The Boy Who Couldn’t Fly Home: A Gay Teen Coming of Age Paranormal Adventure about Witches, Murder, and Gay Teen Love (The Broom Closet Stories Book 2)

by Jeff Jacobson

  Charlie couldn’t imagine negotiating with his mother. How it worked in their house was that she would say something like “We’re going to put up a new shelf in the bathroom” or “I’m pulling that old rug up in your room and refinishing the floor,” and Charlie would say “okay” and then help her. She was the captain. He was definitely just a crew member.

  He wasn’t surprised that Diego was clear about what he wanted. The boy was so sure of himself that it made sense he and his mom would negotiate things. How do you learn to do that? he wondered. Maybe he could become more forthright with his opinions. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure he had any. Did people just make them up and then demand that others agree to them?

  “It’s pretty cool,” Charlie said. The room was definitely cluttered. But it wasn’t dirty. The only smell seemed to be a combination of laundry detergent and incense.

  “Another thing my mom said is that I couldn’t do drugs. No way. And that if she found out I was burning incense to hide smoking pot or something, she’d sell me to a glue-making factory. Did you ever see that movie Young Frankenstein?” he asked, then continued without waiting for an answer from Charlie.

  “Remember that part with Frau Blücher? Every time they said her name the horses would whinny really loudly? My mom always laughed at that part. She said that ‘blücher’ means ‘glue factory’ in German. I have no idea if that’s true. But she thinks it’s funny so I just go along with her.

  “Anyway, that’s a long way to say I don’t do drugs. So my mom has nothing to worry about. God, I’m talking a lot. I’m kind of nervous with you being here.”

  Charlie relaxed, realizing that he was nervous too, standing just inside the doorway while Diego chatted away on his bed.

  “Why are you nervous?” he asked, not ready to admit that he felt the same way.

  “I dunno. I was excited for you to come over and see our house. But I was worried you’d think it was really weird, or that my room was awful, or that I’d say something stupid.”

  “You? You never say anything stupid. You always know what to say.”

  “Are you crazy? I do not. I blab away all the time.”

  “Diego, I’m the one who doesn’t know what to say. I always feel shy around people, even around you, even around my aunt and uncle. Everyone seems so smart all the time.”

  “Maybe this is the case of the grass always being greener. You seem so wise and contemplative—great use of the word, if I do say so myself. Me, I have to say nine thousand words before I even know what I think sometimes.”

  “You’re crazy. I just sound like a stupid shy kid,” said Charlie.

  “You’re such a bonehead!” Diego yelled, hopping off his bed and running at him. Before Charlie could react, Diego tackled him and brought him to the floor, pinning his chest with one arm while he tickled him with another.

  “Hey, no fair, get off!” Charlie shouted, laughing.

  “Make me!” Diego said, his eyes twinkling while he wiggled his eyebrows.

  Charlie tried to push him off, but the other boy was too strong. At first he couldn’t move. Then a slight pulse of electricity rose up from the floor into his back and legs. He closed his eyes, and before he understood how it happened, he felt a spinning sensation and found himself atop Diego, straddling the boy’s body and leaning over him, his hands pressing down on his chest to hold him in place.

  “Whoa! That was cool! How did you …?” asked Diego, smiling up at him with a look of wonder.

  “Oh, uh, just some, uh, wrestling move that my friend taught me,” Charlie lied, hoping what he said not only sounded believable but also hid his shock from Diego. How the hell had he done that?

  “Remind me not to meet your friend in a dark alley,” Diego said, laughing.

  “Nah, it’s pretty easy, it doesn’t take any …”

  “As easy as this?” Diego interrupted, slapping Charlie’s arms off of him. Charlie fell forward, and Diego grabbed him by his shoulders and sat up, then kissed him very quickly on the lips before throwing Charlie off and to the side.

  “I got you, I got you!” Diego yelled. He jumped up and started prancing around the room, laughing.

  “Boys, don’t hurt each other up there,” came Lydia’s voice from downstairs. “Charlie, your aunt is about to leave. Come say goodbye to her.”

  Charlie lay back on the floor and saw Wolverine from the X-Men staring back at him from a poster on Diego’s ceiling.

  Charlie’s lips hurt from where Diego’s mouth had hit him. But they also tingled in a not entirely unpleasant way. Different parts of his body—his inner thighs, his arms, his chest, all the places where Diego had touched him—felt warm and quivery. Fear of what he had just done mixed with anger at Diego for having forced a kiss on him. All of this was covered over with worry: worry that his newly released ability had slipped out, worry that Diego would ask him more about it, worry that something else would happen, something that he wouldn’t be able to explain away so easily.

