“Who are you?”
“I’m Hannah. I’d like to be friends, but you’re on the wrong side of Madison and she says...” She trailed off.
“She tells you who you can be friends with?” Olivia was really surprised.
The girl looked around. “Look, it wasn’t a good idea to steal Alex. Dump him. He’s not that interesting anyway. You’ll find out.”
“Hannah?” came a voice from down the hall. It was Madison. “Coming?” Hannah turned and hurried off as if she were embarrassed even to be seen talking to Olivia.
Dulcimer emerged from the music room. She had stayed behind to talk with Mrs. Foley. “I told her you forgot to take your medication and lost control,” Dulcimer told Olivia. “Listen, you don’t have to rescue me, you know. I’m used to this. She only does it because my parents are musicians.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t give her the right to treat you so mean.”
“I can handle it,” Dulcimer responded. “Now the big question: Are you going home with Alex?”
Olivia smiled. “I don’t think René is going to let me.”
Chapter Eight
SHE WAS WRONG. When she went outside after classes, she found Alex chatting with René as if they were old friends. “This nice young man has a chauffeur who will let you ride in style today,” René told Olivia.
“Um, do you think Aunt Tilda will worry?” Olivia asked.
“René gave me her phone number and I talked to her,” Alex said, waving his cell phone.
“You did?” Olivia felt betrayed. Didn’t Tilda worry about letting her niece go home with some strange boy? “What did she say?”
“As soon as I told her who I was,” Alex replied, “she said it was okay for you to come home with me.”
Riiiight, thought Olivia. As far as she knows, you are the only thing I’ve thought about for the last two days. She probably thinks she’s doing me a favor.
She looked up and made eye contact with Madison, who was standing outside her own limo, a few cars away. Olivia knew that the smart thing to do was to tell Alex she’d come over some other time. Hannah was right. He wasn’t worth fighting Madison for.
Instead, she said, “Okay, but you have to memorize the poem.”
“I’ll try,” he said. His attempt to look sincere wasn’t believable in the least. But it was sweet of him to make the effort.
Alex’s family lived in a massive apartment building on Fifth Avenue. The chauffeur let them out in front, and a doorman emerged from under a canopy to give Alex a salute. A salute? Olivia couldn’t remember anybody ever saluting her mother. And even though Alex was leading Olivia by the hand, the doorman gave her a suspicious look.
The building had an elevator operator too, so Olivia didn’t say anything till they reached Alex’s floor, which was marked PH on the elevator buttons. Penthouse, thought Olivia.
When they got out, a maid was holding open the door to the apartment. Olivia was a little surprised until she realized the doorman must have phoned up to say Alex was on his way.
“You want anything?” Alex asked as they went through the doorway.
For a second, Olivia couldn’t answer. She was staring at the room they were in, with windows at the far end that stretched from floor to ceiling and a view of Manhattan that seemed to extend all the way to the southern tip. Olivia had been in houses with nice views in Los Angeles, but everything there stretched out like a carpet. Here the buildings rose into the air like a fairytale forest. This was the view she’d imagined from the plane.
Olivia realized that the maid was looking at her, waiting to see if she wanted anything. “Iced tea,” Olivia said.
“Peach or lemon or plain?” the maid asked.
“Lemon,” Olivia said.
“Sugar or sweetener or honey?”
Decisions, decisions, thought Olivia. At home, Mother decided what Olivia should have, and that was that. Remembering the honey tea that Eva had served her, she said, “Sugar.” If sugar’s poison, go ahead and strike me dead.
“You can have something to eat too,” Alex said. “Yolanda will bring you whatever you like.”
Olivia smiled. “I don’t know what I want.”
“Ice cream,” said Alex. He was trying to impress Olivia. Nobody like him had ever tried to impress her before. So she was impressed.
“Bring us some Rocky Road, Yolanda,” he told the maid. “You like Rocky Road?” he asked Olivia.
“Sure.” She would have said yes even if he’d asked if she liked Blacktop Highway.
