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

  “I don’t know. I didn’t even know you existed until last week. I thought your mother would be more forthcoming, but …” she trailed off.

  Then she surprised him with what she said next.

  “Your birthday’s in August. August 18.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yeah,” he replied, wondering what that had to do with anything.

  “Well, if you do the math, November is nine months before August. And November is when Lizzy left Seattle. That means that somewhere around the time your mother left and when she got to California, she …” Beverly paused.

  “Oh. She met my father?” He finished. It hadn’t occurred to him to count the months backwards from his birthday after he had read his mother’s notebook.

  “That’s what I figure. But that doesn’t really tell us anything about him, does it? Lizzy wasn’t dating anyone at the time she left town, at least not that I knew of. I had hoped there would be more clues in her diary. But your mother can be very, shall we say, secretive?” Charlie heard the frustration in her voice. “You’ll have to ask her about it, since it’s her story to tell.”

  Then she smiled at him.

  “But I do know that you have the legacy in you. Even if your father wasn’t a witch. The blood in our family is strong,” she said proudly, then continued along the path.

  Charlie wished he could find out more about his father but knew that Beverly was as much in the dark as he was. So he switched topics.

  “Well, how do I become a witch then?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” his aunt said as they walked farther into the woods.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Leap

  CHARLIE FELT THE AIR GROW cooler around them, and the trail that they had been following, narrowed by brambles and the tree limbs crowding in on either side, expanded into a wide cement lane. He could hear the sound of a stream somewhere to his right as well as cars passing nearby.

  It was the same spot as last week where he had encountered the dog and the elderly witch who’d shooed it away.

  He tensed, expecting at any moment to see the same dog rounding the corner up ahead.

  Beverly pointed up toward the break in the trees. “See that?”

  At first, Charlie only saw the leafy branches of the trees and the late afternoon sunlight filling the open spaces, turning everything green-gold. Then a massive concrete base, covered in graffiti, rose into view leading up to the criss-cross of girders and eventually a wide rust-colored bridge spanning the airway at the point where the lane veered left and out of sight.

  He was surprised to realize that he hadn’t even noticed the bridge last week because he had been distracted by the dog’s presence. After the woman had told Charlie that everything was safe again, he had turned around and led Amos back home, having lost his stomach for more exploration.

  Walking closer, Charlie saw that the base marked the far left edge of the lane while its twin sat a good fifty yards across from it. In between the two bases, a small stream gurgled along, two steep banks flanking it on either side, and a wide stretch of dirt led from the stream bed to the opposite bridge base.

  It created a strange feeling. Most of these woods were cramped with trees, small paths running here and there. Other than at the wider entrance at the mouth of the park, you had to walk single file on all of the trails. But here everything spread out. The bridge seemed to pull at the treetops, stretching them higher into the air, creating an expansive unexpected canopy.

  “I always liked it here, this surprise,” Beverly said. “You’re just walking along with all this foliage blocking everything and then, suddenly, a bridge!”

  She explained that it was part of Admiral Way, that he had driven over it with them when heading down from their house to Alki Beach. He remembered seeing it, with a sidewalk on either side for pedestrians. That would explain the car sounds he could hear. It was strange to be underneath it now.

  Beverly walked over to a wooden bench that sat on the bank overlooking the stream. She tied Amos’s leash to one of the bench legs, then sat down and motioned for Charlie to join her.

  The dry bank of the stream at their feet sloped sharply down about five feet, where it touched the pebbles of the stream bed. Another bank rose up on the opposite side before leveling off into the expanse of dirt ending at the farthest bridge base. Charlie could see empty beer bottles scattered near the base as well as small piles of fast food wrappers.

  “You know, I’d chastise the kids who come here and litter like that,” she said to him, “except that it would be the pot calling the kettle black. I used to do the same thing when I was young,” a slight smile playing on her face. “But don’t tell anyone I told you so. Deal?”

  “Deal,” he smiled, enjoying sharing this secret with her.

  “Charlie, when I was your age, I had already known about the legacy for a long time. I didn’t need to have it explained to me in such a rushed way, like we’re doing with you.

  “Even so, we kids would compare stories. Some of what we told each other was true, and some of it we made up, either to act like know-it-alls or just to scare each other. I did a fair amount of that story swapping right over there, under the bridge.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, my friend Janey told me once that her mother always knew when she was going to do something bad, so for years I believed the woman had eyes in the back of her head. Or Mark Ferguson got us all to believe that his dad had single-handedly stopped a band of thieves from stealing diamonds out of a downtown vault.”

  She laughed and shook her head, the afternoon light shining on her dark hair.

  “It wasn’t until I grew up that I learned those stories had just been, well, stories. Made-up myths. I’m telling you this so you’ll know that I won’t make things up when you have questions, okay? I’ll do my best to be as accurate as possible.

  “But,” Beverly said, then stopped. Charlie watched as her brow furrowed and her eyes seemed to grow slightly darker. “There are certain things I can’t tell you. Sometimes it’s because I don’t know the answers. As you’ll soon discover, there are many things out there that we don’t understand. Mysteries. Other times it’ll be because I won’t tell you. Certain things you are just going to have to learn for yourself.”

