Pillage

  I wanted desperately to get back to the conservatory to see what the rain and snow had done to the shed and stones, but the weather was too vicious. I tried going through the tunnels, but on my first try I got lost. I found my way on my second try, but the part of the tunnel where the water had flowed in was frozen and I couldn’t get through.

  The only advantage to the huge snowstorm was that school was cancelled. Of course then I had nothing to do but wander the house and see if my key would open any doors.

  Fortunately for me it opened most of them. Unfortunately for me most of the locked doors opened to nothing but empty and abandoned rooms.

  Wane had brought me a skateboard, and I wasted a couple of afternoons skating around the house. It was fun, but I wanted Kate to be there so I could show off. It wasn’t as satisfying performing for Millie and her one good eye.

  I wanted to talk to my uncle again, but my key wouldn’t unlock any of the doors that opened to the seventh floor. I tried to pick one of the locks with a screwdriver, but the lock was so solid all I managed to do was scratch up the wood and bend the screwdriver.

  I spent a lot of time in the kitchen listening to Thomas and Millie squabble with each other and Wane complain about how the snow was keeping her from her boyfriend, Ben, who lived in Kingsplot.

  It was the fourth day of the snowstorm when the flakes finally stopped falling. I helped Thomas clear a path to the garage where he was able to get the snowplow and begin clearing the drive.

  “I think it’s stopping for good,” I said as I came in from shoveling. The only snow clothes I could find in the house were old, outdated things that someone had already worn many times before. They were all way too big for me. I took off my jacket and hat and threw them on the floor.

  “It’s supposed to warm up a bit tomorrow,” Wane added.

  “I think it looks beautiful,” Millie chimed in as she kneaded a large ball of dough. “We’ve needed the moisture.”

  I looked at Millie as if she were crazy. It seemed to me that all grown-ups were programmed to say things that sounded grateful no matter how difficult the situation.

  “‘Needed the moisture’?” I questioned, hopping up to take a seat on the counter. “I’ve never seen anyplace so irriguous.”

  “Irriguous?” Wane raised an eyebrow.

  “Sorry,” I apologized. “It’s that stupid dictionary you got me.”

  Wane smiled.

  “Well, the water won’t hurt,” Millie insisted.

  I liked Millie. She was like the grandmother I never had—or more like the grandmother I might have had, but never met.

  A bell chimed through the kitchen. Millie and Wane looked over at the ringing bell with surprise.

  “I’ve already brought him lunch,” Millie said quietly.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Your uncle,” Wane answered. “That’s the dome bell.”

  “Maybe he wants some company,” I suggested.

  I had never seen Millie really laugh before.

  “I’ll go,” Wane sighed.

  “I’m coming,” I said, jumping down from the counter.

  Wane said nothing to stop me from following. I didn’t speak until we were past the third floor.

  “He just sits up there all day?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “He never comes down? He never surprises you by showing up in the kitchen and asking for something to drink, or asking if he can make cookies?”

  Wane rolled her eyes. “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I grew up here,” she started, again demonstrating quite clearly how an adult could never give you a straight answer. “My mother worked for your uncle. She died a number of years ago.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said honestly.

  Wane stopped climbing the stairs and smiled at me.

  “It’s no fun, that’s for sure, but I guess you know all about that. Ever since I can remember Aeron has stayed up in the dome.”

  “But why?” I asked, frustrated that I couldn’t get a straight answer.

  “He’s watching,” she whispered.

  “Watching what?”

  “We’re not sure,” she admitted. “The best we can figure is that he feels something will attack by air and he’s the watchman.”

  “So he’s crazy?”

  “A lot of weird things have happened in this house.”

  I was so relieved to hear someone else admit that.

  “I don’t know how many of those things have to do with your uncle’s condition,” she added. “Strange things can happen in any house. Millie says he entered the dome the day your mother left.”

  “Really?”

  “Millie and Thomas have managed the manor for him.”

  “Since my mom left?” I asked in amazement.

  Wane nodded.

  I couldn’t believe it. My uncle probably didn’t know what a microwave or the Internet was, much less what to do with an iPhone or a Wii. I had seen his room and wondered how one person could exist in such a small place for so long.

  “How does he shower?”

  “We bring him hot water and a sponge. Millie takes him meals; Thomas buys him clothes. I read to him on occasion.”

  “Read to him?”

  “There are a few books your uncle likes read to him over and over.”

  “What about a bathroom?”

  “Didn’t you see the pot?”

  “Ewww,” I gagged.

  “Yeah,” Wane said, sounding equally bothered. “Imagine having to clean it.”

  “Tell me again why you like to work here?”

  Wane smiled. “It’s only until I’ve saved enough money to travel. Come on—he’s waiting.”

  “I don’t think I wanna go,” I said.

  “Come on,” Wane waved, taking the steps two at a time.

  We crossed the sixth floor and reached the arched doors. Wane pulled out her set of keys and opened the lock.

  “Wait here,” she ordered.

