The Boy Who Couldn't Fly Straight: A Gay Teen Coming of Age Paranormal Adventure about Witches, Murder, and Gay Teen Love (Book 1, The Broom Closet Stories)

by Jeff Jacobson

  Charlie lay on his bed, pondering what had happened between his aunt and Mavis. The two women had known each other. But they were clearly not friends. Maybe Mavis was a bad guy too. They seemed to be popping up everywhere.

  He knew he should be doing his homework, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the events at the farmers market. He wanted answers, and he figured he knew where to get them, even if the source of the information wanted to tear his head off.

  Gathering his courage, he walked down the carpeted staircase. As he approached the kitchen, he could hear his aunt and uncle talking in low voices. They stopped as he walked through the doorway.

  “Hey, buddy,” his uncle said.

  “Um, can I help with anything? Making dinner or whatever?”

  “Oh no, Charlie, thanks. We’ve got it under control,” said Beverly.

  He took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

  “Can I, uh, ask you something?”

  They both nodded.

  “Um, are you like, well, mad at me or something? Because I was talking to that sunscreen lady?” He felt stupid asking the question. Whenever adults were mad at you they told you so. No use stirring the hornets’ nest if he could avoid it. And yet, things were too confusing. He thought he might go crazy if he didn’t get more information.

  “What? Oh, Charlie, no. No! I’m sorry you thought that. No, you were fine, perfectly fine. She, she just …”

  “Is she one of those bad guys you and Mom were talking about the other night?"

  “No. Not at all. Mavis is, well, Mavis is a bit of a head case. A minor hassle really.”

  He waited, not really knowing what that meant.

  “She’s nothing to worry about, Charlie. She has some talent in her blood, but it’s not much. We call it an ‘echo’ when someone hasn’t been popped before but still has traces of the …”

  “Beverly,” Randall scolded, “knock off the mumbo-jumbo crap. Charlie doesn’t know what ‘popped’ means. Sooner or later you’re going to have to explain it all to him. The more you wait, the more confusing it’ll be for him to …”

  She cut him off. “I know. I know. Don’t you think I don’t know it, Rand? Give me a little credit, for God’s sake.”

  Charlie watched as Randall held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Okay, okay. All I’m saying is …”

  She turned to Charlie, and the late afternoon sun turned strands of her dark hair a deep red. Her menacing look from the farmers market was gone now, replaced with something softer, though he wasn’t sure what. Reluctance? Apology? Acceptance of what Randall had said?

  “Charlie, there’s so much to talk about,” she continued. “I don’t even know where to start. I don’t know how much I should or shouldn’t say. All the kids in our community have grown up with this stuff, so when they learn something they already have a foundation to build on. For you, it’s all so new. I’m afraid I’ll tell you too much and frighten you.”

  “And I’m afraid she won’t tell you anything, leaving you in the dark,” added Randall.

  Charlie wasn’t sure how much Beverly should say either. A part of him wanted to know everything, including who the bad guys were and how to make candles float. He was tired of being told that there was too much to know. There was a whole new world for him to discover, and waiting for it was so difficult it nearly made his bones ache.

  But another part of him was scared. Everything still felt like it was moving at light speed. If he could just slow things down a little and catch up with all the changes happening, he might feel like he was standing on solid ground. He worried that the more Beverly told him, the shakier and crazier things would feel, like after reading his mom’s notebook. Everything led to more questions, not less. He wanted it all to stop. If she told him more, it would speed things up.

  “Well, um, tell me what you want to tell me. Since I don’t know anything, it’ll be better than being totally clueless.”

  Beverly finally smiled, and he was reminded of how good she had been, how good both of them had been to him, letting him stay at their house, buying him clothes and a cell phone, a laptop …

  “Look, why don’t I tell you a little about Mavis, so you can understand what that was all about? The friends who are coming over tonight will want to know what happened at the farmers market, so there’ll be more to the story then, okay? I’ll be as brief as I can, but just interrupt me if you have any questions or don’t understand something.”

