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

by Jeff Jacobson

  These thoughts ran through Charlie’s head faster than he could understand, but he knew them as a warning, knew them to be true even if he couldn’t grasp their meaning. He wished he could stop the cold from sinking into his butt and his legs. He wanted to lie down on the warm soil below, mostly hidden beneath the soft ivy, watching Diego and Charlie above him.

  Then his mind began to race. What do people do when someone is crying? They pat them on the shoulder, don’t they? They just reach up and pat them, and say, ‘There, there.’ That’s what good people do, right?

  He reached up to pat Diego with his right hand, just as the boy turned to face him, his lips and left cheek quivering. Without quite knowing why or how, Charlie’s left arm reached out and up, and now there was a circle wide enough for Diego. Charlie’s betraying limbs extended out and around the boy, pulling him close.

  Diego’s face was so large then, so close to Charlie’s that it doubled, just before his nose tilted to the side and he was pressing his mouth against Charlie’s lips, a sound like a cry and a grunt pouring out of him.

  ‘No, no, that’s not what I meant to do! I was just trying to reassure you, for God’s sake,’ he wanted to cry out. He wanted to slow everything so that he could watch it pass by, the way he watched leaves floating in the stream at Carson Park.

  But it wasn’t happening that way, and there was no space in which to back up and gain any distance.

  And besides, the vines from below had crawled up through Charlie’s heels, had spread their leafy climb up his legs and were sprouting shoots along his spine as his own mouth, his traitor mouth, took Diego’s in itself.

  The boy tasted warm, and the warmth spread from Charlie’s mouth and his tongue down his throat, pushing back at the vines in his spine, spreading out along his scalp, numbing his mind. He didn’t know this was what it was like to touch his mouth to another boy’s. Didn’t know there would be so much teeth and tongue and heat. Didn’t know Diego would taste like this, like the end of summer and pine needles and the sheer volume of things Charlie hadn’t even known he’d wanted.

  The boys lay back on the cold, hard cement, not so much kissing as feeding on each other, while the worried mind of at least one of them burrowed down into the soil below, trying to fill itself with loud noise, hoping to drown out what was happening, wishing none of it were true.

  Chapter 54

  “Just focus, Roberto, just focus. Try a little harder, buddy!” Phil Sanchez shouted from the side of the large grassy field adjacent to Malcolm’s cabin.

  Malcolm looked over his shoulder at the man, and then waved his hands for all the kids to set down their broomsticks. They did so without complaint. Their training wasn’t going very well.

  Charlie watched as Malcolm walked to where the adult helpers stood. To him, they looked like parents watching from the sidelines of a soccer field, cheering their kids on. The hood of Malcolm’s rain parka resembled a large orange light bulb surrounding his head. Mr. Sanchez looked chagrined. He held out his hands to placate Malcolm.

  “Uh oh, you’re in trouble,” one of the other adults said to Mr. Sanchez.

  “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t be yelling. It’s just that I know Roberto can do better. He…”

  Charlie couldn’t see Malcolm’s face, but his voice was very clear.

  “Phil,” said Malcolm, “you shouting things from the sidelines isn’t helping. The kids need time to fail and recover. Fail and recover. It makes them stronger.”

  “I know, I know, I just…”

  “Yes, you do know, Phil. I seem to remember you failing quite a lot when you were a WIT, without anyone yelling at you to try harder when you were learning!” Malcolm’s voice was getting louder.

  Charlie watched as the man’s posture sank in on itself. It was too gray and drizzly for him to be certain whether the color really did drain from Mr. Sanchez’s face, but Charlie imagined it did.

  “Now, I don’t need a herd of soccer moms and little-league dads interfering with my training. From any of you,” he shouted. Mouths hung agape from the ten adults standing in a line. All teasing and lightness had stopped.

  “You have one job, and one job only: to keep these kids safe. That’s it! Does anyone need a reminder of his or her responsibilities?”

