Roar of Dragons

[Sig – 13 years]

I stab the bed of the rusted-out truck with a very thick stick, then jab another part with it. This is a little bit fun and I do it until I've attacked the entire bed. Once I finish that, I whack the top of the cab a few times. I then jump on the bed a few times before jumping up onto the roof and testing its ability to hold my weight.

"This one seems good!" I call to Carter.

"Cool!" He says from where he's watching Tate, who's hanging from a ledge. "I think that's everything. Right, Mr. Cox?"

We're checking sturdiness of things right now. Since Tate can use float magics, he's keeping it ready for activation at all times while checking to see if different surfaces and ledges are safe for grabbing. That way, if they break under his weight or when he lands on them, he can trigger the spell and immediately begin floating rather than falling and getting hurt.

It's only been about forty-five minutes or so since we started and we've still got quite a bit more to check. Even though the videos are around fifteen to twenty-five minutes in length, they apparently usually spend at least an hour to an hour and a half checking to make sure things are safe when doing freerunning videos in places like this.

Which I think is really cool, even if a bit boring. They're wanting to have fun but not risk hurting themselves too much. Our types of fun are a little bit different, but I always try to make sure I'm safe, too.

I hop out of the bed of the truck and go to pick up my whacking stick when I notice another truck… this one driving toward us over the uneven road.

It's Mr. Michaels's truck.

Great. He came out here when I wanted to be away from everyone for a little bit. Except it looks like there are more in there than just him?

Wait. All three dads are in the truck, and I think Aunt Rachel is, too. This is stupid! Why can't I just hang out with other people? Is this about me getting mad at Mr. Thompson for overstepping his authority on me? Because he's not my boss for stuff unrelated to me hanging out at his place or when he takes me places! Him being an adult doesn't grant him universal authority rights over kids! Aunt Rachel and I were going to talk this evening, too!

There's another truck behind that I'm unfamiliar with and when both trucks stop, everyone gets out. The back truck has four men that I don't recognize in it and that makes me really nervous.

"This is excessive!" I tell Aunt Rachel. "I told you I'll be home later, and you agreed! And-"

"Bas," she interrupts me.

"No!" I say. "I need to say it! You can't-"

"Bas!" She runs over and grabs me, pulling me into a hug, causing my next words to get muffled.

I start whacking her with the stick in my hand. Not hard, just enough to let her know to stop. She still takes a few moments to do so while the dads and other men approach more slowly.

"Rachel," Mr. Thompson says.

"Right," she lets go of me. "Can you go to the trucks, Bas?"

"No."

"Bas," she puts a hand on the back of my head and rubs it a little. "Just for a minute. We need to talk with him," she indicates Mr. Cox. "For a minute and-"

"That's not going to work," Mr. Thompson says. "I can see it on his face. Sig, if you don't listen to us, you won't be allowed to hang out with our sons for the rest of the summer."

"What?" I ask. "That's not fair! I'm allowed to come out here and play and-"

"Now," he says very firmly.

"You're not my dad!"

I stomp over to the truck and slam myself against it as I cross my arms over my chest and glare at the dads. Mr. Thompson looks at Mr. Michaels and gives a small nod and a slight jerk of his head in my direction. They're being jerks for no reason! What is wrong with them?

Mr. Michaels does the head-jerk thing to one of the men I don't know, and the two of them walk over to me while the other three men I don't know, the other two dads, and Aunt Rachel approach Mr. Cox. Tate and Carter are told to step away – but not come over to me – and that just makes me even madder. I can't even hang out with my friends for some stupid reason!

"Sig," Mr. Michaels says. "This is William, he works at the same hospital I'm based out of."

"I'm not hurt!" I say. "I was doing just fine until you showed up!"

"I'm not that type of doctor," Mr. William tells me. "I'm more of a specialist examiner."

"So?"

"You told your aunt-" Mr. Michaels begins.

"That I would be home by dinner!" I snap. "And I made sure she knew I was fine!"

"Sig," he says. "I understand your upset, but you need to let me explain things. If you don't listen, hangouts are banned. This is a very serious matter."

I glare at him more.

"You told your aunt that you were hanging out with some boys from ranches," he says. "And that you've been up there before. None of us have ever heard of rancher boys you've hung out with before-"

"I can have friends who aren't your kids, you know!"

