"It's right up here!" Simon called back to Gray, who's short brown hair was damp with sweat as he dragged Scary up the hill.

It had been at least an hour since they'd left the Big Drop. And just about 45 minutes since Simon "forgot" to help him carry Scary.

"You got this, bring it home!" Simon cheered him on, waving his arms like one of those wiggling inflatables at a rental car place. And yet... Gray still couldn't see a house.

Gray set Scary down and gulped down all the air he could get. "Hey... Simon. You see... that... bird... up there?" He called up the hill.

Simon glanced around. "What bird?"

Gray pointed upwards with his middle finger. "That bird,"

Simon blinked curiously, and squinted in the direction Gray pointed. Gray rolled his eyes. You weren't nearly this stupid in the book.

He started to grab Scary's limp body again, but then he decided to take a longer break.

With his hands on his knees, Gray took slow breaths, trying to slow his heart rate. By this point he'd left his house hours ago, and hadn't stopped walking since. And now that his adrenaline had stopped pumping through his body, Gray felt more tired than he'd ever felt in his life.

That's when he saw a rock.

Now, a regular rock was easy to overlook. But this wasn't an ordinary rock. It was perfectly oval, and smooth, with a large carving on its face.

"What's this?" He muttered.

"What's what?" Simon called, standing on his toes, as if that would help him see the rock from thirty feet away.

"This!" Gray pointed, just to make fun of him. Then he leaned down to pick it up, but when his palm touched it's smooth surface, pain exploded in his hand. CRACK!

Gray screamed out in anguish and cradled his limp hand. Simon sped to his side in a split second and looked at him, worried. "What happened?"

"I touched the thing, and... and it bit me or something," Gray choked through clenched teeth. "I think it broke my hand,"

"Oh it's probably not that bad," Simon shook his hand vigorously.

Gray fell to his knees and howled for mercy. Simon looked at the hand, confused. "Oh. Yeah that's broken for sure,"

Gray shot him a murderous look through his tears.

Simon looked down and swiped his foot around in the dirt. "I don't see anything..."

"It's behind you," Gray sobbed, trying to find a position that he could hold his hand, so that it wouldn't hurt.

Simon turned around and spotted the stone, peeking out of the dirt and grass. "Hey!" He cheered. "It's the Venso Rock!"

Gray looked at it, dumbfounded. "That was in the book. It was your weapon of choice," Even though it had just caused him an immense amount of pain, Gray couldn't help but feel a bit starstruck. "Did you lose it?"

"Yeah," Simon nodded. "After Dare blasted me from the forest, Snakeye hunted me down. I fought him with it. But towards the end, he knocked me down and I lost it in the river down that way. They never put that part in the book, though. You never saw what happened to me," Simon dug out the stone, and carefully turned it over in his hand. "I wonder how it got here,"

Gray had always wanted to touch the Venso Rock. Turns out that wasn't his smartest idea. But at least it all made sense now.

As the book said: "The rock itself was indestructible, it couldn't be melted, crushed, broken, or even eroded. It's power was defensive. Any force dealt to it, would be tenfolded and stored for later use,"

So if you were to drop a 30 ton tank on top of the stone, and retrieve it, the next person you touched with it, would be crushed by 300 tons of force. According to the story, when Simon was young, he used to bounce the rock against a wall and catch it again, to toughen up his hands.

And, obviously, the rock and fallen a pretty massive distance since it was last touched, given the state of Gray's hand.

Simon pocketed the stone and reached down to help Gray to his feet. "Come on, let's get to a safer place," he sped Gray up to the door of a run down, log cabin, at the top of the hill.

It was a strange feeling, being lifted, and a split second later, dropped in a very different spot. Gray swallowed to calm his whirling stomach. He didn't know if it was from the superspeed or the broken hand, but something sure turned his stomach upside down.

A second later, Simon sped off again, and the very next second, returned with Scary in his arms.

"Wait, you had me dragging that man over land and sea, when you could have just picked him up and dropped him on the doorstep in three seconds?" Gray stared at him.

Simon opened his mouth to answer, but no words came out.

Gray waited for a minute. "Well?"

"Give me a second, I'm trying to think of a logical excuse,"

Gray rolled his eyes, rose his uninjured hand and knocked on the door.

"Nobody's home!" A voice called from inside.

"Shoot," Simon sighed. "I guess we'll have to wait for him to get back,"

Gray rolled his eyes again, and checked the doorknob. It was unlocked. Oscar was going to leave them out here forever if they didn't force his hand.

Gray opened the front door and looked inside. He honestly couldn't tell if the Mad Hatter had ransacked the place, or if the owner was just messy. He grabbed Scary with his left hand. "Grab his other side," Gray told Simon. Simon did as he was told.

With a little teamwork, and only a couple minor damages, they dragged Scary into the house and laid him on the living room rug.

"The voice said nobody was home," Simon reminded Gray. "We'll probably have to wait,"

Gray nodded as if he was actually listening to Simon, and looked around in wonder. The room was small and cramped, with a lot of little worktables spread across the room.