  A lack of response indicated that no, none of the adult witches needed to be reminded.

  “Good. Then stay ready to help if one of those rug rats over there gets off the ground. Other than that, keep your mouths closed!”

  “I think I’ll go see how dinner is coming along,” said Phil, turning away and heading up to the house.

  “Great idea!” yelled Malcolm, then stormed back to the twelve kids waiting in the middle of the field.

  It was the following Saturday afternoon, a full week since Beverly and Charlie had gone to Diego’s house. They’d been up here since school got out the day before. It had been raining the entire time, and Charlie was glad that Randall had outfitted him with waterproof everything. At first he’d thought that his uncle was being excessive as they shopped at R.E.I.’s downtown store.

  “Believe me, you’ll thank me later,” said Randall as he threw several pairs of waterproof socks into the basket Charlie was carrying.

  This was their first official training weekend, nearly two full weeks since he and his fellow new witches had been popped. Malcolm’s cabin was actually a massive wooden building. It looked more like a ski lodge than the little wooden cottage Charlie had imagined. It sat secluded on one hundred acres of privately owned forest land on Snoqualmie Pass, and it slept fifteen people comfortably, or nearly thirty if lodgers, in this case, the kids, slept on the floor in sleeping bags in the carpeted basement.

  To Charlie, the training was flying by. Malcolm covered so much theory, and they moved from one activity and spell to the next with little or no break. His head was spinning with it all.

  He could tell that the other kids were getting frustrated.

  No matter how much Malcolm seemed to teach them, or how much they practiced, none of the kids had been able to actually do the spells. Any of them. Except one time, a quiet, thoughtful girl named Lucinda caused one of the windows to open, and two black crows flew into the large living room area, squawking loudly. Unfortunately, the purpose of that specific activity had been to learn how to look into a scrying bowl in order to see things that were happening far away. The kids didn’t know whether to applaud her results or worry that Malcolm would get angry. It took three adult witches and several different spells to transport the birds safely back outside.

  Malcolm had simply said, “That’s okay, Lucy. You failed, so recover. That’s how you’ll all learn this stuff. You’ll fall down, you’ll get back up, you’ll try again, you’ll fall down, etc. Fail and recover.”

  It had become a mantra of his, and Charlie thought that some of the other kids were going to scream if Malcolm said it one more time.

  He could understand their frustration. These kids had grown up seeing their parents, family members, and other adults in the community do amazing things with witchcraft. Their own expectations for how easy and how fast it should be were getting in the way of just trying.

  Charlie didn’t care about getting it right. He was just excited to be learning it all. Other than having seen the violent display of witchcraft back in the kitchen in Clarkston, or watching Beverly handle both a candle and late-night intruders, he hadn’t known what to expect. It was a new world for him. He would have been happy just to watch Malcolm perform tricks all weekend.

  He had been surprised, however, when Malcolm announced after lunch that they would be going out into the field to learn to ride broomsticks. All the other kids had yelled in delight and enthusiasm.

  Charlie grew worried. They’d failed at every single thing Malcolm had tried to teach them. None of them had been able to change the color of their hair or otherwise affect their appearance, nor had they been able to: make small objects float, have their voices carry from one floor
to the next, or even ignite a simple candle flame. (Charlie remembered Jeremy’s comment about his own candle-lighting frustration when first learning the craft). Other than Lucinda’s one strange window/crow trick, they’d produced absolutely no results whatsoever. They were tired. Many of them had headaches from concentrating so hard, and they all complained about being out in the wet weather.

  How then, were they supposed to mount a wooden stick, and get it to fly them around in the air? He figured it would either be hopeless, or dangerous, or both.

  “Now you may be wondering why we’re progressing to broomsticks,” Malcolm said as they stood in the field, as if reading Charlie’s mind (he had to remind himself that witches couldn’t do that). Twelve clunky-looking training brooms lay in the wet grass, one next to each kid. The ten adult helpers stood on the side, each of them carrying their own sleeker, smaller riding sticks.

