"This is nonsense!" Dad raised his voice above the conversation, letting his opinion known. Suddenly everyone was quiet.

Shawn was silenced along with everyone else. He was worried speaking up might get him in trouble.

The tension grew along with the silence.

Then, Mom shifted in her seat.

Creeeeeak


Finally, she shot Shawn a glare. "Shawn." She started with unusual formality. "Please explain to your Father why acting is so important."   She said, though it sounded like more of a command than a simple order.

It felt like she was pushing Shawn forward on the Chess board. Of what was, undoubtedly becoming a growing match of contention between two parents with Shawn being used as the sacrificial pawn.

Shawn looked back and forth between Mom and Dad, caught between the two without a way to please both...but then he noticed Mrs. Worthington and an escape hatch occurred. He knew he had to be nice, and cooperate with adults, but sometimes it got complicated which adults to listen to and when. If he didn't do what Mom said here because he listened to something Mom had said before, that didn't make him a bad kid, that just made him a little too eager to please.

He looked up at his Mom, and in his character voice, said, "I'm not an actor, I'm a scoundrel!" And he stood up from his chair and ran up to his room! Hopefully Ralph and Bobby could also escape in the confusion.

"See!?" Shawn could hear Mom shout at Dad as Shawn ran up the stairs. "Look what you've done!"

He could hear arguing as he got to the second floor, the chattering of plates and the screeching of chairs underfoot.

But when he got to his room, everything seemed quiet...

"Ya' alright lad?" Griffix said after a few moments. At first Shawn didn't know where the leprechaun was. Then he saw him emerge from under Shawn's bed.

Shawn tried to ignore the sounds of fighting, to push the pit it opened up in his stomach aside. This was method acting, right? If he pretended it didn't bother him, he wouldn't have to drop character. "I'm fine, Griffix. What are you doing here? You usually come at night."

"I know lad, I know. But I'm here to tell ya' that the new kids 'r here. And to ask ya' a favor, I am. I was hopin' that ya' could help me out, I was."

He headed over to the window. The summer sun was still bright outside, and Shawn watched Griffix's hand reach towards the slitted blinds at the window. One yellow nail parted two blinds opening them for a better view.

"There." Griffix said.

Shawn could see down the road, there was a moving van in front of the house.

"Penelope is movin' in." Griffix confirmed. "I was hopin' ya' could go over tomorrow and tell her 'bout me, lad. I mean, not really tell her 'bout me, but tell her 'bout how there's a story of a monster in the neighborhood that eats kids n' 'tings, if they do bad 'tings. But that it doesn't eat 'em if they right 'tings down" Griffix requested.

"Make it real scary." Griffix requested. Shawn noticed that Griffix was licking his lips.

Downstairs, there was the faint chatter of voices in a deep debate and angry conversation.

Shawn nodded his assent. In terms of things Griffix or the Circus had asked him to do, this wasn't so bad. "Oh, actually, here, I've got an idea..."

He walked over to his schoolbag, and took out an pencil and tore a page from one of his notebooks. He wrote down

I made Mom and Dad fight

 and handed it to the man. "Will this tide you over until tomorrow?"

Griffix took the paper and bit off the corner edge. He smacked his lips and put the rest of the paper in his mouth. "Oh." he said. "It's a good morsel." he agreed, nodding his head, shaggy hair flapping this way and that.

After he swallowed down the paper he went over to the window. "Mighty nice o' ya' lad." he complimented Shawn.

Griffix seemed satisfied by Shawn's gesture. He didn't seem restless or hungry as he described himself the last several times Shawn encountered him. And although it was almost imperceptible, Shawn detected that Griffix seemed a bit more jovial and less animalistic now that he had eaten something.

"Well lad, thanks for takin' care of the story tellin' for me. That should help. I should get goin' though. Anyting' I can do for ya' before I head back down below?" Griffix asked. Shawn knew that 'down below' meant the Circus.

Shawn shook his head. "Not unless you can stop Mom and Dad from fighting..."

Griffix opened his coat for a second to reveal his trough of bottles and elixirs. They jingled together. Then he slowly closed the flap, bringing the coat as a whole closed.

"Ay, I better not." Griffix said. "There's much ta' be done. N' I donna-think it'd be a good 'ting ta' burden ya' with another task before such a large one." Griffix thought outloud.

"Ay, best ta' say, I donna-think now is the time."  Griffix said. "Perhaps we could revisit it later?" He offered.

Shawn looked at the elixirs in Griffix's coat in surprise. "Oh no, it's fine - I was kidding." Though things would be better...no, focus on other things for now.

"As ya' were lad." Griffix said, and he opened the window and jumped out.

When Shawn turned around, Bobby was at the doorway.

"Dad and Mom are arguing. They sent me upstairs."

Ralph came up up behind Bobby, crashing into him clumsily.

"Me t...t...t...too." He said.

The old Bobby might have scolded Ralph and then told Shawn how he couldn't stand him. But this Bobby just smiled and patted Ralph on the head, instantly forgetting that Ralph  had almost toppled him over.

"Yeah, we're both up here Ralph. Hey look!" Bobby pointed to the window. "Oh brother, your window is open Shawn"

Ralph scooted over to the window and looked outside.

"L..l...l...looks like someone is moving in." He mentioned quietly, pointing towards the van down the street that Griffix had let Shawn know about earlier.

Shawn went and leaned out of the window a little, as if getting a better view of the van down the street. He was trying to give a nice, plausible explanation for why the window might be open. "Wow, yeah. I wonder if they'll have more kids?"

"Hey, we should go check it out!"

Shawn glanced back inside, trying to listen to hear if Mom and Dad were still fighting. "Sounds good! But we should sneak out, otherwise Mrs. Worthington might be mad at me for breaking character."

"Sneak out?" Bobby asked, uncertain. The old Bobby would have already been out the window, coming up with lies as to why they didn't do what they are were about to do, if they got caught. But this new, naive Bobby had retreated into his mind and now was little more than optimism, cloaked in an ever-trusting exterior when it came to interacting with Shawn.

"I mean, are you sure? We could get in real trouble. It reminds me of...." He thought for a second. "I... I'm not sure what it reminds me of. I can't remember. Oh brother! Isn't that funny? I can't remember! You're right, let's go do what you said."

"What did you say?"

Shawn suppressed a little flash of guilt for what he’d done to Bobby and tried to steer him onto safer ground. “We were going to sneak out and meet the new neighbors, remember?”

"New neighbor's..." Bobby said, sounding uncertain, the voice a blind hand reaching out into the dark, forgotten, unknown.

"The new neighbors that just moved in. They...they...they...they are here.  Another n...n..new....one." Ralph confirmed.

"There's Junior and Bradford. And then this one." Ralph pointed out the window. Then he turned to Shawn.

"But only Bradford knows about the Circus, right?"