Bewitched

by Mark Jay Harris

  “Her skin isn’t darker than yours,” Darren pointed out to Mike. “She’s more the shade of Halle Berry or Zoe Saldana.” He quickly peered at Andrea and added, “Not that I noticed or anything.” Andrea playfully punched him in the side.

  Seth silently nodded, then in a low voice said, “That’s the hottest girl I’ve ever seen.” Shelley didn’t say anything, but the look she gave her boyfriend should have reduced him to fragments.

  “Yeah,” Mike quickly agreed. “But don’t get any ideas. She’s already taken. She’s mine.”

  “Oh, how do you figure?” Tony demanded.

  “You might have noticed in this white-bread school of ours that she and I are two of a kind.” Mike grinned as he considered the possibilities.

  “Oh, just because you’re both black?” Tony wanted to know.

  “No.” Mike shook off his reverie and smiled down at Tony. “Because we’re both beautiful people.” He thought a moment and added, “Beautiful black people.”

  That comment made them all smile, so no one noticed the particularly pleased grin on Samantha’s face. Nor had they noticed earlier when the beautiful girl had surveyed the room, that Samantha had given her a subtle nod in Mike’s direction.

  ***

  Generally Mike enjoyed art class. He excelled at a lot of things, for example Taekwondo, fencing, or in this case, art. He could sketch with reasonable accuracy, mix colors, use oils, charcoal, pencils, pens, watercolor—it didn’t matter. Mr. Grayson, his art teacher, usually commented favorably on his work and looked forward to putting several of his pieces in the exhibition they held each year.

  Today was going to be an even better day than usual. The new girl would be there, and he was ready to begin his masterpiece. He purposely waited until the last possible moment to make his entrance into class. With less than ten seconds before the bell rang, he sauntered to his seat, sunglasses covering his eyes as he panned across the room. He found her sitting by herself on a stool at a table. As the bell rang, he picked up his stool and art supplies and joined her. The other students watched him with a mixed reaction of fear and awe. The girl didn’t look at him, merely kept her gaze forward as if bored with everything.

  As per Mr. Grayson’s regular habit, he silently took roll as the students talked. Mike turned to face the girl and focused his full attention on her. He peered over his sunglasses, and let his stare work its magic. The beautiful girl, for her part, didn’t flinch or acknowledge him in any way. She remained completely aloof.

  “What’s your name, girl?” Mike asked.

  “You talkin’ to mi, mon?” Her voice was smooth and musical, and her unexpected Jamaican accent momentarily threw Mike off his game. She leveled a cool look with her beautiful eyes on his and waited for him to respond.

  “Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you.” He smiled his toothy grin that always worked on girls.

  “I be Serena,” she cooed, in a sultry cadence. “And what be your name?”

  A dizzy giddiness swept over Mike. This girl’s face and accent were almost too much for him. Almost. “I be Mike.” He smiled again at her.

  “Irie, mon. Irie.” She tossed her head, shaking her hair back into place and jangling her descending silver hoop earrings, creating a slight wind chime sound.

  Clearing his throat, Mr. Grayson, a man so skinny with protruding features that made most students immediately think of Ichabod Crane, called the class to order. “Class, today I want you to continue with the charcoal drawings you began the other day.” He turned his attention on Serena. “Young lady, you can begin the assignment now. The charcoal pencils are at each table, and you can use the model in the center of the room.” He pointed at a series of objects on a table: seashells, a cone, a picture frame, and a child’s model airplane, all casting long shadows from an overhead light. “You may also select another subject if you wish, as long as it is not sexual, vulgar, or violent in nature.” He handed her several leafs of Strathmore 500 Series Charcoal Paper.

  Serena nodded, and Mr. Grayson moved on to other students in the class.

  Mike smiled and opened his own pad of Strathmore Paper. He kept his position angled toward Serena and began sketching her.

  “You gwen to remove de dahkers?” she asked, pointing to his sunglasses.

