Choke

  “Yes, sir, this is Timothy. I am a student in one of Kate’s classes,” I said while pinching my nose. I didn’t actually enjoy lying, but I needed to talk to Kate. “I live in town, and I know she can’t get to school. I thought I’d tell her what we’ve been learning.”

  Kate’s dad commented on how thoughtful I was while Millie just stared at me. Seventeen seconds later Kate greeted me on the other line.”

  “Hello, Timothy.”

  “Hi,” I said, knowing she knew it was me. I needed to tell her what happened yesterday, but I didn’t want Millie to hear. “So you know that girl, Lizzy, in your zoology class?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Kate played along.

  “Well, she’s huge.”

  Millie slapped me with a dish towel.

  “That’s not a bad thing,” I said to Kate, trying not to sound so harsh. “It’s just an observation. Oh, and that really old white dress you like . . .”

  “Yes . . .” Kate said slowly.

  “Well, I saw it . . . in a magazine ad,” I told her.

  “When did you go to the cave?” Kate asked, obviously not in the same room as her parents.

  “A couple of times.”

  “And that old guy was there?”

  I nodded, realized she couldn’t see me do so, and said, “Yes. That white dress came out of the back room.”

  Millie looked at me and raised her eyebrows as high as she could.

  “Can you get over here so we can study?” I asked Kate.

  “Have you seen the rain?”

  “Is it raining?” I asked as thunder simultaneously ripped through the air.

  “I’m not a big fan of being struck by lightning,” she said.

  “Just duck as you walk.”

  “I’ll try,” she said, laughing. “If I’m not there in two hours, I’ve given up.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “Bye, Beck.”

  “Bye, Kate.”

  I hung up the phone. Millie was staring at me with her good eye and both eyebrows arched.

  “That was an unusual call,” she observed. “You’re not up to something, are you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Kate’s a smart girl,” she said, wagging her finger. “But I don’t want you hurting her. You should know that just because your father isn’t around doesn’t give you permission to run around all willy-nilly.”

  “Willy who?” I asked.

  “Beck, this weather can be very dangerous,” she lectured. “Combine that with your personality and . . .” Millie cut her sentence short and shivered as if there had been a disturbance in the force.

  I looked out the window and halfway changed the subject. “When do you think it is going to stop raining anyhow?”

  “It does make one worry,” she said. “Thomas is filling sandbags out by the stables.”

  “That’s great,” I cheered, looking around for breakfast.

  “He’s thinking he might need to sandbag some areas. The water’s getting dangerously close to the south end of the manor.”

  “Wow.”

  “He could use your help,” she added.

  “Really? Cause normally I’d be in school,” I reminded her. “I mean I don’t want him to count on me being around when that’s not always possible.”

  Millie scowled at me, and her wrinkly face bunched up like a rapidly drying prune.

  “I was just trying to think of others,” I told her.

  Millie opened the oven and pulled out a plate of food that had been warming. She handed me a huge biscuit with a thick slice of ham, a fried egg, and melted cheese in the middle of it. “Eat it fast and then go help Thomas before you have to study.”

  I shoved the biscuit sandwich into my mouth and took a huge bite. It was even better than it looked and smelled. Millie filled up a large glass with milk and pushed it over to me.

  “You should cook for a king or something,” I mumbled with a mouth full of ham and cheese. “Or Oprah.”

  “Oh, I don’t think they’d want me underfoot,” Millie blushed.

  I couldn’t imagine anyone who ate who wouldn’t want Millie underfoot. I had a second sandwich, changed things up with a glass of fresh apple juice and then walked slowly down the mansion hallway toward the north end of the manor and in the general direction of the stables. As I stepped out one of the back doors and into the nonstop rain, I decided to at least walk behind the garage house and see if any more of the tracks were exposed.

  They were. In fact they had been so cleared off by the rain, that they now looked completely unburied and almost usable.

  I sloshed through the mud and slipped up between the garage house and the stables. I couldn’t see Thomas, so I opened one of the large stable doors and entered. I followed the long dirt walkway between the stables—there were about fifteen on each side. At the far end was an open room with a hay-strewn floor and a round corral, and then two large barn doors opening to the outside. The doors were wide open and I could see a huge pile of sand. Thomas and Scott were shoveling at the base of it, filling sacks as fast as they could. Thomas was wearing nice trousers with large plastic boots. He had on a dress shirt with a vest over it, but he had gotten casual by rolling up his sleeves. Scott was in his usual grubby work attire.

  I climbed over the corral fence and stepped up to Thomas.

  “Millie said I should help,” I informed him, hoping that by phrasing it like that he would tell me I didn’t have to. He didn’t fall for it.

  “Excellent.”

  “I told her you probably don’t want to get used to me helping because I’m usually in school.”

  “Grab a sack and start shoveling,” Scott interrupted.

  I figured Scott was just mad because I still blamed him for what I had done. I picked up a shovel and started pitching sand into a bag. We were under the lip of the roof outside the barn doors so the rain wasn’t pelting us directly. But every time the wind blew east we got pretty wet. After about forty minutes, Scott left to check on some of the rain gutters. It struck me that since the tracks were exposed by nature, it couldn’t hurt to ask about them.

