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  I headed to The W&W with thirteen dollars and forty-three cents in my pocket, and if it got to be a life or death situation, I thought I might be able to part with a couple bucks to buy something for Grandma. She was worth a couple bucks.

  Looking back, I should’ve just stolen flowers from behind the church. Suffering the wrath of God and Grandma would have been a whole lot easier than what happened just because I wandered downtown that day.

  Hinton’s was packed with people. If I went inside to get the old woman’s favorite candy bar, chances were someone would tell me to pull up my pants. But I didn't feel like being ordered around. In a place like Hazelton, everybody who knew your grandma had the right to order you around. I think it was a law.

  The next store was empty. Naked mannequins stood in the back, and if you put your face to the glass, you could see them, but I didn't want to give anybody a reason to talk to me. I felt like peeing in someone's Cheerios, but I didn't feel like talking.

  I went into the next big business, just to get off the street, but turned around and came right out again. It was a fabric store. Nothing in there but bossy women. Even if they sold scissors, it would ruin my Saturday to get pushed around by teacher-types. It was summer. I didn’t have to put up with that.

  I walked kitty-corner through the intersection, just so no one would figure which door I'd just come out of. Most of the next block was abandoned businesses with parts of their names and logos scratched off the windows. It looked like kids had tried to make dirty messages out of the letters, but mostly they didn’t make sense.

  Just before the corner, I looked up and saw the sign on a place I'd always wanted to go into. The Gladiator's Sword. Lights were on inside. A bright red and blue sign hung on the inside of the window, promising me they were open.

  Cool.

  A skinny guy stood in the display window, pinning strings to the ceiling. I wondered what he would hang there. A fat lady was handing him stuff and talking him to death. I couldn't tell what they were selling, but I was sure I could find something inside that Grandma would like better than flowers. And it was far enough from the middle of town I didn’t feel watched.

  I backtracked to the door. The Gladiator’s Sword shared an opening with a fireplace store, and the fireplace guy, standing in his doorway, looked a little disappointed I wasn't there to see him. What did he think—that a 12-year-old kid would be shopping for a fireplace? Not.

  I was five steps inside before I realized I'd been tricked.

  You’d think a place called The Gladiator’s Sword would sell stuff like swords, knives, or maybe bows and arrows, right? I thought there would be shields and suits of armor and wicked-looking shin guards. But I guess there wasn’t much need for that kind of stuff in Hazelton. I spent my summers there, with Grandma, while my parents traveled around digging bones and broken pottery out of the dirt in really miserable places. The closest thing to armor I ever saw in Idaho was a cowboy hat and maybe the leather chaps the guys wore in the July Rodeo.

  The Gladiator’s Sword—it makes me sick to say—turned out to be a freaking flower shop!

  “I’ll be right with you, hon.” The fat lady put down the stuff she was holding for the skinny guy and headed in my direction. She came at me so fast, I couldn’t just turn and leave. She looked like the type to follow me down the street if I tried to get away.

  I looked around the store, trying to find an excuse for being there and saw metallic balloons flattened against a wall.

  “I need a balloon,” I blurted.

  She veered away just as I was about to be crushed.

  “You betcha, you just tell me which one. The mylars are three dollars. The latex are seventy-five cents.”

  I didn’t know what latex was, but seventy-five cents sounded good.

  “I’ll take latex.”

  “What color?”

  I thought Grandma might like purple. But a video popped onto the screen in my head. It was of me, skipping through town with a purple balloon. It didn’t matter what color I imagined the balloon, I still looked stupid. I couldn’t think. Maybe I looked like I was trying to decide on a color, but really, inside my head, the screen went blank.

  The fat lady waited. She didn’t tap her foot. She didn’t look at her watch. She just waited. Finally, I looked up at her.

  She must have seen something desperate in my eyes and leaned forward on the counter. “Why don’t you tell me what the balloon is for and maybe I can help.” That’s when I started liking her.

  “It’s my grandma’s birthday.”

  “Oh? And who’s your grandma?”

  “Faye Harmon.”

  “Oh, I know Faye! You’d be Keefer then. Pleased to meet you, Keefer. I’m Bessie.”

  “Hello.”

  “Now, your grandma likes purple.”

  “Yeah. I know.” That video of me and the purple balloon was back. “Can we put it in a bag?”

  “Oh, I see. You don’t want to be seen with a purple balloon, ‘zat it?” She looked under the counter and brought out a big green sack. “You fill out one of those little cards while you’re waiting. They’re free.” She pressed the balloon onto a nozzle, but nothing happened. “I gotta switch out this tank. It will take just a minute.” She disappeared into the back room.

  The skinny guy was singing along with the radio, but he held pins between his teeth so the words sounded a little angry. It was funny, but I didn’t laugh. I was embarrassed to death. I just knew someone was going to see me coming out of there...out of a flower shop!

  I signed a card and left it on the counter. I wasn’t going to look at the stuffed animals, even though there were bright green dragons and frogs on the shelves. There were racks of cards I didn’t want to read, and there were fancy bags of chocolate I didn’t want to waste my money on. I really didn’t want to look around, but Bessie was taking so long.

  There was a big book lying open on the counter, facing me, so I took a look. I shouldn’t have. I know that now. I should have run out the door, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t have reached out and turned the page, but I did. And there, in the middle of the book were the prettiest flowers I’d ever seen. At least, Grandma would think they were the prettiest. I didn’t care about flowers, of course. But there were tons of different kinds of blossoms with one thing in common; they were all purple. Light purple, dark purple. Bluish purple, pinkish purple.

  Nothing could make Grandma happier.

  Just then, I heard a boom and the door flew open on the giant white box that sat in the middle of the shop. Half the size of a school bus, it took up a lot of space. The side facing me had a bunch of glass doors, and just inside those doors were flower arrangements of different sizes and colors. On the other side of the flowers stood an orange wall so you couldn’t see any further into the box. It had to be a giant refrigerator.

  The boom had come from a huge man kicking the door open on the end, like an emergency exit on the back of that school bus. He ducked his head to come out, even though the opening was as tall as any regular doorway. His left arm hung limp at his side with blood smeared across his bulging muscles. Sand dumped from the toes of his monster-sized sandals when he stopped. A large lumpy bag hung on his back. Piled on top of his shield, or attached to the guy’s body, were all the things I had hoped to find in The Gladiator’s Sword. All the weapons, all the armor.

  But the thing I hadn’t expected to find in Hazelton, Idaho, even in a place called The Gladiator’s Sword, was a real live Gladiator.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Fun facts about the story

  Look for

 

 

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