“Am I creeping you out?” he asked.
Charlie looked at his face. He had a square chin with a dimple in the middle of it. The rule at P.A. was that the boys had to shave every day. Diego’s beard was thick enough that by the end of the day, his jawline and sideburns, as well as the skin above his upper lip, grew dark. Charlie barely even had peach fuzz and felt like a little boy sitting next to Diego.
After a moment Charlie laughed. “No, no,” he said, shaking his head. He was glad he hadn’t said anything about Beverly and his mother, or his own legacy. “Um, it sounds pretty cool.”
“Yeah, it is. If you want to, you could come to a ritual sometime. But I’m not trying to get you to join, ’k? It’s not like a church where we go around trying to recruit members.”
Three upperclassmen were walking up the sidewalk back toward school.
“Hey, Ramirez. ¿Quién está contigo? ¿Tu novio? ¿Tu pareja?” one of the boys yelled.
“Just ignore them, okay, Charlie?” Diego whispered, looking angry and turning his face away from the boys.
“What did he say?”
“Just forget it. He’s being stupid is all.”
“¡Qué maricones! Bésa le, Diego. ¡Dale un besito!” The three boys started walking toward them.
A sharp whistle cracked through the air. Charlie looked down the hill and saw the soccer coach walking up toward them, whistle in her mouth, a stern look on her face.
“Diego, everything all right? Is Julio giving you trouble?”
The upperclassmen stared at Diego and Charlie. One of them smiled.
“Naw, we’re not bothering them. Just saying ‘hi’ is all.”
“Diego, is that true?” Asked the coach, her eyes narrowing.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Just saying ‘hi.’”
“Because remember, P.A. has a zero-tolerance policy. All you have to do is …”
“Thanks, Mrs. Raymond. It’s cool,” said Diego, looking up at her with a neutral expression.
“All right then. Just keep it peaceful, boys. And there won’t be any trouble.”
Charlie watched her as she walked back down the hill.
“You his little boy toy, kid?” said one of the other guys.
“More like butt toy,” said Julio, and they all laughed.
“Or maybe …?” said the other guy, making a gesture with his hand and his mouth that Charlie didn’t understand.
“Come on, Charlie, let’s get out of here,” said Diego, standing up.
“Oh ‘Charlie,’ is it? Don’t you mean ‘Charlie Darling’?”
“Dude, come on,” Diego insisted, and started walking off.
“Better watch yourself, boy,” said the third guy, as Charlie turned to go. “Faggots like you don’t last long around here.”
CHAPTER 39
Friendly Decisions
DIEGO SQUEEZED THE STEERING WHEEL until the blood faded from his knuckles.
“That Law of Three is hard to follow sometimes. I know I’m just supposed to take a deep breath, listen to the air outside, feel my feet on the ground, all that crap. But I want to smack those guys. They don’t have to take deep breaths. They get away with whatever they want.”
There was a crack in the boy’s voice, and Charlie wondered if Diego was going to start crying.
The two boys sat in the school parking lot in Diego’s car, a compact blue Honda stick shift with pamphlets and fliers and other pieces of paper covering the floor and the backseat.
Faggots like you don’t last long around here.
Charlie could still hear the threat behind those words. His mind filled with the familiar image of Ted Jones’s face. Imagining the football player’s high school photo was becoming a habit. He wished he had never seen the news story that day.
Charlie was scared. Were those guys talking about him behind his back, telling everyone that he was Diego’s boyfriend? Would they cause him trouble too?
He thought about getting popped. He wanted it to happen fast. If he could do to those boys what his aunt had done … Well, maybe he wouldn’t, since he needed to keep things a secret. But still. He wouldn’t be as afraid then. And maybe he could help Diego too.
“Charlie, look,” Diego said, “I don’t want you to have trouble here at school. You’re new and you’re just trying to figure everything out. Most of the people here are cool, but there are some idiots, like Julio and Dave Giraldi. They’ve made it hard for me at times, but always on the side, you know? So no one else really ever sees?
