“Now,” she continued, “I wish I could say that the reason these stories are a myth is because no one would be evil enough to try it. But don’t forget, witches are humans first and foremost. And some humans will try anything to gain power.
“The reason they’re a myth is because it doesn’t work. Our historians in Europe have researched cases where witches were tried for committing such crimes using their craft. The accused killed people and attempted to amass power. It never worked. No one has been able to crack the code of using someone else’s death as a way to boost their own strength.”
“You make it sound like it’s a goal or something, honey,” said Randall.
“No, what I’m trying to say is that it has been tried throughout history. But it has always failed. Nature is nature, thank God. When something dies, whatever force gives the creature life, goes away. It cannot be harnessed. We don’t know where it goes. On that count we’re no closer to knowing if there’s an afterlife than non-witches. But we do know that we witches haven’t been given the ability to use someone else’s life force when they die.”
––
Charlie’s mind rushed with thoughts of the day as he lay awake in his room that night: telling Diego to shut up when he continued to apologize, finding the desire in himself to stop being afraid, hearing Beverly’s stories about witches killing people to bolster their witchcraft.
There had to be a reason why Grace and the other witches were kidnapping young kids. Or hunting them down. What had she said to him? That there were other things she wanted to tell Charlie, things that Beverly and the others were hiding. He had no illusion that Grace had his best interests at heart, or that she even wanted to help him.
But he did believe that she knew things, that she held the key to certain secrets. And maybe there was a way to find out what those secrets were.
Chapter 72
September came to an end, and Charlie dove into his witchcraft studies with fervor. Part of not hiding out anymore meant studying as many aspects of the craft as he could. He had temporarily lost his drive to embrace witchcraft, after his solo ride caused so much trouble. But one of the side effects of his talk with Diego was the realization that he couldn’t hide from Grace anymore. And that meant he knew she’d probably come for him eventually, or at least come for someone else in the community whom he’d want to protect. He needed to be well-prepared and well-armed.
So every afternoon, when he came home from school, he diligently finished all of his homework. Some days he spent an hour or two with Diego. But he always made sure that he had at least a few good hours in the evening for expanding his craft.
He spent some of those evenings with Beverly, down in her workshop. She introduced him to the uses of plants and herbs, how to make a simple magical object so that it would hold a spell, and how to deepen his concentration.
Some evenings were spent with other adult witches. Rose and Sean took him out at night, which came much earlier now that it was October, showing him the finer skills of broomstick riding in the dark. Charlie could barely remember what it felt like to be as wobbly as he’d been on that first day in Malcolm’s field. The broom had become second nature to him.
Rita Lostich and Daniel Burman worked with Charlie to develop skills in hand-to-hand combat. This was completely daunting at first. He didn’t know enough spells to actually do anything if someone attacked him.
“All I can do is make a Ping-Pong ball float around!” he complained.
But they showed him that a lot of fighting was about keeping a cool head and staying resourceful. They built on what he’d learned in his broom-riding lessons, showing him how to mount the stick and still keep his hands free for attack. They taught him how to fight with bewitched knives, how to blast beams of light that were stronger than hitting someone with your fists, and how to surround himself with a protective glow.
“Because the best offense is a good defense,” said Daniel, feinting a jab at him as they circled each other in Rita’s basement one day after school.
“Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?” asked Charlie.
“Not for you it isn’t,” Daniel answered, his intense gaze cutting off any retorts from him. “Don’t ever forget that in a fight.”
‘Is he really gay?’ Charlie wondered for the hundredth time. ‘Does he have a boyfriend? When did he first tell someone? Does he…?’
Pow! Charlie felt a sharp stab of pain in his shoulder, and he found himself lying on his back on the hardwood floor.
“Don’t lose focus,” Daniel admonished, standing over him.
There were so many things to learn. One the one hand, Charlie was extremely excited by how much he was accomplishing. On the other hand, he felt overwhelmed because of how little he actually knew. Things that had seemed impossible at Malcolm’s cabin now seemed easy. Yet he still felt like a kindergartner compared with his adult teachers.
“I’ve been doing this for years, Charlie. Give yourself a break,” Beverly liked to say to him.
“Yeah, I know, it sucks. Just keep going,” Jeremy Lostich said one rainy afternoon when Charlie was having trouble mastering a tracking spell.
“Are you going to let that stop you?” Daniel asked one night as he pinned Charlie to the ceiling with a wispy cloud of smoke vaguely resembling a large hand. “Grace could be here any day. You need to be ready.”
Charlie went to bed so tired every night that he didn’t even remember turning off his bedside lamp. His muscles were constantly sore from either fighting or hunching over scrying bowls and miniature cauldrons every day, not to mention all the late-night flights on his broomstick. “You get used to it. Like Lance Armstrong,” Joan said one evening. Charlie had trouble believing her.
Even though Charlie was finishing his schoolwork on time (it had become a game for him. He would crack his books as soon as he got home and race to finish everything before dinner, knowing that if he did, he’d have more time to learn witchcraft), being school was another issue altogether.