"Yes, I do," he says. "However, that immediately concerned us because we know all of the ranching families around here. We'd have known if it was any of them. We asked our sons, and they told us they've never heard of these other boys."

"So you think they don't exist?" I ask. "What, that I'm hallucinating? He a psychologist, then? I'm not hallucinating, you can see them right there!"

I gesture to Tate and Carter, who are looking pretty nervous. Mr. Michaels lets out a big sigh.

"Your aunt contacted your parents-"

"What, so now I'm getting grounded because you guys can't understand that I WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE RIGHT NOW!"

"Sig," he says. "I understand that you're upset right now, but please listen to what I'm saying."

"No!"

"So you don't want to hang out with Connor, Sam, and Isaac again until school starts?"

I glare at him.

"They confirmed that you've gone to the ranches before," he says. "They weren't sure how often or for how long-"

"Once a summer for the past six summers," I tell him. "For a week at first, but only a day the last three times because of hanging out with Connor and his dad all summer. I did like going for a week. And this whole thing is so stupid! Why are you guys doing this? Why can't I just hang out with my other friends without you all coming here and getting in everyone's faces? You're all being jerks and I hate you! Just leave me alone!"

Mr. Michaels lets out a heavy sigh again as he grabs my arm to prevent me from stomping off.

"Sig," his grip is too tight for me to break free. "We looked up the ranches. Mr. Cox – we know that's him from the picture on his ranch's website – runs a mindwave cattle ranch. Ranchers tend to need to know magics which can help them deal with their animals."

"Yeah," I glare at him some more. My arm hurts from trying to break free and he's still not let go "They know mind magics because their cattle can emit bursts of mental energy that can hurt you when they get stressed. It's just mind barriers, though. Tate knows how to do float magics, too, but that was just for fun."

"Right," he says. "But if they know one magic in a school of it, they might know others."

"You mean like telepathy?" I ask. "Yeah! Tate knows that, too. Last time we talked about it, Carter – that's the other kid – was bummed about not being able to do it. Mind magics are apparently really difficult to learn if you don't have an affinity for it. More so than normal for magics you don't have affinities for. I don't see why that means you have to come out with a bunch of random people or hurt me for not wanting to listen to you"

He's taking forever to get to the point, but at least he lets go of my arm. The look he gives me warns me that he'll grab me again if I try to leave, so I glare at him again while crossing my arms over my chest.

"You tend to talk about who you hang out with with our sons," Mr. Michaels tells me. "And yet you've never mentioned these two before. Your parents have mentioned that you ask permission at least once a year to go to their ranches – I was going to say that before you interrupted me – but that they have only met their parents during the pickups and dropoffs."

"So?" I ask.

"So," he emphasizes that word. "Putting all of this information together, we became concerned that they might have used mind magics on you to keep you quiet."

"What?" I jerk my head back, only to whack it against the truck since I'm still right beside it. "That's ridiculous!"

"It might be," he says. "But we wanted to make sure you're safe, Sig. William here is a mind examiner. He's the only specialist in the area who can check a person's mind to see if they've been influenced by mind magics. He won't read your memories or thoughts, but we want him to check to see if there is magic influencing your mind."

"Well, they didn't use anything, so no!"

"Sig," Mr. Michaels says. "Mind magic can be used to make someone not realize it's been used. To erase or hide memories."

"Did my parents approve of you wanting to do an exam?"

"They don't need to," he grabs my arm to stop me from leaving.

"Uh… yes, they do," I try to pull free again but he doesn't let me. "You need the consent of my legal guardians to do any form of exam on me. You can't just show up and being a jerkwad, Mr. Michaels! Doing exams without legal permission is illegal, especially when it's invading a kid's mind! When the police-"

"When you first started hanging out with Connor," he says. "And wanted to go on the camping trips with him that his father took him on, Mr. Thompson spoke with your parents. He wasn't aware of the full extent of things yet, but he's a mandatory reporter. And your food situation alone is enough to warrant a call to CPS, but there are a few other things."

"My parents aren't abusing me," I say.

