Page 48

Back upstairs with turkey, cheese, and tomato on toast, he sifted through the notes she had given him. Her signature was on all of them, as were a plethora of different excuses, usually involving some kind of sickness. Impressively, some were paired with forged doctor’s notes with the dates left blank. Some for P.E. Some for band. Some for chemistry. He might have been genuinely amazed, if he were actually enrolled in any of those classes.

Still, he supposed the generic notes could be useful. He smirked. He never would have expected this from his mother. Strange as it seemed, she may have just helped him and Garovel save someone’s life.

He sat back as he finished eating. Every part of him ached, but his hands had the worst of it for some reason. He couldn’t remember putting them through anything worse than the rest of him. They throbbed enough that he felt the blood pumping through the veins between his fingers. He rubbed his hands together.

There it was again. That grainy feeling. He held his hands under the lamp at his desk.

His eyes narrowed. “What is this?” Specks of dirt littered his palms. Only, it couldn’t be dirt. The color wasn’t right. They were dark and gray, not light and brown.

Without any ideas, he wiped his hands on his pants and eyed his bed again. Perhaps there was something more productive he could do, but he couldn’t think of it, so he went back to sleep, hoping Garovel would be there when he woke up. And in fact, he was.

‘Sleep well?’

Hector breathed deep. “Yeah... surprisingly. How’d, uh... how’d it go with Bohwanox?”