Some Kind of Magic by Adrian Fogelin

Author:Adrian Fogelin [Fogelin, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781561458998
Publisher: Peachtree Publishers
Published: 2015-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

Cass and Jemmie were lounging in lawn chairs when we came to collect Cody.

Cass lit up when she saw me. “Hey, Ben!”

“Hey, Cass!” I called.

Jemmie and Jus purposely didn’t look at each other, which I took as an encouraging sign.

I walked over to the sandbox where Cody and Missy were playing. The water-spotted hat sat in the grass next to the hose. Someone must’ve wet down the sand, and Cody too—he was almost clean. “Nice castle.”

The chicken bone was sticking out of the top of one of the castle’s sand towers.

Cody tamped down the wet sand in a yellow bucket with the back of a plastic shovel, then flipped the bucket over and pulled it off. “Ta-da! The last tower.”

Missy made a fist and smashed it.

“Hey! I told you not to do that again!”

Giggling, Missy smashed another tower.

Cody threw a handful of sand.

Missy fired back and got him right in the face.

He grabbed a double fistful.

“Cool it! You’re the big kid, Cody.” I hauled him out by the armpits. “It’s time to go anyway.” Cass jumped out of her chair and picked up Missy, who was crying.

Cody twisted in my grip, then went limp. “You done?” I asked, setting him on his feet.

“I was tired of castles.” Cody dropped the sand and wiped his palms on his T-shirt. He picked up the hat and started to put it on, then stopped. “What did you find out, Ben?”

“About what?” I felt my palms get sweaty.

He bounced on his toes. “About the people in the burned-down house?”

Justin gave me a look, like, We are so busted.

Why, this time, did short-attention-span-Cody have to remember what he asked me to do?

Cass quit brushing sand off Missy’s legs. “Were they okay?”

I looked from Cass to Cody to Jemmie, then back to Cass. I hadn’t planned to lie to everyone, just Cody, and only if necessary, but I could straighten the girls out later. “Uh, yeah. We found a newspaper report on the internet. The fire was fifteen years ago, ancient history.”

“And…” said Cass.

I bunched my fists in my pockets. “And everybody got out fine.”

“Really?” I could hear the relief in Cass’s voice. “If everyone got out, I think it’s okay for us to be there. If they wanted the stuff, they would have come back for it by now.”

“Yippee!” Cody flung the hat up, then picked it up off the wet grass. “What about the dog?”

“The dog was fine,” Jus said, giving me backup.

Cody stared at the hat in his hand, and for a second he looked much older than seven. “Are you sure?”

“Yup, Ike got out,” I said, grabbing the name of the Seeing Eye dog from that other house fire story.

“But the name on the dish is Sparky,” said Cody.

“Sparky was probably the dog before Ike,” Jus said.

“Yeah. Ike was a golden retriever,” I added, slapping on another lie like it was duct tape. “They all moved to Pittsburgh after the fire.”

Cody yelled, “Great!” Cass gave me a hug.

Yup, duct tape can fix anything.

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