“How come?”
“Seth, that bird had a broken wing. When you touched it, the wing straightened out and healed up. I watched it happen.”
“So?”
“So that's...weird. Really weird, Seth. Nobody can do that.”
“I can!” Seth said.
“You have to keep it secret.”
“You're just jealous 'cause you can't do it,” Seth said.
“No, Seth.” Carter turned Seth to face him. Carter had light brown hair and green eyes—he looked more like a Mayfield, from their mom's family, than a Barrett. “I'm serious now. People will treat you like a freakazoid if they find out you can do that. It's not normal to heal things with your touch.”
“Jesus could do it,” Seth said.
“And look what happened to him.”
Seth thought about it. “Oh...”
“Just keep a secret for now,” Carter said.
“Even from Mom and Dad?”
“Even from them.”
“For how long?” Seth whined.
“Until I tell you it's safe,” Carter said.
“When will that be?”
“I don't know. I'll tell you.”
“Seth! Carter!” their mom yelled. She wasn't in the back yard anymore. She'd circled the house and now stood on the driveway in her high heels and purple dress, her arms folded, eyes glowing with anger.
“We better go,” Carter whispered. “Don't tell anyone.”
“Jonathan Seth Barrett!” their mother shouted as they approached. “Look at your pants! What have you been doing?”
“I was just...” Seth pointed toward the treetops, but Carter shook his head. “Just playing.”
“In your Easter clothes?” their mom asked. “Get inside right now. You can't go to church looking like that.”
“Okay. Sorry.” Seth hurried toward the front door. Before he went inside, he looked at the high limb again, meaning to wave good-bye to the bird, but it had already disappeared.
CHAPTER TWO
Seth was in his room watching Star Wars: Attack of the Clones when the house phone rang. He was expecting to hear from Wooly—Chris Woolerton—about Seth's plans to visit Charleston and stay with Wooly's family. Seth was looking forward to hanging out at the beach with Wooly and his friends. Wooly had been the most popular fifth-grader at Grayson Academy, known for his pranks, his encyclopedic memory for dirty jokes, and the Playboy magazines he had snuck into the dormitory.
In the fall, they would both be in sixth grade, the last grade before you moved on to Grayson's secondary school, Grayson Preparatory. Until then, they were the oldest kids, the rulers of Grayson Primary.
Seth hurried to answer the phone.
“This is Sheriff Frank Young,” the man's voice said on the phone. “Opawasee County, Florida. Can I speak with Mr. or Mrs. Jonathan Barrett?”
Seth's name was Jonathan Seth Barrett, and he considered making a joke of it and saying “I'm Jonathan Barrett.” But the police officer clearly wanted to talk to his father, and his tone was dead serious. Seth immediately thought of Carter, his fourteen-year-old brother who had gone on vacation to Florida with a friend's family.
Seth opened the door and yelled “Dad! Phone!” Nobody answered, so he sighed and hurried down the stairs.
He found his father in his office, surrounded by the heads of dead animals—not just deer like everyone had, but wolf and bear heads, too, animals killed by Seth's great-grandfather. The office intimidated Seth, as if the whole place exuded death and despair. The desk, liquor cabinet and other furniture were hand-hewn from dark, heavy wood sometime in the nineteenth century.
Seth's dad, Jonathan Seth Barrett III, sat at the gray IBM PC on the desk, surrounded by heaps of open file folders. He wasn't quite forty years old, but traces of gray had already appeared in his hair, along with deep worry lines on his face. The years of managing the family's diverse, worldwide investments had aged him prematurely. Like the office itself, his father was intimidating to Seth—he seemed to make the air around himself dark and heavy.
“Hey, Dad?” Seth asked, hesitantly. His dad didn't like being interrupted when he was working, and he was liable to bite Seth's head off.
“I'm busy, Seth,” he replied without looking up.
“But there's a phone call.”
Seth's dad glanced at the two phones on his desk—one was the regular house line, one of them was for business. A red light blinked on the display panel of the house phone, indicating a call on hold.
“Take a message,” he told Seth.
“But it's the police,” Seth said. “From Florida.”
“Florida? What's Carter gotten into this time?” He shook his head as he picked up the phone. “This is Jonathan Barrett,” he said. Then he listened, and his face drew into a deep frown. “I'm sorry, could you...repeat that?”