Bradley Wallace spotted Wagner before class even began, and of course they shared the same homeroom with Mr. Baldie. But the older boy (Bradley Wallace was surprised to learn that first day back that Wagner was a year and a half older than his classmates) curiously avoided him until recess, and only then waited until there was a large group present. Wagner always did like an audience.
Bradley Wallace tensed up as Wagner swaggered up to him cockily, just like always. Wagner had grown a couple of inches over the summer, Bradley Wallace noted, but then, so had he. As he stared back into Wagner’s wolf-grey eyes, he felt somehow that the other boy had changed since they’d last engaged in a staring duel. A bit of that cocksureness so previously prominent in Wagner’s eyes was gone now, as if an old man with a knife had whittled away at it over the past three months. Even the swagger was different. It almost seemed as though he was doing an imitation of John Wagner, rather than simply being John Wagner. Bradley Wallace’s emerald city eyes reflected his awareness of these changes, and that obviously annoyed Wagner.
The older boy jabbed a finger hard into Bradley Wallace’s chest. “I’m gonna beat you this year, fag!” he asserted vehemently, as though Bradley Wallace had been harassing him or something and Wagner was just threatening to get back at him. The volatile boy turned and strutted away behind one of the school buildings, leaving a confused Bradley Wallace gazing curiously after him. What was it that’d flickered across Wagner’s steely eyes, just for a moment? It looked like a question. But what question? And what was the answer? It was all very peculiar.
Janet also sought him out that day to quiz him on what he’d done over the summer. Though pleased by her interest, his tongue tied itself into knots (as always) and he felt sure he sounded like a real geek.
But he did his best to make the Hawaii trip sound exciting, embellishing the volcano and tidal wave threats as much as he dared without mentioning his and Whilly’s part in stopping them. He tried to make light of his illness, and was delighted by her expressed fear that he could’ve died, and how terrible that would’ve been. Her grandmother died of pneumonia last year, she said, so she knew how serious it could be. The bell signaling the start of afternoon classes sent them scurrying in opposite directions, promising to see each other later.
Bradley Wallace found that he’d actually enjoyed talking to her,
and had even relaxed a little. Janet was a nice girl, pleasant and friendly, and she seemed to like him - the exact opposite of that maddeningly infuriating Josette. So why couldn’t he get the mysterious so-called apprentice-sorceress out of his mind?
This year Bradley Wallace had Sister Myra for English, Mrs. Quigley for reading (he didn’t mind this, she was still pretty), Mr. Baldie for religion (Ha!), art (Ha! Ha!) and science (he did actually teach this one, after a fashion), and wicked witch Rose for math. If he thought she was an ogre in reading last year, she was a regular tyrannosaurus rex for math, attacking and devouring any student who gave a wrong answer, or who even moved without her express permission. She even went so far as to tell students they were wrong if they happened to blurt out the answer to some problem she was browbeating another kid with, even if the blurted answer was correct!
For Bradley Wallace, already confused enough on the subject of math, such tactics were not beneficial.
He decided on the first day to keep his mouth shut and his ears open unless specifically ordered to answer. He wasn’t about to be humiliated in front of the whole class if he could help it. No way.
Despite his fear of Sister Rose in class, Bradley Wallace did manage to muster the courage one day that first week back to approach her after school on the subject of his book. At first, to his astonishment, she denied any knowledge of a borrowed book. But when he jogged her memory with a brief description of the plotline and the day she’d asked him for it, the stocky, red-haired nun suddenly recalled the incident.
“Vaguely,” she said, as though it held no importance for her.
And then, with casual shrug, she snapped shut her briefcase and started for the door, tossing lightly back over her shoulder the announcement that she’d lost the book over the summer. And that was that. She left the room, leaving the boy to gape after her in silent disbelief. The empty classroom seemed to mock him. Even the blackboards stared back scornfully. At first, Bradley Wallace was too shocked even to be angry. But the anger soon rose in his throat like bile, and he stormed out of the classroom and up to his bus. He sat and fumed all the way home,
completely unable to comprehend what had happened. How could she do that to him? A nun! Grownups often did hurtful things to kids - that was true enough. But she was a nun, and they were supposed to be good. Weren’t they?
