Emma and the Minotaur Page 5

her answer.

  “What do you think you’re doing disappearing like that? You’ve been gone since before lunch! I was worried sick and I thought I had lost a student. Come with me right now,” she said. “You’re in serious trouble.”

  Back in the classroom, Miss Robins gave Emma a long speech with lots of yelling, and she marked strike number two beside her name on the Strike Board. She also wrote a note for Emma to take to her father regarding her bad behaviour.

  “Now go to your seat and just wait there quietly for the rest of lunch,” she said in the end.

  3 Wizard Falls

  On Thursday nights, Emma’s father taught a night class from seven to ten. Normally, he would come home at four in the afternoon and wait until after dinner before returning to the school but today he had called the house shortly after Emma and Will had arrived. He'd said that he had a lot of work to do and that he would be staying at the university until the late class was over.

  Will had filled a plate with yesterday’s ham and asparagus and he’d taken it to his room.

  Emma hadn’t felt much like eating or doing anything at all.

  It had started to rain just after they'd arrived at their house. It was now six o’clock and the rain hadn’t relented. The clouds only looked angrier as darkness and night approached.

  Emma was sitting on her window sill watching the falling raindrops as they splashed into potholes. Now and then, there was lightning, and it illuminated the street and cast flitting shadows across the faces of the houses across the road.

  Emma was holding the note from Miss Robins in her hand as she watched the rain. During the best times, the rain made her sad. All that had happened that day only made things worse. She wanted to talk to her father because he was always comforting when one of Emma’s moods snuck up on her but she didn’t want to give him the note from Miss Robins or tell him about her two strikes.

  Emma checked the clock on the wall and made a decision. She went to the closet beside the front door and put on a yellow raincoat and a pair of red boots. There was a flashlight hanging on the wall and she grabbed it and put it into one of the coat’s oversized pockets.

  She opened the front door and went out on the street in the rain. For a moment, she stood there and looked up to the sky and felt the cool raindrops as they fell on her face. She decided that being in the rain was nowhere near as bad as sitting inside watching it.

  There were many puddles and potholes on Belle Street and Emma jumped into most of them as she made her way down the street and onto Lockhart Road.

  To get to the University of Saint Martin, Emma could walk down Lockhart to Glendale Avenue and then turn right, straight up The Hill, but the journey would be shorter if she cut through the forest. She wasn’t allowed in the woods after dark but she figured that having the flashlight with her meant that it wouldn’t be all that dark in there. Not really.

  When she reached the edge of the forest, she took the flashlight out of her pocket, pushed the switch, and peered into the darkness of the trees. She stood for a moment and listened to the whisper of the wind among the leaves and the dripping of the rain.

  When she was satisfied that it was perfectly safe, Emma went in under the trees. The wet leaves underneath her feet made squishing noises as she walked.

  Emma found that she wasn’t getting nearly as wet in there as she had been on the road. A clear indication that taking the shortcut through the forest had been a good idea.

  Some moments later, her flashlight started to fail.

  The flashlight blinked off and on twice before its light became dim. Without knowing why they did it, Emma tapped the back end of it with her palm like she had seen grown-ups do. It didn’t work. She didn’t want to be stuck in the forest if the light went out, so she tried to judge if it would be faster to go on or to turn around and go back.

  Before Emma could make up her mind, there was movement ahead that gave her pause. It had only been a shadowy blur among the trees but it had startled her.

  “Deer?” she said and shone her light toward where the motion had been, but she saw nothing. She took another step forward and the shadow moved again. It didn’t look like a deer.

  “Mr Milligan?” she said and backed away. There was no response. She kept her eye on the shadow and continued to back away slowly, now and then turning her head to look behind.

  Lightning flashed and she saw a man with horns.

  Emma turned and ran as thunder struck.

  She was afraid to look back in case the horned man was chasing her. She ran into a branch and its leaves slapped at her face. There was a rotten tree trunk in her way that she saw at the last moment. She managed to jump over it, though she almost slipped and fell when she landed on the other side of it.

