“Well, after you get married, you become your spouse. You knew that, right?”
“Wait, so he’s now a beautiful woman with long hair who makes lotions in the basement?” Charlie said, surprising himself with his bold comment.
“Charles Creevey! That’s the first compliment you’ve paid me about my looks. You are so sweet I could kiss you!”
“Ew, gross, no way. Wouldn’t that go against the teacher-student relationship thing?”
Beverly’s held tilted back as she issued a deep-throated laugh.
“Right, right. I forgot about that. Okay, no more buttering up the teacher to get out of your studies.”
Charlie smiled, enjoying the teasing and the easy banter.
Then he took a deep breath, focusing again. The laughter had relaxed him. His mind felt emptier than before. He listened to see if he could sense anything. At first, nothing. But slowly he began to notice what seemed like a sound coming from the white ball closest to his wrist. It was like a humming sound, perched almost beyond his range of hearing.
Then he began to feel the material of the Ping-Pong ball, the lightness of it. While he wouldn’t have known what a polymer was, he could sense the smooth plasticity of the ball as well as the empty space inside it. It was made to be light. He sensed a part of himself, from somewhere in his chest, or maybe his forehead, extending out almost like it was leaning forward. This part of himself carried an idea of flight, of floating, of lifting into the air.
And unlike anything he had experienced at Malcolm’s cabin, he felt the thing respond to him. My God! It wasn’t like it was talking to him, but there was a form of interaction going on between him and the ball. Charlie grew excited. He had conveyed the idea of flying to it, had extended an invitation, like his aunt suggested, letting it know he wanted it to fly. And it had done something to the ball. Now the ball was responding.
He remembered learning about Venn diagrams in school. The template his teacher drew on the board showed two circles next to each other, slightly overlapping. She shaded in the part where Circle A and Circle B converged.
“The space shared between the two circles is part of a set, or internal to the set, while the space not shared by the two circles is external to the set,” she had explained. He had had trouble grasping the concept at school, but now it made sense to him.
He and the ball seemed to be creating something internal to the set of them both, as if he were Circle A, the ball were Circle B, and now there was something shared between them.
As he maintained connection to the Ping-Pong ball, he waited until he could feel the lightness of the material, what it was made for, its essential purpose, meeting with his invitation, and even possibly what he was made of.
He sensed the two sides melding together. It felt exciting, normal, and satisfying all at once. The space between two overlapping circles. That part of the ball’s purpose melding with the part of him that wanted it to fly, blending together, becoming a fixed set.
Now. Now’s the time.
He opened up his mouth, letting the Words come to him, feeling the odd way they moved his lips and mouth.
Charlie watched as the ball quivered, leaning toward him and the invitation he held out to it. It lifted up off the table an inch or two, then hovered, quivering again.
It wasn’t like Charlie was lifting something heavy. But he was straining anyway. He could feel something inside him resisting as if it didn’t want to connect with the ball. He could also tell that the ball needed more imagination from him. He needed to provide more possibility. He wasn’t sure how he knew all this, but he knew it nonetheless.
His head began to throb; he heard himself gasp out loud. He felt himself pushing hard. But the ball only rose an extra half inch before bouncing back down on the table, then rolling off and landing in Beverly’s hand.
“Oh my god, Charlie! Look at that! You made it move!” she declared.
He blew out his breath.
“But yours stayed up forever. It floated there. Mine just …”
“Hey, that was amazing. That was your first try since the weekend, right? It worked!”
He sat back, rubbing at his forehead.
“Head hurt?”
“No, not really hurt. It just felt like I was trying to, I don’t know, hold a heavy door open or something. But I … I could feel it, the ball, like it was listening to me or something.”
“That’s right. You hear each other. I mean, not really, since the ball can’t really hear anything. But you get the idea.”
“Yeah, and when it came forward a bit, it seemed like it was touching me inside my brain. Is that weird? Or is that how it is for you?”
“Something like that, yes,” Beverly nodded.
“But the door was really hard to pull open. Like something was holding it from the other side.”
“Ah, yes. Resistance. Your mind doesn’t like it when it thinks that something else is trying to control it. That Ping-Pong ball wasn’t controlling you, but your mind doesn’t know that. It’s such a strange feeling at first, isn’t it? You have to learn how to calm your mind, to let it know that nothing bad is going to happen. That it’s not being invaded by enemies. It’s just strange and new, but not dangerous. That’s where practice comes in.”
Charlie nodded, remembering what Randall had told him in the parking lot at Costco, about how hard it was to have your mind be blown open and about how much it fought to hold on to reality.
“Charlie, you did it. You did it, you did it, you did it.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“No, not, ‘I guess so.’ It was an experiment. Most all other spells operate similarly. Clearing your head, sensing that thing, picturing it in your mind, and then offering the invitation. Or at least, that’s how I like to think of it. If you asked a hundred witches, you’d probably get a hundred different answers as to how it works for them.”
In spite of himself, Charlie smiled. He looked at the mason jars above Beverly’s head filled with their bright contents. He smelled the fruity aroma from the tea in front of them. He heard a crow squawking just outside the room’s high windows. He felt pleased with himself.