  “So, Thomas,” I said.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “I was walking behind the garage to get here and there are some train tracks.”

  His shovel sliced into the mound of sand. “Really?”

  “They run right into the back of the garage.” I held a bag open, and Thomas tossed sand into it. “The rain has washed away about a foot of soil. I guess they were buried.”

  “It’s quite a wet spell,” he said nonchalantly.

  I tied up the bag and picked up an empty one. “So you didn’t know about the train tracks?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he answered, stopping to wipe his brow with a handkerchief. “There’s a line of track that goes through the forest and up into the mountain.”

  “You don’t say?” I said.

  “I remember as a child playing in that forest,” he replied. There was a faint smile on his lips. “The tracks were buried, but we found sections that were clean. All we ever found out was that your great-grandfather built the tracks as a beginning of what he hoped would be an elaborate mountain railroad.”

  “Wow.” I mentally complimented myself on my great

  acting.

  Thomas’s shovel bit into the sandpile again. “There was an accident,” he continued. “A boy was killed, and, like so many of your relatives do, they buried their problems. Years later your grandfather planted the trees that now cover the track. I remember being very curious as a child, but my mother said never to even ask about it.”

  It seemed weird to imagine Thomas having a mother.

  “Well, the rain has washed the dirt away,” I said as I picked up another full bag of sand and heaved it next to the others.

  “I knew this weather was once in a lifetime,” he said reflectively.

  Scott came back and stopped our conversation. I was just about to fake an accident to get o
ut of having to keep shoveling when Kate showed up. She came in through the stables and almost scared me to death when she crept up behind me and said, “Hello.”

  “Hello, Katherine,” Thomas said nicely.

  Scott just nodded. After my heart rate slowed, I informed Thomas and Scott that as much as I would have loved to stay and shovel, I needed to go and study with Kate. They took it pretty hard.

  Kate and I walked back through the stables and over to the garage. When we reached the tracks we stopped to scrape mounds of mud off our boots. Kate was as wet as a person could be without actually drowning. Her hair was hanging from her head like cherry seaweed and the mascara around her blue eyes was running. She looked like a wet Goth angel. I commented on her appearance, and she started in on my windbreaker.

  “What?” I said defensively. “It’s the only thing I have that’s rainproof.”

  “You gotta stop having Thomas shop for you,” she smiled.

  “He just shows up with these things. You should see some of the stuff I throw away.”

  “No, thanks,” she said, trudging ahead of me along the rain-soaked tracks.

  By the time we reached the cave we were so cold, tired, and drenched that my bones were soggy. I knew if I cracked my knuckles, water would spring out of my fingers. Despite our condition, the second I flipped on the lights I was excited. Apparently Kate felt likewise because she ran as fast as me to the large steel door.

  We rolled it open and entered the massive back cavern.

  “Lizzy!” I called out. “Lizzy!”

  “I don’t see her,” Kate said frantically.

  “Lizzy!”

  All I saw were broken crates and split-open barrels that had once held dragon cereal. I could hear the sound of the spring gurgling and Kate breathing slowly. My eyes drifted back across the scene. The back door looked closed and the leafy cocoon was still lying in the center of the space next to its pole. Next to the cocoon were mounds of pushed-up dirt.

  We both looked up at the ceiling.

  “She’s too big to completely hide in the darkness anymore,” I told Kate. “Last time I saw her she was like a giant horse.”

  “Then where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m sure she’s bigger. Look at all the empty barrels.”

  “So she just ate herself into nonexistence?”

  “Maybe she . . .” I didn’t have to guess.

  Loose dirt near the cocoon began to rumble up like the soil was giving birth. The ground shook, and Kate grabbed my right arm as the two of us stepped back. I could see something white rising.

  Both Kate and I were struck speechless.

  Lizzy continued to rise out of her dirt nest. She was mammoth; at least twice the size she had been when I last saw her. She pushed up on her legs and shook. Dirt flew around the cavern like terra-firma fireworks. A decent-sized clod smacked me in the face and stomach. Kate had the good sense to hide behind me.

  Lizzy lifted her head and opened her wings. It looked as if she filled a fourth of the cavern. She folded her wings back, smacked her long white tail on the ground, and screeched. I could feel my eardrums melting. I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes hoping that would help.

  Lizzy stopped screaming, and I opened my eyelids.

  Two very distinct thoughts were running through my mind. One, I had never seen anything so beautiful. I know a guy like me is not really supposed to be talking about beautiful, but that’s what she was. I had seen ten other dragons before, and they were all amazing and awesome looking in their own right, but none of them looked like Lizzy. She appeared powerful just sitting there, and when she opened her wings she was no less spectacular than all eight wonders of the world. She made the pyramids look like baby blocks and the Great Wall of China seem like a hastily built backyard fence. I could barely breathe. My arms just hung to my sides and my body shivered—it felt like my fingernails were just going to slip off and drop into the dirt.

