Ms. Mikado asks for a volunteer to pick up the eyeball, citing her easily-triggered faint reflex.
I run up and gingerly retrieve the eyeball to give to James. I cast my gaze down to avoid his decaying face.
“Why is it wet?” I ask him, holding the orb out.
“Taste it,” he says.
“No.”
“Smell it,” he says.
Some people in the class echo his dare for me to smell the fake eyeball. “Smell it, smell it,” they chant.
I lift the eyeball to my nose, just over my Charlie Chaplin mustache, and take a sniff, expecting something like glue or latex, but it's closer to vinegar. “Your eyeball smells like a pickle.”
I manage to look at the bottom of his face in time to see James grin, showing green and black teeth and gooey gore hanging from his lower lip.
“It's a pickled duck's egg,” he says proudly, taking the fake eyeball back. He wipes the floor dirt off the surface with his sleeve and pops the whole orb in his mouth.
Behind me, something happens that sounds like bags of sand being dropped.
Ms. Mikado has fainted, folded over on the floor in her pink Chanel suit like a discarded doll.
Within seconds, she's being revived by Julie and some of the other students. By the sounds people are making, she's going to be fine, but all I see is a forest of lovely legs in fishnets and legs in white lace stockings and legs in purple leotards.
I love Halloween.
* * *
Julie insists on looping her arm through mine as we walk through the downtown core of Spiritdell. She says dressed how she is, she feels more comfortable as part of a couple, so guys still leer at her, but in a more respectful way.
“Like this?” I ask, scanning up and down. On top of the fishnet stockings, which I like, she has row upon row of black fringe, constantly moving, shimmying. I'd like to reach out and touch the soft-looking strands, but there's no part of my best friend's dress that's safe for me to touch.
We stop in front of a store window to admire our fine selves. With me in my Charlie Chaplin suit and her in the beaded headband and fringed dress, we could have stepped out of a black and white musical film.
Across the street are some kids from our school: Shad and Rosemary. Shad's wearing hip waders and carrying a fishing rod, and Rosemary's costume takes about a minute for me to figure out, because I'm staring at her bikini top and the bikini fruit inside.
DERR.
Mermaid. She's a mermaid. I yank my eyes away.
Julie points to a woman walking our way. “Isn't that your hot neighbor?” she asks.
The woman is dressed in a shiny blue princess dress, with white gloves up to her elbows, and a glittering tiara on her head. She must be wearing a wig, because Crystal's parents are from India, and she's definitely not a blonde, though the color does suit her.
“Must be some fancy party you're heading to,” I say as she gets closer. Crystal doesn't even blink one of her elegant green eyes, nor does she acknowledge my existence. She sails past us on a breeze of jasmine and older-woman-hotness.
“I guess she didn't recognize you in your disguise,” Julie says, as though a tiny black mustache is all it takes to make me unrecognizable.
When we get to our destination, we press the buzzer for the jewelry store door—a bit of security Julie has to point out to me as I flail away at the locked door—and are let in. The air inside is about a hundred years old and the man at the counter a hundred and ten.
“Engagement rings are over here,” he says.
Julie squeezes my arm and lets out a torrent of giggles. “Not for another nine years,” she says, referring to the pact I made during the summer, that I would marry her if we were both single at twenty-eight. Julie used to have a crush on me, but I had to break the news to her I wasn't interested in her like that, and yet she still talked me into the future engagement. Julie can be convincing, especially if you care about her as much as I do. She and her twin brother James have been like siblings to me. We're triplets, albeit with different DNA.
I explain to the elderly man that I need something for my girlfriend, who is not Julie. He holds one hand to his ear to hear me better, because I suppose the furry white hair sprouting from inside his ears are dampening the sounds.
“What did you do?” he asks, the movement of his lips nearly invisible under his thick, white mustache.
“I've been looking at other girls' legs, but she doesn't have to know. The gift is for our four-month anniversary.”