“Whew, that was a lot of work! Moving that little ball and all,” he said.
“Class is over for the day, young man. You get an A-plus!”
CHAPTER 8
Aunt and Nephew
THAT NIGHT, AS CHARLIE WAS finishing up his homework, he heard a knock on his bedroom door.
“Come in!”
Beverly walked in, dressed in layers of polar fleece. She wore a knit cap on her head and gloves on her hands.
“Charlie, in celebration of your fantastic progress with the Ping-Pong ball earlier today, I thought we might take a spin together,” she said, jutting her chin toward his bedroom window.
“A spin?” he asked, at first not understanding what she meant. “You mean … you mean on broomsticks?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. What do you think?”
He set his pencil and protractor down on his geometry book. “Yes!”
“After you finish your homework. How much more do you have to do?”
“About thirty minutes or so.”
“Great. Come downstairs when you’re ready. I’m going to take Amos for a walk right now. Dress warmly. The air gets really cold.”
He could barely concentrate on his work. He had been thinking about his maiden voyage and hoping he could ride a broom again soon.
“Concentrate,” he said out loud, trying to get his brain to focus again.
He finished his last math problem, then reviewed a few Chinese sentence patterns and copied the five new characters he had learned yesterday. Chen Laoshi was probably going to give them another one of her impromptu quizzes tomorrow. He would cram some more in the morning before class.
Charlie slammed his books shut and put them in his backpack. He threw on a sweater and a hat, then ran downstairs to the hall closet and grabbed the fleece-lined leather
jacket that Randall had bought him. He hadn’t had the chance to wear it because the weather hadn’t turned cold enough yet. He caught a glimpse of himself in the foyer’s mirror. His mother’s voice, unbidden, ran through his head. “Two leather jackets, Charlie? One from Beverly and one from Randall? Isn’t that just a tad bit excessive?” Her words were icy with sarcasm and contempt.
“No, it’s not. And you aren’t going to ruin my evening, either,” he said to the image of her face that he pictured in the mirror next to him. “You left me here. It’s out of your hands now.” He felt a thrill as he talked back to her even though he knew she wasn’t really there.
Randall was reading the newspaper in the dining room when Charlie walked in.
“You sure you’re ready for Air Beverly? It’s a suspect airline.”
“Yeah, I think I’m ready. I, uh, I heard the pilots are better than Alaska Airlines.”
“Those are fightin’ words, buddy,” Randall said, grabbing for Charlie’s arm.
Charlie yelped and jumped back, laughing.
“Ready?” asked Beverly as she walked into the dining room.
She slipped a small backpack over her shoulders.
“Yep.”
“Good. Rand, you and Amos hold down the fort. We’re going to go for a real flight, not like what you do in that huge metal, gas-guzzling jetliner you call an ‘aeroplane.’”
“Ooh, witchy witchy. Just because you float around on a little twig you think you’re greener than the rest of us.”
“That’s right. We are model green citizens. See you, love bug,” she said, giving her husband a kiss.
Beverly motioned for Charlie to follow her, then walked down the stairs to the basement, her voice echoing off the walls as she descended. “I brought you a pair of gloves. Your hands can get really cold flying at night.”
She unlocked the door into her workroom and released the wards. Then she opened the closet door on the right-hand wall. Charlie saw several tall broomsticks inside, next to long raincoats, hats, and some more white boxes with labels on them.
“This one’s mine,” Beverly said, pulling out a broom made of a light-colored wood. “Birch. Fast and supple. But a bit tricky to maneuver when starting out.”
She removed another broom from the closet and held it out to Charlie, sizing up how they looked together.
“This ought to do. It’s mahogany. A very hard, solid wood. It should give you a feeling of stability.”
The broomstick was a dark reddish-brown and a lot bulkier-looking than Beverly’s. But it wasn’t as thick as the training brooms they had used in the field near Malcolm’s cabin.
“If you like it, we can call it yours. But I want you to be able to test it out first, okay?”
He nodded. The idea of having his own broomstick was so exciting that he was suddenly afraid if he talked out loud it would be taken away from him. He knew he was being silly, but he kept his mouth closed anyway.
Beverly locked up her workroom. Together they walked into the garage and out the door that led to the backyard.
“You’ll have to get used to flying in the rain if you ever want to ride around in Seattle. But for tonight, you’re lucky. Mostly a clear sky.”
They walked past the hedges framing the sides of the yard and stopped where the grass ended. There was about a foot of soil beyond with small rose bushes and hydrangeas acting as a natural barrier. Then, a steep decline that led down to blackberry bushes about twenty feet beneath his feet. He peeked over the edge and could see the rooftops, far below, of the homes that extended from the end of their property straight out to the Sound.
Moonlight softened the edges of everything in the yard that was sharp and bright during the day, turning the grass a metallic gray, silvering the leaves of the trees. The twin lights of a large ferry, crossing over to Vashon Island, shone over the dark water. A slight wind was the only sound he could hear.
