Sam scampered to his room as if shot from a cannon. Alejo lingered until Wendy smiled tiredly. “I promised he’d get to watch a film all the way through. I’d better hustle him through his bath, so he won’t be up too late. Then it’s my turn for a scented bath, after a good day of work.”
“Excellent idea,” Alejo said, trying not to picture himself in the tub with her.
Wendy followed Sam. Alejo knew he was not likely to get any time with Wendy that night, especially with the other guests around, so he went to his room, answered a long, chatty e-mail from his boyhood buddy Lance, then decided to tackle that long list of messages on his new phone.
He was about twenty messages in (delete, delete, delete, “Talk to my dad—I’m still on the road,” delete, delete, and so on) when he hit one from Godiva. He was considering an answer when he heard a tap at his door.
He lifted his head. It was so soft a knock he wasn’t sure he’d even heard it.
He opened the door, and then stared in surprise at small Sam, who stood there in his pajamas, his hair still damp and ruffled up around his head like a baby bird, his eyes huge behind his glasses. Alejo noted his shoulders up under his ears, and gave an internal nod of respect to the kid for overcoming his terror of strange adults this much.
“Hi, Sam,” Alejo said, in the voice he used on skittish colts and terrified dogs. “What can I do for you?”
Sam looked behind him, then asked in a very tiny voice, “Can I…” He seemed to run out of gas.
“Want to come in?” Alejo opened the door wide, then retreated inside the room, leaving the way free for Sam to enter or not. And when the little boy came in, one step at a time, Alejo glanced around then dropped onto the footstool before the reading chair, so that they would be more or less eye to eye, instead of him looming over Sam.
Alejo said, “Okay, Sam, what’s on your mind?”
Sam whispered, “Theysaid...they saw you.”
“They?”
Sam took a deep breath. “My friends. They areverysecret. Granny Godiva doesn’t go in the forest. I mean, the garden. Nobody does, except for me. I have a friend. I call him Squeak, because I heard him before I saw him. Before I got my new glasses.” Sam halted this rush of words, blinked a couple times, then uttered a chirping trill,R-r-r-r. “And it’s hard to say his name. But I think he likes being Squeak.”
He stopped, looking warily at Alejo.
“Whoa,” Alejo said, not certain whether he was dealing with imaginary friends or not. But, he figured, even imaginary friends deserved respect. “Your friend is teaching you another language? That’s pretty cool.”
Sam’s bony shoulders came down a notch. “I can saytwenty-threewords. Squeak taught meallof them.” Sam snapped his fingers, and then clicked his thumbnail against the nail of his forefinger. “It’s hard to say some, so I do that instead.”
“That’s pretty nifty,” Alejo said.
“You didn’t see them because they can go invisible, kind of,” Sam continued. “They can also pop.”
“Pop?”
“It sounds like bubble gum popping,” Sam explained. “They can go from here to another place, pop. But I think they have to see the place they are going first.”
“Do you mean teleporting?”
“Teleporting,” Sam repeated slowly. “What is that?”
“It means going from one place to another in an instant.”
Sam’s earnest forehead wrinkled, then smoothed. “Teleporting. I wonder if Squeak has that word.”
“They sound amazing,” Alejo said. “Have you told your mom about them?”
“No!” Up came the shoulders. “I can’t!”
“Okay,” Alejo said. “It sounds like they are your friends. But, I bet a hundred dollars your mom would love hearing about them.”
“But she might have to tellhim,” Sam whispered.
“Him?”
“Pater. That’s what I call my dad. I tried to tell him a long time ago, when I was little.”