"Sig," he says. "The only reason Mr. Thompson hasn't made that call is because he convinced your parents to give him some legal authority. You were pretty happy and were generally taken care of and he wasn't fully aware of the extent of things. That authority he convinced them to give him doesn't make him your legal guardian or anything like that, but it means he's allowed to take you out of the area without having to speak with your parents and get their permission. He's also able to authorize medical procedures for you. That includes things like having you checked to make sure your mind hasn't been messed with by a mind mage."

I'm not sure if he's being honest or not, but if something like that is possible, then it does sound like something Mr. Thompson would do. He's not my dad, but he does like making sure I'm taken care of and treats me like he's my dad.

"He can do that?"

"He made sure to get that because he was worried about something happening on camping trips," he tells me. "And had a feeling he'd be taking you a lot of places and seeing you a lot. Felt it would be simpler to get semi-permanent authority on that to make things easier. He's never had to use said authority for authorizing medical procedures before, but this is a special case. We're all really concerned that something is happening that even you aren't aware of."

That's why they brought out so many people. They're worried my memories were erased. But the dads aren't mages, they're not even normal fighters. They couldn't do anything… these other men can, can't they? If they looked up the ranches, they'd know that even the kids grow up learning magic, I'm sure. So they brought in reinforcements – and arranging that is what took so long to get out here, rather than just, like, twenty minutes.

No wonder Mr. Michaels is being so mean right now, he's trying to make sure my mind isn't being controlled by someone else and he can't do that if I leave. I'm still mad and upset with him and the others, but I guess it's okay to stay for now.

"I don't want someone going through my mind…"

"I know," Mr. Michaels says. "It's just to make sure you're not being hurt and having the memories erased or sealed. William doesn't need to look at your memories, and he won't hear your thoughts. And your own consent on this doesn't matter. It's an emergency check being performed by someone with authority to authorize it."

They don't need me to agree… I look at Mr. William.

"I've already finished," he says, then looks at Mr. Michaels. "His memories are all his. No traces of being edited, and I couldn't sense any trace of memories missing from something other than natural forgetting. Nothing was sealed. No binds or controls put in place. That said, he's extremely agitated right now-"

"Damn right I am!" I say. "You can't just go in my mind without permission!"

"He had permission," Mr. Michaels says.

"Not mine!"

"You seem to be misunderstanding something," Mr. Michaels says. "He didn't need your permission. This was an emergency check to make sure you weren't under someone else's control, with authorization granted by someone with the power to do so."

"Yeah, well-"

"Sebastian Greyson Bellman," his voice is extremely stern, and I shrink back a little. "Stop interrupting me. Look at it from our perspective: this kid we think of as our son suddenly reveals that he's had friends for years, friends no one has heard of except his parents. And it turns out that one of these kids is from a family of mind mages. Mind mages are people with power over a person's mind. And our son-like kid is allowed to hang out with them in a completely different area despite his own parents having only met the parents, not gotten to know them. Does that look good to you?"

I don't get why everyone is so hung up on someone needing to know where I'm at or who I'm with, but for the rest of it, I guess I kind of understand him.

"I guess not…"

"Right," he says. "We're all just concerned, Sig. We needed to make sure you were okay and not under someone's control."

"So you hired someone to invade my mind without asking?"

"If you were under the influence of mind magic," he says. "Do you really think you'd agree to getting your mind examined for traces of it?"

Well now I just feel stupid.

"Oh."

Mr. Michaels ruffles my hair and pulls me in for a hug. Now that I know what's really going on, I return the hug. I'm still upset they hired someone to invade my mind, but I now get why they did it. They were all just concerned about me and the situation just looked bad from their perspective, since they didn't know Mr. Cox or the other boys.

"Aren't you concerned about someone trying to use mind magic on them?" I look over at Aunt Rachel and the other dads after the hug ends.

"See the man with the gun on his hip?" Mr. Michaels asks.

"Yeah."

"He's a mind mage who specializes in shielding," he tells me. "He's put up a barrier on everyone's minds, just in case, and will know if something touches it. He put one up on you as soon as you were in range."

"Isn't that kind of magic… kind of rare?" I ask. "His services are probably really expensive."

"Very," Mr. William confirms. "I'm based out of the hospital, while he's a federal agent, but we travel all over the northwestern US for our work."

