“Show off,” I shouted after him. I sat in my bed for a minute, taking a deep breath to slow my heartbeat, and keeping myself covered in case he popped in on me again. I climbed to my alarm clock, turned off the radio, and then carefully walked to my door. The hallway was clear, but downstairs I could hear Joe rifling through my silverware drawer. I opened my closet door, grabbed the first dress I could find, and then I sprinted across the hall to the bathroom.
I took the world’s fastest shower. And let me tell you, there was nothing calming about taking a shower when some strange boy who could walk in at any moment and probably wouldn’t even hesitate to do so is right down the hall. I dried off, and then tried to put on the flowery dress I brought into the bathroom, but it didn’t fit because I forgot to put my transformation rune on my stomach before I put it on.
It’s not like I was fat. Magic helped me stay trim, but my build is naturally much bigger than is socially approved. So, I put the right rune on my stomach with my fingers trembling, and then once the rune hit, I pulled the zipper up without any hint of resistance.
My hair was the one part of me that was naturally thin, but after I put the rest of my transformation runes on, and smiled into the mirror, I looked the way a pretty rube would after about an hour of preparation. It only took me three minutes, including the shower. The clock in the bathroom said seven-fifteen, so I still had about twenty minutes before I had to leave for school.
Armed with my transformation runes, I opened the bathroom and walked into the hall. It was quiet downstairs, so I knew Joe wasn’t down there.
Down the hall behind me, a noise came from inside my parent’s room. I found him in my parent’s closet, standing over the mess of paperwork I had made when I searched for any backup copies of my mom’s notebook.
He looked around the room for a minute, taking in the dust on my parent’s bedspread, the disarray of the open drawers, and the pile of paperwork on the floor.
“Where are your parents, Larissa?”
“Shut up,” I whispered.
My heart was so close to my throat that I couldn’t speak at a full volume. He walked past me and I grabbed his arm.
“Don’t, please.”
His arm slipped through my grasp and he walked out my parent’s open door. I followed behind him as he opened the white door with the words ‘Phoebe’s Room’ in a rainbow of painted wood cutouts. He opened the door, and I stood back, not wanting to look in my sister Fee’s empty room.
I started walking away, my eyes to the floor that so desperately needed vacuumed. I took the stairs two at a time until I reached the bottom. Joe’s empty bowl sat in the spotless sink. I opened up the dishwasher and put in his bowl. It was Tuesday, so there was still another six days before it was full enough for me to start it. I pulled out a clean bowl from the cupboard, poured some cereal, and then turned to face the staircase.
Joe walked down the stairs. I didn’t want to look at him, but his eyes, so full of compassion and understanding, seemed to hold everything I needed. He walked toward me and cupped my face with his left hand. I started crying then and he pulled me into a tight hug. I kept my arms folded as he held me close.
We stood like that for a while, me crying, and him not saying anything. I moved my arms and held him back, my hands against his shoulder blades. He smelled like soap.
It was comfortable for about five seconds, and then it seemed weird. I backed up, and Joe let me go without any resistance. I wiped my eyes and then pulled the milk from the fridge.
“How long ago?” he asked.
I thought for a moment, although I didn’t need to.
“Eight months and five days.” I took out a spoon and took a bite. I don’t think I could taste anything.
“How’d it happen?”
“Car crash.”
His eyes closed as he realized what yesterday must have been like for me.
“Dude, I’m sorry,” he said.
He opened his eyes and they were so blue. Light blue at the center and darker blue around the edge. A sunflower of yellow swallowed his pupil. His eyebrows were full, light freckles covered the bridge of his nose and cheeks, and his hair defied gravity, looking like a casual mess as it fell over his ears.
I looked away. “Thanks.”
The kitchen in my house was always a place of safety for me. Somehow Joe added to the comfort of this room. To me.
Then he took it all away.
“How do you pay for things?” he asked.
I bit my lip, “Life insurance.”
“How come no one knows?”
I sighed. “The Grandmothers thought it would be best for me, as a fully accepted Witch, to take care of myself. They put hide or confusion, or maybe even a forget rune on my personal file. One of them, Giara, comes and visits me every few months. She’s from Chicago.”
“Why don’t you just go live with your grandmothers then?” he asked.
“They aren’t my grandmothers. We’re not related. The Grandmothers are the leaders of the Fellowship of Female Witches. There are four of them total, the strongest two Witches from either branch of magic, Instincts and Runes. Giara is the second in strength of the Runes.” I scratched my eyebrow. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“Because of the friction between the two genders,” he said. “Who leads the men?”
“The Grandfathers.” I answered. “I don’t know much about them, except that my dad used to go to an annual golf tournament every May. He always said it was for ‘Networking,’ but my dad owned a Mexican Restaurant. What kind of networking did he need to do?”
“Your dad could do magic?”
“Yeah. He was a Rune,” I said. “I don’t know anything else about how the male Fellowship, or whatever it’s called, was about. There’s a strict ‘don’t spill the beans to a girl policy.’ And my dad and I were never that close to begin with.”
