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Chapter Two

  Aidan awkwardly tossed over and over again on the back bench of the grey minivan. His torso wriggled in a struggle against the seatbelt as his parents drove in inky night through the high deserts of southern Idaho. He punched his pillow a few times, just to fluff it up, and tried to keep his shaggy red hair in the perfect position—covering his eyes from any disturbing lights, but avoiding tickling his own face.

  Just as he started to relax his aching bones into the ill-fitting seat, he felt a slight tickle of a few lone hair strands stirred by car vents.

  “Agggghhh!” he growled as he struggled to find the perfect sleeping position, slapping hair out of his face. For a brief second he wondered if his dad was right, and he should have cut off his “mop.” But Aidan never admitted when his dad was right and he was wrong. Or at least he wouldn’t admit anything to his dad since that night three months ago, right after New Year’s.

  His mind wandered to why he was on the trip with his family anyway. Some business having to do with Uncle Quinn, but Aidan didn’t know why he had to go—he was fifteen now and could keep himself out of trouble for one week. Besides, Ms. Harbisher next door would have kept her beady eyes trained on him the whole time.

  Nosey old bag, he scoffed to himself as he turned over once again.

  Still, she would have at least saved him the hellish twelve-hour car ride.

  The van gently edged around a sharp bend. Aidan’s fifteen-year-old frame drifted with the motion. His knobby knees knocked against each other to the left and then back again toward the window with each turn. Perhaps the van’s swaying could lull him to sleep. The key was finding the right sleeping spot.

  Aidan nestled his head against the cool window, shoving the pillow on top of his head to block out light and draft, grateful he was finally able to ignore his younger brother’s snoring and the low hum of his sister’s music long enough to. . . drift. . . off.

  He dreamt of walking through his house, but it wasn’t really his house. He knew that much. Yet his mind registered it as home. The front door was off its hinges and smashed to splintered boards. A glowing green axe rested atop the remains, but Aidan did not feel panic.

  Looking around, he saw no immediate threat. No intruder. He merely saw a large, curly-haired dog sitting in the family room. Panting at him. In the fuzzy consciousness of his dream, Aidan tried to remember the last time he saw a green dog.

  Hey boy! He greeted the dog, stepping down to crouch, careful to gauge the slobbering beast’s reactions.

  That’s a good boy. Another step closer, and the wagging tongue drooled—one drip descending in slow-motion toward the carpet.

  One drip slowly falling. As though he could see it rotating mid-air, shifting.

  Slow-mo.

  Ss-sss-sss—pll-lll-o-o-ooo-shh-shh-shhh!

  Suddenly, a woman’s shriek pierced through the haze, but all he saw were the dog’s jaws miming a bark. Aidan’s ears were filled with the squeal of someone.

  Mom!

  Now his heart jumped like he fell off a cliff and splattered on the ground. He held his chest. The screaming was gone.

  He heard his mom’s voice, but it was muffled words. In relief, his heart leapt to alertness as did his body—in the back seat of the minivan.

  Awake.

  Again.

  “Huh?” He shook himself back to reality, peeking out from under his pillow to check his watch.

  Ten minutes.

  He was asleep for only ten minutes.

  “I said, Getting enough air back there?” his mom echoed from the front.

  She was always well-intentioned, but Aidan was annoyed. Being awakened half-way through the night was bad enough, but during a red-eye drive to northern Idaho was more than he could bear.

  Why do we have to go visit Uncle Quinn, anyway? he kept wondering.

  “I’m fine, Mom.” He tried to sound as irritated as possible beneath his pillow.

  “What?” she yelled from the front.

  He uncovered his mouth, leaving the rest of his head smothered in pillow. “I said. I’m— fine,” he breathed through his pillow cave.

  He waited for her reaction so he could have an opening to vent about his annoyance with the whole car ride, the last-minute road trip, and being stuck in the back next to his little brother’s caged hairless rat, Dwayne.

  The rat reeked. He wished he could just dropkick the fleshy, pink rat at the next exit.

  If his brother wasn’t such a pansy and could handle being away from his bizarre sidekick for more than an hour, Aidan could have stretched out on the bench.

  Stupid rat, he thought.

  Besides, the hairless wonder could have survived back at home in the cage with a week’s worth of food and water. But no, Fallon whined; Dad and Mom caved.

  Typical.

  Mom gave her customary calm response to Aidan’s moodiness, “Let me know if you need the air turned down.” She didn’t even take her eyes off of the crossword puzzle poised in her lap; the book light angled perfectly over the pages. “If you can’t sleep, why don’t you play your Gameboy?” she offered.

