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wanderer
forever looking for the next adventure.
    “What
do you want?”
    The
unwritten rule in Hightop was that visits to his home were unwelcome and would
eventually be met with buckshot if they occurred with any sort of frequency.
    The
young man waved. “Hey, how’s it going, man? It’s me. Dennis.”
    Nicholas
repeated blankly, “Dennis.”
    Dennis
raised a small basket that Nicholas hadn’t noticed he was carrying. “I brought
over some of Kevin’s scones.” When Nicholas continued to stare at him, he
laughed uneasily. “You know, like I said I would.”
    Dennis’s
unease was nothing compared to Nicholas’s. “We’ve met before?”
    A
bemused expression came over Dennis’s face. He scratched at the scraggly goatee
clinging to his sharp chin. “Um, yeah. Last night at the alien party. Kevin
introduced us.”
    “At
the party.”
    “Yeah,
er, you were enjoying life if you know what I mean, so, um, you probably
forgot.”
    Nicholas’s
hand convulsed around the door handle. “No, no, I remember. Things are just a
little hazy. Too early in the morning, that’s all.”
    Dennis
grinned. “Hey, man, it’s cool. I black out all the time when I drink too hard.
Man, I’ve forgotten so much . . . probably for the best,
right?”
    A
jolt of anxiety shot through Nicholas. “Black out? I don’t know anything about
that. Did someone say I black out? That’s completely untrue. In fact it’s
libelous and I want the names of everyone involved.”
    Dennis
looked like he’d been hit in the ear with a snowball. “Uh, no, I just meant
drinking and stuff. I don’t think you need to sue anyone . . .”
When Nicholas continued to stare at him without speaking, Dennis fumbled on. “So,
uh, you wanna check out what I brought? Can I, like, come in?”
    “Come
in?” Nicholas, confused and defensive, stepped back. “I invited you last night,
didn’t I? Of course, I want you to come in. I just made tea. For two!”
    Dennis
followed him into the breakfast nook. Before shutting the door, Nicholas peered
outside and then blinked slowly and deliberately. Someone had shoveled the snow
to create a path from his car to the front door. Whoever it was must have been
drunk. The cleared path meandered all over the yard.
    “Did
you do that?” he asked as he hurried into the kitchen.
    Dennis
was giving him that look again that said he thought Nicholas might be a little
off in the head. “Do what?”
    “Shovel
the walkway.”
    “Uh,
no, man. It was that way when I got here.”
    Though
it would have been gratifying to call Dennis a liar, Nicholas reminded himself
that this boy had some sort of connection to Kevin. He decided to hold his
accusations for now.
    He
led Dennis to the kitchen, where he waved vaguely toward the nook. “Have a
seat.” He scrambled to put together a second cup of tea.
    “Thanks.
Oh, hey, I almost forgot.” Dennis reached into a pocket of his parka and
withdrew a wad of red craft paper, which he unfolded. “Here ya go. Toby drew it
for you.”
    It
was a marker drawing of a hovering UFO. A smiling, brown horse-dog-beast hung
suspended in the spaceship’s tractor beam. Nicholas assumed the monster was
Winchester.
    “He
must have nothing better to do,” Nicholas muttered before shifting aside some
magnets on his refrigerator to pin the picture beside the four other drawings
of Winchester already hanging there. He considered the drawing with a critical
eye. “You’d think he’d get progressively better, but they’re all terrible.”
    Dennis
laughed. “I’ll tell him you said that. Holy cow, you got a llama in your
backyard!” He jumped up and hurried to the sink window. “No, wait, that’s an
alpaca. Love these things!”
    Nicholas
joined Dennis at the window, a flicker of hope lighting up in his chest. “You
love them, do you? Would you like to have this one?”
    Dennis
cooed at the beast.
    “He’s
the best alpaca I’ve ever known,” Nicholas went on. “Completely charming.