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

by Jeff Jacobson

  “How so?”

  “You’ll have to find out for yourself. My lips are sealed.”

  Diego called Charlie that Saturday morning. “You back in town, or what?” he asked.

  “Yeah, got home, uh, late last night.”

  “I’m so glad you’re back. It’s been wild at school with Principal Wang’s heart attack. Monday was so awful. Teachers were crying, everyone walking around all spaced out. Then when we heard he’d be okay, it was crazy. Like a huge school party. You missed the whole thing!”

  ‘Not really,’ Charlie thought to himself. He felt the mixture of guilt and relief that came up whenever he thought about Principal Wang. What if the man had died?

  When he talked about it earlier with Beverly, and asked why he’d also had the dream of the young Chinese girl saying “dangerous” in Chinese, she shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t know, Charlie. It’s hard to say. It could mean that one of your gifts will be dreams of premonition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Some witches gets clues about the future in dreams.”

  “That would be weird.”

  “It’s too early to tell, Charlie. Nothing is very clear after someone gets popped. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “Do you?” he heard on the other end of the phone. He hadn’t been paying attention to what Diego had been saying.

  “Do I what?”

  “Wanna hang out? Today?”

  “Uh yeah, sure,” said Charlie. He hadn’t broken anything in the house for several days. Nothing had flown into the air and wrapped itself around anyone. It would feel great to get out of the house. Besides, he wanted to see Diego.

  “Why don’t you come over? You can meet my mom, and maybe I could take you to Lincoln Park.”

  Beverly agreed to drive Charlie over to Diego’s house.

  “He seems like he’s becoming a good friend to you,” she said as she stopped at an intersection and waited for an elderly woman and her dog to cross the street.

  Did she know? He wondered if she suspected. But it didn’t seem like she was hinting at anything. He’d begun to learn that she was pretty direct about things. He liked that, even if he wasn’t used to it.

  “Yeah, he’s pretty cool.”

  “That’s good. I really liked him when he came over the other day.”

  They pulled up in front of a very odd-looking house. More geometric than any of the traditional homes in the area, it was painted beige, red, and black.

  “Oh, it’s this place! I’ve always wanted to see the interior,” exclaimed his aunt.

  Charlie wondered about this. Wouldn’t it be an easy thing for his aunt, someone who single-handedly drove two witches from her home, to figure out a way to see inside a person’s house?

  “Now Charlie, call me for any reason, okay? If you start to feel funny, or if it seems like you aren’t able to hold up the charade of having been in California anymore, just call.”

  “Okay.”

  “Remember, Diego thinks you’ve been sick. It won’t be strange if you’re not completely yourself. But just call me for any reason.” And then, “What a house!”

  The front door opened and a smiling Diego walked out, dressed in jeans, tennis shoes and a red sweater. Charlie opened his passenger-side window, smiling in spite of himself, hoping he didn’t look too eager. He was really happy to see the boy.

  “Hi Charlie, hi Beverly,” Diego said, bending down and looking in the car.

  “Beverly, would you like to come in, too? My mom’s here, and she’d love to meet you.”

  “That would be great. Yes, I’d like that.”

  Lydia Ramirez waited on the front porch. She stood barely over five feet tall, nearly a foot shorter than her son, dressed in yoga pants and a loose top, her black hair pulled back in a clip. Her son’s bright eyes and wide smile were echoed on her face.

  “Welcome, welcome, Beverly,” she said, her slight Mexican accent warming her words, and making her r’s strong. “So nice to meet you finally. And Charlie, you too. I’ve heard so much about you!” she said. Diego blushed a bit, but smiled even more.

  They exchanged pleasantries, then walked inside the house.

  “I’ve always wanted to see this place,” his aunt said. They removed their shoes and left them near the front door.

  Lydia took Beverly’s arm in a friendly gesture and the two women fell into a tour of the house, discussing remodeling nightmares, views of the Puget Sound, and the differences between modern and classic architecture.

  “They’ll be at this forever,” Diego said. “Come on, I’ll give you my own tour.”

