Let's Play a Game

Let's Play a Game (35)

If this kid genius couldn’t find out who was trying to hurt me, then I didn’t know who could. He might have been eleven, but he was smarter than any adult I had ever met. He was definitely going to go places in life; there was no use in denying that.

He sat down right between Zach and me, purposely being obnoxious, but I didn’t even care right then. He was helping me, and that was all that mattered. I didn’t care what he had to do to get answers just as long as he helped me out.

“What're the names of the guys that kidnapped you?” was the first thing he asked the two of us.

I swallowed at the memory. “Tommy and Sid.”

“And where did they take you?”

“To a warehouse,” Zach answered for me, seeing that answering these questions was already getting a little too difficult for me. I never thought I’d be the kind of person to react like this when remembering traumatic events. I guess I was wrong. “There was a big S painted on the front of the warehouse, and on the back of the van that they used to kidnap her.”

Ethan stayed silent, and I could tell he was trying to process this information with everything and everyone he knew. I was surprised he wasn’t using a computer or something, but I guess I shouldn’t have been. All Ethan really needed was his mind.

“That big S,” the little Deveraux began now. “Do you have any idea who it might be? Do you know anyone that might want you dead?”

“We think it's either my mother's family or Aveline,” I gulped now.

Ethan looked at the two of us as if we were crazy, and it kind of felt like we were. “Aveline?” he asked us. “That girl in the backyard that's always crawling all over Zach whenever she’s around him?”

I couldn’t help but make a flat face as I said, “Yep.”

“What the hell is she in the house for?”

Zach almost looked embarrassed. “She kind of invites herself over.”

“Gross,” Ethan concluded, a scowl on his face as he glanced off in the direction of the back door. I couldn’t help but agree with what he had said. “Anyway, have you ever met your mother's family?”

I wish I could have said that I did. It would have made everything so much easier for all of us.

“I don't know,” I shrugged, since that was the truth and there was nothing I could do to change it. “Maybe I met some of them when I was little I did and I just don't remember.”
“Maybe you have net them and you just choose not to remember,” Ethan now thought out loud, and now I couldn’t help but look at him as if he was crazy. How could I not remember meeting my mother’s family? Why would I repress the memory when they hadn’t even done anything that horrible to me?

“What?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Maybe you've met them and you repressed the memory or something,” Ethan tried to explain now, as if I was the stupidest person he had ever met in his entire life. I kind of felt like I was right then. “It happens.”

How was he eleven years old? He knew so much more than I did. He knew too much for his own good.

“I think I would remember... not remembering something,” I informed him, and I didn’t really know if what I had just said made sense or not.

Ethan rolled his eyes at me. “Just as clever as always, I see.”

I said nothing to this insult, since it wasn’t like it used to be. He wasn’t trying to be mean to me anymore, but he was so used to it that sometimes it just slipped out. And it didn’t bother me any longer, because I knew he didn’t mean to say it.