Page 30 of Halo

“I want Mommy.” He rocks back and forth.

“Hey-hey-hey, Grady? Grady, I’m a friend of your mom’s. My name is—”

“I want Mommy!”

I chew on my lip. And then it dawns on me. “Grady, I’m Mommy’s friend.” He pauses as I continue. “My name is Nick, and I’d really like to be your friend.”

He cautiously peers up at me, pushing up his glasses. “You want to be my friend?”

I grin. “I do.”

He slowly stands up and studies me for a minute. “You talk funny, Nick.”

I chuckle. “I do?”

“Yeah. You talk like a cowboy.”

Oh, good grief. “Well, that makes sense. I’m from a place called Cowtown.”

He freezes, deep creases forming on his young forehead. “Do they have cows there?”

“They do. Way back before you were ever born, cowboys would guide cows through the town so they could send them all over Texas.”

“Whoa,” he says under his breath. “That’s a lot of cows—hey … hey, Nick … did you know that there used to be a lot of dinosaurs?”

“Oh.” The question catches me off-guard. “Well, uh … yeah. I guess you’re right. There used to be a lot of dinosaurs.”

“Uh-huh …” He bends down, grabbing the remains of his stick. “They were here before I was born.”

“Yeah, they’re, uh … they’re pretty old, huh?”

“Uh-huh. They’re so old that … that … well, they were probably here before you were born.”

Thanks, kid. “Yeah, that’s pretty old.” I chuckle. “Hey, partner, can I—”

“What does partner mean?”

His deep brown eyes pierce me with curiosity. Partner. Don’t children work in partners at school?

“Well, a partner is someone who’s on your team. In old cowboy movies, the hero always has a partner who helps them get the bad guy.”

“I’m your partner?”

I shrug. “If you want to be. I can be your partner too, if you’d like.”

Grady’s eyes brighten as he adjusts his glasses.

“What’s with those kids?”

His face falls as he begins tapping his stick against the rungs of the ladder. “They don’t like me.”

“Don’t like you?” I scoff. “Do they even know you?

Grady nods, tracing a bolt on a metal post. “They go to my school.”

“Are they mean to you there?”

He pauses. “Sometimes. They call me ‘baby’ and ‘little’ and ‘small.’”