Now, perhaps I’ll admit that I felt just a little bit of longing. A… wishfulness, you might say. Getting a package that claimed to be from my parents had made me remember days long ago – before I realized how foolish I was being – when I had yearned to know my real parents. Days when I had longed to find someone who had to love me, if only because they were related to me.
Fortunately, I had outgrown those feelings. My moment of weakness passed quickly, and I slammed the door closed and locked the old man outside. Then I went to the kitchen to get some breakfast.
That, however, is when someone drew a gun on me.
Chapter 3
I’d like to take this opportunity to point out something important. Should a strange old man of questionable sanity show up at your door – suggesting that he is your grandfather and that you should accompany him upon some quest of mystical import – you should flatly refuse him.
Don’t take his candy either.
Unfortunately, as you will soon see, I was quickly forced to break this rule. Please don’t hold it against me. It was done under duress. I’m really not used to being shot at.
I walked tiredly into the kitchen – which still smelled of smoke – hoping that the strange old man wouldn’t take to pounding on the door. I didn’t really want to call the police on him – not only would I likely break the telephone in the process (I’m particularly bad with phones) but I really didn’t want the old loon carted away in a police car. That would have been –
“Alcatraz Smedry?” a voice suddenly asked.
I jumped, turning from the half-burned cupboard, a box of cornflakes in my hand. A man stood in the doorway behind me, wearing slacks and a button-down shirt. I frowned, realizing that I recognized the symbol on the man’s shirt pocket and standard-issue attaché case. He was a foster care caseworker – this was the man that Ms. Fletcher had sent to pick me up from the house. I realized that when I’d originally gone chasing the old man up to my room, I’d left the front door open. The caseworker must have come in looking for me while I was upstairs chatting with the lunatic.
“Hi,” I said, putting down the box. “I’ll be ready in a bit – let me have breakfast first.”
“You’re him, then?” the caseworker asked, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses. “The Smedry kid?”
I nodded.
“Good,” the man said, then pulled a gun out of his attaché case and raised it toward me. It had a silencer on the barrel.
I froze, shocked. (And don’t try to claim that you did anything different the first time a government bureaucrat pulled a gun on you.)
Fortunately, I eventually found my tongue. “Wait!” I said, raising my hands. “What are you doing?”
“Thanks for the sands, kid,” the man said, and moved as if to pull the trigger.
At that moment something massive crashed through the wall of my house – something that looked a lot like the front end of an old Model-T Ford. I cried out, dodging to the side, and the caseworker stumbled to the ground in the chaos.
The man who called himself Grandpa Smedry sat happily in the driver’s seat. A chunk of smoke-damaged ceiling fell down onto the hood of the car, throwing up a puff of white dust. The old man poked his head out the window.
“Lad,” he said, “might I point out that you have two choices right now? You can get in the car with me, or you can stay here with the man holding a gun.”
I stood, dazed.
“You really don’t have much time to decide,” Grandpa Smedry said, leaning toward me, speaking in a kind of half whisper, as if he were sharing some kind of great secret.
Now, I’d like to pause here and note that Grandpa Smedry was lying to me. I didn’t have only two choices at that point – I had quite a few more than that. True, I could have chosen to stay in the room and get shot. I also could have chosen to get in the car. However, there were lots of other things I could have done. For instance, I could have run around the house flapping my arms and pretending that I was a penguin. The logical choice to make in this situation would have been to call the police on both of those maniacs.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think of penguins or police and instead did as Grandpa Smedry said, scrambling over and getting into the car.
As I stated at the beginning of the chapter, I really shouldn’t have done this. I was soon to learn the dangers involved in following strange old men on quests. I don’t want to give away any more of the story, but let me say that my fate at this point took a sharp turn toward altars, sacrifices, and evil Librarians.
And possible some sharks.
The car backed out of the house, the tires leaving tracks in the lawn. I sat in the front passenger seat, still stunned, looking at the wreckage of the Sheldons’ house. Bits of siding were falling off the outside wall, crushing Roy’s prize tulips. This was more damage than I’d ever done to any foster home. This time it wasn’t directly my fault, but… well, that didn’t change the fact that the kitchen was no longer just burned but also had quite a large hole in it.
We turned onto the street in front of the house – the car puttering along at a modest speed. The caseworker didn’t chase after us, but that didn’t stop me from watching anxiously until the house disappeared in the distance.
Someone just tried to kill me, I thought, feeling numb. You may find it hard to believe – considering the number of things I’d broken in my life – but this was the first time someone had actually tried to shoot me. It was an unsettling feeling. A little like the way you feel when you have the flu, actually. Maybe there’s a connection.
“Well, that was exciting!” Grandpa Smedry said.