting through the doors and screaming out FREEDOM AT LAST!
Kids ran from all corners of the building. They looked like ants leaving their hill. Sam, who was feeling extremely self-conscious in his new adopted wardrobe, waited patiently for Travis in front of the school. Like always, Travis was late. Finally, after about twenty minutes or so, he surfaced. At first, Sam did not recognize him. His head was hanging low, and he was wearing a different shirt too.
As Travis came closer what had happened became all too clear. Sam could feel his blood pressure starting to skyrocket as he stared at Travis, appalled. The sheer humility Travis wore on his face spoke volumes as he weaved through the crowd of kids who were laughing at him.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Sam said through gritted teeth.
The shirt Travis wore was bright pink with large, bold black letters that said, “I Don’t Skinny Dip, I Chunky Dip.”
“What happened to your shirt?” Sam asked quietly, trying desperately not to draw any more attention to them than necessary.
“Someone stole it in gym!” Travis replied, defeated and embarrassed. “Hey, what happened to yours?”
“Don’t ask!” Sam replied. “Let’s go and find a rock to crawl under.”
They both turned in time to see Daniel Harris, the school prankster, walk by with his group of knuckle-draggers.
“Aw, look at the twins! Did you fish that out of the toilet too?” he yelled pointing at Travis. They all laughed and pointed in Sam’s and Travis’s direction while climbing into Daniel’s SUV.
Suddenly it all made sense. Daniel was in Travis’s gym class and Billy, Bobby, Timmy, and Todd were in Sam’s. Sam’s and Travis’s numbers had finally come up. Daniel and his group of idiots had been the ones to take their shirts. They had pulled one last prank before school ended and Sam and Travis had been the victims.
“Can this day get any worse?” Sam moaned as he turned and walked toward home.
“Hey, I kind of like your shirt,” Travis said.
“Figures,” Sam replied.
The walk home was less than thrilling. Travis rambled on about Star Wars.
“You know I love the movie but come on! First you try to save the princess, then you kiss her, then you find out she’s your sister! I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking I would have shot myself in the face with a blaster!”
Sam paid no attention to Travis’s ramblings, except for the part about Travis sucking Jell-O off Paul Axtell’s plate. Apparently Travis took a late lunch after acquiring a new shirt. He went with the detention group. They always took the late lunch to keep them separated from the rest of the student body as part of their punishment.
“So, I ask him, ‘Can I have your Jell-O?’ He says, ‘No.’ So I put my finger in it. He said, ‘I don’t care what you do to it, Travis, I’m going to eat my Jell-O.’ So I look around to make sure there were no teachers standing by. Then I leaned over and sucked it right off his plate!” Travis laughed, “You should have seen his face!”
Sam laughed too. He found that entertaining in a strange kind of way, mostly because Paul deserved it. Paul was always putting his finger in people’s food at lunch.
It was starting to get cloudy. Things cooled off as a light breeze blew in from the north. The weatherman had talked about rain for days, and it looked like he was going to be right for a change. They needed the rain.
Sam had waited all day to ask Travis about the chocolate wrapper he had found last night. He was sure it wasn’t from around here. But, one more opinion wouldn’t hurt, he thought.
“Hey, Trav, you ever heard of Becker’s Famous Chocolates?” he asked in his best nonchalant voice.
“Becker’s?”
“Yeah, take a look at this.” Sam dug into his pocket, pulled out the now crumpled piece of white and red paper and gave it Travis.
Travis took the wrapper and smoothed it out with his fingers, then brought it to his nose and inhaled, as if to smell the bouquet of a fine wine.
“Hmmm, it’s a dark chocolate … maybe extra-dark.” Travis took the wrapper away from his nose and repeated the process.
“It’s expensive cocoa butter too, not that stuff flavored with cheap sugar, vegetable fat, or powdered milk.”
Sam was amazed. Travis may be a social outcast in eighth grade, but he was definitely the man when it came to chocolate.
“Becker’s huh? No, never heard of it. Where’s it made?” he asked, as a look of curiosity set in.
He turned the wrapper over and read aloud the fine print on its back.
Becker’s Famous Chocolates
Hatter’s Cove Rd., Swan’s Cove
Ingredients: Family Secret
Sam hadn’t thought about the back of the wrapper. He had been too caught up with who it belonged to that he simply hadn’t thought of it.
“Um, I don’t think it’s from around here. I mean, you can’t get away with just saying “Family Secret” for the ingredients. Maybe it’s from overseas or something,” Travis said as he twisted the paper back and forth, examining it more closely.
Sam was more puzzled than before. “Yeah, but where is Swan’s Cove and why isn’t there a state or country listed?”
“You got me. I don’t have a clue,” Travis said, handing the wrapper back to Sam.