  The young witches, or WITs, as Malcolm liked to call them (“Witches in Training”) all wore helmets, elbow-, and kneepads. They looked like they were trying out for hockey, or about to go rollerblading.

  “…Especially since it seems to you that none of you have made any progress. That’s okay, that’s okay. Frustration is part of the process. What’s our motto?”

  “Fail and recover,” they responded in dreary unison.

  “That’s right, good,” Malcolm said. Charlie had to give him credit. He seemed utterly undaunted by his pupils’ inability to work any of the spells that he’d been trying to teach them.

  “The reason we’re switching to flying next,” he explained, “is that activating a broomstick is a relatively easy thing to do, much easier than the things we’ve been attempting so far. Riding it is a bit tricky, but that’s less about witchcraft and more about balance.

  “These broomsticks, like many of the objects we witches use, have been charged with spells to make them work. In this case, the broom makers invoked the power of the wood to stay solid and true, and to fly straight. They invoked the power of the wind to allow the wood to rise in the air and to carry a body or two on them. They’ve already been imbued. You don’t have to do it.

  “All you have to do is learn to activate the brooms, then hope like hell you can hang on,” he laughed. None of the adult helpers seemed to think this was funny.

  Malcolm gathered them in the center of the clearing, which was about the size of a football field, and explained that the other adults would be there to help out once the WITs learned how to get the brooms off the ground.

  He taught them the few Words that were needed to activate the broomsticks. He had been teaching them many Words since they’d arrived the day before.

  “Words are very powerful. Don’t go around saying them willy-nilly. Not until you’re ready for something to happen,” he said.

  Charlie was still getting used to the idea of the Words. He couldn’t really understand them, even when Malcolm or one of the other adults helped him form each sound individually. It was as if they were in a language so foreign, mumbled so quietly, that they’d slip right out of his mind before he could hold them in.

  When the adults said the Words, Charlie felt them. He remembered going to a birthday party as a boy. Somebody’s dad had rubbed an inflated balloon along the kids’ arms, then lifted it a few inches away so the kids could feel the static electricity pull at the hairs on their arms. The Words pulled at him much the same way. And when he heard the Words, it sounded like several people were whispering them at once.

  When he and the other WITs tried to say them, nothing happened. No hair-raising electricity, no multiple whispers, nothing.

  “It’s okay kid,” Malcolm said when Charlie hadn’t been able to reproduce the right sounds. “Try again. Fail and recover.”

  Now the kids stood in a wide circle. They had each laid a broomsticks on the ground beside them. One by one, a WIT would place his or her hand over the broom, whisper the quiet Words, and see if the broom would do anything.

  They went around the circle several times. Nothing happened.

  “Like this,” Malcolm said, standing in the middle of them and placing one of the training brooms down in the grass. He pretended to concentrate very hard. His lips began to move.

  Just as he finished mumbling the last Word, the piece of wood popped up from the ground and snapped into his hand, and he affected a surprised look on his face. The WITs laughed at his antics.

  “You have to clear your mind and let the Words work the way they’re supposed to.”

  “Yeah, whatever that means,” said Jenna Tompkins. She looked bored half the time, angry the rest, and was continually rolling her eyes or huffing when Malcolm offered her corrections.

  Now it was Roberto Sanchez’s turn. He was the pudgy kid who’d worn the navy blue sweater at the warehouse when they’d all been popped. Charlie was pretty sure they’d talked together at some point during that fuzzy night, but he couldn’t remember any of their conversation.

  The boy moved his lips, squeezed his eyes shut and held his hand open.

  “Easy, easy, not quite so hard,” Malcolm said.

  Nothing happened. The boy opened his eyes, then shook his head.

  “Nope, sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t be sorry, kid, just wait your turn and try again.”

  Several more WITs gave it a try. Not a single broomstick rose up in the air. They didn’t even wiggle on the ground.

