by Douglas Rees
I pick up the wand and touch the grimoire.
“I will this book to be the best it can be, and I ask the universe to help me,” I say.
And José and Laura say, “Blesséd be,” without needing to be told.
José lays some of his pictures on the altar and takes the wand.
“I will my drawings to be the best they can be, and I ask the universe to help me.”
“Blesséd be,” Laura and I say.
Laura takes out a little statuette of a ballerina. She’s wearing a dress of real cloth. She’s not pretty, but she’s strong, and she’s got one foot pushed forward like she’s saying, “Here I am. Don’t try to pretend I’m not.”
Laura says, “I will myself to be as brave as I can be, and I ask the universe to help me.”
José gives her the wand and she touches the statue.
We say, “Blesséd be.”
“Okay,” I say. “Now we all take time to open ourselves to the universe and each other and think how we can use our powers to help the others in the coven. Remember, it has to be using your powers.”
I hold out my hands, and José, Laura, and I link up over the altar.
“Close your eyes,” I say.
We stand there under the sycamore tree and I can feel the breeze start to blow. It rustles the leaves and the little paper planets over our heads make soft little tok-tok sounds as they hit together.
Something wants to talk to us, I thinksay. May we be open to hear it. Blesséd be.
The wind stops and the tok-tok sounds are quiet. But I know we have been answered. I just don’t know what the answer was.
When I think about five minutes have gone by, I open my eyes.
“Okay,” I say. “What have you got?”
“Nothing,” says José.
“I don’t even know what my powers are,” Laura says.
“Okay, okay,” I say. “This week I’ll use my imaging powers to start you guys developing yours. Just be open, okay? If it works, things’ll start coming to you.”
“I’d rather you worked on the Queens,” Laura says.
“I’ll do that,” José says. “I’ll draw something.”
“What?” I want to know.
“I don’t know.” José shrugs. “I never tried to draw something not happening before. But don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.”
“Thank you,” Laura says, and smiles.
“Next Friday good with everybody?” I say.
It is. So we uncast the circle and strip the altar.
It is then that we notice José’s essay is missing.
Laura’s note is gone, too, but we find that in the corner of the yard. José’s essay is nowhere.
“The wind must have blown it,” José says. “Damn. I wanted to keep that.”
“No,” I say. “This is cool, José. I think it means the universe is telling you it’s taken your problem and started solving it. It kept Laura’s note here with us to work on ’cause it’s not over yet.”
“Makes sense.” José shrugs.
“Makes too much sense for me,” Laura says.
And that’s how we end. I’m worried about Laura. But I think I’m going to like being head of a coven. Explaining things to my friends feels good, especially when I didn’t know I knew all that a second before I said it.
Maybe I got it from the wind.
21
HERO
THE NEXT MONDAY AFTER SCHOOL, I see José with Laura. He takes her over to the coche. Leon gets out. He’s wearing his cop uniform for the first time since I have known him. He looks more like a police general than a sergeant. If they have generals in the police.
José introduces them, and the three of them walk around together, while half the school watches and pretends they’re not.
I take a step back. Interesting.
T&A and the rest of the Queens are holding court at the side of the building. They don’t stop talking, or act like they’ve seen Leon, but the guys with them never take their eyes off him.
He waves at me. I smile and wave back. Then, a few minutes later, the coche takes off with Leon and José. I go over to Laura.
“What’s up?” I say.
“Majix,” she says. “Look.”
She takes her binder out of her backpack and shows me a picture José has drawn tucked into the front. It is Leon standing next to Laura with his arm across her shoulders.
“José was making this for me yesterday and his brother saw him doing it. So he asked who the girl was, and José told him all about the Queens. So Leon said maybe he should come by and make the picture for real.”
Her eyes are shining.
“Way to go, universe,” I say.
José gets it.
Aunt Ariel is also getting it. From Chris. I hardly saw her this weekend. In fact, Saturday night, I waited up for her to come home. Which she did, after I had fallen asleep in the chair in the living room.
“Oh, Kestrel dear, that is so sweet,” she said when she woke me. “No one ever waited up for me before. Were you worried?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not some little kid waiting for Mommy and Daddy to come home. I just wanted to know how it went.”
“Good,” she says, so sweetly that I know she doesn’t believe me, and we go to bed.
The next day, she says, “You know, Kestrel. I think I’m going to have to break down and sign up for a cell phone plan. I’ve always been smug about not needing one. But now, with us living together, I think I do. Just so we can keep in touch.”
“Whatever,” I say. Because I am not worried when she stays out half the night. Not really.
But she does get one, and now my little silver-and-black cell that does everything except fly and make ice cream starts buzzing. Ariel calls to check in when she’s out with Chris. José calls to talk about what to draw, and about Ratchy. Laura calls to talk, even though we just did at school. Plus texting.
And my cell phone is part of how I become a hero this Thursday.
It is after school. Aunt Ariel is working on Grimoire. Ratchy is out being fierce. José is busy, and Laura has some kind of class she just started.