  She looked up at the bridge and paused, as if she were counting the cars passing by overhead. Then she turned her head and continued.

  “But feel free to ask anything that you’d like. If I can’t or won’t answer, I’ll try to tell you why not. How does that sound?”

  “Good. Yeah, pretty good,” he answered. He already knew that she grew uncomfortable when the topic of his mother came up, about why she had run away and what had happened before he was born. So he decided to move on to something else.

  “So, um, does that mean you will or you won’t tell me about becoming a witch?”

  She laughed.

  “Nope, I can tell you about that. Or at least enough to satisfy you, I think. We talked yesterday about popping, and echoes, and the craft being in someone’s blood. Well, the craft is definitely in your blood, Charlie. You’ll be popped when you’re ready.”

  “When will I be ready?”

  “When you reach a certain age. It’s different for everybody, but mostly it coincides with puberty.”

  “But aren’t I, I mean, right now …?” He stopped, blushing, caught between his desire to become a witch and the horror that his aunt might decide to talk about the birds and the bees with him.

  “Probably. There’s a man named Malcolm who knows about all of that and does the popping. I can’t do it, nor can any of the other witches in our community. We don’t have that ability.”

  “Will he be …?”

  “I sent him a message about you. He should be back in town in a week or so.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “What Malcolm does?” She smiled, then shook her head. “No, it doesn’t hurt. But it’s a bit strange. What happens i
s, well, it’s sort of like …”

  She looked off into the distance, trying to find the words.

  “Imagine that all your life you could only see out of one eye. The other one was completely blind. So you couldn’t see everything fully, and you developed habits to compensate. Popping is like finally getting that bad eye fixed. Sure, it’s great, because you get full vision, but it’s also disorienting. You aren’t used to it at first. And all those ways of compensating are habits that don’t die off instantly.

  “Or imagine being deaf all your life, and then suddenly you can hear. It’s hard to get used to all that noise, and you don’t know how to block it out right away. It takes time to adjust. Not forever, but a while. Does that make sense?”

  Charlie nodded, but only because she expected him too. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like.

  “Once Malcolm pops you, there will be lots of us to guide you, to help you adjust. But that’s really only the first step. Just because you get popped doesn’t mean you can do everything right away.

  “Let’s go back to the one-eye example. Think of it like learning to paint. Getting popped is like getting your full vision back, but it doesn’t mean you know how to draw shapes or how to mix colors. Or even how to hold a paintbrush. It just means you have the aptitude for it. You’ll still have to learn a lot.”

  She stopped talking. Charlie could hear her words echoed softly back from the far bank of the stream.

  “Sometimes, someone’s ability can leak a little during stressful situations. That’s probably what happened to you with that stone pendant down in California. When that man attacked your mother, a part of your ability leaked out.

  “Or take Mavis. Most likely something traumatic happened to her when she was young, causing a part of her ability to surface. Or whatever blocked her eroded away a little over time as she grew older. That can happen too.

  “At least that’s what I thought until you told me what she did to you yesterday. Remember when Rita called it a drain? It’s when you siphon off someone’s potency for a little while. Kind of like draining their blood. The one doing the draining gets a jolt of power, while the one being drained feels weak for a while. Mavis is just a minor scam artist with very little real talent. She shouldn’t have been able to do what she did.”

  “Then how did she?” Charlie asked, leaning forward so that his elbows rested on his knees. He felt a chill run up his spine and shuddered, remembering how Mavis had gripped his arm, how nauseous and dizzy he had felt. He ran his hand along his forearm right at the place where her fingers had dug into his skin.

  “That’s what we don’t know. We keep an eye on echoes like her so that they can’t cause any trouble. If something changed in her, we should have known about it.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Oh, petty stuff, the kind I told you about yesterday in the kitchen. Winning minor state lotteries, horse-racing scams, those kinds of things. Daniel’s going to look into it. Besides his regular detective work, he keeps track of what’s going on in the witching world. He’s good at what he does. If anyone can find out more about her, he can.

  “Anyway, you don’t need to worry about this right now. You have your schoolwork cut out for you, and when Malcolm gets back, you’ll have your craft to learn about. It takes a lot of practice, believe me.

  “In the meantime, will you wear this?” Beverly reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a thin silver bracelet. “It’s the main reason I brought you here today.”

  “What is it?”

  “This will hide your potential from other witches so that they can’t guess about you the way Mavis did. It would also alert me if you were in any kind of trouble.”

  “How does it work?”

  She winked at him. “It’s a secret. Wait until you’re popped and then we can revisit the question, okay?”

  Charlie nodded, then slipped the bracelet onto his wrist. He thought he would feel something, maybe a slight buzzing or a tiny vibration to indicate that it was actually working. But it just felt like cool metal on his skin.

  “It doesn’t seem like it’s doing anything.”

  Beverly laughed. “Don’t worry. It is.”

  He liked the way the thin band looked on his wrist, the tiny blond hairs of his arms contrasting with the silver color.

