That was true. While there were plenty of guys who would be willing to give MacKinnon a wedgie or stuff one of their socks in his mouth or tape him to his locker, none of them could be trusted to keep quiet about doing Noble such a favor. They’d be too proud of themselves and would just have to brag. Or if they were hauled into the office, they’d tell Principal Terashita it was Noble’s idea before the door even closed behind them. So, while the thought of a wedgie had been good for a laugh, it wasn’t much help to Harlan.

Argus sighed. “But we just can’t let MacKinnon pick on Harlan like that. If I find it embarrassing, imagine what it’s doing to Harlan.” Argus could feel the rage creeping into his muscles, along his arms, across his chest, and down his back. He took a deep breath and the feeling lessened, but didn’t go away completely. “We’ve got to do something to stop it.” A pause. “Before something bad happens…to MacKinnon.”

Noble nodded once more. He knew just as well as Argus that Harlan would be able to put up with only so much, before he would fight back. When that happened, Jake MacKinnon would no longer be a problem, but there would be a whole set of new problems to take his place.

“I know we’ve got to stop it,” Noble said, finishing off his milk in a gulp, “but I don’t know how. At least not yet.”

Chapter 3

It was two in the afternoon, and Donna Hughson had almost finished her walk around the north shore of Puntzi Lake. She went out every afternoon with her dog, a black lab named Daisy, that was never far from her side. She’d been living in a cabin just north of Redstone for six years now, having moved there after the death of her husband, John, to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming an artist. When she first moved into the cabin, the people around Redstone considered her to be a bit of a joke; just another rich old city woman wanting to get back to nature or “find herself” in the woods. But the old woman surprised everyone. She stuck it out, put in her own indoor plumbing, and hooked up a generator so she could paint after sundown.

When she first began to show her paintings, no one in town thought much of them. Sure, she could render a flower fairly well, and paint a deer or bobcat so you would know that’s what you were looking at, but it was what she did with her subjects that eventually made people take notice.