“How are we going to …?” Charlie whispered, for the night was quiet and it seemed like the right thing to do. “What if someone sees us?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll whip up a little concealment for us. It won’t turn us invisible. It’ll just help us blend into things.”
Charlie’s heart started to pound. The drop-off in front of him wasn’t a sheer cliff face, but it might has well have been. If he fell from this height, he would definitely hurt himself.
“You scared?” whispered Beverly.
“Yeah, a little.”
“Good. You should be. I want you to gain a healthy respect for broom flight. You’ll grow to love it. I just know you will. But don’t ever forget that it’s just a small piece of wood holding you up, hundreds of feet in the air. There are no seatbelts. If you keep that in mind and stay smart, you’ll do fine.
“And don’t forget—I’ll be right here with you. Now, go ahead and set your broom down. Do you remember the Words?”
“I think so.”
He placed his broom down on the wet grass, held his hand over it, closed his eyes, and let the Words find him. The cold air helped to clear his mind. He parted his lips and could feel a tingling sensation gather around him as the Words began to flow from his mouth.
The broom didn’t smack into his palm the way it did at Malcolm’s. It rose gently up into his hand. He held it in his grip and looked at Beverly.
“Smarty! You’re such a natural.”
She lifted her leg over her own broom before nodding at him to do the same.
“Ready?”
“I think so.”
“Good.”
And with that, they pushed off the ground together and floated out over the black expanse of night awaiting just beyond the edge of the backyard.
CHAPTER 9
The Velveteen Night
CHARLIE LOOKED DOWN and saw the blackberry bushes far below the broom handle. He dropped several feet, causing his stomach to lurch.
“Whoa!” he shouted, his voice echoing off the hills.
“That’s okay,” he heard his aunt say from somewhere above him. “You just hit an air pocket. Come back up a bit.”
He leaned back, stopping his descent.
The tip of his aunt’s broom came up on his left side, and soon they flew side by side, soaring forward, the wind cold on his face.
“Keep breathing,” his aunt yelled.
God, why do I always hold my breath? he wondered, exhaling.
He relaxed, convinced at the moment that he wasn’t going to plummet to his death or at least to a painful encounter with the blackberry bushes beneath them.
He looked down and found that the distance to the ground didn’t seem as frightening as it had been back at the edge of the yard. He watched as the pointed roofs of the homes passed beneath the length of his broomstick.
A minivan drove through the winding streets that ran through the neighborhood below. It was a strange vantage point to have: to watch the roof of the van from a good three or four stories above and the yellow light spilling out onto the street in front of it, illuminating garage doors, recycling bins, and juniper bushes as the van drove past house after house.
The taste of salt in the air grew stronger as they passed the last of the houses and flew low out over the water. He relaxed even more, knowing that he could survive a ten-foot drop into the water much better than a fall hundreds of feet above blackberry brambles, chimneyed rooftops, and TV antennas.
He wondered how fast they were going. It was difficult to tell. It felt faster than riding a bike downhill, but slower than being in a car on the freeway. And unlike a car or a bike, flying on a broom was smoother. The air pockets created dips and rises, but none of the bouncing or shaking you got when wheels spun over pavement.
He liked how his broom felt. It was solid, like Beverly said it would be, but glided through the air much better than the one he had used at Malcolm’s, which compared to this felt like it had training wheels on it. He wondered if Malcolm’s brooms had some sort of spell on them to make them go sl
owly.
He felt a tapping on his shoulder. He turned to see Beverly pointing down to the surface of the dark water and smiling, her teeth white against the night’s background.
Charlie looked down and saw the silhouettes of two figures flying on broomsticks. Their shadows rippled and reformed as they passed wave after silver-crested wave, the moonlight pulling their dark shapes along the way a child pulls a toy on a string.
It was a breathtaking view, quiet and wonderful. The colors of moonlight, silver and gray blending in with the shadowy dark, created a soft textured sheen over the surface of the water. It was cold, but the lighting made everything seem gentle.
Charlie remembered a children’s book that his mother used to read to him when he was young. In it, a family of bears drove their station wagon down a tree-lined country road at night. A large yellow moon rose in front of the car.
The sky in the storybook was covered with a black synthetic material made to resemble velvet, and Charlie used to rub it between his fingers while his mother read to him about the bears and their adventures.
The quality of the light around them, the weightless journey, the silver on the water, their shadows, all of it had the same velvety feel to him. Charlie wanted to extend his hand and rub the night between his fingers, convinced that it would feel as soft and as smooth. He resisted, deciding that it would be better to keep a firm grip on his broom handle.
A thought arose in his mind, surprising him. Maybe I am home now.
* * *
“We’re going to land over there on Blake,” Beverly yelled. Several strands of her hair had slipped out from beneath her knitted cap and were whipping past her head as she pulled up in front of him and looked back over her shoulder.
She was pointing to the small uninhabited island to the north of Vashon. All Charlie could see were trees and rocks as they flew closer. His vision was better than when they had first stepped out in the backyard, but it was still hard to distinguish shapes in the dark. How was he going to land on ground that was covered with rocks? What if he fell into the water? As they flew closer to the landmass, Charlie strained to see a clear landing spot.
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) Page 8