"Mr. Thompson's a children's doctor," Mr. Michaels tells me. "Mr. Richardson's a child psychologist, and I'm a family lawyer. We've dealt with a lot of bad cases and know quite a few federal agents, police officers, and more who live in the area. You running off to be alone for a few hours when you get upset isn't something new and we try to respect your space. You suddenly having friends that no one's heard of before, one of whom comes from a family of mind mages, was extremely concerning. We called in favors to make sure you're really safe. The safety code your aunt used means nothing if a mind magic is at play."

"Because they could use their mind magic to know how to make me respond."

"Correct," he ruffles my hair again.

"This isn't everyone, is it?"

Mr. Michaels laughs.

"This isn't everyone," he says. "The government doesn't mess around when it comes to people using mind magic to control others, and using it on kids is an even bigger issue. This might be enough for a normal mind mage, except people who work magic beast ranches tend toward being on the stronger side. There are several former or active magic special forces members around."

It's pretty cool that I've got friends strong enough to warrant MSF soldiers when there's a safety concern going on. Well, it's probably mostly Mr. Cox they're concerned about but children tend to have strength similar to their parents' at birth. That means that Tate and Carter are pretty strong, too.

Which I knew, I just didn't know they were that strong.

Another thing that's cool is that the dads were so worried about me that they called in favors from people who worked in magic special forces. I mean, it's not cool that they were that worried, but it's cool that they care about me enough that when they get concerned over something like this, they'll do something like that. My parents would just assume everything is fine and I'll be home at some point.

"My parents don't love me."

That comes out before the thought really crosses my mind, and Mr. Michaels suddenly doesn't look comfortable. Why would he look uncomfortable unless my realization is actually true?

"They… they don't, do they?" I ask as I feel tears welling up in my eyes. "My parents don't love me. That's why they don't care about what I'm doing, isn't it? It's the real reason they never bother planning a vacation I'd enjoy, either, isn't it? And why they never really pay much attention to food for me but are always eating out for themselves or ordering in for themselves, isn't it? It's why I have to buy everything for myself, isn't it? It's why they don't take me clothes shopping unless they absolutely have to despite getting themselves new clothes whenever they want, isn't it? It's why I can just disappear for a week and they won't even notice I'm gone, isn't it? It's not that they're sure I'll be fine. It's that t-they don't love m-me, isn't it? T-they d-don't c-care a-about m-me a-at a-all."

Getting the words out by the end is difficult and I'm stuttering a lot. Tears are freely flowing down my cheeks now, too. I slide down so I'm sitting and pull my knees against my chest as I cry into them. All this time, I thought my parents cared about me and loved me but they really don't. I just thought my family was different from my friends' and that's why things were different, but I was wrong, wasn't I?

This isn't supposed to be normal at all. My parents just don't care about me, they don't love me. They probably don't even want me! That's why they were okay with me going to a stranger's ranch. They didn't really care what happened to me. Maybe they were even hoping that I'd disappear so that they wouldn't have to take care of me anymore.

Mr. Thompson sits down next to me and starts rubbing my back. He doesn't say anything at first, just rubs my back as I cry. That makes me feel a little bit better, and I lean into him. It doesn't make me feel fully better and I can't stop crying or thinking about this.

What did I do to make my parents not want me, to make them not love me? I've always done my best to behave and even take care of myself so they don't have to. I do really well in school, too, so that can't be it. I'm healthy and never get arrested, never get hospitalized, and am even ripped from being so fit and active so it's easy to tell I'm strong. I'm social and have a small group of close friends but easily make friends with others, too.

What did I do wrong? I always aim to be the best and manage it fine. But my parents never praised me. I'm even the top student in my class and the dads showed more enthusiasm individually than my parents did combined when I showed off my progress reports and report cards, even if it made their own sons jealous of my grades. I'm even learning magic, which is really hard to do without a proper bloodline, and my parents don't care that I've made progress in it. I can go somewhere I've never been before and leave having made friends, and that's not something just anyone can do.

It has to be something which started when I was little. It just has to be, since things have always been this way.

Is it because I never joined a sport? I don't know if I ever wanted to when I was little, so maybe that's it. Maybe it's because I didn't show interest in sports when I was little and would've been in the super-junior leagues. Because I don't show interest in competitive things. What use is being at the top if it's not a competition? That's got to be it. They don't like that I've never liked being competitive, that I prefer just having fun.

If I joined a sport, would they love me? I'm really athletic already and I can do them all pretty well. If I put real effort in, I'm sure I'd be the best on the team. Would that make them love me?