  He hopped up off the floor and shouted “okay” in response to Diego’s mother.

  “You mad?” Diego asked, looking much less confident than he had only seconds ago.

  “Nah,” said Charlie, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He turned, hurried past his friend, and headed downstairs.

  CHAPTER 2

  Foliage

  THEY SAT ON A CEMENT LEDGE at Lincoln Park overlooking Puget Sound. Leafy ferns brushed the outsides of their legs, and all sorts of vines and climbers coiled together in the mass of foliage below. Sometimes the sheer volume of all the greenery in Seattle overwhelmed Charlie. You couldn’t look anywhere without seeing something green and growing, twisting up out of the ground.

  He wondered what would happen if he were to fall off the ledge and land in the soft underbrush beneath his feet. Maybe he wouldn’t get up. Maybe the vines would grow up over him, covering him, while everything else continued to run at its breakneck speed up top. He would rest, and he would stay the same. Nothing would change down in the green world. Maybe he would like that. Being swallowed up.

  A shudder ran along his chest.

  “You cold?” Diego asked him, his words close to Charlie’s ear.

  “Nah, I’m fine. You?” He kept his voice neutral. He liked it better that way, near the other boy but distant. Distant enough to keep things normal, to breathe. After what happened back in Diego’s bedroom, he wanted to stay on the alert.

  “Charlie,” Diego said. His voice sounded strange, as if a door were about to open up somewhere, and something scary would walk out.

  No, don’t, don’t say it. Whatever it is, don’t …, Charlie thought. He didn’t even know what he was worried about. But he imagined himself peeking up through the greenery below, his eyes barely visible through the foliage. He could stay hidden down there, just watching, because no one would know to look through the leaves.

  But instead of feeling the green mass hiding his face and the soft soil beneath him, soft like a bed, like sleep, he felt the cold of the cement wall seeping through the seat of his pants. He shifted, trying to get comfortable.

  “What?” he heard himself ask Diego. “What is it?”

  He hated how his voice sounded, like the bleating of a scared little lamb.

  “Charlie, can I ask you something?” Tall Diego, the politician and the charmer, the confident apple hawker, seemed worried. No, timid. Charlie felt angry at him then. He wanted to shout, “Man up, will you?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure. What?”

  “This is kind of silly, but …”

  Charlie looked at Diego as the boy stared straight ahead. He looked at the length of the side of his face, the line from brow to chin, his lashes like half-drawn shades over his eyes, the freckle at his temple a pinpoint, like the start to a conversation.

  The freckle disappeared as Diego turned his head and looked at Charlie.

  “Do you like me?”

  The boy’s eyes didn’t change color—they stayed brown. But they co
uld have. They should have, his question seemed to ask so much. Charlie could imagine them swirling, could nearly see gray clouds of color roll across them like the sky above their heads.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Of course I like you. Why? You know I …”

  And he paused, because he didn’t want to say it out loud. He wasn’t ready. He thought of what Malcolm had said. But it was confusing. On the one hand, he couldn’t lie about this stuff and be the witch he wanted to be. On the other hand, it wasn’t anyone else’s business. When Malcolm had said it all, it had made sense. But now, it didn’t tell Charlie what to do. What was he supposed to say?

  Diego looked back at the water, and maybe his eyes did change a little then, maybe the gray-green depths of the Sound rose with the tide and crept into his eyes right then, for they shimmered.

  A drop of the Sound spilled out of his left eye and made it halfway to his mouth before Diego ran the back of his hand against it.

  “Shit.”

  Don’t, Diego. Don’t let’s have this talk now. The vines are green, the air is nice, and I’d like to sit here with you, Charlie thought, maybe for a long time. What you’re asking, what I think you’re asking, will rush things. I don’t trust myself to say the right words, to keep things safe and quiet, and I’d like to spend a lot of time just hanging out with you. Those other thoughts I have about you are low thoughts, deeper than the vines down below, and I want to leave them there, let them sleep in the wet soil down there, covered by ferns, while you and I sit on this wall above them. Safe. Just friends.

  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 had 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 3

  Takeoff

  “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 had 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 had thought that his uncle was being excessive as they shopped at REI’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, et cetera. 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 had 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 had 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.