AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Aggie tired.”
Theo halts his pace, groaning from a few feet ahead. “We haven’t even made it to the haunted castle yet.”
The haunted castle is the tree house. It’s also an enchanted castle, an underground cave, a lava pit, an evil fortress, and a mystical tower. June is too small to climb up the ladder, so we created a fort underneath it just for her. She’s the princess, and we’re the heroes.
It’s our favorite game.
Well…it’s mine and Theo’s favorite game, anyway. June would rather play in her ball pit and watch Blue’s Clues all day, munching on Goldfish crackers.
“Be right there!” I call to him. “June wants to rest.”
“Just put her on your back and carry her, Brant. Time is running out.”
June perks up at this, leaping into my arms. “Pig-back!”
“Okay, okay, hop on.”
I gather June onto my back as her wrists clasp my neck, her legs wrapping around my middle. She’s still so heavy for being just an itty-bitty rag doll. Hunching forward so she doesn’t slip, I make sure to grab Aggie, and we slowly march our way over to the tree-house fort, where Theo is already waiting inside, pretending to fight an evil ghost with a tree branch.
“Don’t worry, Peach. I’ll save you!” he shouts.
June makes a sassy little huff, then slides down my back to the ground. “You siwwy.”
She can’t really say her L sounds either.
I take a seat in one of the inflatable chairs Mr. Bailey blew up for us, and June follows suit, jumping into my lap. Her butterscotch curls tickle my nose, smelling like a mix of baby powder and the lilac bushes that fence our front porch. Her hair is a magical thing. It’s darker during wintertime, almost brown, then fades to golden in the summer months.
June spins in my lap, her chubby hands planting on either side of my face. “Bant. Stowy.”
Her eyes glow blue in the afternoon haze. They are light, light blue—even lighter than Mrs. Bailey’s eyes. Sometimes I think I can see right through them. “You want me to tell you a story?”
She nods emphatically.
“Okay, June. I’ll tell you a story…” Then I tackle her to the blankets that line the floor of her fort, my fingers dancing across her torso in a frenzy. “After I tickle you!”
Her laughter warms me, her limbs flailing as she tries to dodge my attack. “No mo! No mo!”
I lift up her T-shirt, patterned with ice cream cones, and blow raspberries onto her round belly.
She laughs harder. She laughs so hard her face turns red like a ripe strawberry.
“I’ll save you, June!”
Theo leaps into action, waving his invisible sword at me until I fall back, pretending to be defeated. I play dead.
“Super Mario to the rescue,” he crows, and I pop an eyeball open to watch as he pulls June to her unsteady feet, then lifts her arm in the air in victory.
I sit up straight. “I’m Luigi, remember? You’re not supposed to kill Luigi.”
“You were a bad guy in this scene.”
“Bant no bad,” June pipes up in my defense. She dashes over to me, falling down beside me on the blankets and cradling her knees to her chest. “He good.”
“Fine, I guess he’s good,” Theo relents. His sandy hair falls over his eyes, so he brushes it back with his arm. Freckles dot his nose and cheekbones, and I idly wonder if June will have freckles, too. Right now, her skin is porcelain white, just like one of Grams’s china dolls. Theo traipses over to us and sits cross-legged in front of me, tracing his finger through a patch of dirt that pokes through the mound of blankets. “What do you want to be when you grow up, Brant?”
I consider the question. It’s not something I’ve really thought about before. I’m in third grade, and we’re learning about so many interesting things—firefighters, doctors, teachers, and pilots. My mind races with potential, with things I can become, and I blurt out, “I want to cook for people.”
Mom loved to cook, and I loved to eat her food. Dad yelled about it all the time, but I never understood why. It was so yummy.
