“Thank your mother for coming, would you, Bojana?” said Dr. Withunga.
“My name is Bizzy,” said Bizzy. “Bojana is what old Slovenian witches call me.”
14
Ryan left the meeting with a sense of foreboding. He was especially alert—and apparently it was obvious to Bizzy, because, as they were leaving the school grounds, she said, “Ryan, the fact that Mother came to the meeting did not actually increase whatever danger there might be.”
“It might have, if they saw her come, and put it all together.”
“They watch me as much as her, or at least somebody does, and I’ve been to the meetings before, so they already know about GRUT.”
“So I’m not supposed to be more careful?”
“Ryan, dear boy, you’ve always been insanely careful of me, capturing filthy bees, cleaning them in the bee-wash of your mouth, and setting them free, shiny and fresh, into the world.”
“Bee-wash. Like a carwash,” said Ryan.
“An intelligent boy. A remarkable boy,” said Bizzy.
“So now we’re captive in the final chapter of A Christmas Carol?”
“You’re twice the size of Tiny Tim,” said Bizzy.
“Which I suppose makes me the prize turkey. Not the little one, the big one.”
“Have you memorized it?” asked Bizzy.
“Have you?” replied Ryan. “I had it read to me every Christmas for the past ten years, and this Christmas, Mother is probably going to make me read it, the way she makes me read anything that needs to be read out loud.”
“Your father used to read it?”
“And maybe they’ll grow up enough by Christmastime that he can come back and read it again himself. Sparing me the bother.”
“Oh, so you’ve finally found a reason for your father to come home?” asked Bizzy.
“One that might convince my mother to relent.”
“You’re sure she’s the one that needs convincing?”
“I used Dad’s phone to call her a while ago, and because his name came up on her phone, her complete answer was to text the word ‘Die.’”
“Ouch,” said Bizzy.
“I suppose your parents get along perfectly,” said Ryan.
“When one of them is a witch who can wreck the next couple of days of your life with a curse, sure, they get along fine. Or they would if Dad wasn’t up at the university from six a.m. to midnight.”
“That’s a killer schedule.”
“He says he doesn’t sleep anyway,” said Bizzy.
“Which is why I’ve never seen him,” said Ryan.
“You saw him the day we moved in,” said Bizzy. “When you were leaning against the wall watching us work.”
“I helped as soon as I was invited.”
“That’s weak, lad,” said Bizzy. “You saw we were carrying heavy things into the house.”
“I also knew that it was your stuff, and you might take umbrage if a strange kid from the neighborhood came up and started picking things up.”
“Are Americans really that suspicious?” asked Bizzy.
“I thought you were born here. When you say ‘Americans,’ that includes you. And yes, there are people who would scream at you and threaten to call the cops if you started picking their stuff up without being asked.”
“You weren’t a stranger,” said Bizzy.
“Strange enough,” said Ryan.
“Well, yes. Maybe my mother would have barked at you and I would have told her, I know him, he’s a friend.”
“But not your fant,” said Ryan, thinking back to the word for “boyfriend” that Bizzy taught him on the day they met.
“To Slovenians,” said Bizzy, “if a boy and girl are on a first-name basis and they aren’t siblings, they’re practically engaged.”
“Engaged, but not punca and fant,” said Ryan.
“‘Punca’ and ‘fant’ are not parallel words like ‘girlfriend’ and ‘boyfriend,’” said Bizzy. “‘Lahka punca’ can carry overtones of being sexually easy. ‘Fant’ has no such connotation.”
“Because all boys are assumed to be sexually easy,” said Ryan.
“Are they?” asked Bizzy.
“Sexually easy? Or assumed to be so?”
“Whichever,” said Bizzy.
“Both,” said Ryan. “As a general rule.”
“‘Fant’ doesn’t carry overtones of professional involvement in being sexually easy,” said Bizzy.
“I can’t believe I thought ‘punca’ just meant ‘miss.’”
“It was amazing that you knew any words of Slovenian at all,” said Bizzy. “I forgave the inadvertent insult and respected the effort.”
“You’re a generous person,” said Ryan. “But please note that throughout this charmingly distracting conversation, I have kept close scrutiny on everyone we passed, including the people in passing cars. The normal number are watching you covertly, but there have been no repeaters, and no cars that I recognize from previous trips except the cars of parents picking up their kids from school.”
“And look,” said Bizzy. “There is the charming old house that your father cut in half so that we could live in such close proximity to each other.”
It was still a charming house, because only the two mailboxes on either side of the front door showed that it was a duplex. And the two metal house numbers on the outside walls. And the fact that the Horvat family’s side of the house had a neatly mown lawn, while the Burke side was getting long and dandelion infested.
“Why do dandelions keep growing all through the winter?” asked Ryan.
“It isn’t winter yet,” said Bizzy.
“It will be. It’s hit freezing a couple of nights already.”
“I know,” said Bizzy. “That’s why our basil on the back deck died.”
“Sorry,” said Ryan. His mother didn’t cook with basil, so he hadn’t recognized the herb among the pots on the Horvats’ deck.