  “Well, um, thanks,” he said.

  “You got it, Bucko.”

  “Why did you have to bring me here to give it me?”

  “I didn’t. I just thought a walk sounded nice, and I wanted to show you where I used to hang out.”

  He smiled at her. They sat together for a while, enjoying the stream in front of them and the occasional birdsong in the trees overhead.

  Then he remembered something and started jiggling his feet in anticipation.

  “Oh, could I, well, do you think that I could …” he started, feeling his shyness descend like a heavy blanket. His foot accidentally kicked Amos, who was lying in the dirt in front of them. The dog yelped and stood up.

  “Oh, Amos. I’m sorry, boy” he said as the dog dropped his head beneath Charlie’s hands. He rubbed the dog’s neck, enjoying how his dark fur looked purple in the late afternoon light.

  “Don’t worry. Amos is a big dog and is used to getting bumped. Aren’t you, buddy? Aren’t you?” she said, joining Charlie in giving the dog a good back rub. The dog moaned in pleasure.

  “What were you going to ask?” said his aunt after a moment.

  “Oh. Do you think I could go to a party tomorrow night?”

  There, he had said it before he could chicken out.

  “A party? Well, sure. Is it at someone’s house?”

  “Yeah, it’s some kids at Puget Academy. I got invited by someone, by this guy, Diego, from school. I don’t know the people having the party. But their parents will be there. Diego gave me his number. He said you could call him and his mom to ask about the details.”

  “Well, how thoughtful. Sure, why don’t we call when we get back? What a nice thing for you to do, Charlie. You’ll get to know more kids at school,” she said, giving him a smile of encouragement.

  Charlie nodded but didn’t look at his aunt. A part of him wanted to tell her about the brown-skinned boy and how they talked to each other, but he didn’t know what to say, especially since he didn’t know what he thought about it all.

  “Before we go back, Charlie, I wanted to show you something else. Something witchy.”

  Excitement rose from his belly to his cheeks. Would it be like the candle trick?

  “It’s very important that others, people who aren’t witches, don’t find out about this. It would scare them too much. And it’s important for us to protect our identity. But I can tell if we’re alone and the coast is clear.”

  She stopped and tilted her head, as if listening to something in the distance. Then, after a few moments, “We’re good.”

  His aunt stood up and faced him.

  “You know how I said we kids used to swap stories over there, under that bridge?” she said, pointing to the expanse of dirt across the stream from where they sat.

  “Yeah?”

  “How do you think we got over there without getting wet?”

  He shrugged. He hadn’t thought about it.

  “Like this,” she said. Turning away from him, she bent her knees and jumped into the air. Instead of coming down in the middle of the shallow stream, her jump extended into a long arc that carried her clear over the stream bed and another good twenty feet beyond it. Her feet touched down next to the huge base of the bridge, landing her in a crouched position. She looked over her shoulder and smiled at him, then stood up and turned around.

  “Whoa! Whoooa!” Charlie yelled, jumping up and down like a little kid on Christmas morning.

  “Don’t tell your uncle I did that, okay? I wouldn’t hear the end of it,” she yelled back at him.

  “Whoa! Okay, I won’t. But … whoa!”

  Amos barked at Beverly, his le
ash forcing him to run back and forth in small circles.

  “Come on, come on, boy. You know you want to swim a bit. Come on,” she called to him. “Charlie, undo his leash, will you?”

  Charlie unclipped the lead from Amos’s collar while the dog shivered in anticipation. Once set free, he leaped over the side of the embankment and threw himself into the stream, splashing and frothing the water for the short trip across before lumbering up the far bank and racing across the dirt to where Beverly stood.

  “Good boy!” she exclaimed, then shielded herself with her hands in a very un-witchlike gesture as Amos shook water from his fur. “Ugh! I should have known better. He always does that!” She laughed.

  After a moment, she looked over at Charlie. “Wanna try it?” she yelled. “The coast is still clear.”

  “What, you mean like Amos?”

  “No, silly, like me.”

  “But I can’t …”

  “I know. But I can. All you have to do is jump and leave the rest to me.”

  “Oh my god,” he whispered. He stepped to the edge of the bank. Suddenly it seemed much higher, and Beverly appeared very far away.

  “Come on, it’s fun!” she shouted.

  Fear took root in Charlie’s chest and branched out like a tree. Or maybe it was excitement. He remembered his seventh grade science teacher, Mr. McPheeters, telling them that people’s bodies respond to fear and excitement in much the same way: you start breathing faster, your hands get sweaty, your heart pumps harder …

  “Wanna?”

  “Um, okay. Okay!” he yelled back. “What do I do again?”

  “Just jump. I’ve got you.”

  “When?”

  “Any time you’re ready.”

  “Just jump?”

  “Yeah. Just jump.”

  Charlie squatted down like his aunt had done. He paused, and in that moment everything grew brighter. A cluster of ferns off to the right of the stream bed glowed green. A single strand of spider web stretching from a fallen tree to a blackberry bush reflected light like a glass rod. Even the air seemed to change, growing thinner and cleaner.