  Emma's mad dash soon brought her out of the forest. She saw the light of a street lamp as she slipped on wet leaves and tumbled forward. Her momentum carried her out onto the road where she landed hard on hands and knees. The flashlight broke into three pieces and the batteries flew away.

  “Okay,” Emma said, “that was dumb. It probably was a stupid deer.”

  She crawled to the side of the road and sat down. Her jeans were torn. Her hands and knees were bleeding. On top of how she was already feeling, she now felt silly. The bright side of it was, she thought, that if she showed up to see her father looking like that then he might take it easy on her.

  She stood up and turned down the road toward The Hill. The wind and the rain beat at her face and pulled at her coat. She walked along the forest for a couple of minutes until it gave way to houses. Emma thought it was interesting that the people who lived in those houses had Glenridge Forest right in their backyard.

  She arrived at Glendale Avenue and, to her right, there rose The Hill, the steep incline over which the road had been built.

  The way up The Hill was a walk of fifteen minutes, but in the bad weather it took Emma twenty-five. There weren’t many cars on the road but some still passed her in both directions. Next to each sidewalk, on either side of the road, there were railings that separated them from the clumps of trees that grew beyond.

  At the top of The Hill, the ground levelled off, and the property that belonged to the University of Saint Martin began. The buildings that made up the school stood on the right side of the street. Across, to the left, there was a residence building for students, as well as a plaza full of fast food restaurants.

  Emma turned into the school grounds and entered the mathematics building. She left a trail of water as she made her way to the second floor and into the physics department. When she reached the office of Dr William Wilkins, she found that his door was closed. She tried to open it but it was locked. She knocked and there was no answer.

  Around the corner there was a clock on the wall and it showed that the time was close to seven.

  “Class time,” Emma said. She leaned back against the wall and slid down to the floor, sitting in her own puddle.

  Two hours later, Emma woke up when she felt someone pick her up off the floor. She opened her eyes, blinked at her father, and then she put her arms around him. He carried her into his office where he sat down on his chair and held her there for a long while.

  “Dad,” Emma said eventually.

  “Yes, dear?” he said.

  “I caught the wizard boy.”

  “Oh? And what happened?”

  “He didn’t want to be my friend,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Emma.”

  “No, it’s okay,” she said. “I know why. I realized something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The boy’s name is Jake Milligan,” she said. “Same last name as Andrew Milligan.”

  Her father nodded. “I see,” he said.

  When they were ready to leave, he locked his office and they walked out of the school together.

  The rain had stopped and, as they walked down The Hill, Emma told him all about the day’s events, including how she had left class early and how sh
e had waited for Jake outside the school. She told him about how she had tried to get to the university by taking the shortcut through the forest and the fright that she had received, along with some scrapes and bruises.

  When she showed him the teacher’s note, he shook his head.

  “I guess you already paid enough for it,” he said. “But we’ll still have to have a chat on another day.”

  They were almost home when he asked her what she planned to do about the boy. “Are you going to leave him alone?” he said. “What did you call that place where he goes?”

  “Wizard Falls,” Emma said. “Because he’s a wizard and there are waterfalls there. I think I know how I’m going to become his friend, Dad.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “I’m going to buy his friendship.”

  The following day, Emma stayed home from school.

  She woke up after Will and her father had already left. The bandages that had been on her knees during the night had fallen off and her sheets had little stains of blood on them.

  She showered and put on new bandages before she got dressed and went into the kitchen to make herself toast with peanut butter. There was a note on the table and it had one word on it.

  “Rest!” said the note. Emma took it and put it in her pocket.

  After her small breakfast, she went back to her room and pulled out an old yellow lunchbox from under her bed. The paint was chipped and the metal was rusty in places. It had belonged to her father. Inside, among other odds and ends, there was a small fortune in bills