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As Will rode the bus home he could think of only one thing: He’s here.

Chapter Three: Will’s Sanctum
    W ill got off the bus with Natalie and a few of the other kids but didn’t look back at her as he walked toward home. He knew that just being in her orbit was a bad idea; he was pulled toward her like the planets to the sun. He wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to handle the feelings he was beginning to have for this stranger but he knew he would have to keep his distance. Even if she did have a smile that cut right through him.
    His house was two stories and constructed of brick with ivy crawling up the front and had a large porch jutting out like a big strong jaw. It had green shutters and a gray slate roof and an attached two-car garage. Will anticipated his mother’s singsong voice asking him how his first day of school had been. Well, gosh, Mom, let’s see, the bus was attacked by demonic crows, I made the toilet in the boys’ room flood while saving some skinny kid I don’t even know, I inadvertently blew up the homecoming float, forever alienating myself from the head cheerleader and her gang of pretty faces, and now the whole school thinks I’m some kind of whacked out arsonist. How was your day? Of course Will would say none of that, he would smile and nod or grunt some monosyllable answers like all teenagers. Sometimes being sixteen
came in handy—you could gloss over tons of bizarre behavior and have it all chalked up to being a teen and going through “those awkward years.”
    He called out as he entered the house, “I’m home.”
    No answer. Good. Will slouched off his backpack, made a quick raid of the refrigerator and scarfed down a couple of brownies with a cold glass of milk, and then, after locking the front door, went down into the basement. Flicking the lights on he saw that all his crates had arrived intact. The basement itself was huge and as such suited Will’s purposes perfectly. He pretended to be an old-school photographer, shooting on film in addition to digital, so he could construct a “darkroom” and thereby restrict entry and keep his real work away from prying eyes. He would get around to building the false wall later. For now all he really needed to do was unroll some thick black plastic and staple it to the overhead floor joists to seal off the first phase of his workspace construction from his mom and Gerald. The basement was always Will’s domain. His mom backed him up unequivocally on this and Gerald, though he grumbled, went along with the edict. Will was sure it was because as long as Will wasn’t anywhere to be seen or heard, Gerald was happy. Out of sight, out of mind. That’s the way it worked. If only it worked that way with everything , thought Will.
    Two hours later Will heard his mom and then Gerald come home and, rather than risk an awkward intrusion, went upstairs and shared perfunctory greetings with them. While Gerald opened one of his homemade beers and extolled its taste, Will nodded like he gave a crap, had a quick bite of chicken and biscuits, mumbled something about homework, and then went back down into the basement. Two hours after that he had the darkroom set up in the first chamber. Anyone trying to enter had to do so by means of a “light lock,” which meant completing an S turn and then moving through a flap door so that by the time you were in the amber-lit room you were completely turned around, a fact that worked entirely to Will’s advantage. Any parental unit snooping around
would surely miss the fact that Will had put up a false back wall, creating a secret chamber that only he knew about.
    Now that his secret chamber was in place, at least with temporary walls, Will went about setting up his futon and unpacking his crates of equipment. He had geological sensor probes and infrared motion detectors and spelunking supplies. He had a well-stocked chemical lab setup and another for weapons design. He had a crate that held his cache of