Whilly, too, found it difficult to accept what Sister Rose had done, but then, as he so often pointed out, he really understood very little about human behavior, which tended toward the emotional and erratic. Perhaps this woman was an aberration, he suggested (he’d picked up that word from TV), that is, unbalanced mentally or disturbed psychologically.
Bradley Wallace simply dismissed the whole subject with a confused shake of his head. He simply didn’t understand grown ups.
“Sometimes people aren’t what we think or hope they should be,” Mr. O’Conner offered when Bradley Wallace pumped him on the subject. “And that goes for youngsters as well as us older folks, lad,” he added with a sharp look. And suddenly Bradley Wallace felt guilty for all the lies he’d told the old man, especially over the past few months. He realized that his actions were essentially no better than those of Sister Rose.
“But she’s a nun,” he insisted, still unable to comprehend the contradictions that fact implied.
“Just because someone’s a nun, or a priest, or a king, or a president doesn’t mean they can’t be bad,” the old man explained. “Whatever else they may be, they’re all still human, and human is just another word for imperfect.”
Bradley Wallace nodded slowly, digesting this latest revelation. He’d never really thought about people all being the same. He just assumed that certain people had to be better than others simply by virtue of their station in life.
“You mean everybody has bad thoughts?”
“We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t, lad,” Mr. O’Conner answered, tousling the boy’s sandy hair reassuringly. “What separates the good people from the bad is what we do with those thoughts, that’s all.”
It all sounded so simple, and yet so different from how Bradley Wallace had always perceived the world. If what Mr. O’Conner said was
true, then anybody could be good and anybody could be bad, no matter who they were or what their profession. So how could he ever tell the difference? The question of his own goodness or badness troubled Bradley Wallace as well.
“Am I a good person?” he practically whispered to the old man, fearful of hearing the answer.
Mr. O’Conner smiled, a simple, honest smile. “Aye, lad. You’re the best person I know.”
Even though that answer sounded so typically grownup and empty, it somehow comforted the boy. Probably because it came from Mr. O’Conner, who as far as Bradley Wallace was concerned, could bring sincerity to a grocery list.
The next couple of weeks Bradley Wallace spent readjusting to a hectic schedule including school, work, homework, “Dark Shadows,” and Whilly, not to mention keeping the peace at home. Thus he spent very little time cogitating the matter of good and evil in people, including himself. Whatever happened would happen, and there seemed to be nothing anyone could do about that. So perhaps it was best not to dwell on such ethereal notions. Time would no doubt take care of them as well.
The annual school carnival took place the last week in September, and for the first time Bradley Wallace’s father expressed interest in attending with his son. Actually insisted. He seemed to feel they saw too little of each other except at the dinner table, and never had the opportunity to do anything together. Like when they went to the movie last summer. Did Bradley Wallace re
member? He remembered, all right, and thought their attending the carnival together might be fun.
So, he and Jack stumbled their way fumblingly through the potato sack races, and even came in last in the game of horseshoes. But the worst for Bradley Wallace was the egg toss, wherein parent and child stand so many paces apart and toss raw eggs back and forth, the object being, obviously, to catch the egg without breaking it. Unfortunately, Bradley Wallace wasn’t terribly good at such games, and ended up literally with egg on his face. The only thing more putrid than raw egg dripping down his cheeks was the humiliation of being laughed at by everyone present, including, unfortunately, John Wagner, who’d pretty much stayed out of his way these past few weeks. The older boy slunk up to Bradley Wallace as he stood by the drinking fountain wiping the slimy egg yolk from his face. Wagner’s movements were like a snake, Bradley Wallace thought, and wished he had the courage to forcibly wipe that derisive sneer from the other boy’s face.