Sam was bursting at the seams to tell him everything, but that wasn’t going to happen. How could he tell Travis something he wasn’t sure he understood himself? No, it was best to wait until he could think it over and figure it out on his own.
It wasn’t long before Travis had changed the subject and began to ramble on about something Sam had no interest in. Sam, however, was still too focused on the stranger and the chocolate from nowhere to think about anything else.
CHAPTER 6
It began to sprinkle as they finally arrived at Sam’s house. Travis was still rambling as Sam headed for the rosebushes, like always. Every day the paper guy would throw the newspaper into the rosebush, so it was a real chore to try to get it out. Sam was pretty sure the paper guy did it on purpose to get back at Sam’s mother for turning him down when he offered to take her out on a date.
The bushes were full of small thorns that looked like tiny shark fins protruding from the branches. Some of the areas were covered with spider webs, which was unusual since the roses were supposed to be insect-free. It was the reason his mother had planted them to begin with.
Sam grabbed a broken branch from the ground below and tore a hole in the spider web, big enough to reach through and grab the paper. As
he brought the stick back through the hole he noticed a large black and green spider attached to the end of it.
It was the same type of spider Travis had been playing with this morning. Upon closer inspection, Sam could see six red eyes arranged into three pairs that formed a semicircle on the front of its pea-size head. Its segmented body was branded with three green stripes and a small circle near its head.
Sam quickly threw the stick out onto the road, then scanned himself and the rosebush to make sure there were no other spiders hiding anywhere.
He stared into the prickly bush. It would take his complete concentration if he was going to stick his arm into the rosebush and pull the newspaper out with any skin left on his arm. One false move meant pain, and lots of it. Sam knelt down in front of the bushes and slowly placed his hand through the destroyed web, and into the tangled array of stems and thorns toward the rolled up paper.
“So what do you think?” Travis said with a hint of enthusiasm.
“Think about what?” Sam was half-listening as he weaved his hand up and down through the maze of stems.
“About going to the caves tonight. It’s Friday night, we’re out of school and we have nothing else to do.”
“Um, I don’t know Trav, OUCH!” Sam nicked himself on the top part of his hand. “That’s one,” he mumbled to himself. If he could get out of the bushes with less than three cuts he would break his own record.
“What, like you got some big plans or something?”
“No, it’s just been a long … OUCH … week, that’s all, and I’m kind of tired … GOT YOU!” Sam had the paper in his hand. He had done it, now he was ready to make his exit.
“What are you like eighty? You sound like my grandpa!”
“Whatever Trav, it’s just been one thing after another, and now I’m digging in a rosebush wearing a t-shirt that says ‘I See Ninjas.’ I mean, do I need to really push my luck?”
Sarah was rounding the corner of Giddyup Lane when she noticed her brother and Travis by the rosebushes. The day had gone by so fast that she barely had enough time to dwell on what had happened this morning with Marcus Snider. But she was dwelling on it now.
Had she caused all of that to happen this morning? Did her anger cause the pipes to break and the water to burst from the ground? Sarah sighed; there was no point in denying it any longer. If she did, she would only be lying to herself. When she got mad, bad things happened, and when they did it usually involved—
Sarah stopped in her tracks. She felt her skin crawl with sudden awareness. It usually involved water. Her mind raced back to the glass on the kitchen counter—it was filled with water. The pipes in the walls of the building were filled with water. The manhole cover had flown into the air because of the water underneath the ground.
Every single time within the last month that there had been a strange event, two things had always been present—her anger and water. Was it just a coincidence or were the two related?
Sarah started to walk again in a daze, her mind quickly sifting through the details of the events. This was so incomprehensible that she could barely wrap her mind around it.
Before she realized it, she was standing just a few feet away from Travis and her brother. Sarah straightened her back. She could not show that anything unusual had happened. It was a good thing that she had run into the gymnasium locker room this morning where she dried her clothes and put herself back together.
She would need to keep this a secret until she figured it all out. She would need to act as if nothing bizarre had happened today. She wouldn’t say a word about almost destroying the corner bakery and sporting goods store, almost killing Marcus and herself with a manhole cover, or the fight with loser Barry. No, she would keep it all inside like she always did. No one could be trusted with this.
Sarah took a deep breath and pulled herself together. Act like you always do, she told herself. She watched as Travis and Sam continued their conversation, unaware of her presence. Sarah began to grin as a thought entered her mind. Act like you always do.
The boys were so caught up in their own conversation that they never saw Sarah sneak up behind them. She moved closer, creeping up to Travis until she was only inches away.
His mouth was still moving ninety to nothing. His bad aftershave was almost unbearable but she stayed focused. She stood there calmly and took another deep breath and as loud as she could screamed out,
“MORONS!”
