Page 1 of One Bad Knight

1

Kat

Neverhad I experienced so many sleepless nights. Excitement bubbled in my tummy like pop rocks. I slipped out of bed in the middle of the night because I couldn’t sleep again. I would turn eleven in only seven days.

Moonlight filtered in through the French doors, drawing me toward it. I stepped out onto my balcony into the crisp night. Everything was bright from the full moon, so when I looked to the left, the expanse of lawn and gardens stretched out behind the house.

The moon’s twin shimmered in the pond out back. Soon, my dad would be throwing parties outside again. His serious, old friends weren’t very fun, but I loved how they decorated everything in twinkle lights and brought out the chocolate fountain.

My arms crossed on the railing as I listened to the whisper of palm-sized leaves. A massive sycamore tree shot up past my third-floor balcony and was always active with birds and squirrels, but not a single animal chittered right now.

I’d barely seen my dad the last couple months. Nanny Maureen reminded me this morning, as she braided my hair, that my dad was a very important man and working very hard right now.

He was up for re-election, which meant he was almost never in the house, and when he was, he was in his office and not to be disturbed. I needed to be on my best behavior. If I was a good girl, it would help him focus on what was important.

The wind picked up my hair and whipped it around my face, causing goosebumps from the cold and anticipation to rise along my skin.

But my birthday? The whole day was going to be just my dad and me. None of his campaign people, absolutely no work, and I got to decide what we did the entire day. I chose ice cream and a painting class. I almost picked the museum, but people always bothered him, and I’d end up wandering around the exhibit on my own while people took pictures and asked my dad questions.

But on Saturday we would get messy with paints, and make big, beautiful sunflowers I planned on hanging in my room.

As I inhaled a deep breath of spring night air, I found myself locking eyes with a strange boy sitting in my tree.

I reared back, but the two sharp gray eyes remained fixed on me. A scream froze in my throat.

He seemed about my age, but his eyes held the weight and intensity of someone far older. They pierced me like blades and rooted to the spot.

I scrounged up my voice. “What are you doing up here?” I asked.

He didn’t speak, didn’t move, just stared at me.

“I’m Kat. What’s your name? And how did you get up here?” With a quick look down, I confirmed there wasn’t a ladder. I could climb from my balcony into the tree, but the limbs were far too high to get to it from the ground.

Another beat passed before I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes and said, “You aren’t a T-Rex. Just because you aren’t moving, it doesn’t mean I can’t see you.”

His brows furrowed.

I didn’t know how I knew, but I read his expression. “You don’t know what a T-Rex is? You know? Like a dinosaur?”

One of his eyebrows dipped as he frowned. I held my hands out to show size. “You know, massive lizards that roamed the earth before humans? Didn’t you learn this stuff in school?”

At that, he looked away and his muscles tensed. Suddenly I was afraid he would leave. Strange as it seemed, I didn’t want the boy in my tree to leave.

My cheeks grew hot. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I go to a special private school. I don’t know what they teach in other schools. That was rude of me.” My mom told me when I was little that we were privileged, and I had to be sensitive to that.

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t leave like I thought he would. The boy continued to stare at me as if trying to figure out all my secrets.

I didn’t have many. Only the ones in a shoebox under my bed. It held the diary I kept safe with a small key, the half-empty bottle of my mom’s perfume, and one of my dad’s special cigars that I told myself I was borrowing. I didn’t want to smoke it or anything. I just wanted something grown-up and important in the box.

Something in his intense gaze made me feel… special. Like I was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen in his life. I weirdly felt the same way about the boy with sharp eyes in the tree outside my bedroom window who didn’t know about dinosaurs.

A breeze swept through my thin nightgown, and the chill of the bright spring night bit into my me.

Good girls don’t let strange boys sit in their trees in the dead of night.And they certainly don’t invite them into their house.

What was I doing? I wasn't supposed to talk to strangers. But… kids didn’t count. It wasn’t dangerous even if the kid was strange.

“Are you cold?” I asked, unable to help myself.