Also, I have gotten something from The Rentz today. It is my bike and helmet and stuff, which they have kindly sent me.
My bike.
I mean, I’m glad to see it again. It’s a good one, and kind of a friend. But getting it means something. Somethings. It means, “We want you to have this because you probably need it and we know you love it.” But maybe it also means, “You aren’t coming back for a loooong time.” And there isn’t a letter with it, or a note, or anything. I mean, how hard would that have been?
So I just sit in the front yard with it for a while, trying to decide how I feel. Which I can’t.
Anyway, I decide to get on it. Just to ride around the hood. Which is not much but houses and a little strip mall down the street.
So I go there first, and I buy a bag of chips, just so I had some reason to come down this way in the first place. But I do not want the chips. I don’t want anything I can buy. I want someplace to go that is not just back to Ariel’s house.
The only place I can think of is school. Don’t ask me why. Ask the universe.
So I toss the chips in the trash, and pump up there.
When I get there it is about four thirty. The flag is down. The parking lot is empty. Someone has put I AM NOT A CROOK all over the base of the bust of Richard Milhous Nixon’s head and then crossed out the NOT.
It is quiet. The loudest thing is the sound of the chain on the flagpole slapping against the pole itself, sad and tired.
I chain my bike up and start walking around.
There is something about being at a school when you don’t have to be there. It makes you feel better, because you can leave anytime you want to.
Anyway, I start walking around the outside of the buildings. Why am I doing this dumb thing? Because I can’t think of anything else to do right now. The wind is blowing softly
across the grounds and the trees are filled with the voices of the ghosts of old students who can’t think of anywhere else to be, either. But at least I am here on my own time.
“Hey, losers,” I say, and wave to them.
But while I’m doing it, I hear this kind of WHUMP! and a voice hollers, “Oh, shit!” and I smell gasoline and see this big hand of flame and smoke reach up from the far end of the building.
I whip out my cell. I start taking pictures. Then, I start to dial 911. Then I don’t.
You know how in schools they always have those fire extinguishers behind glass doors? You never saw anyone actually break one in your life, but you always hoped you’d get to be the one to do it, even if it meant saving your school from burning down? You know how they have those alarms, and it’s illegal to break the glass and pull one down unless there really is a fire? Well, I broke the glass and I pulled the alarm. And by the time the fire engines showed up, there I was spraying foam on the place where somebody had tried to torch the building.
These two big trucks come roaring across the campus with their sirens and lights and they get the hoses going and the thing is out in a few minutes.
That whole side of the school is a huge, gross black-and-gray mess. The water is still running off it, and the stinky smoke is hanging over the school and the houses around it.
The fire guys in their yellow coats and their helmets come and stand around me and say things like, “Are you all right?” and “Good going, girl” and “Look at that wall. We’d have lost this whole wing if she hadn’t been here.”
All of which makes me feel very cool. But then it gets even more interesting.
Because this detective comes and starts asking me questions like, “Did you see who started the fire?”
I have been waiting for someone to ask me this. I nod and pull out my cell and show him the guy running away with the gas can in his hand. It’s just a few seconds, and you can’t see his face, but the cop is pretty excited.
“Did you see where he went?” he asks me.
“Sure,” I say. “Come with me.”
I lead him over to the Dumpsters.
“In there,” I say.
So the detective takes a step back. He puts his hand inside his jacket.
“Are you sure someone’s in there?” he says.
I do not answer him. I just take the Dumpster lid and throw it back so it crashes good and hard against the back.
Out comes the detective’s gun. He says, “Come out of there. This is the Jurupa Police.”
Something that sounds like a huge rat scuttles around inside, but nothing comes out.
“Come out now,” says the cop.
By now there are more cops, three of them. And they’ve got the Dumpster surrounded. More are coming. I hear the sirens.
Now there are five cops, and one of them is Leon.
He walks over to the Dumpster, looks down into it. Then he swears. He reaches in with one of his derrick-sized arms and up comes Blake Cump, twisting and crying.
“I didn’t do it. They made me do it. I always get blamed.” Then he sees me. “She did it. She made me do it. I almost got killed.”
Blake’s shirt is singed and he smells like a filling station.
22
BLAKE
IN CASE YOU’RE WONDERING one hundred years from now: No. Garbage Gorringe does not make me Orthogonian of the Week. He’s not going to do that for somebody who doesn’t wear the sucky uniform just because she saves his sucky school.
This is cool, because I do not want to be Orthogonian of Any Week, but he still should have done it.
I am in the paper, though:
GIRL, FOURTEEN, SAVES SCHOOL FROM ARSON
Susan Murphy, who prefers being called Kestrel and claims to be a witch, gives the universe credit for her being in the right place at the right time to save Richard Milhous Nixon Union High School from the firebomb of an arsonist Thursday.
“I just rode my bike up that way,” she said. “I don’t know why I went there. I never hang out at school after the bell rings.”