“Four months,” the man says, stroking the snow-white hairs of his mustache. “Necklace.”
I look at the section he directs me to, which contains one really pretty, expensive necklace, and a bunch of junk. The choice is obvious.
Julie tries the necklace on and seems disappointed I've chosen so quickly.
“I don't usually wear fancy stuff,” she says, “but being in this place has awoken something primal.”
“Rowr!” I say.
“Does the recipient live in town?” the man asks me, ignoring Julie.
“Yes, why?”
“We wouldn't want to see this beautiful piece stray too far away.”
Julie asks him, “Did you make this necklace?”
He shakes his head. “Not my hands. Maybe not even living hands. It's vintage.”
“I'll take it. My girlfriend loves things with history.”
Julie coughs into her hand, saying, “Except boyfriends.” Cough.
I give her a disapproving look, which I shouldn't. She and her brother would both stop teasing me about the age difference if I'd stop reacting.
“Some people think opals are bad luck,” the man says as he nestles the necklace in a navy blue box. “You're not superstitious, are you?”
I assure him that I believe we make our own destinies, and a pretty little rock is just a pretty rock.
Julie sticks her lower lip out. “I wish someone would buy me a pretty necklace.”
“I'd suggest dressing a little more demurely,” the old man says. “If you keep your tatas and bobos behind the curtains, the rubes will pay anything to get admission.”
Julie's jaw drops.
I bite my tongue as Julie sputters for a moment. Tatas and bobos. James is going to scream when he hears about that.
* * *
After we leave the jewelry store, I say to Julie, “Senior citizens are so adorable, don't you think? They say the darndest things!”
She punches me on the arm, hard, as usual.
I laugh and say, “Watch out, you're jiggling your tatas and bobos.”
Something catches Julie's attention and she shuts her mouth into a tight line. Her lips barely moving, she says quietly to me, “Make the bee go away.”
A big black and yellow bee bobs and hums around her. Julie's been stung by a bee four times in as many months since the first manifestation of my so-called defensive power. Unlike my visions, I don't know much about this secondary power, except bees appear sometimes when I'm in trouble, and they sting Julie. She and James weren't with me for my epic battle with the two witches a few months ago, but I told them—and only them—everything that happened. I told them all I know about my bee power, which is almost nothing.
“I'm not doing anything,” I say, watching the bee. “But maybe this is a sign you should stop punching my arm. My loyal bees will get you!”
Her lip quivers, as though she might start to cry. “I don't want to get stung again. It hurts.”
The bee is still bobbing up and down, as though waiting for orders.
Now's as good a time as any to give my powers a test, so I put my fingers on my temples, because whenever I've seen people with magic powers in movies, they always put their fingers on their temples. It could help. Sometimes the truth is there right in front of us, disguising itself by being too obvious for people to suspect.
With my fingers on my temples, I also squint my eyes and wiggle my Charlie Chaplin mustache.
Instead
of embarrassing myself by saying my commands out loud, I focus my thoughts. BEE! I COMMAND YOU! GO DO SOMETHING USEFUL. DO SOMETHING GOOD.
The bee bobs up and down, the volume of its buzz doubling then tripling, growing to a tiny roar. The bee zips away from us, down the sidewalk, and straight into the plate glass window of a store. Smack. Game over, bee.
Julie looks at me, her pale blue eyes wide with awe. “You did that,” she says.
“Did I? Maybe the bee thought you were a flower, found out you weren't, then committed suicide.”
“I'm just glad I didn't get stung, which is no fun, whatsoever.” She ducks her head and looks around for signs of other bees, but there aren't any. We're enjoying a lovely fall day, with a light breeze and birds chirping in the nearby park.
Julie grabs my arm and pulls me to the side to let a woman pass by.
The woman, Crystal in her princess costume, gives me a weak smile when I wave at her this time. “Must be some party you're going to,” I say, again.
She hurries off, still not responding. Maybe she had a bad day at work, I decide. She works at a veterinary clinic, and they may have delivered some bad news today.