Thousands of jars and papers were strewn over the floor, and shelves, in what was probably a sort of organized chaos.

He reached for a glass of foggy orange liquid, but stopped short at the sound of voices in the next room.

"I cannot go around creating what cannot be created, you know that," a hushed voice echoed from the room opposite of them. "If you want him found, you'll have to find him the old fashioned way,"

"I tried that," another voice replied. "I need your help,"

"Have you seen this?" There was the sound of crinkling paper, and the first voice read out: "Endangering Figure #2. Number... TWO. Tell me that doesn't sound bad,"

"This doesn't even look like you,"

"That's a picture of me,"

Gray snuck over to the doorway, and peeked around the corner at the men in the other room. One was a tall, pale, lanky man who was carefully mixing a pair of florescent liquids. The other was a boy no older than himself, holding what looked like a wanted poster.

"I don't care what it takes. I need to find-" The teen looked up from the poster, and spotted Gray.

Without warning, he sprung from his spot, soared across the room and grabbed Gray's collar. He spun Gray into the open and down onto his back.

At the table, the skinny man lifted up the glass, so that his bottle would stop shaking as he measured.

The teen drew a knife.

Simon lunged from the opposite room, and deflected the swinging blade with the Venso Rock. Then, in a flash, he spun out of the assailant's view, and touched the rock to his arm.

The attacker cried out, as an invisible force sliced open his shoulder.

"You get what you give," Simon chuckled.

Through tears of pain, the boy's eyes shot wide open, as if the phrase sparked a fire in him that had long since faded. He glanced up and saw who'd defended Gray. "S-Simon?" He leapt several feet in the air, and hung there for a second. Then he threw his arms around Simon's shoulders. "Oscar it's Simon!"

Oscar glanced up, having been oblivious to the scene that took place five feet away from him. "How exciting," he nodded, returning awkwardly to his work.

"Hey Luft, how you been?" Simon returned the squeeze, carefully avoiding the injured shoulder.

"I looked everywhere for you," Luft sobbed into his friend's neck. "Last I saw, Dare shot you, and you disappeared into the forest. I thought you were... I thought you might've... died. But then I couldn't find your body. I wanted to find you before the Committee did, but you disappeared,"

"I ran into Blaze when I went back to check on Scary, and found the two of them frozen," Simon recalled aloud "Blaze said the Committee would be hunting us all down until the Child of Stone could set Scary free. You know, take away his assets. So he had his Dad turn me into a tree,"

"Wait," Gray stared at Simon. Then looked up at his red hair. "You... You were a tree?"

"Yeah, I was. It was kinda cool actually. I got to see the world like-"

"A-And you were right by where Scary and Dare were?" Gray interrupted him.

"Yeah. Right at the top of the hill,"

"Oh my God," Gray stared at him, dumbfounded. "You're the Red Tree?"

"I used to be," Simon recalled fondly. "You and your mom used to come and sit with me all the time. Just like she did with her father. And him with his mother. Your great grandmother, Carly, was a friend of ours. For them, I was the X that marked the spot. The Red Tree that never lost its leaves. I told them all right where Scary was,"

Simon suddenly seemed to remember something. "Check this out," he lifted his shirt to show Gray a scar on his side. The scar was in the shape of a heart. Inside the heart were the letters A.C. + M.R.

Abby Corman + Mike Ritcher. His mom and dad.

"Who is this guy?" Lift finally asked, jabbing a finger in Gray's direction.

"This is the Child of Stone," Simon replied, gesturing proudly at the mess of a human on the ground. "He set Scary free,"

"Scary?!" Luft jumped up and floated again. "Where is he?"

"In the living roo-" Simon started to reply, then his eyes bulged. "Oh shoot. Oscar! Scary needs help!"

Oscar set down his vial, carefully. Then he looked up with a sigh. He might never finish his experiment. "What happened?"

While Simon regaled the story, which he'd apparently watched the whole time as a tree, Gray covered his head, and tried to arrange his thoughts.

Simon. Lively, animated, dumb, and loveable Simon McWerter, was his Red Tree. The Big Drop, was the pathway to Scary and Dare. His great grandmother, knew Scary Skelitin. Everything he thought he understood, everything he thought he knew, he didn't understand at all.

The world was slowly crumbling around him...

...when a thought suddenly popped into Gray's head. "Simon," he whispered.

Simon didn't hear him, he was leaning over Oscar as the man studied Scary's eyes.

"SIMON!" Gray yelled.

Simon sped to his side. "What's wrong? Is it your hand?"

"Did my mother know?"

"What?"

Gray grabbed a chunk of Simon's collar and pulled his face close. "Did... my mother... know?" He hissed through clenched teeth.

Is that why she always had the answers? Because she already knew everything there was to know?

All those nights of reading him that story, he thought it was all because she wanted to spend time with him. But what if that wasn't it at all?

Was there, behind every truth she told him, actually a lie?

Simon stared into Gray's furious, and slightly hurt, eyes. He hugged him. "Yes," Simon whispered. "She knew,"