Excerpt: Peter Halifax and the Godfather of the Galaxy

When Peter Halifax first met Andromeda MacCutcheon, he was seven-years-old and upside-down. He hung from the gnarly branch of a short tree with his poorly-chopped yellow hair drooping almost to the well-trimmed grass beneath him, swinging ever-so-slightly as if in a breeze. He blinked, and a little redheaded girl stood before him, a sucker sticking out between lips that had been colored green by her candy. She watched him placidly for nearly half a minute before she pulled the sucker from her mouth with a pop. She'd lost her two front teeth, the perfect hole for the flat lollipop to fit through. Peter smiled; he thought that she looked like a slot-machine.

"Whatcher 'angin' oopside-down fer?" the girl asked in a heavy childish accent.

"Because I can," he retorted simply, as if the answer had been completely evident. He uncrossed his arms and let them dangle at his side. "Why are you standing right-side-up?"

She thought about it for a good, long moment, squinting at him with scrutinizing little eyes. "Can't stand no other way, doomy."

"Yes you can," he said, smirking. "You're not trying hard enough, is all."

She thought with her sucker in her mouth, then removed it again with a similar pop. "Well, then whatcher 'angin' oopside-down in my yard fer?"

"I'm waiting for Harry," Peter replied, again as if the answer had been obscenely obvious.

"'Arry's got 'omewerk," she replied, twisting her hips in a childish way that flared her skirt out like a doll's.

"I know," Peter waved her off. "That's why I'm waiting."

"Wot's yer name?" she asked after a pause, observing her sucker pensively.

His fingertips grazed the grass below him. "Peter Halifax." When he smiled, the his freckles bunched up around his eyes. "I was named after Sir Peter Halley, the greatest man alive."

"Bet 'e ain't so great as my dad," she protested.

"Did your dad discover inter-dimensional travel?" He smirked as disdainfully as a boy his age could.

"No," she replied as if his statement didn't mean a thing. "But 'e buys me sweeties."

Before Peter could come up with another taunt, a redheaded woman appeared in the doorway to the house behind them, a hand cupped to her mouth.

"Andromeda! Food's ready!"

Peter snorted a half-giggle, a dangling hand thrown across his smirking lips. "Andromeda?" he asked incredulously.

The little girl's face bunched up indignantly, her own coppery splash of freckles nearly lost amid her fire-red blush. "No!" she cried, "It's Andie!" And she loosed her grip on her green sucker and lobbed it right between the hanging boy's eyes. He gave out a whoop as he lost his concentration and fell the bare inches to the lawn. By the time he'd righted himself, the girl had run off to the house, her braids trailing after.