  “Yeah.” He chuckled and set his sunglasses down on the table.

  Serena arched her long neck away from Mike. After several moments, she slowly turned her attention back to him.

  “Don’t move,” Mike ordered. He glanced up quickly at her and back at his pad of paper, his hand moving quickly across the page.

  “You drawin’ mi portrait?”

  “Oh man, am I drawing your portrait! Turn back ahead, please. This is going to be a three-quarter view.”

  A slight smile crossed her lips as she gave him a sideways glance. Slowly, she turned back toward the objects on the center table and began her own sketch.

  Mike worked away for several minutes before asking, “So, you’re from Jamaica?”

  “Yah, Jake,” she replied. Without looking at him, she continued to sketch the objects on the table. “I be born deh.”

  “And you moved to Cache Valley, Utah because?”

  “Mi fadda stoosh.”

  Mike stopped his drawing and stared at her completely perplexed.

  “Im gotta lotta money. Im open a plant in Cache Valley for de taxes. Also, Im want mi learnin’ in de States.”

  “So, where do you live?”

  “Hyde Pahk,” She peered up at the objects on the table, then back at her paper. “You heard a dis place?”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of this place, seeing as I live there.” He continued glancing at her and working on his drawing.

  “Dis de coldest place I evah live,” she mentioned as they continued to draw.

  “You think March is cold, you should have been here in January. I don’t suppose you’ve ever snowboarded before.”

  She smiled and giggled just a little. “I don tink so, mon.”

  “We’ll have to go some time. You’ll love it. So, what did you do in Jamaica, before coming here?”

  “Same ting dey do everwhere. Mi go to de school, sing in deh choir, flex wit mi fren’.”

  “You sing? That’s excellent. What does ‘flex with your friends’ mean?”

  She glanced at him, smiled, and said, “Hang out.” Then she turned her attention back to the objects on the table she was drawing.

  “You’re not into ganja are you?”

  “Dahs mainly de Rastafarians. I no Rastafarian, and I no smoke de ganja.”

  “Good,” Mike replied.

  “De drugs I do are much stronga dan ganja!”

  Mike stopped drawing and stared at her. What had she just said?

  She glanced at him, and he realized he’d been played.

  He laughed. “Nice. Very good. I couldn’t have pulled that off better myself. I thought you were just beautiful. Nice to know you’re also half-baked.”

  Her smile widened as she looked ahead and continued to sketch.

  The class passed quickly. They worked on their projects with intermittent talking. Mike was feeling good about his drawing of her. It was coming together better than he had hoped. After much nodding and agreeing with what he was accomplishing, Mike finally announced in a heavy French accent, “She is finished.”

  “Is she, now?” Serena said, still focused on her sketch. “And is she bashy?” Mike’s puzzled expression led her to explain. “Is she good?” She gave him a flirty side-glance, then returned to her own project.

  “Oh, she’s good,” Mike assured her. “She’s real good.” He examined his charcoal sketch admiringly. “I think I’d go as far as to say bashy.” He held his pad out for her to see. The sketch of Serena was excellent. He had used several different shades to create an accurate likeness of her. She inspected his work and nodded with an expression of surprise at his evident skills.

  “You must be a pro. Dat cris, dat very cris.”

&n
bsp; “Well, I hope that means you like it.”

  The bell rang, and the students in the class picked up their art supplies and headed to the front to turn in their drawings. Mike waited for Serena to gather her things together. More than likely she would write the date on her paper and turn it in at the end of the term as a notebook piece.

  “Hey, let me see your drawing.” They were both headed toward the door.

  “Ah, it’s noting, mon,” she said, brushing her own work aside. As they passed Mr. Grayson’s desk, she slid it out of a folder and laid it gently down. Mike caught a glimpse of it and stopped in his tracks.