The maid disappeared and Olivia walked over to the window. “This must look fantastic at night,” she said. She thought about standing here with the lights in the room out and Alex’s arms around her....
“Yeah,” said Alex. “I guess I’m used to it.”
“Can you see Greenwich Village from here?” Olivia wondered if she could see her aunt’s house, but the tall buildings blocked out everything else. The house would be like a little cottage lost in a forest of stone.
“I don’t think so,” said Alex.
“Listen, I wanted to ask you... how come the doorman saluted you and gave me a fishy look?”
“Did he?” Alex didn’t really remember. “Maybe because he didn’t recognize you. Usually he sees me with—” Alex had just enough sense not to finish the sentence.
“All righty, then,” said Olivia. “How about getting to work on that poem?”
“Aw, let me show you my collection first,” said Alex.
Collection? Oh, the X-Men. “Okay, but you promised you’d work on the poem.”
Alex took her down a hallway that had several rooms leading off it. He reached the end and opened the door. Another great view, although the window wasn’t as big, nor was the room itself. “Is this your bedroom?” asked Olivia. She noticed there wasn’t any furniture except some soft chairs and shelves containing what looked liked thousands of comic books.
“No, this is the study,” Alex replied.
Study? Olivia thought it a funny name for a roomful of comics.
Alex was proud of them, though. He began to take them down from the shelves, telling Olivia what stories each one contained. Some were valuable and he kept those in plastic wrappers. The story of Wolverine was, of course, part of the larger story of the X-Men, and Alex could recite most of that too. Olivia was hoping the maid would show up with the ice cream just so he’d shut up.
“And you know,” Alex said, “when you asked me if anything special happened the day before yesterday?”
“Um, yes,” Olivia said, wondering if he had remembered somebody—her—had looked at him in a crystal ball.
“I thought about you when I was reading the story where Wolverine has a crush on Jean Grey. I realized you look just like her.”
“I do?” Olivia was curious. “Show me.”
“It’s in Uncanny X-Men, number 94,” Alex said, taking that copy down from a shelf, handling it the way the salesmen at Harry Winston displayed a particularly valuable piece of jewelry for Olivia’s mother.
He opened it and pointed. Olivia stared at the drawing and said, “Alex, she’s naked.”
“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head, clearly upset that Olivia would even suggest it. “Look, see where the green part starts? That’s her shirt.”
“Shirt? It looks like she’s wearing paint. And besides—” She stopped, not quite knowing how to explain that Jean Grey’s breasts were, well, somewhat more humungous that the actual ones that Olivia owned.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Alex.
I sincerely hope not, thought Olivia.
“You’re thinking that Wolverine’s real girlfriend is Mariko Yashida,” he told her.
“Something like that,” Olivia said.
“But see, he had to kill Mariko.”
“Really?” Olivia looked nervously toward the doorway, wondering what was taking the maid so long to bring the ice cream.
“Because she was injected with poison from a blowfish and she
begged Wolverine to put her out of her misery.”
“Where’s the iced tea? I’m really thirsty all of a sudden.”
“But listen, you shouldn’t feel bad, because Wolverine gets his revenge.”
“How could I have ever doubted it?”
“Every year, on the anniversary of Mariko’s death—”
Just then, Olivia’s sanity was rescued by the appearance of Yolanda in the doorway. Olivia jumped up to help with the tray.
Tea with sugar wasn’t bad, Olivia decided after sipping it, but she felt guilty because she knew Mother would have told her to take the artificial sweetener. The ice cream was amazingly good. Fortunately, it also seemed to have gotten Alex off the comic book jag. He was telling Olivia that his father had the ice cream flown in from Cincinnati, where some family made it in small batches.
“After we finish, we’re going to get to the poem,” Olivia reminded him.
“Aw, Olivia, what’s the point?” he complained. “Madison’s father is going to get Ms. Noyes fired anyway.”
“Did he call your father too?”
“Yeah.”