(Actually what I said was “I never hang out at that sucky-hole loser academy one minute longer than they make me.” So much for truth in newspapers.)
Anyway, it goes on to tell you exactly what you already know, except for Blake’s name, on account of him being too young and “innocent” to have his name in the paper just because he tried to torch the school. I will not quote you the rest of it because you already know more about what really happened than they put in the paper. And also because what happens next is way more interesting.
Today is Saturday. José calls me up and says, “I got to talk to you.”
The way he says it, I know he’s scared.
“So talk,” I say.
“I can’t just talk,” he says. “I have to show you something.”
So I bike over there and meet José in his special place.
He unfolds a piece of notebook paper.
“I just started doing it,” he says.
The picture is not finished. But it shows Richard Milhous Nixon Union High from the front and flames are coming up behind it.
Oh, man, it worked. First Laura and now this. José has majix to the max. No wonder he’s scared.
“It’s cool,” I say. “The fire’s out. Blake’s in trouble. You’re developing your powers, that’s all. Great developing, by the way.”
“But did I make Blake do it?” José asks.
That’s something I hadn’t thought of.
“No,” I say. “Because you didn’t put Blake in the picture.”
“But the picture’s not finished,” he says. “Maybe I was going to put Blake in.”
“Maybe we’d better ask Ariel,” I decide after a minute.
“No way, man,” José says. “Nobody else can know about this.”
But Ariel has to know. Because we have to know what’s going on. And we had better ask fast, before she and Chris take off for the evening. I make José see this, and we head back to our place.
José tells her the story, with me helping. She looks at the picture.
Then she looks at us over the tops of her glasses and says, “So your question is, are you responsible for what Blake did?”
“Yeah. Kind of,” José says.
“Good one,” Ariel says, and pulls her nose. “Suppose I say no. How does that make you feel?”
“I’m not sure,” José says.
“Better or worse?” Ariel asks.
“Well, relieved. But it doesn’t seem true, exactly,” José says.
“Then suppose I say you are responsible?” Ariel says.
“I get mad,” José says. “It’s not fair to blame me for what he did.”
Ariel nods. “Then suppose I say that you may be partly responsible?”
“What do we do if I am?” José asks.
“If we are,” I say. “I gave you the idea.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that, honey,” Ariel says to me. “You’re both realizing something important about the Craft. About any power, really. When you take it on, you acquire a certain responsibility with it. And in this case, you don’t really know how much responsibility, or what kind. But you do feel there’s some, or we wouldn’t be having this talk.”
“So what do we do now?” José asks.
“Take appropriate responsibility,” Ariel says.
“But what kind? How?” I say.
“I have an idea,” Ariel says. “Actually, it’s just the beginning of an idea. But maybe Leon and Victor can help me turn it into something. Have you got Leon’s number at work?”
So Ariel calls Leon and Leon calls back. They talk about Victor and then she calls him.
The next few days it’s Ariel-and-Leon-and-Victor-and-Laura’s-mom, who it turns out is a psychiatrist-when-she-isn’t-making-tables kind of woman, and it’s all about Blake.
One of the biggest parts is what happens with Laura’s mom. Because she talks with Blake, or hypnot
izes him or something, and decides that he doesn’t have the profile of a real arsonist. (Of course not. He has the profile of a perverted rat, with bad teeth.)
But Ms. Greenwood’s opinion is like huge, apparently. Because Blake does not even get expelled or anything. Instead, she and Aunt Ariel come up with something that persuades me that my aunt is really off her broomstick.
Because what they all do is go to the court and talk it around with some judge and get Blake into his own personal diversion program. With Victor.
The deal is, Blake shows up at school at 2:30 p.m., from which he has been expelled, and gets into the coche. He rides down to Victor’s dojo. And he works there until it closes. And he gets karate lessons for pay. And being expelled doesn’t do him any good because there’s this home teacher who gives him stuff to do and if it isn’t done, he answers to Leon and Victor.
All this is Ariel’s idea. And today is the day it began.
When I found out, I told José, “He’ll never do it. Not in a million years.”
“He’s agreed,” José says. “He’s figured out some really bad stuff could happen to him if he doesn’t.”
“He’s lying. He always lies.”
“Maybe,” says José. “But there are some guys in this world it’s very bad to lie to. Leon and Victor are at the top of the list.”
Which was true, so I had to be there to see Blake get killed.
So today after school we all ride down to Victor’s dojo in the coche. It was Leon and Victor in the front seat, José and Chris in the back, with Blake between them, and little me in the cargo space behind.
Blake had been there right on time, looking scared, but trying not to show it.
“So are we gonna break bricks with our hands today?” he asks as he gets in.
Victor doesn’t say anything. Leon starts the coche up and we head downtown.
“When do I get my black belt?” Blake says.
“Belts are to hold up pants with,” Victor says. “Karate is not about belts, or taking people out with your feet, or anything that you think it is. And you won’t learn any of that stuff until you show me you’ve learned a lot of other things first.”