“You look tired,” Diego said more than once as Charlie wandered down B-wing, momentarily forgetting where his next class was.
“Stay awake, Mr. Creevey,” his sophomore English teacher said while tapping him on the shoulder. They were reading The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. All of his classmates were glued to Jackson’s prose and the terrifying ghost story. Charlie had been fighting to keep his head from dropping.
“Tongxue,” Chen Laoshi said to him one morning as the other students were leaving the classroom. “Ni de gongke zuo de bu hao.” Charlie stared at her, knowing that she was saying that something wasn’t good, but having no idea what the subject of the sentence was.
“Shenme?”
“Charlie, you don’t say, ‘Shenme?’ when responding respectfully if you don’t understand something. You say, “Qing zai shuo yici.”
“Qing cai zuo yizi,” he mumbled.
“Budui,” she said, correcting him. “Qing zai shuo yici.”
“Qing zai shuo yici.”
“Hao. Ni de gongke.” She held up a piece of paper showing the Chinese characters that Charlie had handed in for homework the day before. Half of the page was covered in red ink corrections. “Zuo de bu hao.”
“Oh, duibuqi Chen Laoshi, wo…wo…”
Chen Laoshi stood up and looked over at the doorway, cast her glance around the classroom, and then spoke in a lowered voice.
“Charlie, I know you are studying other things late at night. And I understand that you are under tremendous pressure to learn as much as you can before the next attack.”
Charlie winced at her words. A part of him still hoped that the next attack might not happen. He knew it was a ridiculous thought, but he couldn’t help himself. When he heard the adults talk about it, it wasn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when. And when seemed to be swiftly approaching, at least in their eyes.
“But you must keep up with your schoolwork and your attendance here at Puget Academy
.” Chen Laoshi continued. “If you don’t already know this, we have the double burden of maintaining both sides of our lives, the public side and the community side, which of course must remain private. Do not let your public life suffer, Charlie, or it will cast aspersions not just on you, but on all of us.”
He didn’t know what “casting aspersions” meant, but he figured it must be something bad.
As Charlie nodded and turned to go, Chen Laoshi took him by the arm.
“I know it’s hard work, Charlie. Hang in there.” Then she winked at him. It was very uncharacteristic for her to break her formality and do something like that. He felt kindness from her, and understanding. Her gesture emboldened him, and he took her words to heart, more determined than ever to do his best to maintain his school life and his witch life.
Chapter 73
On a Saturday in mid-October, Charlie awoke late and lay in bed, trying to decide how to use the day to catch up on everything, when he heard a knock on his door.
“Come in,” he said, his voice still groggy.
“Hey, bud.” Randall opened the door halfway and peeked his head in. “I asked Beverly if I could kidnap you for part of the day today. She told me I shouldn’t use that word, since it’s a little ‘sensitive,’” he smiled, adding his ubiquitous air quotes.
Charlie smiled back. His uncle’s enthusiasm, as well as the way he teased his wife, was infectious.
“To do what?” he asked, yawning and stretching.
“Well, if Diego’s free, I thought I’d take you two over to the Eastside. There’s a place over there that looks really fun. I don’t want to tell you what it is, but I will say you’ll need to wear something comfortable. Like gym clothes. What do you say?”
––—
Diego rode up front with Randall. Charlie listened to the two of them, chatting away like old friends. He enjoyed their banter. It was a nice distraction from the worry that he wouldn’t get enough done today.
“I know, right? And then she’s all ‘whatever,’ and then he was all like, ‘whatever.’”
Randall laughed. “Yeah. But I still like the show.”
“Okay, me too. I think it’s rotting my brain, but I can’t help watching it.”
“Have you seen the trailer for that new reality show, where they make some bozo millionaire live in a poor rural area like a local, and then at the end it’s revealed that the people have a millionaire living among them?”
“Totally!” cried Diego. “And then the rich guy cries, and everybody cries, and he donates all this money to the town, to like build a library or something?”
“My thoughts? Cheesy.”
“Cheesatoidinal!”
“But I’m still going to watch it.”
“Me too! I’m gonna record the whole series!”
Diego looked in the back seat. “You’re kinda quiet back there, Charlie. Even quieter than normal.”
“I’m just enjoying you two gossiping about every TV show ever made.”
“Charlie!” Randall gasped, pretending to take offense. “It’s not gossip. It’s artistic critique.”
“That’s right,” Diego chimed in. “We are refined minds here, speaking of refined things.”
“Oh, you mean like who sleeps with who on Bachelorettes Gone Bad?
Randall exited off the main road and pulled into the parking lot of what looked like a large business park.
“Where are we going, anyway?” asked Diego.
“I thought you two boys might like…”
“No WAY!” yelled Diego. “I’ve wanted to come here for like ever!”
The place was a huge gymnasium-like structure filled with trampolines. After paying an entrance fee, they were given a short tour of the facilities. There was an open floor with segments of six-foot-by-six-foot trampolines, bordered on all sides by padded dividers. As the guide explained how things worked, they watched little kids running and jumping from square to square, as older kids did flips, and even ran up the sides of the padded walls.
