Still, Scott had been lucky because of the care Wil’s parents had given him, and now it seemed that Larry LaSalle was going to continue that tradition. He was a good man, and Scott was glad Mrs. J had found him.
He glanced at his hands again as he and Wil stood on the porch and waved good-bye to the newlyweds pulling out of the driveway. The warm April night was cloudy and promised rain.
“What the hell, dude?” Wil demanded when the car had moved down the street.
“I don’t know,” Scott said frantically. “I don’t. I just—I felt a tingle and then…” He held up his hands. “It was strong, that feeling, but it didn’t exactly hurt. It felt more like…static electricity.”
“Your hands were silver, and not like Tin Man silver. They glowed.”
“I know, and it didn’t feel exactly wrong,” Scott confessed. He looked up at the sky, which had been clear a couple of hours ago. Now the promise of a storm seemed greater with the dark clouds gathering overhead.
“What does that mean?”
Scott’s phone vibrated in his pocket. “I’m still trying to sort it out,” he said as he removed his phone and glanced at it.
“Well, let me know when you do,” Wil said as he sat on the steps. “There’s enough weirdness going on around here.”
“You mean there’s more? Like what?”
Wil waved him off. “I’m not sure. Let me think on it a little bit.”
Scott’s curiosity was piqued, but he knew Wil would tell him when he was ready. “Well, how about this for weird,” he said, changing the subject as he sat beside his friend. “Andrew texted and wants to talk to us. Says it’s important.”
Wil kept quiet.
“You know, it’s been a while,” Scott tried again. “He made it through basic training. He’s in the Marines now, trying to make something of himself. Maybe you two could patch things up and get back to being friends.”
“That’s great.”
“I mean, he must’ve put all that stuff behind him. You two haven’t talked since last summer. It really hasn’t been the same without him.”
“Scott—”
“He even wrote Mrs. J an apology. That’s got to count for something, right?”
“Scott.” Wil sighed and stood up. “I said it was great, and I mean it. I didn’t buy confetti, but maybe next time.”
“No confetti? He’ll be so disappointed. I’m disappointed.” Keeping things light was what Scott was good at. He’d had lots of years of practice living with his drunken dad.
Wil shook his head, his gaze on the heavens once more. “Come on. You have dish duty while I figure out where to put all that food.”
“Hmm. Well, leave out that ice cream,” Scott said as he stood. “That was pretty good.” Damn it, his ear annoyed him. No matter how much he rubbed it, he just couldn’t get the ringing to stop.
“Maybe that means you’re getting better.”
There was a hopeful thought. “Maybe. Let’s put on the game. The Braves are in Philadelphia tonight.” Perhaps that would distract him from his ear.
Suddenly, lightning flashed behind the clouds. Once, twice, three times as though someone was taking a picture. The light wasn’t sharp but rather flat and pale. Something nagged at Scott. This didn’t feel like regular lightning, but it did feel threatening.
In one of the flashes there appeared a black outline as though someone had suddenly traced a picture in the heavens. Even though he was standing completely still, Scott stumbled down the porch steps, his mouth hanging open. That shape, skeletal though it was, looked like a dragon.
Then it was gone.
Behind him, Wil gasped. Scott turned just in time to catch him as he slouched forward.
“Whoa! Are you all right?”
“No,” Wil choked out as he clutched his chest. Scott
helped him sit down, and Wil leaned his head against the railing as he struggled to breathe. “Oh, god, what is this feeling?”
“Do I need to call a doctor?” Scott asked, reaching for his phone.
“No. It’s not that.” Wil winced. “It’s…I’m so empty inside. It hurts.”
Another flash of light lit the sky, and then it grew still.
A chill crept over Scott, and it wasn’t because he was cold. “What do you mean you’re empty inside?”
Wil’s face began to relax, and a long breath escaped him. He shook his head wearily. “I don’t know. It just feels hollow, like my soul goes away for a few seconds, if that makes any sense.”
Scott thought it made a lot of sense, but he couldn’t say why. “Is that what it’s been like these past few weeks?”
“Yeah, only not this bad. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the lightning did it to me.” Wil grinned weakly.
“Why do you say that? Did you see something in the light?”
Wil glanced up at him. “Why? Did you?”
Scott nodded slowly. If he had been with anyone else in this moment, he would never have said anything, let alone confess. But if anyone would understand dragons, it was Wil.
“You saw the unicorn?” Wil asked incredulously.
Scott blinked. “Unicorn?”
“Yeah. I saw the outline of a unicorn. Didn’t you?”
“No. I saw a dragon.”
Wil’s brown eyes widened. “A dragon?”
Scott tugged on his ear again. “Yeah, and I think it was looking at me. I think it was trying to tell me something.”
“So was the unicorn.”
For a long moment, they sat in confused silence. The ringing in Scott’s ear wasn’t as sharp as before. In fact, it seemed to be more of a hum than a ring now. His eyes drifted skyward again, hoping to see the dragon as proof that he—and Wil—weren’t caught in some dream full of delusions. The clouded night sky remained still, but the impression of the dragon’s outline was fresh in Scott’s mind. His thoughts drifted to Christmas past for some reason—apple cake and tree lights. Christmas trees and warm socks and apple
cake—
“Dude, Little Drummer Boy?”
Scott blinked.
Wil stared at him in amusement. “You were just singing. Pa-rum-pa-pa-pum?”
The humming in Scott’s ear grew a little louder. “Except it went thump-thump-thump,” he said to himself, glancing at his hands.
“What?”
Scott ignored Wil for a moment. He thought he heard words inside the hum, jumbled words that made no sense to his brain. The dragon form stood out clear in his mind. He thought of Christmas lights, apple cake, a tree with three trunks…
His mind snapped to suddenly. “Dilly!” He darted up the porch, into the house, and took the stairs two at a time. He paused in the doorway to his bedroom, listening. Wil followed him, panting slightly from the franticness of the pace.
“Scott, what—?”
Scott held up a finger. Now he felt the humming more than he heard it. Moving to his desk, he opened first one drawer and then another. There, in the bottom drawer was a towel twisted rather than folded. As he picked it up, his hand seemed to vibrate gently, although it did not turn silver.
Unwrapping it, Scott found a wand in the shape of a
unicorn’s horn nestled in the velvet casing. His fingers wrapped around it, and soft silver light pulsated in the darkness of his bedroom as he removed it from the box. Warm energy flowed from the wand into his hand.
“Wicked,” he heard Wil say behind him, and he turned to stare incredulously at his best friend.
“Wil, I think there be dragons for real.”