The Boy Who Couldn't Fly Straight (The Broom Closet Stories)

by Jeff Jacobson

  Did it mean he had to tell Diego? It didn’t, did it? Didn’t Malcolm say that it could stay a secret? Didn’t that priest say it was between Diego and God? Couldn’t it be between Charlie and God? Did he even believe in God?

  ‘Argh! This is too hard!’ he yelled inside his head. ‘I mean, Diego isn’t telling me that I have to make a decision, and he’s not trying to get me to say anything I don’t want to. But still. He’s just sitting there on that bench, looking at me, watching me walk back and forth like he’s at a tennis match. Just waiting for me.’

  “I don’t know!” Charlie yelled, causing Diego to jump at his sudden outburst. “I don’t know! Okay? God, why does this have to be so hard? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, or say, or…”

  “Hey, take it easy, Charlie. No one is telling you to do anything!”

  “Yes you are. You want me to be gay. God, I hate that word. You want me to like boys. Everybody always wants something from me, and I, I’m just, I’m just sick and effing tired of it all!” he screamed into the afternoon air.

  “All, All, All, All, All…” bounced back and forth across the creek bed.

  He stood quietly, his hands at his sides, ashamed at what he’d said. Here Diego was, trying to help, and all he could do was yell at him. The outburst didn’t feel good. It felt dirty on his lips, like he’d drunk spoiled milk and couldn’t get the taste out of his mouth.

  Amos was on his feet, harrumphing into the dirt, tail wagging, looking at Charlie with his tongue hanging out.

  Charlie looked over to the bench, expecting to see Diego’s face crumpled with hurt, or even worse, smiling that fake smile he’d done in the car the other night.

  Instead, Diego’s eyes were wide open, and his mouth hung agape.

  “Dude! That was awesome! Awesome! Do it again. Yell it!”

  “What? Are you crazy? I don’t want to…. That was, like, totally embarrassing. I shouldn’t have…”

  “Shut up! That was amazing. Ms. Barry, the GSA faculty member, says that sometimes we just have to yell stuff out loud. I want to try it!”

  And with that, he stood up, threw his head back and yelled, “I am sick and effing tired of it all. I am sick and effing tired of it all!”

  Amos began to lurch between the two boys, trapped by the leash. Finally he leaned forward on his front paws and offered up his own loud, “Aroof!” to the sky.

  The boys took one look at the dog and erupted in laughter. All the anxiety and confusion in Charlie turned into hard laughter, pouring out of him like soda fizzing from a bottle. Charlie bent over, trying to point at Amos and keep himself from falling over at the same time. Diego fell back on the bench and howled, drawing his knees up to his stomach and hitting the dirt with his free hand.

  “Maybe he’s gay too!” Diego choked out between gasps. This made Charlie fall to his knees. As he tumbled forward, he threw his hands out to keep from landing face-first on the ground, and accidentally blew a rather large bubble of snot out of his nose.

  “Gross! Gross!” Diego yelled, pointing at Charlie’s face, then dissolving into more laughter and clutching at his stomach.

  Charlie was giggling too hard to be embarrassed. Amos yelped a few more times, which set the two boys off again for a good ten minutes, forcing more snot and more tears, more gales of laughter from their tired, vigilant, bodies.

  Chapter 44

  It seemed to Charlie that he spent the rest of that Friday, as well as all of Saturday, on the phone. He and Diego talked several more times each day. It wasn’t as if they spent the whole time talking about being gay. They talked about school, about California, about Diego being Mexican-American, about his mother Lydia, who was a single parent, a Republican (a fact that led to endless debates between her and her Democrat son), and a successful lawyer at a downtown law firm. They talked about Charlie’s mother and her quiet, capable ways (Charlie found that it was easy to talk about her as long as he kept to general details), about his aunt and uncle, about cool things to do in and around town. It was as if, now that Charlie had admitted to himself and Diego that he was (Might be? Could be?) gay, it gave the boys a chance to talk about everything else.