“Anyway, maybe you shouldn’t be seen with me. Those guys … they’ll just bother you and … I don’t want you to have trouble, is all.”
Charlie, who saw himself as a shy person, afraid to express his opinion, who always wanted to hide out and not be noticed by anyone, surprised himself by what he said next.
“No way, Diego. I’ll be friends with whoever (whomever, he heard his mother’s voice correcting his English) I want to be, and be seen with anybody I want to. I didn’t come all this way to Seattle just to hide out.”
He couldn’t believe he had said that. He had come to Seattle to hide out.
No, that wasn’t exactly true. His mother had brought him here to hide out. It hadn’t been his decision.
He thought about how he had always hidden from things—hoping adults wouldn’t talk to him or ask him questions, hoping he wouldn’t become the center of attention. And then, his mother just continued it by dragging him off to some city where he had never been before and hiding him away like some stupid witness protection program.
Wait. Shouldn’t he be more cautious? Look at what happened Tuesday night. Shouldn’t he lay low and make sure people couldn’t find him?
But trying to hide hadn’t worked. The Dog Man found them in California. The witches broke into Beverly and Randall’s home. People seemed to know where he was. So he might as well accept the fact that hiding didn’t work and figure something else out instead.
Charlie wasn’t used to such blunt self talks. It felt strange, and strangely invigorating. They seemed to be happening more often these days, and often times when he was hanging out with Diego.
“I want to be friends with you. That’s my decision, not Julio’s, not anybody else’s,” he said, looking at Diego, surprised by the fierceness in his voice.
The other boy stared at him, his mouth open. Then he smiled. “Dude! You are so, like, righteous right now. Wow! I didn’t know you were that tough!”
Diego paused, then looked sheepish. “I hope that didn’t sound like an insult.”
Charlie smiled back. “I didn’t know I was that tough either.”
Diego’s shouts of laughter and dashboard banging could be heard throughout the parking lot.
CHAPTER 40
Malcolm
CHARLIE HEARD VOICES COMING from the living room as he opened the front door and walked inside. He put his house keys in the top drawer of the table in the foyer.
“Hey, Charlie. Come here for a minute. I want you to meet someone.”
He walked down the hallway and turned into the living room. Beverly was perched on the edge of the couch next to a middle-aged man with shorn gray-brown hair and a trim beard. Teacups and saucers sat on the coffee table in front of them along with a half-eaten array of fruit and cookies.
“Charlie, I’d like you to meet Malcolm Goedde, historian, teacher, and sneaky wise guy of this community. Malcolm, this is my nephew, Charlie.”
The man stood up, laughing. “Thank you, Beverly. Always the kind one.”
He stepped around the coffee table, walked over to Charlie, and shook his hand.
“Hello, young man, seems like there’s been an awful lot of buzz about you lately.”
The man’s eyes sparkled, and his hand was large and warm. At the same time, there was an edge to him that Charlie found unnerving.
He turned back to Beverly. “Ah yes, you’re right. He’s filled to bursting.”
“What he means,” said his aunt, ges
turing for Charlie to sit with them, “is that you are ready to be popped. Quite ready, it would appear.”
“Is it too late?” asked Charlie, hoping for all he was worth that it wasn’t.
“No, kid, you’re fine. But another six to eight months, and it might be.”
Beverly went on to explain that there weren’t many people in the world who could open up a new witch’s ability. Malcolm spent most of his time popping kids and then training them how to use their craft carefully.
“He’s a tough teacher. I can speak from personal experience. But his lessons will prepare you better than anything else out there.”
Malcolm lived up near Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascades Mountains outside of Seattle. He traveled a lot, mostly in the States and Canada but sometimes South America and Europe.
“Any questions, kid?” Malcolm asked.
“Um, when do we get started?”