“It was way too overgrown,” said Bizzy. “It grows faster than we can use it. And we always grow basil inside the house on a south-facing windowsill. So . . . fresh basil all winter.”
“So what do you use it for?”
Bizzy stopped on the sidewalk and stared at him, making a show of being shocked.
“I’ve never had basil in my life,” said Ryan. “What does it do? Is it hot? Is it minty? Does it have a nauseating flavor like nutmeg? Is it licorice-y like anise?”
“Well, you’re a regular encyclopedia of herbs,” said Bizzy.
“Mom makes a spice cake and she likes to mince fresh herbs. Well, fresh from the supermarket produce department. Not from a McCormick tin.”
“Basil wouldn’t work in a cake,” said Bizzy.
“So what does it work in?”
“Pesto,” said Bizzy.
Ryan shrugged. “I thought pesto was my younger sister.”
“Also, it’s vital on a caprese salad. Mozzarella, tomato, oil, and basil.”
“I won’t recognize it from foods I’ve never eaten or even seen,” said Ryan. “What does it taste like?”
“It tastes fresh,” said Bizzy.
“Do you want to know something interesting?” asked Ryan.
“Anything would be better than trying to explain a taste,” said Bizzy.
“That’s the third time that car has passed us. Don’t look. It’s a Toyota RAV4, which is weird-enough-looking that it’s memorable, which makes it a terrible choice for surveillance.”
“Are you sure it was the same one?”
“White with the same spatters of red mud on the right side.”
“But not on the left?” asked Bizzy.
“I’ve only seen the left side once,” said Ryan. “But better than mud spatters is the face of the driver, and the two car seats in the ba
ck.”
“So it’s a family car,” said Bizzy, looking relieved.
“So I thought, the first time it passed. Heading for school. Except nobody at the high school needs car seats in the back, right? And it came back from the high school remarkably soon, with no additional passengers. And then it came back heading toward the high school. Also quite soon.”
“So whoever it is has not been subtle,” said Bizzy.
“Or it has nothing to do with us,” said Ryan.
“Mother made us paranoid, is that it?”
“Wasn’t that her purpose?” asked Ryan.
“Yes,” said Bizzy. “Only I’m used to ignoring most of her dire warnings because in all the years she’s been warning me, nothing bad has happened. Unless you count invitations from strangers to get into their white van to help them hunt for a lost kitten.”
“Come on,” said Ryan. “Really?”
“Only once, and Mother had trained me well. My only answer was to stand there and scream at the top of my lungs, ‘I will not get in your stupid car!’”
“Did that work?”
“He drove away fast, without closing the van door. So yes, I guess it did. I also don’t think he was a Slovene witch hunter.”
“And you were what, five?”
“I was such a lovely child,” said Bizzy. “Everybody wanted me to help them hunt for kittens.”
It was Ryan’s first glimpse at what Bizzy’s life must have been like. Always attracting attention even when she wasn’t wearing her glamor face.
Always a target for predators. Who needed Slovenian loveks when there were regular pedophiles around all the time?
“It’s really your mother the loveks want, isn’t it,” said Ryan.
“I have dangers of my own, yes,” said Bizzy. “But what better way to get control of my mother than by first kidnapping and sequestering me?”
Ryan shuddered. “So . . . nobody wants to kill you. Or your mother. They want to use her, and use you to get her to cooperate.”
“We don’t know,” said Bizzy. “I’ve heard about the loveks my whole life, the way other kids hear about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. About five years ago, I started wondering if they were all in the same category of important imaginary beings. But it’s clear Mother really does believe in them. She’s really scared of them. And we have no idea what they want. There’s lore of loveks who kill witches as soon as they’re sure they have a magical power—and sometimes way before they’re sure. But the fact that they haven’t killed her already makes us wonder if maybe they have something else in mind. Me, I’m just a pawn in this game. Maybe Mother is, too.”
“What does your father think?”
“Mother doesn’t talk about it much with him. If the subject comes up when he’s home, he rolls his eyes and leaves the room, so I think he doesn’t believe in it or doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but he also doesn’t want to fight with Mom, because who in his right mind would?”
“And here it comes again,” said Ryan.
The white RAV4 drove toward them. Definitely the same SUV, definitely the same driver. Same child car seats in back. But the driver didn’t so much as glance at them. Just concentrating on the road.
“Still, maybe he just forgot something and had to go back and get it,” said Bizzy.
“The likeliest explanation.”
“Don’t tell Mom about it when we get home.”
“I don’t report to your mom unless she comes out to meet me, which she’s only done, like, twice, so it’s your job to not tell her about it.”
“Fine,” said Bizzy. “Leave all the heavy lifting up to me. Again.”
“You’ll never let me off the hook for that one, will you.”
“Of course not,” said Bizzy. “It’s always good for a woman to identify the lazy men so she doesn’t end up stuck with one.”
“You’re stuck with me for now,” said Ryan.
“Fortunately, you’re still a boy,” said Bizzy.
“And you’re not a woman,” said Ryan. “So my laziness isn’t an issue for you. As long as you’re around to give me orders—which, you’ll notice, I always obey promptly.”
“Good evening, Mr. Burke,” said Bizzy as she headed up the steps toward the Horvats’ door.
