Charlie sat in the passenger seat, tapping his feet on the floor mat. He wasn’t sure why Diego was telling him so much. He wasn’t really listening to him. Maybe I could just ask him to take me home. I could tell him I was tired, and could we talk about it later?
There was a pause in Diego’s chatter. “Well, is it true?”
“Is what true?” Charlie asked, realizing that he hadn’t heard Diego’s question.
“About you? I thought, I thought maybe you were gay too. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so in-your-face about it, Charlie. If not, that’s cool too. I just …”
“No. No, I’m not gay,” he said, scooting closer to the car door at his right. At least I don’t think so. How do you know if you are?
Diego exhaled then sat back against his seat. “Oh, okay. Look, no hard feelings, right? I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I just …”
“No, no, it’s cool.”
“I hate this stuff. It never goes well. It always gets so weird,” Diego said and then slammed his fist against the dashboard. The loud thud made Charlie jump.
“Um, could you just take me home? I’m sorry. I’m just tired is all. Could we maybe …”
“Oh sure. Sure.”
“… talk about it tomorrow?”
“Yeah, of course,” said Diego, starting up the car, not looking at him. None of the normal aliveness was in his voice, and Charlie had something to do with that. It felt awful.
“Really, I mean it, it’s just been a long day, and …”
“No prob. No prob. Meiyou wenti,” he said, then flashed a wide grin at Charlie, a grin that failed to touch the boy’s eyes.
He pulled the car away from the curb and turned into a driveway. He backed the car up, then drove down the street and out of the neighborhood. “Meiyou wenti.”
When the car pulled in front of the house on Washington Street, Charlie turned to Diego to apologize. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was apologizing for, but he knew it was something important.
But Diego spoke first. “Look, can we just drop this? It was totally my fault. My mistake. I kind of blunder into these things. I didn’t mean to drop so much heavy stuff on you,” he said, and this time his smile filled his whole face. He was talking loudly.
Diego reached across Charlie and opened the passenger-side door. “We’re both a little tired. I’ll, you know, I’ll see you at school tomorrow. In our boring old uniforms, but oh well, same shit on a new day, right?” he said, winking.
The amount of things Charlie wanted to say and do in that moment overwhelmed him. He wanted to pull the door closed, tell Diego to turn up the heat, and just drive around the city for a while.
He wanted to get Tawny in the car with them. Maybe she would sit in the front passenger seat while Diego drove, and Charlie would sit in the back. He would listen to them as they talked about school. He would learn to talk just like they did. They wouldn’t expect anything more from him than to just sit there.
He wanted to scream at the boy, “What do you want from me? What does everybody want? Why do people always want stuff?”
He wanted to whisper in the boy’s ear that his aunt could jump over a stream bed, could make things float, and that pretty soon he would be able to do these things. He wanted to whisper, “I’ll show you when I learn, okay?”
And a deeper part, a part that scared him almost as much as talking dogs, wanted to take the boy’s face in his hands, to smell the gel in his hair, the hot breath in his mouth, the way the scent of the soap he used still lingered on his skin. He wanted to run his finger over the freckle on the boy’s right temple, the one that looked like a small comma, and press on it. He wanted to open his own mouth and see if there was a way he could taste the words that Diego said, all of them, the vast variety of them, the ease with which he said them.
He wanted to be this boy’s friend. And he was pretty sure that that wasn’t going to happen now. He felt flashes of fear and sadness. How had he managed to screw everything up so fast?
But he didn’t say any of this to Diego. He didn’t know how to say it all without more words coming out, words that might be like Words, for they could do things, they could set things in motion, they could have a witchcraft of their own. Charlie had never felt more afraid of what might come spilling out of his mouth than in that moment, and so he kept it closed.
He climbed out of the car and stood on the wet grass near the curb.
“Thanks for the …”
“Sure, Charlie, we’ll see you,” Diego said, already turning his head away, already making decisions that might not include him anymore.
The red taillights of the BMW looked like a pair of angry disgusted eyes glaring back at him. He made himself stand there and watch until they turned right a block away and disappeared around the corner. Then he fished for the keys in his pocket, unlocked the door, and walked inside the house.
CHAPTER 34
The Witch of the House
THE ONLY SOUNDS TO BE HEARD in the neighborhood were typical night noises: tree boughs blowing, late-night television playing, the groan of a refrigerator door opening and closing. Somewhere a child’s voice, stuffy with sleep, asked for a drink of water.
Two figures stood listening on a rooftop a block away from their target, the house on Washington Street. Once they were sure that their presence was undetected, they nodded to each other and, holding their broomsticks aloft, jumped to the ground below. Quieter than moonbeams on water, they slipped across the street and approached the house, letting their broomsticks shrink to small twigs and placing them in their pockets as they moved.
They stopped inches from the barrier surrounding the front yard and the circumference of the house. This barrier was invisible to the naked eye. It had been set in place by the formidable witch who resided in and watched over the home, and its purpose was to keep people like them from entering the property. It would have worked, except …
Except that Grace had given them the way in. Years ago, when she had learned all the community’s secrets from its careless and lusty leader, she made sure to study the ways it protected itself.
