Chapter 6A constant drone assaulted our ears, and it abruptly occurred to me that the dry, high-pitched sound was caused by the creeping, crawling, leaping, slithering inhabitants of the brush.
I had a thing about creepy-crawlies, and it wasn’t a good thing. The mere thought of one of those insects finding its way under my trouser leg tied my stomach in knots and made my skin feel as if it were ready to do some crawling of its own.
“Johnny, are you listening to me?”
I forced my mind away from the image of dragonflies the size of the rats that ran in the sewers of New York or centipedes as long as I was tall. “Sorry, Mr. Chetwood. You were saying?”
“What’s the lowdown with Hildy?”
I’d wondered if he’d noticed. “She’s kind of…well, adopted me.”
“Say again?”
“She has this idea that I s