  The house was unlike anything Charlie had ever seen. His aunt and uncle’s home was very big, grand on a scale he was not used to, but it still felt like a house to him. Basically, it was what he was used to, only bigger and nicer. This house was completely different. He remembered Diego’s description of chrome and glass, but only now realized what he’d meant.

  Stainless steel appliances sparkled in the pristine kitchen. The counter tops were concrete, cut in sharp angles. A glass-like surface covered the cabinets, and a soft green light warmed the plates and glasses within. Diego explained that the surface, which was the colored part, not the soft white light bulb hidden inside the cabinets, could be exchanged for a blue effect.

  “Mom changes it about every two weeks. According to her mood, I guess,” he shrugged, as if to say, “Mothers and their moods. Go figure.”

  Charlie had never seen such a stark living room before. There were only two pieces of furniture, both upholstered in leather, on the wide, light wood floor: a black recliner chair and a curved red leather couch, both of which sat near a black metallic, freestanding fireplace. Floor-to-ceiling windows gave an unobstructed view of the Puget Sound. Since the house was situated farther south than Beverly and Randall’s place, Charlie could see more of Vashon Island than from Washington Street.

  A wood and glass staircase rose up to the second floor. Diego hopped up the steps in his stockinged feet. Charlie followed.

  Evenly spaced skylights lit the second floor. Soft, pale carpet ran the length of the hallway. Lydia’s bedroom was also very spare, with a large bed and a simple set of dressers, nearly everything painted white.

  Charlie was therefore completely unprepared for the train wreck he saw when Diego opened the door to his bedroom and invited him in.

  “This is what my mom calls ‘The Land that Time Forgot.’”

  Utter chaos and disaster reigned over Diego’s room. A king-sized bed was shoved against one wall, with most of its bedding lying crumpled on the floor. Books and papers were scattered on every available flat surface, including the desk, a folding table in the middle of the room, and the floor. Posters of male models, male and female Hollywood stars, and South American soccer players covered most of the dark blue walls.

  A two-tiered set of stacking tables rested against a wall in one corner. Several large decks of cards, bigger than those used for poker, covered the surface of the top table, which was draped in a gauzy yellow material. Leaning against the wall sat several framed photographs of dark-skinned people, some of whom looked quite old. However, there was one of a beautiful young woman with a bright smile and a red dot painted on her forehead. The woody scent of incense filled the room, and Charlie spotted a thin stream of smoke rising from a silver disk on the smaller of the two tables.

  Clothes hung out of drawers, sat where they had been tossed on the floor, or draped, half in and half out, of the full closet on the far wall.

  “This place is a mess!” Charlie said, so surprised by its contrast with the rest of the house that he forgot to be polite. It didn’t seem to match the bright, well-put-together young man he’d been getting to know.

  “It sure is,” said Diego, laughing. “Isn’t it great?”

  He walked into the room and threw himself on the bed, stretching out and folding his arms behind his head.

  “A man needs his ow
n kingdom,” he said, smiling. “My mom hates it. But we made a deal when she bought this house three years ago. She could have it any way she wanted, as long as I got to have my room any way I wanted. Her rule is that there can’t be any rotting food or really stinky smells. My rule is that I get to have as much clutter as I want. I didn’t think she’d agree, but she did.

  “But,” he added, “I have to keep the rest of the house as neat as she wants. It’s a good deal for her. She’s picky about it, and figures that as long as I know how to clean the kitchen and the bathrooms, and help her cook and do chores around the house, it doesn’t matter what I do in my own space. Oh, and she has to knock before coming in to my kingdom. It works out pretty well. She’s a lawyer, and taught me everything I need to know about negotiating.”

  Charlie couldn’t imagine negotiating with his mother. How it worked in their house was that she would say something like, “We’re going to put up a new shelf in the bathroom,” or “I’m pulling that old rug up in your room and refinishing the floor,” and Charlie would say, “Okay,” and then help her. She was the captain. He was definitely just a crew member.