"What's going on?" Aunt Rachel softly asks.

I didn't hear her walk over and my eyes are too full of tears for me to see, so I just keep my head pressed against my knees while leaning into Mr. Michaels.

"We finished explaining why we were concerned," Mr. Michaels softly responds. "And he guessed there were more people around just in case. I confirmed that there were and he got a happy look on his face, then his expression fell and… he realized about his parents."

Aunt Rachel doesn't say anything, but I'm going to assume that's her who just sat on my other side and is wrapping an arm around me. She pulls herself against me in the hug and rubs my side a little.

It takes awhile for me to calm down enough to be able to talk.

"Aunt Rachel?" I mumble.

"Yes, Bas?"

"If-if I joined a sport and did really well, would they like me?" I ask. "I'm already the top student. And I'm even learning magic. And I make friends easily. So that's the only thing missing, r-right? N-not being the best athlete? I-I'm pretty good at sports, though, and that's without putting in effort. S-so t-they'd love me then?"

"Bas," she rubs my side again and gives me a squeeze. "We were hoping to wait until much later to touch on this subject with you. Until things were more settled and finalized. This is a little bit more blunt than it probably should be, but your parents never wanted a child in the first place. I'm sorry I didn't see the signs when you were very little. If I did, maybe things would be different. When you were small, I took care of you more than your parents did. Your first word was 'Ray', trying to say my name. Your parents were on vacation when you took your first steps. I changed most of your diapers, fed you as a baby, and so much more. But I thought 'once he starts school, things will be easier for them' and didn't think more of it. I'm so, so sorry for not realizing sooner, Bas."

I do remember she was around a lot when I was really small, but I don't remember too much. It was her who was taking care of me as a baby?

"It wasn't until Paul contacted me awhile back," she says. "And told me about what he and the other dads had realized that I started to understand stuff about you and your parents. I knew they hadn't wanted a kid but since they kept you, just assumed they'd changed their minds. Me moving down here? That wasn't to be closer to family."

"It wasn't?"

"You overheard Paul and I talking about it the other day," she says. "But the 'one specific boy' I'm aiming for custody of is you. I moved down here so that you wouldn't be pulled away from your friends. After your parents up and left to go to Niagara Falls – and I realized that you were serious about how they really do that – and then saw what food they'd left, I made a decision then. That's why I wanted you to bring your computer over."

"What do you mean?"

"Sig," she says. "When your parents come back from their vacation, I'm asking them right then to terminate their rights and let me adopt you. The dads have already agreed to use their connections to expedite the process."

"We have plenty of evidence that will make it a surefire case," Mr. Michaels rubs my back a little more. "So even if your parents fight it, which we doubt they will, your aunt is guaranteed to get custody of you."

"Evidence?"

I try to look at him, but my eyes are still full of tears. They're not flowing anymore, but I should probably dry my eyes off. Instead, I just close them and put my head back against my knees.

"Connor, Sam, and Isaac are genuinely curious about what all your parents buy you for food," he says. "They think it's ridiculous and stupid, and they're right. They even make fun of your parents for it, no matter how many times we ask them not to. Don't be mad at them for not telling you about this as we told them in no uncertain terms they're not allowed to, but we've also told them to always ask for you to send pictures of all of what your parents bought if you haven't and to send us the pictures. Paul's also taken pictures of your grocery lists on the fridge and then what they actually got and all of the receipts for groceries that he's gotten you. That normally wouldn't help our case, except for one major detail."

"What's that?"

"You only write down a couple of junk food items," he says. "Most of what you write down is stuff for meals. And what your parents get isn't even that. So it'll show that you're just trying to get food and your parents aren't even supplying that much. We also have your message conversations where you complain about the food sometimes, like when your parents order something from a restaurant and don't even mention it to you and don't order you anything, so you have to find something on your own."

"There are probably a lot of those," I mumble.

"Quite a lot," he agrees. "That's just some of it, and we've got a lot more. But as I said, we don't foresee them fighting it, not after learning from your aunt that they never wanted a child in the first place. The way they act suggests that's still the case and are just trying to do the minimum level of care for you. If Rachel asks them to let her adopt you, they're more than likely going to agree."

