Fifteen

FIFTEEN

I crouched at the edge of those blueberry bushes, quietly afraid. Jake left his bike with me, hoisted his backpack over his shoulder, hefted his hammer once more and melted into the darkness soundlessly like a cat.

I couldn’t help but shiver, thinking about Dad saying James Burns could do the same thing as a kid. That’s why he’d been picked to be a Green Beret, because he could fade into the misty Cambodian jungles like he’d never been there at all. Here Jake was, doing the same, leaving me alone. The night closed in around me, darker than I’d ever seen it, so dark I could barely make out my hand.

After what seemed like forever finally it came: the sharp ring of metal striking stone, Jake swinging away at that stone chest under the gazebo. On the first strike every muscle in my body tensed. I gripped the flashlight so hard my knuckles ached, expecting the shrill sound and its echoes to bring something from either the shadowed depths of the blueberry bushes or from Mr. Trung’