“Good evening, Punca Horvat,” said Ryan, not loudly, but still loud enough to be heard.
Bizzy swished her butt back and forth at the door to show that she heard him but didn’t much care. Though the more Ryan thought of it, inside the house and later that night as he tried to get to sleep, the more he wondered why twitching her butt at him was her answer to his calling her “punca.” Wasn’t a butt-swish kind of like acting out the negative implications of “punca”? Or were those implications always negative? What did Bizzy mean by it?
Ryan knew perfectly well that the game of “What Did Bizzy Mean?” was a terrible one, because it led him down many miserable and lonely roads, all of them leading to despair.
If Dad were home, Ryan could ask him about women. Of course, if Dad actually knew anything about women, he’d probably still be living at home. Or he wouldn’t have married Mom in the first place, which would certainly have had unfortunate consequences for Ryan and Dianne. But he could sure ask Dad more comfortably than he could ask Mom, because then he’d get her nightmare lecture about never getting involved with the Serbian family next door because Serbians were genocidal slaughterers, and she just couldn’t hear Ryan when he endlessly repeated, “Slovenian, Slovenian, not Serbian.”
He finally did fall asleep, thinking of a white RAV4 with a sturdy-looking man driving. Was he an assassin? A spy? Or a machinist picking up somebody after school but he got the time or place wrong and had to go back and look up the note his wife had left him?
* * *
The next morning, Ryan was outside sitting on the steps, watching cars drive past. What would it mean if he saw that RAV4 again? That he was still doing surveillance, or that he just had a regular errand that required him to drive past their house?
And what would it mean if he didn’t see the RAV4? That the surveillance had ended? Or that they had switched vehicles?
The RAV4 drove by. The guy didn’t glance at their house. He still had mud spatter on the side of the car. If they were doing surveillance, they were really bad at it, because they left random identifying marks on their car.
Or maybe they meant Ryan to notice, while the real dangerous car slipped past him unidentified.
For that matter, maybe the guy didn’t glance at the duplex, because there were cameras on both sides of the car uploading images to the cloud.
The door behind him opened. Please be Bizzy. Please don’t be Mrs. Horvat or Mother. Nor either her sibling or mine.
It was Bizzy. She sat beside him and put her arm on his back, hooking her hand over his near shoulder, in what Ryan could only assume was a convivial gesture. Putting her arm around him would have been at least affectionate and maybe even possessive. So of course she did the brotherly friend-zone thing.
Her hand is on your shoulder, bonehead, the voice inside his head pointed out. Enjoy it while it lasts.
“So you’re checking out for lovek spy cars?” she asked.
“The same RAV4 drove past, heading toward school.”
“So he has to drop off a kid.”
“No high school kid in the car. No little kids in the car seats.”
“So he’s on his way to work,” said Bizzy.
“Maybe,” said Ryan. “But there he is, coming right back toward us.”
“Well. That’s bad news,” said Bizzy.
Without really thinking about it, Ryan leapt to his feet and ran out into the street. Fortunately, nobody was coming from the left at that moment. Ryan stopped in the middle of the lane so that the RAV4 would either hit him or stop. Or go around, but Ryan could
hear a phalanx of cars coming from behind him, so going around was probably off the table.
Either I die here or the car stops.
And what then? I pull out my .45 and start shooting through the windshield? What kind of stupid action movie do I think I’m in?
Running out here came to him like his micropower—doing what was necessary. But what in hell was it necessary for him to do? Every time before, he knew what he was about to do when he started acting instinctively. Where was that knowledge now?
Maybe I have to actually think this time, he thought. But if I actually think, I probably won’t go through with it.
The guy stopped the RAV4. Then he just sat there, staring straight forward. Not even looking at Ryan, just staring off into space. No honking. No opening the window and yelling for this weird teenager to get out of the road.
So this was not just a guy with errands to run. Even in Virginia, where Dad said drivers tended to be polite, this was taking patience and courtesy way too far.
Ryan started walking toward the car.
Why am I walking toward the car? I’m unarmed, I have no martial arts training, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
Ryan walked up to the driver’s-side window and signaled for the guy to lower the glass.
The guy lowered the glass and actually turned his face toward Ryan. “Why are you driving back and forth in front of our house and when we’re walking on the street?”
“That’s just the way I’m going.”
“Back and forth?” asked Ryan. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to the woman,” said the guy.
“My mother?”
“Her mother.”
“Talk to her? Or kill her?”
“I don’t kill people,” said the man.
“You personally? Or the group you belong to?”
“There are people who might want to kill her,” said the man. “But I am not one of them. I want to help her.”
“So driving back and forth and creeping us out—that’s helping?”
“That’s making sure nobody else does anything to the girl or the mother.”
Ryan shook his head. “There’s a front door. A concrete walkway leads right to the porch. Ring the doorbell. Either one. Then you say, ‘I’d like to have a peaceful conversation with the mother of the pretty girl who goes to Vasco da Gama High.’ Now, my sister is rather pretty, so there might be a moment’s misunderstanding, but eventually you’ll end up talking to the pretty girl you’re looking for. And her mother.”
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