"This isn't how we wanted you to learn," Aunt Rachel tells me. "I was honestly hoping to put it off until you were a lot older."

"Even though you were going to adopt me?"

"The explanation we were planning on giving you," she says. "Would have worked if your parents agreed without a fight. It would just be that your parents didn't feel fit to raising a child and have struggled your whole life with how to do it and what to do and often relied on your friends' dads for the actual parenting – which is true – and felt it better if someone else raised you. They wanted it to be a family member you were close to and I agreed to take over that role. That way, you'd not know the truth until their treatment of you was long in the past and you were more emotionally mature. It wouldn't hurt as much, then."

They were trying to do things secretly so that I wouldn't be as hurt and upset and feeling like this. I lean into her and Mr. Michaels moves his hand off my back and ruffles my hair a little. He stays here instead of getting up, and I'm grateful for that. It feels better with both of them.

"So when we were picking stuff out for your house," I say after a minute of us just sitting like this. "And you kept deflecting back to what I wanted for my room there when I kept trying to ask about the foster kid's room… that was because I'm the kid you're wanting to get?"

"Yeah," she squeezes me again, then rubs my arm. "It was really difficult to not tell you that it was you. I wanted so badly to say 'no, Bas, it's not some other kid, it's you, the room that needs setting up is yours because I'm going to try to get you living with me by the end of summer to make sure you're taken care of and always have food without needing to work for it' and so much more.

"That's why I wanted you to stay with me while your parents are gone, too," she says. "To give us both time to adjust to the difference in rules just a little. I pushed things a bit too fast for you, and I'm sorry about that, Sig."

"With wanting to know where I'm going and stuff?" I ask.

"Yeah," she taps her head against mine. "Like I told you before, it just makes me feel better if I know. There's just some big difference between 'oh, he's at the park with his friends' and 'is he at the park? The zoo? The rec center? Did he leave town? Where is he? Oh, my gosh, where he is? Is he okay?' I know there will probably be times you lie about where you're at, but since I won't know you're lying, I'll think you're really at the park and feel fine."

It still doesn't make any sense to me how it matters. Why would she feel better knowing I'm at the park versus not knowing where I'm at.

"Our boys all have to let at least one of us dads know," Mr. Michaels tells me. "And we generally know your location since you're usually with them, so it's always been fine for us. We know that if we don't know where our son is, we can probably just ask one of the other dads and they'll know. And since our boys do it fairly often, we can usually make a guess and don't mind them forgetting every now and then.

"I think your aunt is a bit more affected," he says. "Because she didn't know until recently that unless you were hanging out with our kids, there was a good chance no one knew where you were. In your eyes, that's fine. That's normal. To us, that's concerning as it makes us worry that you would just vanish. It might seem irrational to you, but that's because it's you."

"Mr. Cox said something similar, I think," I say. "I… kind of vented to him earlier. Is-is Mr. Thompson upset I snapped at him earlier? I was really mad."

"A little bit," he says. "But he also understands your situation and accepts that he might have overstepped a little when looking at your perspective. That he should have approached it a little bit more sensitively. He told us he probably should have asked Sam's dad to go instead after Rachel contacted him about you storming off and why."

"About Mr. Cox," Aunt Rachel says. "He said that the boys only see Bas one to three times a year, whenever they stop down here. It took him until Bas was seven to realize something was wrong and that was why he wanted to see about getting Bas somewhere he could eat well at least for a little bit. After talking with my sister and brother-in-law, he apparently contacted children's services, too. Assumed things were fine after that, until he realized that Bas was pretty much unchanged between encounters. Got permission to take him to the ranch the next summer and contacted children's services again. And the summer after that."

"But not after?" Mr. Michaels asks. "They wouldn't have told him about the results of their investigation, if any. I'll have to see if I can get some answers on why nothing was done."

"Thanks," Aunt Rachel rubs my arm and pulls me against her a little bit more tightly for a moment. "He told us that three summers ago, Bas didn't want to hang out for as long because 'of a cool new friend' he wanted to spend the summer hanging out with. He'd also filled out a fair bit and generally looked happier, so he'd assumed that in the five months since the last time they'd seen him, things had changed and Bas was in a different home now. Then that his parents were just better about things, after Bas had to ask them for permission about coming out to the ranches again. Since the food concern was gone, he wasn't feeling it necessary to have Bas out for a week again so the length was determined by that for the last few years.