“Did your father go along with him?” Olivia was ready to walk out of here if the answer was yes.
“Not really,” Alex said. “My father’s from Greece and he’s kind of old-fashioned. He thinks if the teacher says something, she’s right.”
“So you should memorize the poem,” said Olivia. She opened her backpack to get the book with the poem in it, but the Dr. Dee book fell out.
“Hey, what’s that?” Alex asked.
“Nothing,” Olivia said. “Just an old book.” Alex reached it before she did, however, and he opened it to the back section. “Wow,” he said. “It’s in some funny language. Can you read this?”
“No,” Olivia said.
“It must be some kind of code. You need a key to uncipher it,” Alex said.
“Decipher,” Olivia corrected. He was on familiar territory, she could see, even if he didn’t get the word right.
Alex nodded. “The X-Men solved one in Marvel Heroes Puzzle Masters,” he explained.
“Right. Okay now Alex, pay attention.” Assume control. “Pay attention while I read each line,” Olivia said sternly.
Alex looked at her, giving an imitation of paying attention. Imagine he’s an empty bucket, she told herself, and you’re filling it with knowledge.
Twenty minutes later, she was ready to admit the bucket had a big hole in it somewhere. “Alex,” she said, “you’re not trying.”
The unhappy look on his face reminded Olivia when she’d heard those same words earlier today. She had a horrified thought: I’m turning into Mrs. Foley.
“I’m just not as smart as you,” Alex said. “And anyway, I don’t get the point of it. Read the first line again.”
“I met a traveller from an antique land.”
“See, antiques are furniture. My mother buys them all the time. So that’s confusing. It makes you think he was shopping for furniture. Why doesn’t he just say, ‘I met a traveller from an old land’?”
“That’s what makes it a poem. Listen, I know they use different kinds of words in the comic books you read. You don’t have trouble with them.”
“That’s because they have pictures,” said Alex. He opened the Dr. Dee book again. “Some of this writing is like little pictures. I bet we could figure this out.”
“You’re just trying to distract me,” Olivia said.
“See, it says this book is about John Dee. He was in the X-Men books. They called him Johnny Dee.”
“It’s not the same person. Didn’t you hear Mr. Feldstein today? John Dee lived in the 1500s.”
“Maybe they’re related.”
Olivia sighed. “Alex, can I ask you something? Did you ever invite Madison over to your apartment?”
He looked embarrassed. “Well... yes.”
“And did she like looking at your X-Men books?”
“Not really. All she wanted to do was make out.”
Eeeep. Olivia stopped breathing.
“Do you want to make out?” he asked, as if the thought had just occurred to him.
She had to force herself to take a breath. First one, then another. See? Now you can speak. Answer him. “Well, it wasn’t what I was thinking of.” Liar, she told herself.
“See. That’s why I like you,” he said. “You’re interested in other things.”
Olivia felt guilty. “Alex, maybe there’s some other reason why you like me.”
“Well, you look good too,” he added.
“Like Jean Grey,” she said, making a joke of it.
He smiled and nodded. Not joking.
Maybe it’s true what they said about boys. Maybe they really do go blind if they... no, he walks around school without bumping into things. It’s the crystal ball.
“Alex, I have to go now,” she said suddenly.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked.
“No, I just realized that I have to go visit a friend of my aunt’s.”
In the end, she agreed to leave the John Dee book with Alex. He thought that meant Olivia would come back another time. She figured that Alex’s apartment was a safe place to hide it—and anyway, she wanted some more of that ice cream.
Olivia let Alex’s chauffeur drop her off in front of Tilda’s house, but when he drove off she walked down the street and rang the bell for Eva’s apartment. Eva buzzed her in and was waiting when Olivia reached the top of the stairs. “I’m so glad to see you again,” Eva said, holding the door open.
Olivia slipped past and said, “There’s something I need to know.”
“Oh, sit, sit. Young people are always in so much of a hurry.”