  Maybe it wasn’t completely out in the open. It didn’t feel that way. But as he stood in his bedroom that Friday night with his cell phone to his ear, hearing the multitude of words spilling from Diego’s mouth like bird chatter, he caught himself staring at his reflection in his full-length mirror and wondering if he looked any different.

  ‘I’m gay,’ he’d try out in his mind as he looked at himself. Did that feel right? ‘I’m homose…’ No, he couldn’t say that word. It felt weirder, more scientific. More definitive, somehow. ‘I’m gay…I’m gay…’

  “And then I was all, ‘Whatever, and she was like, ‘Yeah.’ So I was like, ‘You sure, mom? You, sure?’ And she was all, ‘Diego Alejandro Ramirez,’ which totally means I’m in trouble when she uses my full name…”

  “Uh huh,” Charlie heard himself saying.

  It was nice that Diego did most of the talking. He could just add a few words now and then and the boy would keep going.

  The one thing Charlie hadn’t talked about were his feelings for Diego.

  After he’d eaten dinner with his aunt and uncle, and while they were downstairs watching TV, Charlie went back upstairs and found the card Malcolm had given him. He had never really considered not becoming a witch. Now that he had talked to Diego, though, he was ready to commit. His hands only shook a little as he entered Malcolm’s number on his phone screen and hit “send.”

  “You sure, Charlie?”

  “Uh, yeah. Look. I thought about what you said. And I talked to the guy at school who’s gay, the one I think I like. I told him I thought I was gay. We, uh, we talked a lot about it.”

  “Wow kid, nothing like a little pressure to get the ball rolling, huh?”

  Charlie nodded, forgetting that Malcolm couldn’t see him on the phone.

  “Malcolm?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Um, I didn’t tell that kid, Diego, about, you know, how I feel about him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Nope. That’s not gonna cut it.”

  “Well, because what if it means I have to do something about it? Like, I don’t know, hold his hand at school or something? That would be so weird. And everybody would find out.

  “Plus,” added Charlie, “what if it changes things? He’s my new friend, and I really like it that way. I don’t want things to change.”

  “I see. Any other reason?”

  Charlie paused. He didn’t want to answer the question. But in a way he felt forced. If he wasn’t up front with Malcolm, the man might not let him become a full-fledged witch. Plus, getting all of this off his chest wasn’t as bad as he’d feared it would be. It actually felt kind of good.

  “What if he doesn’t like me? In that way, I mean? He’s so popular, and everybody at school likes him - well, almost everybody - and he’s just so, you know, handsome and smart and can talk to anybody about anything.”

  “Are you basically wondering why someone like him would be attracted to someone like you?”

  “Yes! Yes! That’s it. I mean, really, I’m just some stupid kid from some stupid town who doesn’t know anything.”

  “That’s how you see yourself?”

  “Come on, Malcolm. I know this is where you give me the little pep talk, about how great I am, about how I really can succeed in life. People have been doing that ever since I can remember, cuz I’m shy and get tongue-tied when I get scared. I hate it! I always feel so stupid.”

  “I’m sure you’re exactly right, Charlie, that people only say those things about how great you are because you are a hopeless charity case and they’re only doing their community service to boost you up a notch or too.”

  “It’s true! You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like to feel so, so clueless all the time, to not understand stuff, to have people
expect me to…”

  “Charlie,” Malcolm interrupted, “You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to be you. I came from a witch family who told me all about it when I was very young, about what it would mean to grow up in a community of similar people. I had lots of time to think about it. So that when the time came to get popped, I’d had more time to prepare than you did. It happened in the town where I grew up in New England. I already knew everybody involved. I didn’t have to live in a new house, go to a new school where I didn’t know anyone. My parents didn’t leave me with strangers. And most of all, I didn’t have to come to terms with two big things: that there was witchcraft in the world, because I already knew about it and had seen it growing up, and that I was gay. I liked girls, Charlie, so I fit in. In that respect, all of that stuff was way easier for me. Of course, there were girls who didn’t like me the way I liked them, which was hard, but all in all…”

  “Why are you saying all of this?”

