Grampin told me you had another one of those dreams,” Aidan’s dad said. He tentatively put his hand on his son’s shoulder and gave a firm, reassuring squeeze. Aidan shrugged it off as if it were a wasp.
Mr. Thomas grimaced, exhaled, and ran a hand through his gray-streaked hair. Silence hung like a cloud between father and son.
Nearby, Aidan’s mom stood with her head at a slight tilt and her hands on her hips as if to say, I told you so.
Mr. Thomas looked away and sighed. He started to leave the dining room, but spun around and quickly pulled up a chair next to his teenage son, who was sitting stiffly at the table.
“How long are you going to keep this up?” he asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Aidan replied. He looked away.
“Look, it’s been two weeks, son, and—”
“Yeah, two weeks and I still hate it here.”
“I know it was kind of sudden—”
“Kind of?” Aidan interrupted. “One week into summer vacation and you say, ‘Oh, uh . . . , by the way, Aidan, we’re moving halfway across the country in two weeks.’ That’s more than a little sudden. You didn’t even ask if I cared.”
“We’ve been through this before,” Aidan’s dad said, his face reddening. “You know we didn’t have a choice. Grampin needs our help. This is where he spent his whole life, and we can’t just force him into an assisted living facility.”
Aidan shrugged. He’d heard this song before.
“Besides,” his father continued, “Riddick and Dunn has an office out here, and it was easy for Mom to get a teaching position, with her credentials.”
“So it was convenient for everyone but me.”
Mr. Thomas turned his head and frowned. “Listen, we left friends behind in Maryland too, you know.”
That was it. Aidan sprang up and rushed from the dining room. He banged up the stairs in an angry fog, slammed the door to his room, and dove onto his bed.
Aidan faced his bedside table. The twelve medieval figurines— the pewter knights, dragons, and unicorns—were, as always, still, quiet, and ready to listen.
“Y’know what?” he said to them. “They don’t have a clue what it’s like leaving a friend behind. I bet they won’t have any trouble at all finding people to play Bridge with.”
None of the small medieval beings replied. They were good that way. They didn’t offer advice. They didn’t lecture. They simply listened.
“I mean, how am I supposed to survive high school when my only real friend is a thousand miles from here?” Aidan glowered at the fantasy figures and shook his head. There was no way he’d ever find a friend like Robby again.
Robby Pierson and his family had moved from Florida to a house in Maryland a block away from Aidan. The two boys had met in school, had homeroom together and lockers side by side, and everything changed for Aidan. Until that time, Aidan had been known to the kids in the neighborhood and at school as the overweight weirdo who sat around all day drawing castles and spacecraft. Then Robby showed up. He was tall and muscular and had huge green eyes, long blond hair, and an earring. And given his good looks and ability to play every sport better than everyone else, he was instantly crowned “so cool” by everyone—even the juniors and seniors!
For reasons Aidan still didn’t understand, Robby had decided to become his best friend. They hung out between classes, after school, and sometimes had PlayStation sleepovers on the weekends.
It was as if coolness were a magical golden powder that could rub off on Aidan just by standing in Robby’s shadow. Because of Robby, the most popular kids in the school paid attention to Aidan. They all seemed to think, If Robby Pierson thinks he’s cool, then he must be cool. It was, after all, a large shadow, and Aidan liked it there. He didn’t have to worry about being picked on, and better still, he never had to think about what to do in certain situations—Robby always knew what to do.
“Looks like it’s back to being the oddball again!” Aidan’s anger surged to the point that he was tempted to smack the little medieval figurines right off the table, but he’d already destroyed a lamp. So he hit his pillow as hard as he could and then threw it at his bedroom door.
Aidan suddenly sat very still on the edge of his bed. He had the most intense feeling that someone was outside his bedroom window watching him. He felt frozen in time, unable at first to summon the courage to turn around.
This is stupid, he thought. I mean, who could be at my window?I’m on the second floor, and there’s nothing out there to stand on . . .except, maybe one of the pines.
Aidan spun around and looked out the window. The front yard was full of tall evergreens, but the biggest one was rocking severely back and forth.
. . . like something was in there! The thought leaped into Aidan’s mind, and he pressed his face up against the glass.
Aidan looked left, right, up, down. At first he didn’t see anything. But then, up the road that ran in front of his house, there was a shadow. It was wide, spanning the road at times, and it was moving fast. That’s what caught Aidan’s eye. And even through the glass, Aidan heard a peculiar swooshing sound. Aidan looked up in the sky. Nothing there.
The swooshes continued. And the shadow rocketed back toward Aidan’s house. Aidan strained to see what could be casting such a shadow, but there was no passing cloud or low-flying plane. The shadow swooped over the house, and for a split second the sun was eclipsed by . . . something.
Aidan bounced off his bed, took the stairs two at a time, arriving with a horrendous thud at the bottom.
“Hey, watch the thumping!” Aidan’s father bellowed from the kitchen.
“Sorry!” Aidan yelled over his shoulder as he ran out the front door to search the skies.