  She climbed the spiral stairs and I could hear her muffled voice saying something. She climbed back down and said, “You’re up.”

  “What?”

  “Turns out you were right.” She smiled. “He just wanted someone to talk to.”

  “I’m not changing his pot,” I insisted.

  “Hopefully he won’t ask you to.”

  I climbed up the spiral stairs and through the trapdoor. I looked at everything with new eyes, realizing that my uncle had seen and used nothing but what was in his room for the last twenty years.

  Including the pot.

  “Hello,” I said, closing the trapdoor.

  It was colder than before. The violent snowstorm had left the dome room feeling like a freezer. My uncle stared at me, his brown eyes churning. His hair looked longer and his beard even wirier than when I had last seen him.

  “Beck.” He threw a fur-lined robe at me.

  “Uncle.” I pulled it on, grateful for the warmth.

  “Call me Aeron,” he said sadly.

  “Aeron.”

  There was a nice awkward pause. I cleared my throat. “You wanted to talk to me?”

  “No clouds.” He pointed.

  The sky was remarkably clear.

  “They’ll be blowing in from behind us,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said, looking out the window. “Mystery solved.”

  “Sometimes I think the weather is trying to force me to move down into the house,” Aeron said absently.

  “I guess that wouldn’t be the worst thing,” I tried. “I mean it’s a lot warmer downstairs.”

  “I’ve been up here for many years,” he said mournfully.

  I wanted to tell him about the conversation I’d had with Wane and the information I knew, but I kept quiet.

  “I’ve not been lonely before.”

  “Oh,” I said, not knowing where this conversation was going.

  “I miss Francine,” he admitted.

  “Me too.”
br />   I had been around creepy people before. My mother had had a number of boyfriends who had given me the willies, and we had often lived near neighbors who made me uncomfortable enough that I’d walk a block away from their place. Certain people just give off bad vibes. My uncle lived on the top of a mansion, looking at the sky, and using a pot for a bathroom. Arguably he should have been at the top of my creepy list, but there was something familiar and honest about him that made me not worry.

  “She was an amazing person,” he said.

  “She was,” I said, remembering the time my mother had locked me out of the apartment for two days because she thought I was somebody else.

  “She gave up a lot.”

  I didn’t know if he was saying she had sacrificed a lot, or if he was insinuating that she threw in the towel too often. I felt the second definition was more fitting.

  My uncle gripped his staff tightly. I watched his knuckles flash white and color slowly return to them.

  “It hasn’t snowed like this in years.”

  “That’s what Millie was saying,” I said.

  He looked at me and banged his weird staff against the floor. He spotted a flock of birds in the sky and watched them closely as they flew by.

  “If it weren’t for this dome over my head, I could be snatched up,” he whispered. “They’d snatch me up and it’d be over.”

  “Those birds?” I asked, confused.

  He looked at me as if I were the mentally disturbed one.

  “Don’t tell the others about my condition,” he insisted.

  “I won’t,” I promised, reluctant to point out to anyone just how crazy my uncle was.

  “Stay out of the gardens.”

  I nodded.

  “And the basement,” he added.

  “I thought you said there was no basement.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “But stay out just in case?” I asked.

  Aeron took his staff and stared at the markings that ran up and down the wood.

  “How is school?”

  “It’s been cancelled for the last few days because of the snow.”

  “Simon will make you do more work than if it hadn’t snowed.”

  “Simon?” I asked, not sure if Aeron was talking about a person or if we were suddenly playing a game of “Simon Says.”

  “I miss your mother,” he said again, dejectedly.

  Sadly, so did I, and never quite as much as I did at that moment. I wanted to leave, but Aeron looked unbearably lonely.

  “I miss a lot of things,” I said. “It sucks to be alone sometimes.”

  Aeron looked at me kindly.

  “I miss my mom, but I think I miss my father even more.”

  Aeron shifted and sat down. He seemed to be listening so I kept going.

  “I mean, I did a lot of things with my mom,” I said. “We’d go to movies and restaurants and parks. I knew that if I served my mom peas, she’d eat them four at a time. Or that if I complimented her hair, she would blush. I knew a ton of dumb little things about her, but I don’t know anything about my dad. I guess I miss what I should know.”

  The wind blew through the open room my uncle refused to leave. It was kind of a nice moment between a confused kid and weird hermit.

  “You have brown hair,” Aeron said, as if noticing me for the first time.

  “I do,” I replied.

  After another silence, Aeron spoke again. “Your mother would be proud of you, Beck.”

  “I think she was.”

  Aeron smiled.

  I said good-bye and climbed down the stairs where Wane was waiting for me.

  “What did he want to talk about?” she asked me.

  “Guy stuff,” I joked.

  “Oh.”

  “We talked about soccer and how poorly his team was doing this year.”

  “Really?”

  “What do you think we talked about?” I said, bothered by Wane’s questions. “He’s a bit eccentric.”

  “I know,” Wane said.

