Choke

  “I agree,” Millie complained. “Wane and I have been running up and down those stairs like mad women just to tell him you’re not back yet.”

  “Sorry,” I apologized.

  “I should make you rub my knees,” Millie said.

  “That doesn’t seem totally fair,” I complained.

  Millie grumbled and then pointed for me to go.

  “So I’m supposed to go see him?”

  “Now,” she insisted.

  I was even more worried and more out of sorts by the time I reached my father’s door. It felt like my stomach had the flu and it was throwing up into my lungs.

  I knocked and then pushed open the door. My father was sitting in his chair staring at the floor. I closed the door behind me.

  “You wanted to see me?” I asked quietly.

  “Come in,” he said.

  I looked around, wondering how much more “in” I could come.

  “I’m sick,” he said without looking up.

  “Me too,” I replied sincerely. “I guess I’m nervous about going back to school.”

  “Beck,” he scolded. “I saw the dragon in the sky.”

  “I like to spot neat-shaped clouds too,” I tried.

  My father stomped his right foot. “It wasn’t the clouds. I saw a dragon. A white queen.”

  I had no choice but to tell him. “She’s locked up now,” I said defensively. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think . . .”

  “It’s no good,” he interrupted. “She’ll think of nothing but pillaging now.”

  “That’s not true,” I said, defending her. “Lizzy’s different.”

  “Lizzy?”

  “She had to have a name,” I told him.

  “No she didn’t,” he barked.

  He lifted his head and stood. He then did one of the things that bothered me most, he paced along the windows looking out and talking as if he were having the conversation with the clouds and not me. “You hatched a dragon.”

  “Oops,” I said humbly.

  “Oops?” he said, repeating what I had just said. “Oops?”

  “Sorry,” I tried.

  “It was done,” he mourned. “It was over.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I apologized. “Honest.”

  “You didn’t mean to what?” he asked sternly, towering over me, the ends of his long nightshirt billowing lightly. “You didn’t mean to find the stone among the millions of stones?”

  “Well . . .”

  “You didn’t mean to then plant the stone?” he continued, not even giving me a second to answer.

  “I . . .”

  “It was by mistake that you harvested it?” he said scornfully. “And then, quite by accident, you raised it and let it loose?”

  “Well, when you put it that way, it does sort of make me look bad.”

  My dad massaged his forehead as if there were a tattoo there he was hoping to rub off.

  “Beck,” he sighed.

  “Dad,” I said manipulatively.

  “This is on your head,” he whispered. “What the queen pillages will be the work of her talons and your hands.”

  I looked at my hands, marveling at all the trouble they were capable of getting me into.

  “The old man told me I had to,” I said. “I thought it was what I needed to do.”

  “But what else did he say?”

  “He said to destroy her while she was small.”

  “That was not a small dragon I saw flying in the air.” My father paced back and forth, his entire body shaking.

  “It’s fine,” I told him. “She’s locked up and can’t harm anyone. I’ll make sure of it.”

  My father fell back into his chair. He closed his eyes, looking as if the entire world had just punched him in the gut.

  “I’m a terrible father,” he whispered.

  “It’s not like I’m a perfect son,” I said trying to make him feel better.

  “Go,” he waved.

  “Dad,” I whined.

  “Just go.”

  I went to my room and lay on my bed on my stomach with my face pushed into the pillow and my arms by my side. I wanted the guilt in my gut to go away. I had let down Kate, myself, and my father. Plus, somewhere there was a little gray-haired organist most likely having a heart attack by now.

  I screamed into my pillow as someone knocked on my door.

  “Go away,” I yelled nicely.

  “Beck, it’s Wane,” she called.

  I rolled over. “I’m sleeping.”

  “Beck,” Wane hollered sternly. “Sheriff Pax is downstairs, and he needs to talk to you.”

  I stood up and opened the door. Wane was standing there wearing an expression that didn’t exactly flatter her normally pretty face.

  “The sheriff?” I asked nervously.

  Wane nodded.

  “Is it about the school bus coming tomorrow?” I asked hopefully.

  “I don’t think so.”

  I spent the rest of the night talking to Sheriff Pax. Apparently that little gray-haired lady who had been practicing the organ—the same one I had selflessly worried over—had gone straight to the police and described the incident. It took me a long time to convince Sheriff Pax that even if she was telling the truth, I had nothing to do with it.

  “Something’s not right,” he said. “That woman was a church organist, why would she lie?”

  “I know a grandmother who stole a car,” I argued, stretching the truth a bit more. I didn’t actually know said grandmother, but I had read about it in a book.

  Sheriff Pax wrote something down on his police notebook.

  “Hundreds of people here have blamed things on dragons,” I went on. “Ever since that last incident, tons of crazy people have made things up.”

  “Well, something tore off the roof of that church,” Sheriff Pax said with authority. “Part of it was laying hundreds of feet away.”

  “Maybe it exploded, and the roof blew off,” I told him, making a few things up myself. I knew it was wrong, but there was no way I was giving Lizzy up.