It always felt weird to me, not knowing anything about the men’s side of magic. Whenever I used to ask my dad about it, he’d close his eyes, and start humming some song I didn’t recognize. My dad and I had this weird relationship. Even when I was little, he didn’t like being in the same room as me, or talking to me for more than a few minutes. And he never talked to me about magic at all. For a while, I thought he hated me. But sometimes he’d buy me random gifts and have my mom give them to me, or he’d kiss the top of my head when we were in a crowd of people.
I leaned against the kitchen counter and pulled myself up on the edge. It felt good to talk about them, so maybe even Joe’s obnoxious round of questions still ended up comforting me somehow.
My cereal was starting to go soggy, so I picked up my bowl and started eating again.
“Hey,” I said when I remembered how to speak, “how did you know a rune?”
“Three runes, actually.” Joe said, and then he sat down on one of the dining chairs facing toward me. “This is gonna sound weird.”
“And the rest of our conversations have been completely rube-like.” I said with my mouth full of cereal.
Joe smiled and then looked away, “I’ve always been good at patterns. You know, seeing patterns in things. Like those curtains,” he said pointing toward the kitchen window, “they’re embroidered with three different color blue threads, and light and dark silver. The darker blue is used forty percent of the time, followed by the medium blue at twenty, the light blue at about fifteen. The two silvers were used an equal amount to show light and shadow...”
He looked at me as if he was embarrassed. I could feel the heat from his eyes on my face. I think I sat there with my mouth open. To me they were just white and blue curtains.
I swallowed, “What does that have to do with the runes?”
“There’s a pattern there, in every rune. But the patterns… it’s like… They don’t connect, in my brain.” Joe held his hands on either side of his face, and he looked down at the ground as if he was in some other world.
He shook his head, looked me in the eye,
and smiled, “I saw my first rune when I was five. This was when we lived in California. It just looked to me like a pretty pattern, you know. I kept trying to draw it, once in blue crayon in the corner of one of my mom’s library books. I saw another one of them when we lived in Maine. I was, what nine then? I wrote them both down all the time. It was like they stood out to me.”
“Well duh, they glow.”
“L.O.L.,” he spelled out with a straight face.
I laughed.
He continued, “Anyway I just started hunting for them. When I was fifteen, this was when we lived in Utah, I used to trace the runes with my fingertips, and a few times I swear I saw sparks.”
I stopped moving. “You can do runes, too?” I asked. A chill ran up my neck.
“No, I’ve tried. I was up all night last night trying, and all I could do was an occasional spark.”
I can’t tell you how much that relieved me. My mom used to tell me stories from our history of men and women who were both Rune and Instinct... stories that made me stay up all night with my light on.
My mom always finished telling me these stories with this sentence, “Larissa, if you ever meet an Instinct who can do runes, hide.”
The fact that the woman in the silver convertible said the same thing to me right before she died didn’t make me feel any better.
CHAPTER TEN
Erica Fisher came to school that day. No one, other than me and Joe, thought that was a weird thing. I stopped by her locker before first period. I tried to talk to her, to look her right in the face and reassure myself, but I never felt the heat of an Instinct’s look. She was as big of a rube as they come, excited to talk to me about fashion magazines, hair products, and who that gorgeous new kid was.
I only cared about the last thing on her list. But I tried to pretend otherwise. It always seemed like Erica didn’t like a guy until she knew someone else wanted him. In seventh grade, she found out my best friend, Meg, liked this boy Sam, and by the end of the day, she was making out with him in front of Meg’s locker. It wasn’t as if she was an intentionally mean person or anything, not as if she kicked cats, or played Celine Dion out her car speakers. She wasn’t evil.
She was just annoying. I made it clear that I had no feelings whatsoever for this new kid, (Josh was it?) and she was welcome to date him if she so chose.
Besides, I wasn’t worried. Joe had seen a version of her die and turn into an old woman. That wasn’t the kind of memory you could just wipe clean because a girl looked pretty without the aid of transformation runes.
Anyway, it didn’t matter, because I didn’t like Joe. I had no feelings for Joe. He was just a nice person who could help me get back my mother’s notebook. I needed him, but I had no feelings for him.
I had no feelings for Joe.
I repeated that mantra in my mind as I walked into my second period class. Joe looked up when I entered the room and smiled.
Crap.
I took the seat next to him. I tried my best to ignore him and pay attention to Mr. Beaman instead. It didn’t work. Joe kept slipping me notes with questions on them.
How does runelight make magic happen?
I sighed and then wrote a note back.
I don’t know, but I’ll ask Giara next time I see her.
Before I handed him the note back, he had another question ready for me.
Was your mom a Rune or a rube?
I pointed to the word Rune, and then he glanced once at the teacher and wrote again.
So is the hormone thing genetic?
I nodded. He was quiet for a while, so I snuck the note from his desk and wrote.
Your mom is a rube, right?
He looked over at my writing and nodded. I wrote again.
So where’s your dad?
Joe looked over, crumpled the note we had both written on and stood and walked out of the classroom.
I sat back in my desk. At least the door was open so no one saw him walk through a solid wood door.