  “Because, kid, you need to go easy on yourself. You keep comparing yourself to people who aren’t in a similar situation to you. It’s apples and oranges. Give yourself a break, okay?”

  “But I’m not being honest about things with Diego. You said that I couldn’t lie. And that if I lied, I couldn’t be a witch.”

  “I said you couldn’t lie to yourself, Charlie, or it wouldn’t work. And you can’t lie to me, or I can’t teach you what you need to learn. You get to decide what you tell other people. That’s your business, not theirs. If you want to talk to Diego about it, great. If you really should, but you chicken out and avoid the whole thing, well, that might cause some problems. But if you aren’t ready to do it, and you’re still being honest with yourself, then I think you’re good to go.”

  “What do you mean, ‘good to go’?”

  “I mean you’re ready to get popped. And I’d be more than happy to do it.”

  “Really? Honestly?”

  “Really. Honestly. You’ve done your work, young man, and you’ve shown me how seriously you’re taking this. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. And you’re using it. That’s all I ask for.”

  Charlie held the phone to his ear and looked out the window. Several leaves on the maple tree in the front yard had begun to turn yellow. When had that happened? He thought he had been looking at the tree every day. He’d spotted the beginnings of fall colors on the tree at school, but…

  Time seemed to be pressing down on him, pushing him forward. Malcolm said he was ready, and Charlie wanted to be popped, but was he ready? Was he ready for all the things coming his way?

  “You still there, kid?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Sorry.”

  “Look, we’ll do it this Sunday. Probably Sunday night. Beverly will give you the details.”

  “This Sunday? Like in two days?”’

  “Well, yeah. When did you think it would be?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I’d have to, I don’t know, prepare or something.”

  Malcolm’s laugh was loud in his ear.

  “This isn’t the Eagle Scouts, Charlie. It’s not like you have to earn a badge before you advance. All you have to do is show up. Leave the rest to me. The preparation will be afterwards. That’s when you’ll have to learn everything.”

  Later, long after he’d hung up the phone, Charlie sat in the window seat looking out at the dark night. The trees stood tall, like sentinels, in the yard. An occasional car would drive down the street, its headlights casting a cone of thick yellow directly in front of it. Somewhere out there, a witch and her group were trying to hunt him down. Somewhere out there Grace was planning stuff, stuff that could hurt the people Charlie was getting to know better.

  Even though he’d been surprised and a bit scared when Malcolm said it would be this Sunday, he knew it had to be soon. Things were coming, and Charlie needed to be ready for them.

  “Hen weixian,” he heard the girl from his dream say out loud, as if she were standing there in the bedroom next to him, looking out into the darkness.

  Part III

  Chapter 45

  And that was how Charlie found himself on Sunday night, sitting in the second row on a metal folding chair, with ten or so other kids in the middle of a large warehouse in South Seattle. About thirty adults stood along the walls behind him. They sipped at their Starbucks cups, whispering in each other’s ears and stamping their feet to stay warm.

  The warehouse, near Boeing Field, was as big as an airplane hangar. Apparently it had been used at one point to repair planes. Now it belonged to someone in the community.

  The adults were excited, waving to each other and smiling. The kids just seemed scared. Some of them talked to each other. Most sat silently, bouncing their legs or kicking the floor. A few of them looked over their shoulders to check out Charlie, with borderline curiosity, then stared back at their shoes. Or the ceiling. Or their fingernails. They seemed to range in age from about ten, to sixteen or seventeen. He didn’t recognize any of them from school.

  He could barely breathe.

  Beverly had driven Charlie to the warehouse that evening. The day had begun bright and sunny, but the sky soon turned gray and filled with thick, billowy clouds. Charlie watched the storm clouds in the afternoon, approaching across the Sound from the Olympics, and just as they seemed to hit the shore on the Seattle side, fat raindrops began to drop on the deck. It had rained a slow, steady downpour for the rest of the day and into the evening.