  Charlie’s turn came around again. This was his fourth time. He was cold and hungry, but it dawned on him that he was having a strange sort of fun. He just couldn’t believe he was standing out in a field with a group of witches, trying to learn how to activate a broomstick. He didn’t even care if he succeeded this round or not. He believed what Malcolm said about failing and recovering. At some point, one or more of the kids would make it work. The adults had all started where the WITs were now, standing in a field somewhere, cold, hungry, and failing. Even his aunt Beverly had started out not being able to do anything.

  Charlie took in a deep breath, cold air with the scent of pine and damp earth filling his lungs. He closed his eyes, held his hand over the long, chunky piece of wood in the wet grass, and moved his lips. As usual, nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing.

  “Good try, Charlie. Next,” said Malcolm.

  But something felt different this time. Almost…almost as if what he really should have done was open his mouth a little and let the Words say themselves. That was strange. How could that be right? But it did feel right, somehow.

  “Charlie, time to stop and give someone else a chance,” Malcolm said.

  But he didn’t stop. He felt a stirring in his chest, a sensation of rushing forward, as if a wide expanse had opened up in front of him. He could feel the thrilling vastness of something just beyond his reach.

  “Charlie,” said Malcolm, his voice sterner.

  Charlie opened his mouth, and this time, the Words themselves moved his lips, as if tiny, invisible fingers were lifting and pulling at them. He heard the Words near him, not as if he were saying them, but as if a crowd of people a short distance away were mumbling them, and the sounds carried to both of his ears simultaneously.

  A sensation of vertigo descended on him. He felt sure that if he opened his eyes, he’d find himself standing on the edge of a cliff, with endless miles of drop-off just beneath the tips of his rain boots.

  He could feel the Words inside his ears, as if they were small, live insects tickling the nerve endings along the rows of cartilage inside his ear drums.

  With a soft whooshing sound and a hard smack against his palm, the broomstick landed right in the middle of Charlie’s hand. He closed his fingers around it before he could drop it, then opened his eyes.

  At first, there was no sound. Only the sight of the other kids, Malcolm, and the adults that he could see standing off to the sides, eyes and mouths wide open.

  Then one of the kids shouted, “Hurray!” Soon everyone was clapping and cheering. Malcolm’s smile beamed, and som
e of the younger kids even jumped up and down.

  “I did it,” Charlie muttered to himself, shaking his head in disbelief.

  The broomstick quivered with tiny vibrations in his hand, confirming that he had, in fact, been successful.

  After the cheering died down, Malcolm spoke.

  “Now, my boy, do you remember the Words to return it to just a piece of wood?”

  He nodded. He knew how to do it now. All he had to do was stop trying to make it work, and instead let the Words say themselves through his mouth. He closed his eyes, the Words came through, the feeling of vertigo left him, and the broom dropped to the ground. It seemed so obvious, so easy. How could he not have seen it before?

  More clapping, more smiling from Malcolm, even more of a sense of understanding on his part about how it all worked.

  “Okay, do it again, Charlie. Call up that baby, and you can take it for a spin.”

  The Words came through with even more assurance. The sense of vertigo and slipping forward wasn’t as strong the second time. The broom snapped up into his hands in a way that felt right, like catching a stick someone had tossed to him. Its weight felt good in his hand. Familiar.

  “Okay, kiddo, hold on a second,” Malcolm said. He called two adults over from the side. Charlie wished Beverly had been there to help. He would have appreciated her calm, caring attitude.

  “I’ll be here when you get back on Sunday night. I’ll help you practice all the things you’ll learn with Malcolm,” she’d said as she handed him a sleeping bag and helped him load his things into the minivan that was taking a group of kids and adults to Malcolm’s place.

  “I’ve got to stay here and make sure this community keeps itself going while you’re all off having fun,” she’d said, giving him a wink.

  One of the adults called over by Malcolm was the tall black man who helped subdue Charlie when he’d started breaking things after learning of Principal Wang’s heart attack. His name was Sean Crenshaw.