Somewhere Over the Freaking Rainbow - By L.L. Muir Page 0,2

all her white layers of clothes. Her pants looked like white jeans. She wore an off-white t-shirt that showed in the V of her same-colored sweater. Her rough-looking coat was the color of pencil lead. Her boots looked like moccasins and matched the fringe of her scarf—pale and bumpy like the inside of an orange peel. A She-eco-nut. Just like the rest. Just like you’d find all over the world.

But she wore plain pretty well. Whether it was the confidence in her walk, or her steady gaze when she’d finally noticed him, he couldn't say. One thing was for sure, though. She’d gotten his attention and he was never going to get it back.

Especially when she teased him with crop circles and secret meetings in the middle of the night.

The tall one finally moved away from her and walked toward the center of the circle. His movements were slow, deliberate. Bent corn stalks tugged at his robes as he passed over them, but he kept going until he reached the center.

Jamison was relieved there wasn’t an altar in sight.

The Somerleds cleared their throats, then began...singing...kind of. It was more like the sound an orchestra makes when the musicians are warming up, only with voices.

A choir? Some stupid kind of choir practice at three o’clock in the morning? Something that couldn't be sung in a building somewhere, but in a crop circle?

Jamison smirked. How lame. Oh, he was going to kill Ray.

The noise sharpened, the voices blending better. He'd stay and watch for another minute, then he was going to bed. Ray could live until morning when they met up at school. If this was his idea of a joke, he’d be dead before first period.

Jamison glared out at the scene, disgusted that he’d lost sleep for this. He didn’t know what he’d been hoping to see, maybe a body being buried or some blood-drinking ceremony, but not this. Okay, the crop circle was pretty cool, but that was it.

He was about to turn away when the man in the center suddenly started getting taller and taller. Only he wasn’t growing—he was rising in the air!

With the lights from the far side of the circle it was clear there was nothing lifting him up!

But then, twenty feet in the air, nearly straight out from the tree house, he...exploded.

Fiery pieces of him flew in all directions and disintegrated, like a meteor burning up in the atmosphere. But there had been no sound. The singing had stopped short when the guy exploded.

Holy crap! They blew him up!

“Holy shit!” Ray's voice rose through the drop door and none too quietly.

Immediately, light hit the tree house—not small lights but more powerful beams, like cop flashlights. The Somerleds started moving back into the corn, heading not in the directions they came from, but toward the trees! Some started to run.

Jamison's heart splashed into his bladder and he thought he'd piss his pants. He hurried to the hole and leaned over.

“Get out of here!” he hissed. “They're coming.”

But Ray had already noticed. He was nearly sitting on Burke's head as the two climbed down as fast as the awkward rungs would allow. If Jamison tried to follow, he'd get to the ground just in time to welcome the neighbors to his back yard.

Crap!

Would they come looking in the tree house?

He peeked out the window. Long robes didn't seem to be slowing anyone down. They looked like a search party after escaped convicts and they didn’t appear concerned about the fence, either. Did they expect to run right through it?

Hell yes, they'd come looking in the tree house.

Suddenly he remembered the other trap door, but this one opened onto the roof. Jamison had “remodeled” when he'd inherited the hideout. Although with no handholds of any kind, and nothing to keep him from falling off the roof, the opening had only been used to hide contraband when Grandpa started huffing and puffing his way up the tree.

Jamison moved beneath it, thankful to still be deep in the shadows where the flashlight beams didn’t reach him.

No go. Crap crap crap. He’d remembered the hole being so much larger.

The side window was barely big enough, but he wasn’t complaining. He thrust one leg through and found a fat branch for his shoe. With a bit of maneuvering he found enough footholds to make his way to the roof and ease himself onto it, flattening as best as he could. The wood was cold and would have been smooth if not for