Feeding Frenzy (Watty Award Winner)

Blue Cheese Sandwich: Chapter Thirty-Seven

"Are my parents in danger?" Tonya's hands trembled and she gripped the steering wheel tightly.

"Turn this car around and I'll tell you." Aunt Helen cleared her throat noisily and opened the window. She held her face in the wind, letting stray hairs dip and dance.

Tonya glanced at the back of Aunt Helen's head. Her white ponytail was thinning, revealing pale scalp, like the ground of a replanted forest. When had she lost so much hair?

Tonya turned the car around and continued north, waiting for her Aunt to finally speak.

"Well?"

Aunt Helen sighed and stared straight ahead. "When I found out Len was back in town, I sent my sister on an eco tour of Australia. Your parents will be camping for two months."

"Why haven't they phoned?"

"Every week I email them that you're happy but busy, and don't have time to talk. Besides, they don't have much internet in the Outback."

"Is that why they won't answer my calls?"

"I convinced them not to bring their mobiles, oh, and I made them forget your number."

"You can do that?"

She laughed and Tonya felt like a little girl again, overawed by grown-up powers.

"They're going to be mad at me when they return and remember selling the house."

"What?"

"I had to pay for their trip somehow."

"They told me you were in the hospital, that they were moving to Toronto to visit you. They wouldn't let me see you, said you didn't want me to. Mom was really clear about that."

"I've done things I'm not proud of. When my sister finds out I manipulated her mind..."

"Let me talk to them."

"No. This is for their own good. If they come back, I can't protect them. I may not be in hospital right now, but I'm still very sick."

Tonya kept one eye on oncoming traffic to watch for help. Maybe her Aunt wasn't working for Waldock, but this was wrong. Was she any better than her enemies? Messing with people's minds was evil. And an eco tour? Tonya couldn't imagine her mother going on a trip without nice bathrooms, boutique shopping, and art galleries. Whenever her father suggested camping, she said 'she could rough it in Loon Lake if she wanted to, she just never wanted to.' Two months of camping felt like proof of her Aunt's evil intentions.

They drove until Tonya complained her stomach was growling. She hadn't eaten since breakfast.

Her Aunt got this funny look. "Are you sure that's all it is?"

"I can't promise I'm not infected," said Tonya. "I was in the forest with the dead body of Professor Rudolf." She explained her suspicions to Aunt Helene.

"You have good instincts. Pull over here. Stop. Now!" She indicated a gravel lane so overhung with trees, Tonya would have driven past it. They turned off the highway.

"I was hoping for a restaurant," she said, pulling up beside a weathered Victorian farm house.

"First we have to visit a doctor."

# # #

The sagging porch and moss-covered shingles looked more suited to a farmer, and not a successful one. As they waited on the porch, which was overrun by giant carpenter ants, Tonya asked: "Can't you drive back to Loon Lake and see a real doctor?"

"Shhh. The walls have ears."

Once again her Aunt didn't want to discuss things. Working summers in the Herbal Healing Shoppe, her Aunt often demanded quiet, especially when her teenaged niece asked about magic. It was something one didn't mention openly in Loon Lake, but Tonya felt it moving through the Shoppe, below the surface of things. Before that summer, she had associated magic with luck charms, New Age prayers, and placebo love potions.