  “And I’ll just chop some vegetables for dinner and look pretty,” said Randall, blinking his eyelashes and grinning broadly.

  Beverly frowned.

  “Oops. Sorry. Bev, I know it’s hard for you to figure out what to say and not say. I’ll get dinner going, but you know I’ll add in stuff too. I can’t keep my mouth closed.”

  “It’s why I love you so much, honey.” Beverly said in a completely unconvincing voice. But she leaned over the counter and kissed him anyway.

  Charlie was surprised to find that he wasn’t embarrassed by their kissing. Maybe with all the other weird things going on in his life, this didn’t even merit his face turning red. He considered this to be a vast improvement.

  Beverly poured three glasses of water, handing one to Charlie and one to her husband.

  “Have a seat, kiddo,” she said, indicating one of the bar stools. He sat down, eager to hear whatever it was that she had to say.

  “Okay, here’s something you should know,” she began, after taking a long sip out of her own glass. “Witchcraft runs in people’s blood. It’s passed from family member to family member. This means that not just anyone can be a witch. Randall couldn’t if he tried.”

  “And believe you me, I’ve tried,” he said, slicing into a red pepper. Charlie watched as white seeds fell away from the bright flesh.

  “But just because someone has the blood in them,” Beverly continued, “doesn’t mean that they can do anything with their abilities. They have to go through a process that we call being ‘popped.’ Another witch basically helps their craft come to the surface. It’s kind of complicated, and not important right now, but suffice it to say that there are people out there in the world who are ‘unpopped,’ meaning they have the blood, or the legacy, in them but maybe don’t know it, or can’t access it, or don’t want to.

  “Now, some of these people have what we call an ‘echo.’ It means that in spite of not being popped, some of their abilities leak out. It’s why some people claim to be psychic. Others seem to experience better luck than most. And others might be extremely talented in the work that they do, maybe as surgeons, or as firefighters, even professional athletes. They just seem better than the rest. This could be because of the echo in them.”

  Beverly paused a moment, then continued. “Mavis is an echo. She is sleazy, always running scams here and there. She didn’t even know about being an echo until she was an adult. By that time, it’s usually too late to be popped. People are just too set in their ways to be able to have their full abilities come to the surface. It’s like they calcify, and nothing can break through to bring their witchcraft out.

  “But I’m pretty sure her whole life she’s been able to do minor things, like make really great skin concoctions, maybe even get lucky now and then at pull tabs or the smaller state lotteries.”

  Charlie had no idea what pull tabs were, but he didn’t want to interrupt his aunt’s momentum. His own excitement was growing as he listened to all that she was saying.

  “Sometimes people like her are called ‘kitchen witches,’ which isn’t a nice thing to say to someone.”

  Charlie heard the term and suddenly remembered the dog in the kitchen, taunting his mother. It had said, “Or what? You’ll bake something? You’ll come at me with a rolling pin? Please, Elizabeth, we both know that you are nothing more than a kitchen witch these days.”

  His lips begin to tremble, and shivers ran up and down his arms.

  “Charlie, what is it?” he heard his aunt saying. “
You’re turning pale.”

  Her voice brought him back from the kitchen down in Clarkston to this bigger, more modern one. He saw his aunt and uncle staring at him, the knife in Randall’s hand paused above the cutting board.

  He shook his head to clear away the images in his mind.

  “That dog, you know? The one that came into our house and …?”

  “Yes?”

  “He called my mom that. A kitchen witch. Before she made him, uh, made him turn into a man. He said it to her.”

  “What?” Beverly snapped, coming around from the corner of the counter as if she were about to confront the man himself. “Idiot! He had no right to say anything like that to her!”

  “Hon, calm down, okay?” said Randall. “Just take a breather.”