The place was no tidier than it had been before, but Olivia found a place for herself on the couch again. Momentarily she compared this crowded little room with Alex’s apartment.
“People may have grander places to live, but none so comfortable for me,” Eva said. Olivia reminded herself that she had to be careful what she was thinking in Eva’s presence.
“Would you like some tea?” Eva asked. “I can make it in a jiffy.”
“No, thank you,” said Olivia. “I don’t need to be drugged into sleeping for fourteen hours tonight.”
“Oh, I’m sorry if that upset you,” said Eva. “It shouldn’t have. Sleep heals the brain and spirit. Besides, it wasn’t the tea. It was the honey. Comes from Afghanistan, where the bees take nectar from poppies.”
“Why did you want me to sleep?” asked Olivia. “So I wouldn’t see the sex orgy going on in the backyard?”
Eva raised her hands. “Well, you are a sharp one,” she said, winking. “I should have mixed in a little more honey. But whatever you saw had nothing really to do with sex.” She chuckled a little. “Most of us are well past that.”
“Then why did everybody take off their clothes?”
“Skyclad,” said Eva. “That’s what we call it. It was our end-of-summer gathering and going skyclad puts us closer to the goddess.”
“What goddess?”
Waving her hand in the air, Eva said. “The Lady. The goddess who rules all. Mother Nature, some call her. Amaterasu, Rhea, Demeter—she has many names.”
“Is that what witches do?”
Eva’s brows went up. “Witches? Who said anything about witches?”
Olivia hesitated. “Aunt Tilda...”
“I believe you misunderstood her,” said Eva. “Tilda might have referred to the Craft, or Wicca, but not to witches. That would sound like Mr. Shakespeare, and I don’t want to tell you what I thought of him.”
“Well, anyway, if all you were doing was celebrating some nature festival, why did you have to drug me?”
“Drug is such a modern, ugly word. Why not say ‘soothe’? Because you know, dear, we knew that you’re a young person, just getting comfortable with your body and your feelings, and the ceremony might upset you.”
“Why didn’t Aunt Tilda just give me some
tea herself?”
“Well, Wiccans avoid using such things on their own relatives. It makes home life easier. But I assure you, it was for your own good and no harm was done. Next time we’ll invite you.”
“Next time?” Olivia was suddenly imagining herself playing naked ring-around-the-rosy.
“You see? You are upset. But not to worry, next time the weather will be cold and we’ll wear clothes. Cotton or linen or flax, mind you. No leather or fur. We don’t take the animals’ clothing for our own, as if we were savages.”
“I see,” said Olivia. “Anyway, I came to ask you about something else.”
“Just have a little tea, then. I promise... nothing that will dull your senses.”
Olivia reluctantly agreed.
When Eva brought out the tea, she said, “This is good black tea from Annam. Has a distinct flavor and shouldn’t need any sweetener.”
Olivia sipped some and found it strong. She put it aside, wondering if it was really harmless. “I wanted to ask you about what happened last time,” she told Eva. “When I saw this boy—Alex—in the crystal.”
“Did you notice a change in him?”
“For sure.”
“And now you want to change him back?”
Olivia thought it over. “Not really. Not yet anyway. He’s calmed down a bit.”
“They all do, dear. Nothing you or I can do about that. The charm doesn’t have much of a holding power.”
“But I wondered... see, I’d really like him to be a little smarter.”
Eva frowned. “Well, adjustments, you see, aren’t quite within the rules. You run into trouble when you try to make people different from what they already are. My advice, if you like them smart, is to find a smart one and then we’ll cast a love charm on him.”
“I really just need him to memorize something. He could be the same as now except for that.”
“Memorize? Is it long?”
“Fourteen lines. A poem.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Easiest thing in the world. Just take down the crystal again. You were very good with it the other day.”
Olivia followed Eva’s instructions and once more the clouds within the ball lifted, revealing a tiny figure of Alex.
“Do you see him?” asked Eva.
Be Careful What You Witch For Page 10