Travis jumped forward, screaming at the top of his lungs like a frightened school girl, and knocked Sam, who had almost gotten the paper out, face-first into the rosebushes. He let out a scream of his own as the thorns slashed across his forearms and face.
“What in the world?” he cried, whipping his head around to see what was going on.
Sarah stood in front of them, red-faced with her hands over her mouth.
“Have you lost your freaking mind?” Sam screamed back at her!
Sarah tried to apologize between sudden bursts of laughter.
“Oh my god, that was so funny! Sam, I promise I had no idea Travis was going to scream like that and kick you into the roses!”
Sam was not amused in the least; he was mad. He was hurt, and today had been, without question, one of the worst days of his life.
He stood up slowly. His arms and face were bleeding from the scratches and tiny thorns that had lodged in his skin. He felt defeated. He stared down at the newspaper that he had dropped. It looked seemingly untouched in the middle of the twisted chaos they called a rosebush.
Sarah tried to conceal her laughter with her hands, but she still snickered under her breath as she tried to keep her composure. Travis stood with his hand on his chest as if he were about to pass out.
“I said I was sorry,” Sarah said still laughing.
“Shut up Sarah, and leave me alone!” Sam shouted and turned toward the house.
“Hey where are you going?” Travis panted, “Are we not going to the caves?”
Sam slowly climbed the stairs of the front porch with his head hung low. He turned and looked back at Travis.
“Not tonight Travis. Go home.”
CHAPTER 7
Rain began to fall in earnest at about eight o’clock that night. The tiny raindrops beaded up on Sam’s bedroom window and shimmered in the moonlight before streaking down like silver ribbons onto the wooden ledge. The street light down below flickered on and off as it always did.
Sam lay on his bed with the lights off staring at the ceiling, and contemplating revenge on his stupid sister. He also thought of adding Daniel Harris to his mental list of paybacks for ruining his favorite t-shirt and leaving him with that loser of a garment he had to wear home.
Sam sat up in his bed and stared at the small puddle that was starting to form on his window sill. The lightning cracked and thunder rumbled, followed by another bright flash that streaked across the sky. It was a good thing he didn’t go to the caves, he thought. He could see himself getting trapped there with Travis until the whole storm had passed.
Sam forced himself to stand up and grab the bath towel that was draped over his desk chair. The leak from his window was now dripping onto the floor. He carefully folded the towel and placed it snugly under the edge of the window sill.
Lightning struck again. The street light below popped; sparks of electricity flew into the air like fireworks, then slowly fell to the ground.
In that moment, Sam thought he saw someone standing next to the light post. He waited, but it was too dark. His eyes were still trying to adjust from the sudden flash of light. Was it the stranger from before? He couldn’t be sure.
Suddenly, lightning flashed again and Sam saw him. The dark figure stood next to the street light in his long coat and holding his staff, looking up at Sam.
Thunder roared and it was dark once more. Sam quickly rubbed his eyes, trying hard to focus as the lightning struck again, blinding him momentarily. He searched frantically through the spots of green and blue floating in
front of him, but the stranger was gone, vanished into thin air.
Then a small click echoed from behind him, and the light in his bedroom switched on. Sam whirled around to see his mother standing in his doorway.
She had her long brown hair pulled in a tight pony tail that draped across her right shoulder. Her light blue eyes were trapped behind a pair of thin reading glasses. She was wearing a light pink robe and house-shoes.
“Mom, turn off the light!” Sam whispered, worried that the stranger could see him now. Alisa Dalcome turned off the light and stood there in the doorway. Her silhouette stretched across the wooden floor.
“Shut the door, something’s out there!” Sam whispered.
“What? What on earth are you talking about?” Mrs. Dalcome asked as she closed the door to his room. The lightning flickered again. Mrs. Dalcome scuffled across the cluttered floor, trying to reach Sam.
“Mom, I swear there’s someone out there!”
“Don’t swear. You know I hate that! Now see there, you made me say hate! I don’t like that word either!” His mother could be a bit old-fashioned at times, Sam thought. Words such as swear, hate, and liar were off-limits in the Dalcome household. Mrs. Dalcome thought there were better ways, nicer ways, to get your point across.
“Why are you whispering?” she asked.
“Mom, shhhhhhh!” Sam said, trying desperately to see any sign of the man outside.
“Sam, you need to clean this room. You can’t even walk in here!” she said, not bothering at all to whisper.
Sam wasn’t listening to a word she said; the stranger was out there, he was sure of it. He may have vanished from sight but that didn’t mean he was gone.
Mrs. Dalcome finally made it to the window; she grasped one corner of the window sill and placed her other hand on Sam, trying to keep her footing amidst the piles of clothes. She reluctantly leaned toward the window, scanning the front yard and the street below.