  He moved back to the desk and stared in stunned disbelief at his own face looking up at him from the center of the page with incredible life-like detail. In the upper left-hand corner, a smaller image of him set in profile, and in the upper right, his face drawn in a three-quarter view. The images were done with such precise detail Mike couldn’t imagine how she had done them with charcoal pencils. They could have been the product of a laser printer, yet the charcoal on the page told a different story.

  The thing that really caused the blood to leave his head was the fact that she had scarcely glanced in his direction. She had been facing the center of the room, intent on drawing the objects on the table—or so he had thought. His mind was jammed between gears for a moment, grappling with what it meant. It wasn’t just complimentary to him personally. It demonstrated she had some sort of freakish unheard of talent. His blood chilled as he realized what she had done was impossible. It had to be. The feeling of impossibility so overwhelmed him he’d have been no less disconcerted if his own sketch of Serena had winked up at him from the page.

  Reining his thoughts back to the here-and-now, he turned to say something to Serena, but she was gone. The hall was crowded with students, and some inner clock told him he had less than a minute to make it to his next class. Quickly, he turned and rushed out the door.

  CHAPTER 7

  Cat Scratch Fever

  School ended, and seventh period had been a blur to Mike. He’d spent his time replaying Art class over and over again in his head. Finally, he settled into the comfortable belief that Serena had conned him. She was extremely talented and had thought of a great way to freak him out. He still wasn’t quite sure how she had done it, but it was a con, no doubt about it.

  Just the same, he needed a little head-clearing time, so when school let out, he went to the old gym, located in the center area of the school, across from the office. It was not as big as the new gym, and most of the time, it stood empty. Nevertheless, it contained a full basketball court, and right now, it was the perfect place for him to be alone and shoot some foul shots.

  He found four basketballs over by the old coach’s office. He hauled them out to the free-throw line and began popping them up at the hoop. The first three banked their way through the hoop off the backboard. He dribbled the last ball out to the three-point line and popped one up that slid through the net. He ran in, gathered all the balls and went back to the same spot to throw some more. On his way, he noticed a figure in the doorway of the gym, a most appealing figure.

  “Hey, Jake,” Serena said. “Wa’ppun?”

  “Serena,” he replied, surprised. “Why do you keep calling me Jake?”

  “Dat’s not your name?”

  He gawked at her in disbelief.

  Pointing a long manicured finger at him, she said, “Mike.”

  He dropped the other balls and dribbled the last one over to the doorway. “I saw your drawing. Not bad. How did you do it? Did you have a photograph stashed someplace I couldn’t see?”

  “De sketch?” she asked. “D’you like it?”

  “It was of me, so, yeah, I liked it. But, how did you draw a picture of me when you hardly ever looked at me?”

  She grabbed the bouncing ball from him before he could pull it away. “You play dis bahsketball?”

  “Are you kidding me? I’m one of the star-players on the team.”

  She threw the ball back at him. He caught it with one of his large hands. She smiled at him, impressed.

  “You ever play Horse?” he asked.

  “Hohs? Wat dis Hohs?”

  Mike enjoyed looking at her, but that accent was melting him every time she spoke. “It works like this. You take a shot from anyplace on the floor. If you make it, then I have to shoot from that same spot and make it, too. If I don’t, then I’m the first letter of the word, horse: H. If I do make the shot, you have to make it again, and so on until one of us misses. We play until one of us has all the letters of the word horse.”

  “And if I miss de shot, den I’m an H?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Let’s play dis game a yours.” She slipped her jacket off, revealing her slender shoulders. Drawing a foot up behind her, she leaned back and released the latchets that held her sandals on and kicked each one onto the floor next to the jacket. Mike watched, trying to be subtle about his observation and loving every second he got away with it. She shook her head so her curly tresses moved out of her face. The jingling of her hoop-earrings tinkled alluringly across the room.

  Mike tossed the ball to Serena. Using both hands, she awkwardly bounced the ball toward the far hoop. Mike chuckled as she struggled to keep control of it. Halting about four feet from the basket, she stared up at the backboard. She raised the ball in both hands high above her head and threw the ball. It ricocheted off the rim and flew directly back at her head. She squealed, flailing her arms, barely avoiding being smacked in the face by it.

