Page 1 of Wild Blades

PROLOGUE

Wade– Age Ten

Like every week, the muffled shouting behind the closed bedroom door across the hall grows louder.

Their arguments always make my heart beat a little faster.

I don’t like the way they scream at each other. Or the wayhespeaks to my mom. It makes her cry, and she stays in her room for days afterward.

I feel sad for her.

If I had a friend who made me sad, I wouldn’t be friends with them.So why does she keep letting him back into the house?It confuses me to the point of curiosity.

Squashing my face against the oak-paneled wall, I close my left eye to peek through the minuscule hole I carved out in my secret hiding place at the top of the stairs.

It has the perfect view of my mom’s bedroom door.

The perfect place to spy on whatever it is she does with the man who visits every week.

There are lots of cool hiding places in this huge house, but this one is my favorite.

Extra special because no one knows about it.

They couldn’t. It’s just me, my mom, and the housekeeper, Gretchen, who live in my grandfather’s old house. It’s a bit creepy and big. Pretty cool though, but it freaks me out.

My best friends, Ezra and Myles, told me to stop complaining. They said I was lucky to be livingon one of the best streets in all of Edmonton. And even though my friends live on the same street, and we have so much fun together, it doesn’t make me like this house anymore.

It’s not like my other house. The one I remember living in before moving here.

I scratch my head in annoyance. Sometimes I get confused and think I may have dreamed it up.

But how could I dream up having a little sister and a dad?

I definitely remember having both of those.

Although maybe I dreamed them up too. More like wished for them, maybe.

Because if I had a sister and a dad, they’d be here. With me and my mom.

We’d be a family.

I scowl in confusion as I continue to spy through the peephole, remembering the hazy memories I have of the mysterious house I chased a sister around in. She had a sweet giggle and chubby cheeks, and I swear there was dad who had a smile the size of a moon crater and played football with me in the backyard until it was so dark, we couldn’t see the ball anymore.

I remember those things the most from my dreams.

The last time I asked my mom about the white house from my memories, she told me I had a great imagination. I think she was lying because her left eye twitched. It always does that when she lies.

Maybe she is right though. Perhaps those two people have been in my dreams for so long that now I think of them as real.

Or it could be this house that makes me confused.

It’s spooky.

Before he died, my grandfather, my mom’s dad, once told me that ghosts lived here with us. I don’t know if that’s true because I stay inside my room when it gets dark. I don’t ever want to find out.

A cool wind blows through the thin gap of the concealed door, making me shiver. If I think about ghosts wandering the halls of this house, I will permanently have the heebie-jeebies.

That’s why I love my hideout. It’s cozy and small, and far nicer, safer, than this stupid, oversized house I’ve never felt warm in ever since my grandfather died.

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