  She paused, then looked at her husband. Charlie watched as she inhaled. “Okay, sorry. Charlie, your mother is not a kitchen witch. She was fully popped and had been developing her abilities for a few years before she … before she left Seattle. She stopped, so she isn’t very strong. But she has access to her full legacy. That dog didn’t know what the hell it was talking about.

  “Anyway, there are people like Mavis all over Seattle, all over the world, really, who have some latent talent and use it to trick folks. They run seedy psychic shops, become fake fortune tellers. They do other scams too. We keep an eye on them. For the most part they don’t have enough ability to cause any real damage. Just more of a nuisance, really.

  “Today I just let Mavis know that I was on to her and gave her a very strong warning to stay away from you. She knows I can come after her and make her life miserable, should I want to. She wouldn’t want me or our community watchdogs to track her. I’m confident that she’ll back off and not cause any more problems.”

  “Why did she do that to me then?”

  “Do what, honey?” she asked, knitting her eyebrows together.

  “Put her hand on my arm like that?”

  “Oh, she could probably tell that you had some unpopped abilities and wanted to find out more about you.”

  “But she made me feel really dizzy and kind of sick to my stomach, like I was gonna puke or pass out or something.”

  “What? That’s impossible! She doesn’t have that kind of ability. How could she …? Charlie, are you sure that’s what she was doing?” Beverly asked.

  “She grabbed my arm and started rubbing sunscreen on it. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there. She was talking to me, then she looked at me funny and said, ‘Hey, you’re a …’ and she stopped rubbing my arm. She held on to it though and started saying these words, words I couldn’t really hear. I felt all dizzy, and like all the lights started to go out.”

  “Damn it!” Beverly slapped her closed right fist into her left palm. “That changes things.”

  “What is it, Bev? Isn’t she just an echo?” asked Randall.

  “Yes,” she said, but her voice trailed off as she looked out the window over Puget Sound.

  “Beverly, don’t go quiet on us now. What is it?” Charlie’s uncle pressed.

  “It’s just that,” she said, her voice muted, her face still turned away, “it’s just that she shouldn’t be able to do what she did. Something is up. Something is definitely up.” Charlie watched as her face hardened like it had at the market. His skin broke out in gooseflesh as he too looked out the window, half expecting to see Mavis standing outside on the deck, staring in at them.

  His aunt turned from the window and faced them both.

  “That’s enough for now,” she said, and the tone of her voice made it clear that there was no room for discussion. “We’ll continue this when the others get here.”

  Charlie didn’t think that it was enough. He wanted to know what was “definitely up,” wanted to know what she was thinking, wanted to know what Mavis had been doing and what it all meant.

  But Beverly had already turned to stare out the window again. When he opened his mouth to say something, Randall cut a glance at him and shook his head, mouthing the word “no.”

  Charlie sighed, accepting the fact that the conversation, at least for now, was over.

  He tried to imagine what getting popped was like. Images flooded his mind: a cork being removed from a champagne bottle; his friend Mike teaching him how to make popping noises by flicking his finger out of his mouth with his cheeks puffed out; watching Polaroid pictures develop in front of his eyes from his mother’s old camera; a human face breaking through the surface of still water.

  Was it like any of those things? Did it hurt? Would he be able to get popped?

  He walked out of the kitchen while his mind raced with thoughts of echoes and popped witches, of people sneaking around behind Beverly’s back, of the dizzy way he felt when Mavis grabbed hold of him and wouldn’t let go.

  CHAPTER 25

  Invitation

  CHARLIE WENT BACK UPSTAIRS to change his clothes for dinner. He saw his cell phone sitting on the bed and suddenly remembered meeting Diego. He had forgotten about him after what happened with Mavis.

  He frowned as he sat down on the bed and picked up the phone. He was still shaken from what Beverly had been saying downstairs. He probably shouldn’t call the boy now, even though Diego had told Charlie to get hold of him about the party.