  “Listen, Beck,” he said, staring at me. “This is an active investigation. I don’t want you telling anybody about any of this until we have more information.”

  I crossed my heart.

  “If I find out you’ve lied to me, there will be severe consequences,” he warned. “And I’m not sure even the Pillage name will save you. Now, you’re positive there’s not something you want to tell me?”

  “All right,” I sighed in defeat. “When I was eight, I stole my neighbor’s hose and used it as a swinging vine.”

  The sheriff closed his pad and growled at me. “That sharp tongue is going to get you in trouble someday.”

  “Believe me,” I lamented. “It already has.”

  I could have been wrong, but I think I saw a small smile on his face.

  He handed me a business card and promised me he would be back soon to check on me and my story. His promise wasn’t all that comforting.

  I called Kate right before I went to sleep. Nobody answered. It might have been because they somehow knew it was me calling or maybe it was because it was after eleven o’clock. Either way, my head now hurt right along with my body and soul.

  “This stinks.”

  Despite the fact that I had flown on the back of a dragon earlier in the day, I don’t think I had ever felt lower.

  Illustration from page 54 of The Grim Knot

  CHAPTER 22

  Waiting for the Hammer to Fall

  I tried my best to get out of going to school. I woke up and instantly started coughing. When Wane came by to make sure I was up, I coughed extra hard. I thought she looked sympathetic until she told me that if I coughed once more she was going to reach down my throat and try to repair my lungs personally.

  “I think I’m feeling better,” I said.

  “I thought so,” she replied.

  While eating a breakfast of cream-covered fruit and massive blueberry muffins dripping wit
h butter, I kept moaning and grumbling so Millie would think I was ill and make me stay home. Unfortunately, she just mistook my noises as a compliment about her cooking.

  As I shuffled down the driveway, I felt defeated and uncomfortable. I looked up toward the mountains. Thanks to all the trees growing out sideways, I couldn’t see the cave or any sign of the moss opening. I considered just ditching school and going to hang out with Lizzy, but I knew that would only make Sheriff Pax and my family more suspicious.

  I stood by the gate waiting for the bus and wishing I made better decisions in my life. I looked up at the three gargoyles on the gate shack—even they looked mad at me. It was early in the day, but already I had the feeling that something else bad was about to happen. I felt like I was watching a movie where I knew that any moment something awful was going to take place. Of course, the big difference was that I couldn’t pause my life or rewind to a point where I could fix the mess I had made.

  When the school bus finally arrived, I got on reluctantly. Kate was sitting in a seat next to a boy I knew she hated. I waved at her, but she looked away. Things were obviously worse than I had thought. I sat down in the seat directly behind her.

  “Hey, Kate.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Something happened with that big girl we know,” I said using code again.

  Kate got up from where she was sitting and moved four rows closer to the front of the bus. The boy she had been sitting by turned around and looked at me.

  “She said you were a jerk,” he told me.

  “Thanks.”

  My stomach grew even more unsettled.

  When we got to Callowbrow, Kate rushed off the bus, and I never caught up to her. To make matters worse she wasn’t at lunch, and I had to sit by Wyatt and a boy who didn’t wear

  deodorant.

  “So what’d you do to tick Kate off?” Wyatt asked.

  I took a tiny bite of my sandwich, spit it out because nothing tasted good at the moment, and said, “I’m not sure.”

  “Girls,” Wyatt scoffed. “You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without them, because they all wanna be with me.”

  “Give it up, Wyatt,” I said, setting my sandwich down.

  “You’re just jealous,” he replied starting in on his own lunch.

  Kate came into the cafeteria ten minutes later and walked right past us. I watched her buy an apple from the cafeteria lady and then leave through the far doors.

  “I’m in trouble,” I moaned.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Wyatt said. “Not everyone can be as smooth with the ladies as I am.” He patted me on the back, and I had to resist the urge to hit him.

  I used the remainder of my lunch period to write a note to Kate. It was over a page long and said a number of things that I probably couldn’t express well verbally. I was desperate. I gave the note to Wyatt so he could deliver it to her next period when he had science with Kate. I made him swear not to open it and read it.

  “Too juicy for me to read,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

  “No, but the words are probably too big for you to understand.”

  The rest of the day was long and filled with teachers dishing out tons of makeup homework that the washed-out road had caused. I should have paid better attention, but all I could think about was Kate and Lizzy. It was weird to have girl problems that concerned two different species. By the time my last class ended I was determined to find Kate and do whatever it took to convince her that I was honestly sorry. Hopefully she had read my note and her feelings toward me were already softening.

  When Kate wasn’t at her locker, I decided to wait for her at the bus. While walking there I heard someone calling my name. I wanted it to be Kate, but the voice was too low.

  “Beck!”

  I tried not to appear overeager as I looked about, just in case whoever was yelling was actually calling someone else.

  “Beck!”

  I spotted the yeller across the street and beneath an enormous willow tree. It was Van and he was still wearing a blue hoodie. We made eye contact but I quickly looked down, pretending not to notice.

  “Beck!” I could hear him running across the street. His shadow mixed with mine and I finally looked up.

  “What?” I said, bothered.