In another section, two large trampolines were split down the middle and separated by a long strip of hanging mesh. Teams on either side threw balls at each other while trying not to fall as they bounced around. The kids here were older, and even though they tried to be serious, most couldn’t help laughing at their failed attempts to stay upright.
“Dodge Ball, trampoline style,” said the guide.
“Awesome!” Charlie, Diego, and Randall replied in unison.
The last section had five long runs of trampolines, running parallel to each other, which ended in a pit filled with huge pieces of foam. People were throwing themselves off the end and flipping into the pit with varying degrees of klutziness and skill.
Diego started jumping around on the floor. “Can we, can we, can we?”
The three of them put their wallets and cell phones in a locker before walking over to the open floor filled with the trampoline squares.
“I haven’t been on one of these in a long time,” Randall said. He took a few small jumps, smiled at the boys, and then performed a perfect back flip.
“Whoa! Dude! Where did you learn how to do that?” Diego exclaimed.
“I was a diver in high school. Sometimes we trained on trampolines instead of at the pool.” He gave them a mischievous grin. “Beverly made me promise I wouldn’t do anything too wild.”
The boys joined him, and soon they were bouncing, dodging kids, shouting to each other, and laughing.
Charlie enjoyed the weightless feeling at the apex of each jump. It wasn’t like flying on a broomstick, but he imagined he felt more comfortable this high off the ground than he would have before he learned how to ride. He remembered Beverly telling him that some witches don’t use brooms, that they had the inherent ability to fly through the air on their own. Knowing how hard he had to work to master even the simplest of witchcraft skills, the idea of learning how to fly without a broom made his head hurt.
Just then, Diego did a spinning twist in midair and bumped into Charlie, knocking them both down.
The boys fells back on the trampoline floor and began giggling, unable to regain their footing. Randall tried to jump onto their square right at the exact moment a young girl in pigtails and pink barrettes ran past him. He let out a yelp, spread his legs to let the girl pass underneath him, then sailed over the square and crashed into the padded wall nearby.
This sent the three of them into such guffaws of laughter that one of the young employees, dressed in a baggy polo shirt uniform, cheeks bright with acne, came over to tell them that they had to either keep jumping or leave the floor.
After recovering from laughing so hard, they tried their hand at the dodge ball game. Randall and Charlie were both fierce throwers and very competitive. Diego didn’t like it as much. “I can’t throw very hard,” he complained, sitting out.
“I’ll help you if you want!” Randall yelled as he bounced up into the air. Just then a ball launched by Charlie hit him hard in the gut. “Oomph!” he grunted in midair.
They moved over to the third area with the foam pit. Charlie jumped on the three successive trampoline squares then flung himself high before landing on the soft wedges of foam. He was surprised how difficult it was to pull himself out of the pit. The softness of the wedges was perfect for a safe landing, but gave no support when climbing out.
“This is hard!” he yelled to the other two as he tried to reach for solid ground.
Diego leaped into the air when it was his turn, swiveled his hips so that he could grab both of his feet with his right hand, then disappeared into the waiting foam pit. He had his own challenge climbing out.
“What are you going to do?” Charlie asked Randall, as his uncle stepped up to the trampoline.
“A double,” he said, giving him a wink.
One bounce, two bounces, three bounces, and then he soared straight up, tucked into a somersault, spun around twice, and landed feet first on the soft wedges.
“Oh my god
! Oh my god! Your uncle is amazing!” Diego yelled.
Although jumping into the pit was great fun, all three were exhausted by the time they could finally climb out. They were only able to complete a few more rounds of jumps before they found themselves standing off to the side, bent over with their hands on their knees, trying to catch their breath.
“Okay guys, I’m hungry,” Randall said, panting. “One more jump for me, and then let’s say we get something to eat.”
They watched as he launched himself into the air, spun around two and a half times, then landed hands first as if he were diving into a pool.
“Shit!” they heard him yell as he climbed up to a kneeling position on one of the foam wedges. He stayed there for quite some time, not moving, only holding up his left hand and looking at it.
“Sir, you all right?” asked one of the employees.
–––—
They sat in the first aid room as the facilities manager applied ice to Randall’s wrist.
“Sir, I’m pretty sure it’s broken,” he said. “I mean, there’s a bone nearly sticking out.”
Randall laughed once before shaking his head. “Your aunt is going to kill me. Anyway, glad I’m right-handed.” In spite of his attempt to be funny, the skin around his eyes and forehead had turned pale, and he was sweating.
They decided that Diego would drive them to the emergency room. Once Randall had been seen by a doctor, they’d call Beverly. Not before.
–––-
The boys sat under the bright lights of the waiting area, worrying about Randall, while the physician’s assistant put a cast on his broken wrist in the examining room.
He’d been right. Beverly was furious.
“I told him not to show off!” she’d yelled when Charlie called her. He had to pull the phone away from his ear. After much discussion, Beverly finally agreed not to come all the way over to the Eastside hospital. Diego would drive them home.
The Boy Who Couldn't Fly Straight (The Broom Closet Stories) Page 42