Wagner indicated the egg, and then nodded his head in the direction of Bradley Wallace’s father, animatedly chatting with Jeff Kott’s dad (who, with Jeff, had won the egg toss). “Your old man’s a real wreck. Now I know why you’re so lame. He couldn’t help you win anything.” There was genuine contempt in Wagner’s voice, and it riled Bradley Wallace’s pride.
“Yeah, well at least I have a father to help me try!” he retorted viciously, unthinkingly. And his words hit Wagner like a right uppercut to the jaw, and Bradley Wallace actually saw his rival flinch back as though he’d been physically struck. The grey eyes blazed with momentary flares of pure hatred, and then Wagner turned and strode quickly away. Bradley Wallace watched him disappear behind a balloon-popping booth, and released the breath he was holding. That look in Wagner’s eyes had been so vile and intense that Bradley Wallace felt certain the other boy would take a swing at him. But Wagner hadn’t. Why not? A year ago Bradley Wallace would have been engaged in a full-blown brawl, and quite possibly have lost. But this year Wagner was different, weird almost, and Bradley Wallace actually preferred him as he’d been last year. At least then he knew what to expect. Perhaps that was it - perhaps Wagner was acting weird to confuse Bradley Wallace, catch him off-guard, and then set him up for some ultimate beating-up or humiliation. He had noticed Wagner watching him a lot more lately. But what could he be up to?
Whilly shrugged off Bradley Wallace’s suspicions about Wagner without even considering their merits. His suggestion was that Bradley Wallace stop hating the other boy and try understanding him a little more.
“He hates my guts,” Bradley Wallace snapped angrily, a bit hacked off that Whilly always seemed to see good in Wagner when there obviously wasn’t any. “What else is there to understand?”
How about why he hates you? the dragon offered before
dropping the subject entirely. Though Bradley Wallace persisted, he could get nothing more out of Whilly that night on this matter, and no explanation of his cryptic answer, which was actually a question anyway. Dragons could be as stubborn as people sometimes.
Fortunately for Bradley Wallace, Whilly was able to at least temporarily solve the problem of outgrowing the water tower - he simply ripped the top right off the tank one day while the boy was in school. The tank now provided no cover against rain (which hadn’t begun yet), but did allow the massive creature easy entry and exit. When Bradley Wallace arrived that afternoon, he gaped in astonishment at the enormous sheet of twisted metal lying in the brown grass of the hillside like a discarded soda can tab. Whilly’s power was incredible, he marveled, feeling sorry for anyone who ever managed to make the dragon angry. He called to his friend and moments later Whilly appeared overhead, circling excitedly. They entered the tower to watch “Dark Shadows,” and talk. Life for the companions had become simple and idyllic.
But that was before the wind changed, and brought danger with it.
CHAPTER 11
“Danger”
October brought a sharp cold snap to the air, and stripped nearly every tree of its clothing, leaving them naked and forlorn, watching helplessly as their protective red and green coats turned dry and brown and toppled off to blow haphazardly through the wind-swept streets. It was also the month the missing-cows situation hit home for real. Bradley Wallace had still not touched a steak since that night so many months ago, but his mother seemed to have accepted his vegetarianism as a longer-than-usual phase, and no longer badgered him about it, for which he was most grateful. For some time now, Whilly had been feeding on full-grown cows he plucked from various pastures around the county but, knowing how the boy felt, never discussed the matter openly with him. Bradley Wallace knew just the same - such were the drawbacks to a perpetual mind-link - and it continued to trouble him that he was an accessory to stealing. Being discovered also worried him, but his squeamishness prompted him to ignore the problem. The problem, however, as he realized one crisp, but sunny, October afternoon, was not about to ignore him.
Mr. Baldie’s class was engaged in a science project that day, and Bradley Wallace’s partner, by pure happenstance (though he didn’t really mind) turned out to be Janet, who for her own part seemed pleased to work with him. Their homework assignment that week had been to construct, using explicit instructions, a simple battery operated electromagnet.