  “I need to talk to you,” Van smiled. “For just a moment. I think it will be worth your time.”

  I looked at the school bus and still saw no sign of Kate.

  “I should yell ‘stranger,’” I told him. “Then maybe they’d take you away and lock you up.”

  Van laughed. “I actually left for a couple of days, but then I got the oddest call.”

  “I can only imagine what kind of people call you.”

  “Funny, Beck,” he laughed. “Always funny. You know what’s not funny?”

  “Reporters,” I answered.

  “No,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “What’s not funny is when someone or something burns down a church.”

  I could see Van watching me for a reaction, but I didn’t give him one. I just stared at him until he cleared his throat.

  “Oh,” I said as if confused. “That was your point? You just came here to tell me that burning churches isn’t funny? You’re quite the journalist. What’s tomorrow’s headline going to be, ‘Making fun of sick people isn’t nice?’”

  “It was a dragon,” he whispered fiercely. “A dragon burnt down that church, Beck.”

  “Aren’t you a little old to believe in dragons?” I asked, while still keeping my eyes open for any sign of Kate.

  “I have friends on the police force,” he informed me in a low voice. I think he was trying to sound threatening. “I know things. You need to talk to me, Beck.”

  “Listen, Van,” I said as nicely as I could. “I know you think I’m hiding some great secret from you, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Van grabbed the front of my shirt and almost instantly realized this was not the right spot to do something like that. He let go and tried to smile as students continued to stream past us. I had been bothered by Van, but up until that moment when I witnessed the rage in his eyes, I had never been scared of him.

  I stepped back. “You should go.”

  “Beck, I want to help,” he huffed. “This could change everything for both me and you. Is it money you want?”

  I laughed at him.

  “I can help you, Beck,” he hissed.

  “I don’t want your help,” I said loudly. My raised voice caused a number of students to look over at us. “Leave me and my family alone.”

  “Keep your voice down,” he demanded in a whisper. “You’re making a huge mistake—one that might hurt you in the end.”

  I didn’t know what to do. My sick stomach was not absorbing the threat very well. I wished so badly that I could throw up on him, but I just didn’t have it in me.

  “You need my help,” he insisted.

  “Go to . . .” The bus horn beeped right on time.

  I turned around and stormed off, trying to look cool. I was mad, and I knew that everyone was staring at me. I got onto the bus, walked down the aisle, and sat in one of the back seats. I felt angry, cool, and confused. I also felt stupid because the second the vehicle started moving, I realized that I had accidentally gotten on the wrong bus. I rode it to the first stop and then got off and called Thomas.

  I had to beg Thomas for a full five minutes before he agreed to come into town and pick me up. I then just stood in front of the pay phone, looking like a traveler who had no money and nowhere to go.

  My heart hurt.

  I guess the one good thing about my mistake was that because of the waiting I now had time to mentally list and think about all the things that were going wrong. Of course it was the kind of good thing that only a grown-up would appreciate.

  Illustration from page 60 of The Grim Knot

  CHAPTER 23

  Stone Cold Wacko

  By the time I finally g
ot home it was dinnertime. I ate a bunch of delicious food and then excused myself to go and do all of my makeup homework. Which, loosely translated, meant I was going to see Lizzy.

  I took the secret passage from behind the mirror and exited the manor from the hidden door near the courtyard. I ran through the dusk and into the forest. By the time I got to the Lizzie-size hole in the moss wall it was almost completely dark outside.

  I turned the lights on and practically skipped to the large steel door. I’d apologize for the skipping, but it had been a full day since I had seen Lizzy and I was going through withdrawals.

  I undid the heavy metal latch and rolled the steel door open just enough for me to slip through. I didn’t want there to be any chance of Lizzy getting out. I slipped in and rolled the door shut. When I turned around I couldn’t see any sign of her. The organ pipes she had stolen were stacked almost neatly in a pile near the cocoon.

  “Lizzy!”

  Once again the dirt in the center of the cavern began to rise. Unlike before, however, something was different. I could see Lizzy’s white scales, but now patches of her were gray and black. She rose out of the dirt screeching wildly. Soil tumbled off of her like dirty lava as she spread her wings and flapped them. Dirt flew everywhere—a small fist of soil smacked me in the left ear. Despite the hit, I kept my eyes trained on her. She looked my direction and screeched, fire spreading out in front of her mouth like a giant flaming flower. She snapped her jaws shut and stood there staring at me as smoke drifted up from her nostrils.

  “Wow,” I whispered.

  I walked up to her with my right hand out in front of me and gently took hold of the rope around her neck.

  “Come on,” I said attempting to pull her in the direction of the water. She pulled back, jerking the rope. “Seriously, Lizzy, come on.”

  She let me walk her to the water but she had an attitude about it. She took a few drinks and then looked at me like she was angry.

  “What?” I argued. “I’m trying to help. It just seems that if I was a dragon and I had just spit up fire that my throat would be a little parched.”

  She turned around and snorted. Then with an air of great purpose, she began stepping across the cavern and toward the steel door. I held onto the rope as I walked alongside her.