  The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Diego had just been playing the nice guy. He probably felt sorry for Charlie, being the new kid and all, and wanted to help him out, like a charity case or something. Why else would he have entered his number into Charlie’s phone?

  He was about to give up on the whole idea when an image of the boy’s face appeared in his mind: the bright eyes, the warm brown color of his skin, the smile that seemed to be an invitation to kindness and adventure. He tried to erase the picture from his head, but it wouldn’t disappear.

  He thought about the easy way Diego had chatted to him and how Charlie didn’t have to explain himself when they had talked.

  Maybe we really could be friends, he thought. And before he could talk himself out of it, he found Diego’s name in his contacts and called him.

  “Hello?” said the voice on the other end of the line, in a cheerful, slightly breathless way.

  “Uh, Diego? Is this Diego?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Oh, um, yeah. Hi. This is Charlie. The uh, the guy from the …”

  “Charlie! Charlie Creevey! Oh good, you called back. I didn’t think you were going to.”

  “Why not?” Charlie forgot that he had told Diego his last name. Sometimes kids teased him about it. He had heard “Creepy Creevey” his whole life. But Diego didn’t tease him. Charlie liked how it sounded when the boy said it, as if he had filed it away in his memory as something important.

  “Oh, I’m weird that way, that’s all. Hey, do you still wanna go to that party Tuesday night? Did you ask your aunt and uncle?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “No, you don’t want to go, or …?” he asked, his last word rising up into a question.

  “No, no. I mean, no, I didn’t ask them yet. But I’d like to, uh, yeah, I’d like to go, if, you know, if that’s okay and all.”

  “Totally okay, you goofball,” the boy said and laughed.

  Charlie smiled. He had never been called a goofball in a nice way before.

  He lay back on the bed and looked out the window. A gust of wind swayed the birch trees in the front yard, making their leaves flash from green to silver to green again.

  While the boys began to chat, the whole experience of Mavis, of witches being popped, of people with echoes, faded into the background. They talked about school, about their teachers, about Seattle. Diego was a junior and had taken Chinese for two years.

  “Ni juede xuexi Zhongwen nanbunan?” Diego said, sounding completely different, like maybe he was Chinese or something.

  “Um, I have no idea what you just said,” Charlie replied.

  Diego laughed. It was a gentle laugh, not cruel, just a sound that s
eemed to mean he was enjoying himself. It was a sound Charlie liked.

  “I asked you if you thought studying Chinese was difficult.”

  “Yeah, definitely. I mean, sometimes I don’t even know what Chen Laoshi is saying until class is over, and then it’s too late.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”

  They talked some more until Charlie heard the doorbell ring downstairs and remembered that he hadn’t changed his clothes yet.

  “Uh, Diego, look, I think I should go. Some people are coming over for dinner.”

  “Hope they taste good,” he said. “Ha ha ha.”

  “Okay, now who’s the goofball?” Charlie replied. He wasn’t used to teasing people, and the words felt as foreign in his mouth as Chinese did.

  But Diego laughed again, harder this time.

  “Okay, man, take care. Hey look, the party starts at seven. I can come by and pick you up at six forty-five. Why don’t you have your aunt and uncle call me? They can talk to my mom to make sure it’s all cool. Adults like that kind of thing.”

  “Sure, sure they do,” Charlie said, just like a kid who was used to asking his mom if he could go to parties.

  Charlie pressed “end” on his phone, then got up and walked over to the window. The wind had died down, and the street in front of the house was quiet. People must be settling in for their Sunday evenings together, he thought. Just before he turned around, he spied a small cat sitting on the curb on the opposite side of the street in front of a thick expanse of green trimmed lawn. The cat seemed to be staring right at him, and its tail stretched out from the side of its sleek body. As he watched, another cat approached and sat down next to the first. Both animals seemed to be looking directly up at the window where he stood.

  “That’s weird,” Charlie said out loud. He left the window and went over to his closet to find something to wear for dinner.

  CHAPTER 26