I waited a few minutes to see if he would come back, but he didn’t. I started feeling guilty about saying something inconsiderate, but where did he get off being mad at me when he could say anything he wanted to without fear of how I would react?
Hypocritical is what it was.
I put up my hand and asked for the hall pass. Mr. Beaman nodded without asking for a reason. I guess there are privileges when you ace every test and don’t cause trouble. Teachers tend to trust you not to do something dumb.
I walked out into the hall to go do something dumb. Joe was walking toward me. The bottoms of his pant legs were wet.
“Hey, I’m sorry about asking about your dad,” I said when he was in earshot, “I didn’t think…”
“No problem, Larissa.” He looked at me and he smiled the biggest smile I have ever seen on him.
My face felt toasty warm, and I’m sure my cheeks went red. I wasn’t blushing. His Instinct magic was on high. He walked past me and back into the classroom.
I stood in the hallway for a moment trying to decide what to do, my fingers against my cheeks feeling the residual warmth. I left the classroom to find Joe, but if I went in right away, it would look like I left the classroom to find Joe.
I decided to walk to the girl’s bathroom and check my runes instead. The one for my stomach was a working rune, and I would hate for it to end during lunch like that one time when I was in seventh grade.
When I got to the restroom, the boy’s bathroom next to it was the one that held my attention. Water seeped across the linoleum floor from under the door. Feeling curious, I pushed open the door to the boy’s bathroom and looked in.
“Hello?” I called out.
No one was inside. I entered, mostly because I have a strong belief in saving natural resources, and if someone left the water running, that would leave the school quite a water bill. Also, I had never been in a boy’s bathroom before and this was a good chance to see how the other half lived.
Turns out, they lived disgustingly, but that wasn’t important. What was important was the glowing red rune written on the mirror. The brilliant curved line was brighter than any rune I have ever seen. Sparks of runelight exploded across the sink. It was the rune for water, and the sink drain it stood above was shooting water about four feet into the air.
I wiped the runelight with my fingers from a distance, but the rune was too powerful, and it wouldn’t budge. I stepped closer to the mirror and stuck my hand through the geyser that shot through the sink. Water covered my dress and soaked my hair. I ran my fingers over the rune and it felt hot to the touch, but it wouldn’t rub away. The runelight was disappearing though, so I knew it was a working rune. When the magic ran out, the water would stop flowing.
I stepped back, and the cold water sent goose bumps up the back of my neck, as my flowered dress clung to my skin. Was there another Rune in the school, maybe watching us?
Worse, like I suspected, as part of me already knew… was Joe the one who wrote that rune?
“Hide.” In my mind I heard Fake-Erica say her last words.
I didn’t move. The bell rang, and rubes started walking around the hallways. A few rube boys walked into the bathroom and saw me frozen there, with the water flowing to the ground. They didn’t seem to notice the rune, glowing like a firework. I couldn’t take my eyes away from it, as those rube boys left to get a teacher or something. I took in a shallow breath when the runelight faded; the water moved to a steady gurgle, and then a thin stream of water ran from the faucet. I turned the handle to off. Then with my hair and clothing plastered to my body, I walked out of the bathroom.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Giara came to visit me today. Apparently, my scars have healed enough now, so they are going to fit me with artificial hands. I don’t know how to feel about that.
I’m sure Doctor Jensen mentioned this outside artistic activity to her. I’m sure Giara has read or will read it. Maybe I should go back to the beginning and tell Giara not to worry.
>
Done.
Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I stopped at this point. If, as soon as I suspected Joe could do runes, I took the life insurance money and moved somewhere warm, and I could just start over, maybe find a job in a library, or as a hand model.
Because I’d still have hands, that’s for sure.
Anyway. After I stood under the hand dryers in the girl’s room for all of third period, and then reapplied my transformation runes, I went on as if it were just a normal day. I ate lunch with Megan, passed a math test, and flirted with some of my friends…
I didn’t even have to avoid Joe. He just wasn’t there. He didn’t wait for me at my car, and he didn’t show up at my house that night or the next morning. In that time away from him, I kind of lied to myself. I told myself there was so much I didn’t know. There was an Instinct at the school the day before, so who was to say whoever sent that spy in Erica’s body couldn’t send another one: a Rune this time, to blow up the boy’s bathroom to rid the world of ick.
I wore a vintage pantsuit to school that next day. I don’t know why that matters, but I thought I’d throw in that little detail. Anyway, Joe didn’t show up. Not for second period. Not after school. I started to worry about him, and so on my way home I decided to stop by his house.
I guess I’m not that good at avoiding.
The sad thing is... I wasn’t scared. Not of him, not of what could, and did, happen. Does that make any sense?
I knocked on his door, and his mom opened it. Ms. P. had long light brown hair pinned up in a half ponytail. She wore sweat pants around the house, only cooked food from a box, yet somehow always smelled like vanilla. She had beautiful hazel eyes and freckles across her nose. At home, she didn’t wear much makeup, and it made her look younger somehow. She never looked old enough to be Joe’s mother, yet there was so much of her in Joe’s features.
Funny Tragic Crazy Magic (Tragic Magic Book 1) Page 4
