Here in the Real World: Chapters 1–12

Tomorrow he’d bash them into chips to build the ramparts of his castle, but tonight he had another use for them.

Ware had studied the Middle Ages in school. Back then, kings could be kind and wise, kings could be cruel and crazy. Luck of the draw: serf or knight, you lived with it.

“Space Man” they’d dubbed him, claiming they’d had to yell at him three times before he’d lifted his head.

No, the mortifying thing was when Big Deal came out and sent the kings slinking away with a single glare. An eleven-and-a-half-year-old boy was supposed to protect his grandmother, not the other way around.

The Twin Kings scuttled back around the corner.

“Baby fat,” his mother called it. “It’ll turn into muscle.” Witnessing his bathing-suited self in his grandmother’s mirror every day, he realized his mother had omitted a crucial detail: how it would turn into muscle.

The palm fronds began to flash red.

Ware woke, disoriented to find himself in his own bed instead of on the prickly couch at his grandmother’s place.

The night swept over him—the grim, silent ride to the hospital, following the ambulance in Mrs. Sauer’s old Buick; the air-conditioned waiting room where he’d shivered, pool soaked and worried, until a nurse dropped a blanket over his shoulders; his mother charging in a few hours later, her jaw set like a rock.

“Wasteland” was an exaggeration, but not much. Mr. Shepard wasn’t a spend-money-on-yard-maintenance kind of landlord, and his parents weren’t the spend-time-working-on-a-lawn kind of parents, so the yard was barren.

Besides an old shed crammed with junk abandoned when the previous tenants left a decade ago, there were only a couple of rusting lounge chairs and a listing picnic table.

Knights had a rule book—their code of chivalry—that covered everything: Thou shalt always do this, thou shalt never be that. If you were a knight, you knew where you stood.

Too often, Ware wasn’t even sure he was standing. Sometimes he felt as if he was wafting, in fact. A little drifty.

Big Deal was always asking piercing questions—She’s direct, his mother explained in excuse—and she expected answers.

His mom looked pretty surprised, also. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. The news that her body would betray her like this seemed to bewilder her even more.

All three were the kind of kids who found the community center’s cavernous space an irresistible acoustic challenge.

Ware raised his hand to half-mast with a nod, but inside, he felt the familiar contracting retreat of the thing that lived deep in his chest, which must be his soul.

Ware had tasted beer, and he couldn’t fathom why a human being, let alone a flamingo, would drink it, but he liked that the bar was there, too.

He imagined sap rushing through his veins, fresh leaves unfurling from his fingers and toes.

Their tops looked like crenellated parapets—he’d learned the term researching for his castle report; it meant notched like a jawbone missing teeth.

Their tops looked like crenellated parapets—he’d learned the term researching for his castle report; it meant notched like a jawbone missing teeth.

One of the massive wooden doors had been smashed to splinters, the other lay canted out like a drawbridge half raised.

In the light streaming down from the gaping top, where the spire used to be, a steel stairway winked all the way up like a promise.

Before he could climb, he heard the clink of metal hitting something gritty.

She raised a trowel and stabbed the ground.

Ware clambered over the rubble to the doorway.

There, a big container clad in fake stones stood almost as tall as he was and twice as long.

She retrieved a lozenge, extra-strength honey lemon, and began to unwrap it.

“It was...all right,” he said, his voice quavering only slightly.

Castle battlements were slotted with narrow openings called arrow slits, through which guards could shoot approaching enemies without being targets themselves.

The girl pursed her lips and tapped them with a grubby finger, pretending to think hard about whether to divulge this extremely important information.

The next morning after his mother drove away, Ware jumped up into the oak and concealed himself in a cloud of leaves, deep as a secret, because the first objective of medieval reconnaissance was to gather information about the enemy.

The sight of people being frightened literally stole his breath, like a hundred-arrow volley to the lungs, thunk-thunk-thunk.

He backed away and climbed onto the foundation to accomplish the second objective of reconnaissance: location assessment. Location assessment required height, so he picked his way over to the tower.

She was dabbing her trowel over each plant down the row, like a fairy godmother bestowing blessings with her wand.