  He wasn’t surprised that Diego was clear about what he wanted. The boy was sure of himself that it made sense he and his mom would negotiate things. How do you learn to do that? he wondered. Maybe he could become more forthright with his opinions. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure he had any. Did people just make them up and then demand that others agree to them?

  “It’s pretty cool,” Charlie said. The room was definitely cluttered. But it wasn’t dirty. The only smell seemed to be a combination of laundry detergent and incense.

  “Another thing my mom said is that I couldn’t do drugs. No way. And that if she found out I was burning incense to hide smoking pot or something, she’d sell me to a glue-making factory. Did you ever see that movie Young Frankenstein?” he asked, then continued without waiting for an answer from Charlie.

  “Remember that part with Frau Blucher? Every time they said her name the horses would whinny really loudly? My mom always laughed at that part. She said that ‘blucher’ means ‘glue factory’ in German. I have no idea if that’s true. But she thinks it’s funny so I just go along with her.

  “Anyway, that’s a long way to say I don’t do drugs. So my mom has nothing to worry about. God, I’m talking a lot. I’m kind of nervous with you being here.”

  Charlie relaxed, realizing that he was nervous too, standing just inside the doorway while Diego chatted away on his bed.

  “Why are you nervous?” he asked, not ready to admit that he felt the same way.

  “I dunno. I was excited for you to come over and see our house. But I was worried you’d think it was really weird, or that my room was awful, or that I’d say something stupid.”

  “You? You never say anything stupid. You always know what to say.”

  “Are you crazy? I do not. I blab away all the time.”

  “Diego, I’m the one who doesn’t know what to say. I always feel shy around people, even around you, even around my aunt and uncle. Everyone seems so smart all the time.”

  “Maybe this is the case of the grass always being greener. You seem so wise and contemplative-great use of the word, if I do say so myself. Me, I have to say nine thousand words before I even know what I think sometimes.”

  “You’re crazy. I just sound like a stupid, shy kid,” said Charlie.

  “You’re such a bonehead!” Diego yelled, hopping off his bed and running at him. Before Charlie could react, Diego tackled him and brought him to the floor, pinning his chest with one arm while he tickled him with another.

  “Hey, no fair, get off!” Charlie shouted, laughing.

  “Make me!” Diego said, his eyes twinkling while he wiggled his eyebrows.

  Charlie tried to push him off, but the other boy was too strong. At first he couldn’t move. Then, a slight pulse of electricity rose up from the floor into his back and legs. He closed his eyes, and before he understood how it happened, he felt a spinning sensation, and found himself atop Diego, straddling the boy’s body and leaning over him, his hands pressing down on his chest to hold him in place.

  “Whoa! That was cool! How did you…?” asked Diego, smiling up at him with a look of wonder.

  “Oh, uh, just some, uh, wrestling move that my friend taught me,” Charlie lied, hoping what he said not only sounded believable, but also hid his shock from Diego. How the hell had he done that?

  “Remind me not to meet your friend in a dark alley,” Diego said, laughing.

  “Nah, it’s pretty easy, it doesn’t take any…”

  “As easy as this?” Diego interrupted, slapping Charlie’s arms off of him. Charlie fell forward, and Diego grabbed him by his shoulders and sat up, then kissed him very quickly on the lips before throwing Charlie off and to the side.

  “I got you, I got you!” Diego yelled. He jumped up and started prancing around the room, laughing.

  “Boys, don’t hurt each other up there,” came Lydia’s voice from downstairs. “Charlie, your aunt is about to leave. Come say goodbye to her.”

  Charlie lay back on the floor and saw Wolverine from the X-Men staring back at him from a poster on Diego’s ceiling.

  Charlie’s lips hurt from where Diego’s mouth had hit him. But they also tingled in a not entirely unpleasant way. Different parts of his body - his inner thighs, his arms, his chest, all the places where Diego had touched him - felt warm and quivery. Fear of what he’d just done mixed with anger at Diego for having forced a kiss on him. All of this was covered over with worry: worry that his newly released ability had slipped out, worry that Diego would ask him more about it, worry that something else would happen, something that he wouldn’t be able to explain away so easily.