  Lizzy lowered her head, and her blue eyes looked right through me.

  The second thought running through my head was: I should have destroyed her the moment she was born. There was no way I could ever extinguish something so amazing and large.

  Lizzy lowered her head to the ground in a submissive gesture. I could see that the horns above her ears were as long as elephant tusks now.

  “She’s unbelievable,” Kate whispered. “My eyes aren’t able to quite adjust.”

  “She wasn’t this big yesterday,” I whispered back.

  “I think she wants you to climb on.”

  “What?” I asked. A thrill of excitement bounced around my body.

  “Look at how she’s standing.”

  Lizzy’s head was resting on the ground, and her front legs were folded so that her shoulders were lowered.

  “Maybe she wants you,” I said, still whispering.

  “You’re the Pillage,” Kate reminded me. “Get on.”

  “I should just walk up her neck?” I asked. “Like Fred Flintstone?”

  Kate nodded.

  I took little strides as I moved closer to Lizzy. Part of me wanted to cower in fear, but a larger part of me wanted to run toward her. I got about five feet away and stopped. She still hadn’t moved. Her head was resting on the ground, and her eyes were looking up at me like a dog that was both loyal and nervous. She appeared even more dazzling up close. Her scales were like diamonds that circled around her entire body, and the feathers that were around her ankles flared out like flames. I could see a gray streak running over her ridged back and down her tail.

  “Hey,” I said soothingly. “Remember me?”

  Lizzy snorted.

  “I was here yesterday,” I went on. “I helped you hatch.” I looked back at Kate and she motioned for me to go on.

  I took two steps closer.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I promised. “And hopefully you won’t hurt me.”

  Two more steps.

  I was close enough now that I could reach out and touch her. I shuffled my feet and got even nearer. I put my right hand out and touched her above the left eye. She felt like cool clay. Lizzy kept her head down and shivered. I watched the shiver move all the way down her back and shake out through the tip of her long tail.

  “Get on her,” Kate called.

  “Hold on,” I said impatiently.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Probably,” I answered. “It’s kinda hard to tell at the moment.”

  I put my arm on Lizzy’s neck and leaned into her. She smelled kind of like corn chips. She didn’t move so I lifted my right leg and gently jumped onto her lowered neck. I slid back and came to a stop just above her front legs. She lifted her head and I grabbed onto one of the round ridges growing from the back of her neck.

  Lizzy straightened out her powerful front legs and stood up on all fours. She cocked her head and began to walk directly toward Kate. With just three great steps, Lizzy was standing directly in front of Kate. Kate’s shoulders and arms were shaking.

  Lizzy opened her mouth and snorted, and Kate wobbled like she was going to pass out. I wasn’t actually happy about this, but Kate was usually so cool and unfrazzled that it was kind of interesting to see her shaking. Kate stood her ground and grimaced at Lizzy. I had always imagined that someday two girls might fight over me. I just hadn’t thought that one of them would literally be able to bite the other one’s head off and then fly away.

  I glanced down at Kate as she gazed up at me.

  “You think you’re pretty cool, don’t you?” she said mockingly.

  “Just a little,” I smiled and tossed my hair back.

  Lizzy walked around the edge of the cavern three times with me on her back. I felt privileged just to be near her. I could see the huge hole she had dug in the middle of the cavern. It looked like an empty dirt swimming pool. None of the other dragons had ever nested like that.

  At the end of the third trip around Lizzy stopped, lowered her head, an
d leaned to the right so that I slid off of her. She looked at me and almost smiled—at least that’s how I perceived it. She then nudged me with her head, screeched, and with one fantastic leap leaped toward the cavern’s ceiling. She twisted her body as she darted and rocketed feet first with her wings folded in. The blue talons on her back legs grabbed the stone roof and held fast.

  Her body dangled like a white uvula.

  Kate stepped up to me and put her arm around my waist.

  “She’s incredible,” Kate said in awe. “But scary.”

  “You’re just jealous,” I replied.

  “So what do we do with her?”

  “Whaddya mean?” I asked.

  “I thought you were supposed to destroy her.”

  “No way,” I insisted. “That guy lied about other things, and I’m not going to just take his word for it.”

  “So what happens?” Kate asked passionately. “I mean, she can’t stay in this cave forever.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Beck. What if she keeps getting bigger?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered with frustration. “But I’m not going to harm her. Look at her.”

  We both stared at Lizzy as she slightly swayed.

  “I guess you don’t know how to kill her anyway,” Kate said, defeated.

  “Actually I do,” I told her.

  “How?”

  “I’m not saying.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not saying,” I repeated myself. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “It’s not like I’m actually going to use the information,” Kate argued.

  “Still,” I lamely argued back.

  “Listen, Beck,” she said. “I think Lizzy’s amazing. I haven’t really thought about much else since I first saw her. And now I don’t think I’ll think of anything else. But remember what happened last time?”

  “This is different,” I insisted.

  “How?”