Disclaimer: I do not own the Magic Tree House books
Jack is slammed violently into the lockers.
"Look at this loser. You wear glasses, four-eyes!"
"Hey man, take a hit."
Jack straightens up. It isn't his bully from the small elementary school he had attended calling him four-eyes. Instead, it's his best friend Tyler from his huge county high school giving him a friendly greeting.
Jack apologizes to a boy he'd hit. For a second he looks like someone Jack knew a long time ago, but Jack shakes it off. Not possible, he tells himself.
"What're you holding?" Ty says, picking up one of the books in the stack he is carrying to class. "Guns, Germs, and Steel? What the hell is this?"
"Ah, yeah, it's just something for Grenville's class."
"You going there now?"
Jack shifts the books in his arms. "Yeah."
"No you're not, Skinny, we have practice."
Jack glares at him. "Why the fuck was I not informed? Now what am I supposed to do with these?"
Ty shrugs. "Put them back in your locker."
"My locker's on the fourth floor."
"So take them to the locker rooms. I don't know."
Jack is the wide receiver for the high school football team, the Henry S. Commager Ravens. None of the guys on the football team know that he loves books.
Heading out to the football field with Ty, Jack sees Annie running toward him. "Jack! Jack!" she calls.
"Catch up with you, man," Jack says.
"Jack! You'll never guess what just happened. I saw Kathleen!"
"Kathleen?"
"Yeah. Remember, the selkie?"
"Yeah, I remember."
"We will see you soon, Jack and Annie. We promise. Onward!" "Teddy, onward doesn't work in the Treehouse."
Unlike Jack, who was a jock yet wasn't, Annie had truly done a Jekyll and Hyde. She still wore her hair in braids, but she had dyed her hair black and hangs out with the stoners. Fuck, she is a stoner.
Annie looks truly excited about something for once, so Jack hates to do this. "Annie, listen to me. There is no way Kathleen is here."
Annie narrows her eyes at him. "You don't think it's possible?"
"No," says Jack, shaking off the memory of the boy in the hallway. The one that looked like Teddy.
"Fuck you," she says, and storms off.
Jack sits on the porch and listens to the crickets.
"Listen to the crickets," Annie said.
Jack listened. The cricket chirps sounded louder than ever.
"Their ancestors lived in the time of the Dragon King," said Annie.
"Oh, Brother," said Jack.
"Right now the grownups are telling the little crickets a legend," said Annie.
"Yeah, sure," said Jack.
"A legend passed down from their ancestors," said Annie.
Jack smiled. He didn't want to admit it, but the cricket noise did sound like storytelling. He could almost hear them saying, Dragon King, Dragon King, Dragon King.
Jack sighs. He'd been distracted at football practice and Annie hadn't spoken to him for the rest of the day.
It hurts. When she was eight, Annie would have been fighting him, telling him she could feel that they were here.
But it's funny. Now Jack, the logical one, can feel it. Why had he told Annie that it wasn't possible for Kathleen and Teddy to be running around their school somewhere, invisible in the masses? Because she would be disappointed if it wasn't them?
Jack jumps up and runs to his room. He opens a drawer in his desk and digs to the bottom. He pulls out his Master Librarian letters glinted gold in the evening sunlight coming through his window.
Jack goes to his bookshelf and gets his yearbook out. He'd never gone through it; there were too many people. Now he lies on his bed and reads every name, looks at every picture, even when his sight blurs. And finally he finds someone.
It's Kathleen. Her dark brown waves are pulled back by an aqua flower clip. Kathleen Murphy, it reads.
Jack keeps reading until he sees Teddy's face. The caption underneath says Alan Trevelyan. Jack is confused, until he remembers Teddy isn't Teddy's real name, and he'd actually told Jack and Annie to call him Ted, which they'd tried to do for a while but soon forgot.
Jack crosses the hallway to Annie's room. "What do you want?" she groans.
Jack shows her the yearbook. "You were right," he says. "We need to find these people."