Trollhunters Read Free

broken as always and held together with a Band-Aid, and squinted at the key code.
After punching in the seven-digit number, he yanked upward and the steel panels accordioned to reveal a sunny day.
    “Don’t bother,” I grunted. “I’m just going to have to lock them again when we leave.”
    “Sunshine is important to growing boys.” It didn’t sound like he believed it.
    “I’m not growing.” I took after my dad when it came to size and was still waiting for that growth spurt everyone kept raving about. “In fact, I think I’m
shrinking.”
    He fussed with the left wrist button some more before heading out the door.
    “Up and at ’em,” he said. “Breakfast is important, too.”
    It didn’t sound like he believed that either.
    After showering and getting dressed, I found Dad right where I expected him, standing in the living room entrance by the altar to Uncle Jack that was arranged above our electric fireplace. I
call it an altar because I can’t think of a better word. Every inch of the shelf was filled with Jack memorabilia. There were school photos, of course, of kindergarten Jack beaming above a
Lone Ranger
shirt, second-grade Jack happily displaying his various missing baby teeth, fifth-grade Jack sporting a black eye and looking darn proud of it, and eighth-grade Jack—the
final Jack—tan and healthy and looking like he was ready to conquer the world.
    Other objects on the altar were weirder. There was the thumb-operated bell from Jack’s Sportcrest, speckled with rust. There was the bike radio that played its last song in 1969, a
weird-looking contraption sporting a crooked antenna. There were other things that had a brotherly significance only to Dad: a broken wristwatch, a wooden Indian figure, a little chunk of
fool’s gold. Most unsettling, however, was the object right in the center of the altar: a framed milk carton picture of Jack, a black-and-white replica of his eighth-grade photo.
    Dad noticed me in the glass reflection.
    He forced a smile.
    “Hi, son.”
    “Hey, Dad.”
    “Just…tidying up.”
    He held no cleaning liquid, no towels.
    “Sure, Dad.”
    “You want to eat?”
    “Yeah, whatever. Okay.”
    “All right.” He pushed that fake smile to its breaking point. “Let’s do breakfast.”
    Doing breakfast meant cold cereal and milk. There was a time when we ate actual cooked food in the morning, back before Mom had her fill of Dad’s insecurities and walked out. Dad was doing
the best he could, I told myself. We crunched and slurped across the table from each other, faces to our bowls. On occasion he threw glances about the room to ensure that the house’s steel
shutters were locked tight. I sighed and poured myself some more milk. It came from a jug. Dad never bought cartons.
    He kept checking his watch until I was guilted into tossing the rest of my cereal down the garbage disposal. As he tapped his foot by the front door, I hurried into my room, threw on my jacket
and backpack, and punched the key code into the shutters to lock them. Only when I was at his side did Dad begin to unlock the front door.
    It was a ritual I knew by heart. The door had ten locks, each one more impressive than the last. As he shifted bolts and turned keys and slid chains, I whispered along to the same lonely
percussion solo I had been hearing for fifteen years:
click, rattle, zing, rattle, clack-clack-clack, thunk, crunch, whisk, rattle-rattle, thud
.
    “Jimmy. Jimmy!”
    I blinked and looked at him. He stood in the doorway, looking vulnerable in that ill-fitting shirt, a hand clutched to his stomach where his ulcer was acting up right on schedule. I wanted to
feel bad for him, but he was motioning at me with impatient gestures.
    “Get off the porch or the pressure sensors will go off. Now, now, now.”
    I shrugged an apology and made my way past him onto the lawn. I heard the electronic noises of the alarm system being armed, followed by the computerized female voice: “Home