  “When I heard I had an uncle, I was pretty excited,” I admitted. “I never knew my father and the thought of having

  someone who was related to me look after me was kind of nice—comforting. But I think he might just be a bit beyond crazy.”

  “Your uncle cares about you,” Wane said.

  I stared at her, amazed at the logic adults used at times. I remembered something else I missed about my mother: the way we had learned to communicate almost silently with each other.

  “Come on,” Wane motioned. “Millie’s made a cake.”

  I sighed—I guess a cake would have to do. I was sick of the snow.

  Chapter 15

  Me with a Thorn in My Side

  “Yes, Mr. Phillips,” Mr. Squall said dryly. “What is it?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said honestly, wanting to make sense of what I thought he was saying. “The dragon represented what?”

  I had learned years ago that despite what so many adults always said, there really was such a thing as a stupid question. I had asked a number of them myself over the course of my life. But, I had also learned that life required asking stupid questions every now and then.

  Squall sighed.

  It had been more than a week since the last snowfall and, with the temperature rising quickly, the snow was starting to melt. There were more patches of green and brown on the ground than white. We had missed almost a week of school and Mr. Squall was determined to cram down our throats everything the snowstorm had delayed.

  “Who said anything about dragons?” Squall questioned.

  I looked at the book in my hands.

  “I mean demons,” I said, slightly embarrassed that my thoughts were on dragons.

  “What’s not to understand, Beck?” he asked tiredly. “The character believed that he could be both physical and immortal. He was a demon who aspired for more.”

  I rolled my eyes for all to see.

  “Come down here,” Mr. Squall insisted, motioning for me to approach. “Now.”

  I shrugged and stood. I closed my book and walked to the front of the class.

  “I know out West there is a sloppy casualness,” he said, waving his hands. “Here, however, rolling your eyes is a form of poor upbringing.”

  The class laughed lightly.

  “Perhaps you would like to stand here and roll your eyes for the class?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “It’s not a request,” Squall said.

  I rolled my eyes, exaggerating the motion.

  “Again,” Squall insisted, folding his arms smugly across his chest.

  The class was laughing louder. Squall tapped his pointing stick on his desk as if he were conducting the laughter. I rolled my eyes and added a smirk. The class liked that. Mr. Squall held his palms up to try to quiet everyone. Unfortunately, my poor upbringing kicked in—I rolled my eyes, smirked, and bowed.

  “Enough,” Squall said, realizing he was losing control of the class.

  I rolled my eyes in his direction.

  Mr. Squall grabbed me by the collar of my oversized sports jacket and spun me around to look into my eyes. He leaned close and whispered into my ear. “Did Aeron send you to humiliate me?” he hissed. “Does he want to ruin my life twice?” Mr. Squall pushed me away. “Sit down.” He turned away to write something on the chalkboard.

  I went back to my seat, thinking hard about what Mr. Squall had said.

  At lunch, Milo and I talked about finally returning to the conservatory. Kate was eating lunch with the popular kids, but I knew she would come along if invited.

  Wyatt passed our table with Ellis and Carl in tow. Ellis made a face, but they knew better than to mess with me, especially when the school was serving coleslaw.

  “What about Scott?” Milo asked.

  “It’s Thursday. Millie said he’s taking the horse to the vet.”

  Our conversation was halted by the shadow of Mr. Squall. He stood hoverin
g over me with Principal Wales next to him.

  “Now,” was all Wales said, jerking his head toward the cafeteria door.

  I stood up and asked Milo to take care of my tray for me.

  “Your office?” I asked the principal.

  “Now.”

  After I stepped in his office, Wales closed the door. Mr. Squall leaned against the back wall and Principal Wales took his seat behind the desk.

  “Professor Squall tells me you have been disrupting his class. I want to know why, Beck.” He said my name as if he had taken a class that told him to do so. “What’s bothering you?” he asked.

  I decided to be honest. “Dragons.”

  Principal Wales jumped in his seat.

  “Don’t be tart,” Squall said to me. He turned to Principal Wales. “See what I mean?”

  I looked back and forth between him and the principal. They were communicating with each other by huffing and puffing.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

  “What?” Principal Wales demanded. “Do you find all of this amusing? There’s a responsibility necessary to learning at Callowbrow.”

  “I’m horrible with responsibility,” I admitted. “My mother wouldn’t even let me have a pet fish.”

  “Don’t bring your mother into this,” Squall said hotly.

  “I could pretend it was someone else who wouldn’t let me have a fish if you’d like,” I said angrily.

  “Now, now,” Principal Wales said, trying to keep the conversation under control. “No need to get heated up. We just want to know how we can help.”

  “Then I’m not in trouble?” I asked impatiently, not wanting to be late for my next class and risk being called into the principal’s office yet again.

  “Well, that depends,” Wales said.

  “On what?”

  “Listen,” Principal Wales said. “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot the other day. The Phillips name still holds water in Kingsplot, and we aren’t looking to punish you. We have the weighty responsibility of watching over you. We just want to make sure you’re not getting yourself into trouble.”