he had called The Hobbit that didn’t have any pictures and that never exactly said if the dwarves were chubby or African or American it just said that they lived in Middle-earth and that they had these toxic axes and other sweet fighting skills and they liked treasure which me and Altemonte totally did, too. Flaming arrows, I said. Flaming axes, he said, so we stuck with that and played double-crossing pretend where none of the other kids could tell we were playing pretend which they would not allow us to do without creaming us.
I mean at school.
Because one thing about school is I wasn’t really popular anymore. The kids knew that I was a foster kid. When Ms. Carroll had borne me aloft to the principal’s office, I had stopped being Friend of Snake and instead become Stupid Abused Neglected Kid. I knew it, I knew all the words even though I didn’t see the need to use them. My first day back, Bexley came up real close to me and I crouched, ready to throw a flaming axe at his face, but he just said, My dad said to leave you alone ’cause you’re going through some stuff. So I said, It’s okay, you don’t have to leave me alone don’t leave me alone please, and Bexley said, My dad said. And then he left me alone. Everyone left me alone. Actually I was totally alone except for Altemonte.
Whatever, said Altemonte. Half of them are foster kids, too. The agency places kids at my grandma’s house all the time.
What kids? I asked, feeling like I was getting stabbed with the flaming sword of jealousy, but Altemonte said, Mostly just kids who don’t care about Middle-earth or dwarf weaponry. They don’t stay long.
Altemonte wasn’t that popular, either, and thus I learned a life lesson which is that true friendship, acorn collecting, and flaming axes might be all that is left after you try and totally fail to be cool. I learned that I’m into having one true friend and that friend is Altemonte. Every day we pulled on our ears, so our ears would stick out more and kind of be accentuated but we would still be incognito. We collected acorns and filled the hollow places beneath tree roots. We silently existed as elf and dwarf. We felt that no one could see us.
So now I knew. I knew that my mission and my destiny had been to meet Altemonte. I kept searching my comic books to see what the elves would do, or if the wolf pack council knew a way I could take Altemonte with me. Because now that I had met him, and now that I had accomplished my mission, I figured what was to stop me from bringing him home.
I mean, here I was living with him at his house, but I’d just as soon he come live with me in the All Worship Altemonte camper. There was plenty of room for both of us and I would gladly tell him the password. Hell, I would make up a new one just for him.
But when I brought it up, Altemonte backed away from me and said, I don’t want to live at your house, this is my home, I want to stay here with my grandma, and Grandma Barlow heard him and came in from the kitchen and pulled Altemonte into her lap and she said, Perley, I can only do what I can do. I can’t make miracles, so you can’t go home, not just yet. And you can’t take Altemonte, he’s my tiny baby.
I’m not a tiny baby, Altemonte said, but he snuggled in close.
But I need you here with me, my pie, Grandma Barlow said.
Grandma Barlow could only do what she could do. And what she could do was bake pies. And teach math, and cover us with quilts, and fill us with pancakes, and prop us up in front of a video, and furnish us with a PlayStation, which we could throw flaming axes across the screen right into the forehead of the bad guy, and she did all of this to comfort us.
She held Altemonte in her lap and I watched them and I didn’t think about how it felt to be in Mama L’s lap. Altemonte pushed his head up under her chin and I didn’t think about what it felt like to push my head up under Mama L’s chin. I just watched them and tried to think