Here in the Real World: Chapters 13–40

Sometimes, yourself was exactly what you didn’t want to see.
“Oh,” he said, a little unnerved for a moment.

A long butcher-block table stood stolidly bearing its load of rubble, but most everything else had been crushed.

She had an infallible internal clock and a memory that archived every appointment time for eternity.

Once, while shopping, she’d passed a big digital display that read 2:55. “Oh,” she said wistfully, “two fifty-five! First Monday of every month, I’d leave the office at two fifty-five. Pick you up from school at seven past three, have you at your orthodontist at three twenty-five. We’d sit in the car for exactly four minutes while you complained about having braces and then we’d walk in right on time. Remember?”

“Fine,” he conceded boldly. “But the new deal is also this: no more boundaries.”

“First of all,” the girl said to Jolene, “this is not your place. This is parcel number 788, owned by Sun Shores Bank.”

Jolene was glowering over the rims of her sunglasses, but just for an instant Ware had seen it again: the look of fear on her face.

“Um...it’s foreclosed? That’s what happens. Anyway—”
“When?” Jolene demanded.
The girl threw her hands up. “I don’t know! Forget it. I don’t work for a bank, remember?”

The new girl climbed the back steps, sat primly at the top, and looked down at them like a teacher waiting for her class to settle.

Ware panicked for a second—eyes closed, mouth slack, his father looked too much like the people rolling by on gurneys at the hospital the other night.

Ware didn’t begrudge them the space, but they always reminded him of the day he’d heard his mother say she wished her son was normal.

Ware figured Jolene had been bluffing, because afterward, she’d refused to talk about it.

He walked down the stairs and ambled over.

Her arms kept up the waving, almost hysterically.

There were a few two- and three-block chunks, but the rest were mortared together in big slabs, some the size of cars, with twisted metal rods spiking out of them.

He felt a wave of revulsion sweep through him, as if he’d lifted a rock and found maggots.

“In lots of places, they just leave stuff out for buzzards or rats. How about that for your grandmother’s old bones? Or how about landfills? People break in, looking for stuff they can sell. How about if someone found her hips, put them up for sale?”

He liked this best, fitting the blocks together, filling the gaps with plastic bags full of gravel and then sealing those in with the caulking he’d found in his shed.

He and Jolene watched Ashley drop down over the fencing and shake herself into composure. Her cool evaporated when she saw the operation in the parking lot.

Ware, sitting on the floor beside her chair as she read, had been crestfallen.

If the Knights’ Code no longer applied in today’s world, that meant that he himself would never have a chance to exemplify its standards. To live a life of honor, of service to a liege lord. Most importantly, to come to the rescue of those in need.

If the Knights’ Code no longer applied in today’s world, that meant that he himself would never have a chance to exemplify its standards. To live a life of honor, of service to a liege lord. Most importantly, to come to the rescue of those in need.

Ware had never seen the Greek Market before, because it faced Second Street and his mother had determined that First Street was the most efficient route downtown, and once she’d determined the most efficient route anywhere, she never wavered.

Beside him, a crate of what looked like lumpy footballs, mottled green and orange, caught his attention.

“I know some papaya plants,” he told the checkout lady, although he hadn’t planned to add anything after the “hot one out there” opening. “They’re pretty spindly.”

Outside was a garden. A woman with white-streaked hair piled on her head stood beside a table under an arbor of vines.

He had just finished setting up the Y-shaped branch, the bungee cords, and the colander when Jolene gave up spying and came over.

A few of the baggies had stuck, resulting in random glossy patches that reflected the sunlight in a jaunty way.

“Wow,” Jolene said.
“Wow,” Ware agreed.
“Don’t castles have flags?” Jolene asked after another minute of reverent admiration.

The church now looked strong and defiant, like the best castles, like a fist of rock bursting up through the ground.

He stifled a panicked gasp.

“It’s almost time to fill the moat,” he broached the subject with Jolene.

Jolene shot him a skeptical look, but she followed him onto the foundation and over to the big kitchen table.

Wind gusted shingles around the deck and flickered the candles.

She was beaming in smug victory.