"Though he did say he noticed Bas filling out a little bit," she adds. "He didn't know he was buying groceries on his own. Or that Bas was taking money from his parents' safe to get it, nor that he's now been doing a bunch of jobs to earn money to buy food. That came up while Bas was complaining to him earlier."

"I didn't know about the safe," Mr. Michaels says. "Sig? You take money from your parents' safe?"

"I did before I started doing jobs for money," I tell him. "And I sometimes still do if I don't have the money to get me groceries. That's why I sometimes got grounded after they got back. It was just 'cause I was getting junk food, though. I didn't know you were having them report that my parents weren't buying groceries when going on vacation. I did kind of feel bad about you guys buying me stuff but I just wanted to complain about it. Maybe I should've waited until after I got some to complain."

That hadn't crossed my mind before.

"You're really like another son to each of us," Mr. Michaels tells me. "We didn't mind so much, and we did usually get your parents to pay us back for it. They seemed to misunderstand what we were asking and thought it was for some party we threw for you boys. Not that we were complaining, since they seemed willing to cover the cost of a party just fine and that made it easy."

"You didn't tell me about that," Aunt Rachel says, and I giggle a little at her tone. "Feeling better now?"

"A little bit, yeah," I try to dry my eyes a bit, though I don't have a shirt on so I can't use it, so it's really just wiping them with my hands and hoping for the best.

"Bas," she says. "Did your parents actually know you were buying junk food? Or do you just assume they knew?"

"I mean, why else would they be grounding me for buying food?"

"For taking money from their safe," she says. "I'll have to ask them about that when they return."

"They never changed the combination," I say. "It's mom's dad's death date."

"That's a really strange date to us," Mr. Michaels comments.

"She disliked how much control he wanted in our childhood," Aunt Rachel says. "And no, he wasn't abusive. She just wanted to have no supervision, no responsibilities, nothing. We all went no-contact with her for awhile, and I entered back into her life because of Bas. She contacted me one day and said she just had a kid and had zero idea what to do and wanted to know if I'd come help her and her husband as they adjusted.

"As much as I wasn't fond of my sister," she continues. "I wanted to make sure my nephew was fine. As I told you three back when you contacted me about Bas's situation, I'd honestly thought it was just them having a rough time with a baby and then a toddler and things would be fine once he was in school. Kids had never been my thing, so I thought it was normal at that stage. And Bas? I'm really sorry for not noticing things sooner. If I had, I would've talked to your parents years ago and gotten them to let me adopt you. I'm really, really sorry for not noticing."

"Okay," I press my head into her. "Thanks, Aunt Rachel. I love you lots."

"I love you, too," she rubs my arm again.

"I-I'll try to let you know from now on," I tell her.

"If you don't know where you're going, who you'll be with, or when you'll be back," she says. "It's okay to say that, too, alright? Just as long as you let me know the where and when whenever you figure it out."

"And Sig?" Mr. Michaels says. "You already know that at least one of the boys texts his dad to let us know when locations are changing, if they remember. I'm sure your aunt will be fine if she knows you're with them, since one of us pretty much always knows, okay?"

"I'll probably still worry my mind off if I don't know," Aunt Rachel tells me. "But if it's something I can ask one of the dads, it's okay. I just need to already know that you're with the boys or the dads, alright?"

"Alright."

We're all quiet for a minute.

"Aunt Rachel?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks for caring about me."

"I can't not," she leans her head against mine. "You're such a sweet kid."

"Also…"

"Yes?"

"I haven't gone by 'Bas' in over three years."

"You'll always be my little Bastian," she chuckles and gives me another squeeze. "But sorry, Sig."

"Thanks."

"Are you feeling a little bit better now?" She asks. "After talking with Mr. Cox, I do feel a little bit better about you hanging out with his kids now."

"Only Tate's his kid," I say. "Carter's the one from the flaremane horse ranch. His last name's 'Martins'. So it's okay if I still hang out with them today?"

"Yeah," she answers. "Do you mind if a couple of us stay as well?"

I do mind, and I don't think she'll change her answer if I say so. But I think she's still a little worried, now that I know what's going on.

"Only if I can have ice cream for lunch."

"How about after lunch," she chuckles.

"Deal!"