  He hopped up off the floor and shouted, “Okay,” in response to Diego’s mother.

  “You mad?” Diego asked, looking much less confident than he had only seconds ago.

  “Nah,” said Charlie, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He turned, hurried passed his friend, and headed downstairs.

  Chapter 53

  They sat on a cement ledge at Lincoln Park overlooking the Puget Sound. Leafy ferns brushed the outsides of their legs, and all sorts of vines and climbers coiled together in the mass of foliage below. Sometimes the sheer volume of all the greenery in Seattle overwhelmed Charlie. You couldn’t look anywhere without seeing something green and growing, twisting up out of the ground.

  He wondered what would happen if he were to fall off the ledge and land in the soft underbrush beneath his feet. Maybe he wouldn’t get up. Maybe the vines would grow up over him, covering him, while everything else continued to run at its breakneck speed up top. He would rest, and he would stay the same. Nothing would change down in the green world. Maybe he would like that. Being swallowed up.

  A shudder ran along his chest.

  “You cold?” Diego asked him, his words close to Charlie’s ear.

  “Nah, I’m fine. You?” He kept his voice neutral. He liked it better that way, near the other boy but distant. Distant enough to keep things normal, to breathe. After what happened back in Diego’s bedroom, he wanted to stay on the alert.

  “Charlie,” Diego said. His voice sounded strange, as if a door were about to open up somewhere, and something scary would walk out.

  ‘No, don’t, don’t say it. Whatever it is, don’t…’ Charlie thought. He didn’t even know what he was worried about. But he imagined himself peeking up through the greenery below, his eyes barely visible through the foliage. He could stay hidden down there, just watching, because no one would know to look through the leaves.

  But instead of feeling the green mass hiding his face, and the soft soil beneath him, soft like a bed, like sleep, he felt the cold of the cement wall seeping through the seat of his pants. He shifted, trying to get comfortable.

  “What?” he heard himself ask Diego. “What is it?”

  He hated how his voice sounded, like the bleating
of a scared little lamb.

  “Charlie, can I ask you something?” Tall Diego, the politician and the charmer, the confident apple hawker, seemed worried. No, timid. Charlie felt angry at him then. He wanted to shout, ‘Man up, will you?’

  “Uh, yeah, sure. What?”

  “This is kind of silly, but…”

  Charlie looked at Diego as the boy stared straight ahead. He looked at the length of the side of his face, the line from brow to chin, his lashes like half-drawn shades over his eyes, the freckle at his temple a pinpoint, like the start to a conversation.

  The freckle disappeared as Diego turned his head and looked at Charlie.

  “Do you like me?”

  The boy’s eyes didn’t change color - they stayed brown. But they could have. They should have, his question seemed to ask so much. Charlie could imagine them swirling, could nearly see gray clouds of color roll across them like the sky above their heads.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Of course I like you. Why? You know I…”

  And he paused, because he didn’t want to say it out loud. He wasn’t ready. He thought of what Malcolm had said. But it was confusing. On the one hand, he couldn’t lie about this stuff and be the witch he wanted to be. On the other hand, it wasn’t anyone else’s business. When Malcolm had said it all, it had made sense. But now, it didn’t tell Charlie what to do. What was he supposed to say?

  Diego looked back at the water, and maybe his eyes did change a little then, maybe the gray-green depths of the Sound rose with the tide and crept into his eyes right then, for they shimmered.

  A drop of the Sound spilled out of his left eye and made it halfway to his mouth before Diego ran the back of his hand against it.

  “Shit.”

  ‘Don’t, Diego. Don’t let’s have this talk now. The vines are green, the air is nice, and I’d like to sit here with you,’ Charlie thought, ‘maybe for a long time. What you’re asking, what I think you’re asking, will rush things. I don’t trust myself to say the right words, to keep things safe and quiet, and I’d like to spend a lot of time just hanging out with you. Those other thoughts I have about you are low thoughts, deeper than the vines down below, and I want to leave them there, let them sleep in the wet soil down there, covered by ferns, while you and I sit on this wall above them. Safe. Just friends.’