  His aunt drove through their neighborhood and headed down the long hill that led to the West Seattle Bridge.

  “I love heated seats when the weather starts to turn,” she said, shivering as she patted the leather upholstery with a free hand.

  “Beverly, does anyone ever not get popped?”

  “What do you mean, honey?”

  “I mean, what if someone just can’t, you know, get popped? Like maybe Malcolm can’t open them?”

  “You make it sound like those two or three clams in the bucket that never open, the ones you’re supposed to throw away,” she’d smiled.

  “I’m serious. Does it ever happen?”

  “Yes, it does. Rarely. And I mean, very rarely, Charlie. Sometimes it’s too late for somebody. The window of opportunity closes, and they can’t be popped. Or you hear old stories of witches trying to forcefully pop people. Legends of someone resisting being popped. If they resisted hard enough, it wouldn’t happen.

  “And also,” she continued, “sometimes a community is wrong. Sometimes someone just doesn’t have the blood legacy in them. No matter how hard people try, they just don’t have it.

  “But,” she continued, a thoughtful look passing over her face as she drove, “does it ever happen that someone who hasn’t missed the opportunity, who is open to it, and has the legacy in their blood, still doesn’t get popped? I guess it could. But I don’t know of anyone.”

  “But it could happen, right?”

  Beverly looked at Charlie, then pulled over to the side of the road at the base of the hill. She turned off the windshield wipers and cut the engine.

  “Are you worried that you’re going to be a dud? That it won’t work on you?”

  “Well, no…well, yeah, I guess so. What if it doesn’t work on me?”

  “I guess we’ll have to deal with it then. But let me put it this way: I would be very surprised, very surprised, if that’s what happens. I tell you what. I would even be willing to bet you that it won’t. I would even be willing to bet you, oh, say, two hundred dollars that you’ll get popped.”

  His aunt’s wager tickled him. He could feel an inch or two of pressure, coming from his worry that he wouldn’t become a witch, release from his shoulders, his neck.

  “Two hundred dollars? That’s not very much. I thought you said you, or, we, had a lot of money.”

  “Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants, how much should I bet you? A thousand dollars? More?”

  “No, something else. Let’s see…” he said, enjoying the game. “How
about if I win, if I’m not popped, I never have to do dishes again.”

  “Done!”

  “And I never have to weed the garden.”

  “Done!”

  “And I never have to, uh, wash your car, put my clothes away, or ever go grocery shopping.”

  “Done, done, done! And I’ll make you breakfast in bed every morning for the rest of your life,” she added

  “Done!” They both laughed. Charlie relaxed a bit into his warm leather seat.

  The silly bet proved to him how much confidence his aunt had in the process much better than if she’d just told him not to worry. He knew she wasn’t the kind to serve breakfast in bed every morning.

  Earlier in the day he’d called Diego. He needed to tell him that he wouldn’t be in school the next day. Or the next. Or maybe even all week.

  “Yeah, it’s stupid, but I have to go back to California to get some stuff. And help my mom.” He knew it was the right thing to do, lying like this to Diego. But he didn’t like it, especially after so much honesty with the boy in the past two days.

  “Seriously? You get to miss school? Not fair.”

  “I thought you liked school.”

  “I do. But I like adventures too.”

  You have no idea what kind of adventure I’m about to take, Charlie had wanted to say over the phone.

  “Anyway, when will you be back?”

  “Not sure. Friday at the latest. Maybe Wednesday or Thursday.”

  “You driving down?”

  “Nah. Flying. You know my uncle’s a pilot, right? We get to fly really cheap as a family.” Was this what it would be like from here on out? That being a witch meant you always had to lie, always had to make sure you kept your stories straight? He didn’t like it.

  Charlie had never been on a plane in his life. He hoped he sounded legitimate to Diego. If the boy asked him anything about the plane, or what airport he was flying to, Charlie knew he’d be in trouble.

  “Is it weird to say that I’ll miss you?” Diego had asked, his voice quiet.

  “What? No, no, that’s cool. I, uh, I’ll miss you too.”