The older man laughed. “That’s what I like. Lots of gumption.”
He turned to Beverly. “Leave us alone for a moment?”
She gathered the teacups together but left the snack tray. “Charlie, make sure you eat something,” she said over her shoulder as she headed to the kitchen.
“Just a moment,” Malcolm said when they were sitting alone together on the couch. He reached up and pinched his nostrils closed with his fingers, then puffed his cheeks out. Charlie felt pressure against his eardrums much like when he swam toward the bottom of the lake near his house back in Clarkston.
“Okay, just a precaution. No one else can hear us now.”
Charlie’s eyes grew wide. “Um, okay, well, I’m ready, I guess. Do I have to, you know, do anything, or …”
“What? No, no no no no. I’m not going to pop you now. I need to ask you a few questions and give you some information.”
“Oh.” Charlie was equally relieved and disappointed.
“First off. Do you understand what popping is? Do you know what it will mean?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Explain it to me then.”
The man’s eyes lost their sparkle. He crossed his arms and waited. The intensity in his face increased.
Charlie took a deep breath. “I have witch blood in me, and even though some of it is leaking out, most of it won’t, and so I need to be popped so I can, uh, so I can use all the witch blood in me?” he finished with a question.
“Pretty good, pretty good. Though you might want to change your metaphor. You don’t have blood that is leaking out of you, like a wound. Your blood is very active right now. Think of it like vapor, or steam, rising from inside you. Your insides are hot, and so steam comes out. It came out in the form of the dream you had that Beverly mentioned to me and what you did to that man down in California. That’s the steam. After a few months you’d cool down a bit, and then you might have echoes for the rest of your life, or you might have nothing at all. That’s how it works.
“Now,” he continued, “I want you to understand what this means, my boy. This is not a decision to be taken lightly. Everyone wants to be popped. But few really take the time to understand the implications of it. Most kids who get popped come from families with a long legacy. They wouldn’t dream of not becoming full-fledged witches.
“But it’s not all good, okay? You will see the world, you will feel the world, very differently from how you do now. I’m sure they explained to you how disorienting it is right after you’re popped. That’s true. But it’s not like everything goes back to normal. You’ll never be normal again. Ever. Even if you try to do what your mother did, forsake her legacy and let her ability mostly dry up, it’ll always be there. And a witch who lets his or her abilities get weak is just asking for danger. Witches sense each other. They sniff each other out like dogs.
“Yes, I know, I know, there are wards, and bracelets,” he went on, pointing to Charlie’s wrist, “but still. We can always smell each other eventually. If you stay unpopped, you might be able to avoid that whole thing. Avoid being on the radar screen. But if you get popped and then decide, ‘Oh, I don’t want this anymore,’ you’re in trouble, kid. You might as well paint a big bulls-eye on your face and walk around town yelling ‘Shoot me!’
“Now, your mother’s a bit of an exception. Even though she isn’t a very strong witch and has let most of her abilities atrophy, she can lay low and stay under the radar screen better than most I’ve seen. And I’ve met a lot of witches in my day.
“And even she was found, eventually. Well, to her credit, I think they sensed you, not her. But see, she couldn’t keep you hidden. And I doubt you’ll be able to keep yourself hidden either.”
He paused. “Is any of this making sense?”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “If I get popped, I won’t be able to go back to how I was before, or how I am now. And it’ll make me stand out more to other witches, good and bad. If I do it, then I have to learn how to protect myself.”
“Well said, kid, well said,” Malcolm smiled. He reached over and gave Charlie’s shoulder a hard squeeze.
“Okay. On to the next thing. What’s her name?”
“Whose name?”
“Don’t be shy with me. We gotta put it all out on the table if we’re gonna make this work. The girl you’re so crazy about.”
“Girl? There’s no girl …”
“Oh. Pardon me. What’s his name?”
