“We’re going to live in the castle!” I said excitedly, squishing my dad’s face even further. “And Morgan is going to teach me magic and I’m going to be so awesome and I’ll get to have friends and you get to go with me and we won’t be hungry and we’ll get to have baths every day—wait.” I turned in my dad’s arms to glare at Morgan. “I better not have to have a bath every day.”
“Every day,” he said solemnly. “You’ll be in the King’s Court, Sam. A requirement is not to smell like stinky little boy anymore. You might even have to comb your hair every now and then.”
“Good luck with that,” Mom muttered.
“Oh well,” I said slyly. “I guess we’ll just have to stay here. Darn. How disappointing.”
They all stared at me.
They were totally falling for it. Adults were so dumb.
They still stared at me.
They weren’t falling for it. Adults were so dumb.
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes. “I was kidding. We’re still going, even if I have to bathe every day. Gods. Whatever. It’s waste of water, especially when I’m just going to get dirty again.” And then another thought hit me. “Do I still have to do math?”
“A lot of it,” Morgan said, grinning widely.
“Ugh,” I mumbled. “Maybe I wasn’t kidding about staying here. Math is stupid.”
“Are you sure about this, my lord?” Dad asked, voice shaking in a way I had never heard before. I turned back toward him, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone look so hopeful. “About him? About us?”
“And that we’ll all be together?” Mom asked. She glanced at me and Dad before looking back at Morgan. “You won’t separate us from each other?”
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life,” Morgan said. “You will all be together and in good hands. And Sam… well. He’ll be… extraordinary, I think.”
“That’s another word for amazing,” I whispered to my dad, just to make sure he understood. “He’s talking about me.”
“Can we have a moment?” Dad asked.
“Of course,” Morgan said, bowing his head. “We’ll wait outside to give you all the privacy you need.”
Dad moved me to one arm while reaching out with the other to shake Pete’s hand. They left, and we heard the rickety front door close behind them. Silence fell in the kitchen where less than an hour before, we’d been hunched around an old and outdated math book. How strange it was that things could change so quickly. It was usually for the worse. Today just happened to be for the better.
“What did he tell you?” Dad asked.
I told them everything as I remembered it. The promises made. Morgan’s faith in me. What I could become. That we could leave this place and never have to worry again. Fanciful, sure, and probably unrealistic, but I felt like a boy in a fairy tale, being plucked from his slovenly obscurity and handed his wishes on a silver platter.
“And this is what you want?” Mom asked when I finally ran out of words, my voice hoarse and cracked from the excitement.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can do this. Okay? I promise you.” I looked at each of them, one at a time, so they could see just how serious I was. “I’ll do so good. I’ll make you proud of me, okay?”
Dad’s breath hitched. “We’re already proud of you,” he said gruffly, because he was a Northern man who didn’t show weakness. “You are everything we could have ever asked for.”
“And we don’t need this for us,” Mom said, rubbing a hand up and down my back. “If we do this, it’ll be for you.”
“But why can’t it be for all of us?” I asked them.
And they both seemed to be at a loss for words.
Finally Dad said, “Well, I’ve always wanted to say that I lived inside of a castle. Maybe we could send a postcard to your mother, just to rub it in a little bit.”
Mom smacked his shoulder and said, “Josh!” but we could see the sparkle in her eye, fiery and bright. “Maybe just one.”
“Does that mean we can go?” I asked, wriggling in my dad’s arms.
Dad glanced at Mom, his eyes lingering on her before he looked back at me. He took a deep breath and said—