Page 6 of Wishes and Research

It would’ve been easier if he wasn’t lost in his own world so often but that couldn’t be helped. He was a bug doctor after all, so he had to be looking at the bugs.

How often he’d been found digging in the dirt by everyone around town wasn’t helping them believe he was a boring adult either.

Unfortunately, everyone knew I was a real adult and were now looking at me to fix what they’d broken…the mind of the bug doctor.

He was still doing a great job of ignoring the chaos, though.

It was actually a pretty amazing skill, so I decided to use that as my opening and stood up to head over to where he was trying to hide from the insanity of the rest of the town. He was intently focused on his food, but every once in a while, he’d twitch as something he heard caught his attention.

So he was listening…and was curious at least…even if he was confused.

I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, though, so I shooed everyone else away and sat down across from him in the booth. “You have an amazing skill for ignoring chaos.”

It seemed like I was also chaos that should be ignored, so I kept going. “I’m Fraser. I’m your guide.”

His body barely reacted as he finished a bite of his grilled cheese and set the rest down. I could almost hear the wheels in his head turning, but he carefully wiped his hands and took his time before looking up and acknowledging me. “Alright, thank you.”

Was he actually polite or was it a defense mechanism?

The way he held his hand out didn’t help me decide. “I’m Paxton. It’s nice to meet you.”

Shaking his hand, I decided to clear up a few things just in case. “I wouldn’t have let the chaos continue much longer, no matter how good you are at ignoring them, but you need to be a bit more straightforward if you want to get rid of ’em. They’ve also been trained to walk away and stop being a nuisance if you say red.”

Training them on safewords was weird but it’d been more effective than I’d thought it would be.

Blink.

Blink.

“That’s good to know. Thank you.” There was a flash of something before the confusion set in again. “I’ve tried to follow some of the trails in the area, but I think a few of them may be marked wrong?”

His effort to find a rational explanation was amazing if the trails were as fucked as the roads had been recently. But still, I could help even if the trails had become magically lost.

“I can help you with that. I’m a part-time local guide and my specialty is the local trails and actual wilderness hikes.” Sometimes tourists just wanted to be able to walk the trails without worrying and sometimes they didn’t want trails at all, but either way it was fine with me.

The bug cutie finally looked thoughtful and like he’d tuned back in completely. “You don’t mind taking me off trail? I have some specimens I’m trying to locate but that’s been difficult.”

“I don’t mind.” I had questions, though. “But you’re always dressed like Boyd, the town’s accountant. Are you familiar with hiking?”

Did bug doctors always do fieldwork?

Aside from the whole playing in the dirt thing, he didn’t look like he did, and I wasn’t sure what kind of assumption I could make about his skill level.

Looking down at himself, he frowned like he’d just realized what he was wearing before glancing back at me. “I don’t get to dress up much during my usual fieldwork.”

Okay, that actually made sense.

“Not roughing it here. I get that.” Pointing to the audience, I shrugged. “It was one of the things they’ve been confused about.”

“Oh.” Frowning, he slowly nodded. “That explains some of the questions I’ve gotten.”

Probably not enough of them, but maybe a few.

“And I had a couple last year give all the right answers to go off trail but then they turned out to have no idea what they were doing and they drove me crazy.” It’d been bad. “I just wanted to make sure you’d actually seen bugs in the wild and you know that the outside has dirt.”

He just blinked at me for a moment.

“This town keeps getting weirder and weirder.” He had no idea, but I just nodded to keep him going. “Um, yes. I understand the outside has dirt and bugs. I need to see the bugs. I also can tell you which bugs are edible and I’ve hiked large parts of the Appalachian Trail when I was in college.”

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