  “Wouldn’t be awake if it wasn’t for you talking to me…” he grumbled beneath his pillow, quiet enough so his mom really wouldn’t hear.

  Aidan sighed in annoyance. Then he became uncomfortably aware of the hot stagnancy of life under cotton. He harrumphed the pillow onto his lap, and sat up straight. His knees slammed harder than necessary against the back of his sister’s seat.

  He grinned in amusement, but she didn’t even twitch.

  Aidan looked around for something else to do. Sleep obviously wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. But with half of the car already asleep, there was no one to talk to, and he wasn’t about to start talking to his brother’s rat. He decided to go for his last resort.

  When he was ten, Aidan could have spent hours in the car playing video games. He would stare blankly at the glowing screen, lost in electronic worlds. But over the years the games had lost their charm, and he found that they lacked the excitement which they brought five years before. But maybe it was that all of his friends had newer gaming systems. Aidan was too embarrassed to be seen playing with his little kid system while his friends raved about their newest, violently-awesome games.

  Mom told him to pack his Gameboy “just in case.”

  “Ooo. Yeah,” he sarcastically muttered as he fumbled to insert the cartridge into its slot. “Nothing like some old-fashioned dragon stomping to kill some time.”

  It was a fantasy game he had already beaten ten times—and that was in the first two months he owned the game. The glowing screen flickered between scenes as Aidan spent the next hour traversing each level with a master’s skill. But the repetitive movements of his fingers on the gamepad and the van’s monotonous drone down the interstate made him struggle to keep his eyes open. Yet his body wouldn’t just let him nod off.

  Maybe it was that stupid dream, he wondered.

  Since he couldn’t sleep, Aidan decided to go all out and try to actually stay awake.

  Quietly he sneaked a swig from his hidden soda—hidden because his mom didn’t like to have anything but water in the car and also because his mom constantly harped on him for guzzling caffeine.

  During his momentary break from the game, he noticed the buzz of his sister Kaylee’s headphones was missing—she must be asleep and the iPod ran out of songs on her massive playlist. That was good enough for him because he was growing tired of being reminded how Kaylee won a new iPod for some essay she wrote on environmental consciousness.

  Fallon was still snoring, cuddled up with his Winkie—the blanket he swore off when he turned seven, but still managed to sneak during long car rides. Aidan felt satisfied knowing he would have payback for his ten-year-old brother’s annoyance during the car ride. He could give him tons of crap for his Cuddlie-Wuddlie-Winkie when he woke up.

  Dad and Mom were in the front whispering to each other; th
eir voices were muddled by the late night radio host blathering on during an interview with a ghost hunter.

  You see, Samuel, in the area of paranormal sciences, most people simply don’t want to understand or acknowledge the presence of spiritual beings. Half of the reason why most average people don’t see these beings is because of a lack of faith. Pure and simple.

  Aidan rolled his eyes and quickly put his earbuds back in place. He settled back into his cramped seat – or at least as best as he could settle.

  He was on level three already, using his wizard powers to eradicate some goblins. It was as the next level loaded that Aidan caught something move from the corner of his eye. Something outside of the swiftly gliding minivan. He quickly turned his head to gaze out the window but only saw the reflection of his game screen shining back.

  It must have been the screen, he thought.

  A full moon illuminated rolling sagebrush hills and craggy plateaus. They passed a dust storm advisory sign.

  “Comforting,” mumbled Aidan. “Wish I had my freakin’ cell phone so I could at least text DJ.”

  Dad confiscated his phone last week. Aidan’s parents received a call from his math teacher about Aidan using his phone to cheat on a quiz. While he had only been using his phone’s calculator on a no-calc quiz, Aidan was still punished just as severely as two girls who were texting each other answers.

  Aidan thought it was unfair that he was stuck without his phone for two weeks and that he also had to lose total contact with all of his friends, especially his best friend, DJ.

  Another flicker in his periphery, and Aidan jumped, nailing his knee on the seat in front of him. He peered out the darkened glass at the landscape flying by; he looked past the barbed wire fence for the movement he knew was following along in the desert.

  Nothing.

  “Probably just a stupid deer,” he told himself, but even so, Aidan turned his back to the window, focusing instead on conquering level four of his dragon quest.

  Fifty miles later and the Tanner family drove by four more farming communities. Aidan was passed out on the bench, Gameboy glowing on the minivan’s floor. He dreamt of racing through a bog in his backyard, slaughtering dragons.