  Mike ran toward her and retrieved the ball. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, mon, yeah.” She glared at the basketball in his hands as if it had purposely attacked her.

  “Okay, my turn.” He dribbled out to the foul-line, lined up a shot, bounced off his toes and launched the ball. It flew true, tapped the backboard, and dropped through the hoop.

  She walked over to where he was and said, “Now I mus do de same ting?”

  “Just put it through the basket. It doesn’t have to bounce off the backboard, but it must go through the hoop.”

  She licked her lips and smoothed an errant lock away from her face. She cinched up her skirt and leaned forward with the ball in both hands until she was bent completely to the ground. She stood up straight, flinging the ball toward the hoop in a perfect granny shot. The ball went high and came down through the basket.

  “That was fantastic!” Mike congratulated her. “Who taught you how to throw a granny?”

  “Dat was a granny?” She grinned. “It jus’ come to me de trow de ball dat way. But dat was good?”

  “That was bashy!” This made her smile, and for a second, Mike thought he might forget his own name.

  He took her place on the court and lined up another shot. No one was ever perfect from the free-throw line, not even professional ball players. Still, he was confident he could sink another shot right now. He bounced a little on his toes and pushed the ball into the air. As soon as he released it, he knew it would swish perfectly through the net.

  From his peripheral vision, he saw Serena poke at the air with a finger. He quickly forgot it when the ball hit the back of the rim next to the board and bounced high into the air.

  “That’s weird,” he muttered. There were times when you released the ball and knew you had thrown it perfectly. You felt it. This had been one of those shots, yet it didn’t do as it should have. “That should have gone through,” he said, truly puzzled.

  “You de letter H, no?”

  “Right, I’m the letter H.”

  “My tun?” Serena asked.

  “Yeah,” he mumbled. Why hadn’t the ball gone through?

  Serena walked over to the far right side of the hoop, about thirty feet out along the baseline. There would be no board to bounce the ball against. Mike smiled and forgot about his shot. It was much more enjoyable to watch her play anyway. She hitched up her skirt again, leaned forward a bit, and gazed up at the bask
et. Then she leaned all the way down with the ball and came up quickly, releasing it into the air in another granny shot. Her arms were in the air after the ball left them, and as they came down she made a hooking gesture with her right finger. The basketball sailed in a bizarre overreaching arc. But as the ball started coming down, heading far beyond the hoop, it jerked back a few feet, as if it had been attached to an invisible string and someone had tugged on it. Unexplainably the wildly thrown shot dropped through the hoop.

  At first Mike didn’t know what to say. It was such an uncanny sight. He wondered if somehow she had put a strange backspin on the ball, and it had caused it to fly backward horizontally at the last second. However, he understood the physics of the situation well enough to realize that couldn’t happen, not in the air. His mind went instantly back to the basketball that rolled up the dirt slope under the school. Perhaps Sky View was some sort of Bermuda Triangle for basketballs.

  The ball hit the ground, rolled toward the back wall, bounced off it, and slowly made its way toward Mike. Absentmindedly, he reached down and picked it up. “That was a great shot,” he finally managed to say. “I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Now you mus do da same ting?”

  “Right.” He dribbled over to the side of the court where Serena had made her shot. “Maybe not the same thing, exactly, but I do have to make the shot or I’ll be a HO.” He smiled at the little joke these letters created. “So-to-speak.”

  He always found these side shots difficult. He was much better underneath. Even with three guys bearing down on him, he could find a hole and sink the shot. But out here, with no one blocking him, it was tricky. He’d have to judge the exact distance, give it a perfect arc, and hope the planets aligned.

  His brain sent his arms the precise coordinates and units of force necessary for the ball to fly straight and true. He’d made this shot before, but it was always unpredictable. He bounced off his toes, let instinct take over as much as possible, and pushed the ball once again into the air toward the basket.