Bradley Wallace worked long and hard to get his project exactly right, assisted in part by his father until Jack lost patience with the intricacies of the assignment and left its completion to his son. The finished product was basically an upturned Styrofoam cup with two screws inserted at opposite sides of its bottom, copper wire leading from each screw, and a needle suspended across the screw eyes. Attached to the needle was a small chunk of magnet, and when the two wires were touched to the plus and minus poles of a “D” cell battery, the magnet would move. Bradley Wallace was rather proud of his work, and noted with pride that his worked better than most.
Mr. Baldie had devised several experiments for testing the homemade magnets, and it was these in which Bradley Wallace and Janet were engaged. He’d been embarrassed when she complimented him on how well he’d built his, and had turned a little red. He liked Janet more and more each day, and yet for some reason almost every time he looked at her he saw Josette instead. That frustrating girl even pervaded his dreams, and he couldn’t seem to forget her. But curiously, she always appeared in replays of their adventures in Hawaii, never at home, or school, or any other local hangout. Why couldn’t he forget about her?
A far-away voice pierced his reverie, a girl’s voice, a familiar girl’s voice. “Bradley Wallace?” it said.
“Josette?” he replied dreamily, excitedly. “Is that you? Please tell me you’re real. I have to know.”
And then he heard, from even farther away, “Mr. Baldie, could you come here. I think there’s something wrong with Bradley Wallace.”
And then another voice penetrated the fog, a man’s gruff growl. “What’s the trouble here?”
“We were just doing our experiment,” answered the girl’s voice, “and then he just freaked out, calling me ‘Josette.’”
“Murphy, old boy,” the man growled. “What’s wrong, my friend?”
Bradley Wallace still couldn’t see any faces, couldn’t see anything. Who was talking to him anyway? Or was he just dreaming? The voices were so distant, so tiny, almost like the buzzing of bees far, far away. Then hands grabbed his shoulders, big hands, and he felt himself shaken gently.
“Murphy,” the man’s gravelly voice barked, “snap out of it, boy!”
And then another voice suddenly burst into his mind like the blast of a flamethrower. Bradley Wallace, it’s Whilly. We have a problem. Can you hear me?
And then he could. “Yes,” he spoke aloud, snapping out of his trance as fast as he’d lapsed into it. He shook his head, which felt strangely muddled, and gazed in confusion at the circle of staring, bewildered faces surrounding him. Mr. Baldie was hunkered down before him, the usually gruff features twisted into a gentle look
of concern.
“What’s everybody staring at me for?” Bradley Wallace asked, completely unaware of what had happened.
“You all right, Murphy old boy?” Mr. Baldie asked uncertainly.
“Yeah, fine,” the confused boy answered with a shrug. “Why shouldn’t I be?” He scanned the sea of faces as they exchanged looks amongst themselves. Janet stared at him with a mixture of puzzlement and worry. What had he done? “Will somebody tell me what’s goin’ on?” he demanded, trying to mask his growing fear with irritation.
“I think you ought a go down and see the nurse, Murphy old boy,” Mr. Baldie offered, rising slowly to a standing position.
“What for? I’m fine!” the boy exclaimed, his irritation no longer an act. He was also embarrassed at being the center of such unwanted attention. What had happened? Had he buzzed out again? He must’ve, since he couldn’t remember anything.
“I believe you,” Mr. Baldie continued, pronouncing “believe” as one syllable - “blieve.” “But I think it would be good to have her talk to ya, take yer temperature, you know.”
His voice had taken on the firmness Bradley Wallace had come to know meant that he’d accept no argument.
Nonetheless, the boy opened his mouth to protest one last time, but stopped short as Whilly whizzed past the classroom windows and a quick, worried question entered his troubled mind. Are you all right?
I’m fine, Bradley Wallace sent back silently. But his intense gaze toward the windows naturally attracted everyone’s attention. And of course they saw nothing, only adding to his problem.
Mr. Baldie cleared his throat awkwardly. “Uh, Murphy, you’d best get on down to the nurse, even if you feel all right now.”
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