Charlie felt a chill in his heart. Did he mean …? But they were just friends. Besides …
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Okay, little man. That’s your first lie to me. You better make them few and far between, or our relationship isn’t going to go so well. Now, I don’t know if you’re only lying to me or to yourself too. But …”
Charlie stood up. “I don’t think we really need to …”
Faster than he would have guessed, the man was up and shoving Charlie back down on the couch.
“You think this is a game, kid?”
“No, I …”
Malcolm stood over him for a moment, arms crossed, then was sitting down next to him before Charlie could register that he wasn’t standing anymore. His face was inches from Charlie’s, the smell of tea and cookies sweet on his breath. The man’s voice dropped low, becoming ominous. Charlie’s legs began to shake. “You think this is just something you get to control? You’ll just get popped, and you’ll be able to do all the neat stuff Auntie Bev Bev does, and everything will be fine? You’ll learn hocus-pocus, and fly around at night stopping all the bad guys? Poof, like that?” His mouth had curved into a taunting smile, and his eyebrows arched up toward the top of his head.
Then the smile vanished.
“Now you listen to me, and you listen good. I don’t give a rat’s ass whom you love or what kind of person floats your boat. It’s none of my business. What is my business is training you to use your craft with skill, caution, and most of all, a level head. You’re asking me to turn you into a weapon that makes an entire SWAT team look like a bunch of crossing guards. You don’t think I have a sense of responsibility here?
“If you lie to yourself, then how do you think you’ll do when you learn your first Words? Words that shift and change things. Words that give you power over normal human beings. You gotta be clean with yourself, little man, when you start wielding Words. If not, wouldn’t it be easy to push somebody around a little bit? Or a lot? Maybe steal something at school? Just that one time? Maybe force people to do things against their will?”
“No. No, I wouldn’t …”
“Or the flip side. Be so worried about it that you become a recluse, hiding from everyone, living in a little hut somewhere eating tree bark because you can’t reconcile what you can do with how the rest of the world works? Like your mother?”
Malcolm’s words felt like gravel pelting Charlie’s face. “What? No, she …”
“You think that’s what I want to create? You think that’s what this community needs? At a time like this? A hermit? Or some kid who lies to himsel
f about what turns his crank and then goes around causing collateral damage?”
Malcolm sat back and glared at the boy for a moment. Then the expression on his face changed, looking more than a little satisfied, like a lion after finishing his kill. Charlie half expected him to lick his lips.
What was Malcolm saying? That Charlie liked Diego? That he was gay? How could that be?
“How did you know?” Charlie whispered. “Is it that obvious?”
Malcolm’s face softened. “Kid, this is what I do. I gotta make sure people are very clear what they’re getting into before I hand ’em the keys to the car, so to speak. Believe me, I’ve made mistakes over the years, mistakes that have cost lives, because someone I thought could handle their gifts, couldn’t.
“You need to know something. Witches can’t read minds. I don’t care what anybody tells you. It’s one of the nuts we haven’t been able to crack. And I’m personally glad we can’t. It would be too unfair to normal human beings, and I think it would make us crazy. So, no, I didn’t read your mind. You don’t need witchcraft to see that everyone on this planet has a secret or two. I just make it my business to see what unpopped kids are hiding. It’s always stuff nobody wants to admit to, like you, so I have to ‘help’ them,” he said, making quotes with his fingers in the space between their faces, “to see what secrets they have before I agree to pop them.
“And you’d be surprised how common the secrets are. ‘I want so-and-so to love me.’ ‘I took money from mama’s cookie jar.’ ‘I touch myself at night,’” he finished, his voice high-pitched and mocking. “Make sense?”
Charlie nodded. Only moments before, he had felt the thrill of not hiding anymore, of sitting in Diego’s car and tasting the freedom of just being himself. Now it didn’t seem thrilling at all. It seemed awful, terrible, the worst of the worst.
Horrified, he realized that fat tears had welled up in his eyes, and his whole body had begun to shake.
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 22