She had passed these ways on to the two figures now looking at the house. If used correctly, they would be able to breach the wall. And get inside.
They said their Words in unison. Their hands made movements in the air. It did not take long.
At first, just a small snap. Then, tiny fissures spread out along the invisible wall, like cracks on a windshield. The barrier didn’t collapse. It was too strong to destroy completely. It simply began to weaken.
The strangers said more Words, made more hand gestures, until a perfectly round hole formed, large enough for them to slip inside. Just like Grace had said it would.
The man, Tony, spun in place and wiggled his hips, his own version of a silent celebration. The woman, Claudia, rolled her eyes. He bowed and made a chivalrous gesture. She nodded, then took a short breath, and caused her own form to turn to vapor. The vapor poured through the hole like smoke through an open window, and before two seconds had passed, she was crouched on the ground inside the property. She paused, listening for any signs of disturbance. When satisfied that she was in the clear, she signaled to Tony behind her, whose own form vaporized and poured through the round gap.
Together they remained near the ground, their senses alert to any alarms sounded. Nothing. Not a change. Nothing to indicate that the home’s security had been breached. Still, they waited. The witch inside was known to be quite strong.
* * *
Charlie was dreaming. In the dream, he was teaching a Chinese class. He sat at his desk looking at his materials, all of which were written in Chinese characters. He couldn’t understand anything.
He looked up from his desk to see that every student in class was Chinese. They sat still, waiting for him to say something. He realized with horror that he couldn’t speak anything other than English. Sweat filled the worry lines on his forehead.
One of the students
sitting in the front row, a nine- or ten-year-old girl in black braids, raised her hand. Charlie nodded to her.
“Teacher, blah blah wingwang wingwang blah blah wingwang Puget Sound chingchong chingchong witchcraft,” she said.
The rest of the students nodded and smiled. What she had said made perfect sense to them, yet he could only make out a few words.
Charlie heard a noise at his feet. He looked down, and saw Amos lying on the floor to the right of his desk. The dog trembled from head to foot. He whimpered. He seemed to be suffering.
Charlie felt a tap on his shoulder. He looked up to see the young girl with the braids standing by his side. “I think you’re in trouble,” she said in plain English. She was missing her two front teeth.
“You mean the dog, right?” he said to her, confused.
“No, Charlie. You. You’re in trouble. Hen weixian,” she said.
* * *
Claudia and Tony stood over the boy as he slept in his bed. The curtains from the opened window floated in the night breeze. The large dog lay trembling in the corner, unable to get up or make a noise. A few simple Words had subdued it.
The boy had bright yellow curls spread about his pillow. Apples added color to his otherwise pale cheeks. His face was knotted and tight as he slept, as if he were lifting something heavy.
The two strangers stared at the boy. They were pretty sure it was him. They had been given a clear description. That, and the fact that they knew they were in the right house, confirmed that it had to be the boy they were looking for.
* * *
Two cats ran down a succession of alleys in the neighborhood, loping along in their thin-bodied silent-footed way. They were soon joined by another, then another, and even more still. The cluster ran together for several blocks until a few of them split off down side roads.
One of the cats turned down Washington Street. Jumping into the air, she dug her claws into a tall pine tree in the yard of the large white house and clambered halfway up, then raced out onto a thick branch. Just before reaching the end of the branch, the cat leaped from the tree and landed on a window sill. She pawed loudly at the glass until the human female, the one with the long dark hair, parted the curtains and looked out. The human stared at the cat’s face for a moment, until her brown eyes grew round. In a flash she was gone from the window, the curtains closing again.
* * *
Claudia took several strips of the gauzy material that Tony held out in his hands and leaned over the sleeping boy, peering at him until she was inches from his face. She knew not to use any Words on him until she could block his mouth. It might not be needed, but she couldn’t be too cautious.
Without warning, the door to the bedroom crashed open. The witch of the house rushed at them, her long dark hair streaming behind her as she attacked, Words hissing from her mouth, hands outstretched.
Tony spun to his side and threw a bladed metal disk at the witch. Before it could touch her, it skipped past her head and stuck itself in the wall behind her. Tony dove sideways as a bolt of light shot from the witch’s hands and blasted into the carpet where his feet had been.
Without pausing, Claudia threw strips of the gauze at the boy’s mouth and each of his hands. The material fastened itself to his skin faster than a striking snake. The boy’s eyes flew open. Before he could sit up, Claudia flicked her wrists, forcing the bedclothes to stiffen and trap the boy’s legs.
The witch turned her attention from Tony and flew through the air to her nephew’s bed. She slammed into Claudia’s body and tackled her to the ground, her hands squeezing the air from the woman’s throat. As the witch’s mouth moved, sparks shot from Claudia’s ears and scalp. She writhed and screamed in pain.
Tony’s body blurred as he ran to the bed, threw the boy’s bound form over his shoulder like a sack of laundry, then jumped toward the open window.
“Beverly,” he said, “Stop moving or I toss the boy out, head first.”
Beverly released her grip on Claudia and looked at him, pure venom in her large brown eyes.
* * *
Charlie wriggled in the man’s arms. The stretchy material trapped his limbs, and even though he kicked hard at the man’s back, it had no effect.
“Get off me, bitch,” said the woman pinned beneath Beverly. “Get off me before I …”
From his vantage point hanging over the man’s shoulder, Charlie watched as Beverly stood up. She was wearing a long white nightgown. The strangers wore black. The good guys versus the bad guys. His aunt stood very still, arms at her sides, her eyes locked on the man and Charlie. The woman got up from the floor and walked over to them, rubbing the back of her neck.
“Here’s how this is gonna go,” said Claudia. “We leave with the boy, and you stay put. If you even begin to move your lips,” she said, pulling a long curved dagger from the pocket of her jacket, “then this goes into the boy. Got it? If so, nod your head to Mama Claudia here,” she said, pointing to herself.
Beverly nodded.
“That’s good, missy, that’s purely psychological,” said the man, doing a strange pelvic thrust in Beverly’s direction. “You are down with it, Mama, aren’t you?”
The woman turned to look at the man. “Shut up, Tony. Come on. We’re leaving.”
With a swirl of white material, the spot where Beverly stood was now empty. She didn’t vanish so much as sparked across the room. A bright blue streak of electricity charged toward them.
The woman screamed, then flew up against the ceiling as a strip of gauze sealed itself across her mouth. Blue light shot along the sides of her body, forcing her to drop the dagger.
Beverly’s white nightgown blurred again, coming toward the man so fast that Charlie almost didn’t see it. The man grunted and bent over, but turned and tried to move toward the window. Charlie felt himself sliding downwards, his own hip bumping against Tony’s.
He fell to the floor on his back and watched as the man’s body lifted into the air and slammed against the ceiling directly above, alongside the woman. He yelled out, “Holy friggin’ witch!” before a strip of gauze stuck itself over his lips and cut off his words.
Beverly rushed over to where Charlie lay and pulled him away from the window toward the bedroom door.
“Are you okay?” she asked. He nodded, unable to speak.
She turned her head and looked over to the corner. “Amos, buddy, I’ll be right there, okay? First I have to …”
A shadow passed through the doorway.
“What the hell?” said Randall, eyes trying to focus in the faint light as he stepped into the bedroom. Charlie could see that his face was puffy from sleep. He must have only just heard the commotion in the room.
“Randall, get back!” Beverly stood up and put her body in front of her husband and her nephew. But the shift in her attention seemed to be all that the two intruders needed. They fell toward the floor and landed feet first, right as cats. Without pausing, they ripped the gauze from their mouths.
Beverly reached her hands out in front of her, preparing for another attack.
But the man and the woman moved to the window. The woman slipped through first and jumped out into the empty air. The man looked over his shoulder and, just before stepping up onto the windowsill, said, “You are one kick-ass lady. Holy ninja witch!” He smiled his toothpaste commercial smile, winked at them, and then he too was gone in an instant. The smell of damp freshly cut lumber filled the room.
Charlie watched as his aunt ran to the window and looked out. Eventually she turned around to face them, shaking her head. “They’re gone,” she said. “I think we’re safe for now.”
CHAPTER 35
Midnight Meeting
AN HOUR LATER, THE COFFEE machine sputtered in the corner while fruit and bagels were pulled from the refrigerator and passed around. The kitchen was filled with conversation as Charlie’s aunt and uncle, along with Rita, Jeremy, and four other adults he didn’t know, crowded around the island in the middle of the
floor. Earlier, while still upstairs in Charlie’s bedroom, Beverly had snipped the gauze from his hands and feet and carefully peeled it away from his mouth.
“Okay, stand still. I need to check to make sure that you’re okay and that they didn’t leave anything behind that could hurt you.”
She placed both of her hands on the side of his head, leaned in close enough to his face that their noses were almost touching, then inserted a finger inside each of his ears. The sensation was disorienting.
“What are you doing?” he asked, taking a step back from her.
“Charlie, I don’t have the time nor the energy to explain this. I know it’s weird, and I’m sorry. But please just stand still.”
Her expression was all business, and her voice was low and dark. He thought about how fast she had attacked the two intruders, how she had made the bolt of light shoot from her hands. His knees weakened. Without a second thought, he stepped forward and closed his eyes.
Her fingers slipped inside his ears again. He kept his feet planted. For a brief moment, a buzzing pressure filled his head and spread down his shoulders. And then it was over.
Inspected to her satisfaction, Beverly apologized and told him he was clean.
“Oh, and Charlie? For the time being, please wear the bracelet when you sleep, okay?” she said, nodding to his nightstand where he had set the bracelet before turning off his light last night. “We can’t be too careful.”
Now he sat on a stool at the far corner of the counter as the adults moved about the kitchen in various stages of pajamas, sweatshirts, and overcoats. It seemed part emergency meeting, part adult sleepover.
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) Page 20