And on that note, I stop at the plate glass window to pay my respects to the dead honey bee or bumble bee, whatever species he or she was. I look around on the sidewalk, but there's no little bee body.
“Could the breeze have blown the body away?” I ask Julie.
“I don't know. What does a bee weigh?”
I take off my Charlie Chaplin hat to let my head breathe. My black suit is soaking up the sun and cooking me.
“I could have sworn ...” Julie frowns at the window and leans back to take in the store. “I think the bee flew straight through the window, into this pawn shop.”
“Through the window?”
“You were doing magic stuff.”
“You're nuts. Let's go inside and ask if they've seen a bee,” I say. “What's the harm?” I tuck the blue box containing Austin's necklace into my suit pocket and hold open the door for Julie.
There's a scent to the air that wafts out of this storefront, and it's nothing like the old dust of the jewelry shop. Sorrow. This place smells like sorrow.
Suddenly I'm as cold as someone who's never seen the sun.
The inside of the pawn shop is dim, every shape alive and moving as my eyes adjust. Dim light is always more frightening than absolute pitch blackness because the mind plays tricks. I won't even look at mirrors in dim light.
There's a sound in here, a symphony of ticking clocks, playing their time-passing song, but I can't pick out the buzzing of a bee. We look, for a few minutes, at the musical instruments on the wall before I realize what feels strange. There's nobody here but us.
“Hello?” I call out. That sick, sweet smell. I still can't place it.
Julie yells, “You have customers!”
“Don't say that,” I hiss at her. “I'm broke as of now. I'm not buying anything.”
She whisper-yells back at me, “Maybe I want to buy something.”
I point to some neon beer signs high on the wall. With my regular-volume, speaking-voice, I say, “You should get one of those for the basement.”
I keep expecting to hear a toilet flush and for someone to rush out and greet us, but we're still alone.
Julie sniffs the air. “I think I smell something.”
“We're in a pawn shop. You probably smell a lot of things.”
She pushes me toward a dingy gray curtain hanging over a doorway that leads, presumably, to a back room. “You go look.”
I step behind the counter through the opening, which is a segment of counter top that flips up on a hinge. It's in the up position, indicating that perhaps whoever was here exited through the front door and that's why the shop is empty. Or, that someone came in and more than one person is now in the back. What two people are doing in the back of a pawn shop is not something I want to walk in on.
Julie waves me on. “Go, look. Be a man.”
I stop in my tracks. “Wait just a double-standard minute. Be a man? So, because I'm the guy, I have to go? What about being treated equal? Do you get to stay back from danger because of your bobos and tatas?”
Julie's quiet, because she knows I'm right. She's always pointing out any time I don't treat her and James equally, so I'm mildly aware of gender bias now, thanks to her.
“Fine, I'll do it,” she says, but she doesn't move one stiletto-clad foot. The knees inside her fishnet stockings appear to be trembling.
“Gotcha,” I say, laughing, and with that, I yank aside the curtain and step boldly into the murky back of the shop. This area is even darker than the front, and I'd be lying if I said my guts didn't mind.
“Hello?” I palm the wall behind me, searching for a light switch, but encountering only sharp things that bite and poke and scratch my fingers.
I let out an unmanly yipe, and Julie asks me if I'm okay.
“I'm prepared for anything,” I reply, extra-loud. “My karate training is totally kicking in. It's all muscle memory.” This is not a complete lie. My feet are pointed slightly toward each other in the dimness, in sparring position. I feel very stable as I inch forward.
The floor is lit with a rectangle of light just ahead of me, illuminated by a tiny window high on the wall. I am drawn to the tiny, shadowy shapes within the light, and I squat down to find the curled-up body of a bee, and another round object. I pick them both up and drop them in my jacket pocket. The bee weighs almost nothing.
“Hello?” I call again.
I hear a scream behind me.
“Julie?”
Julie yells, “Ow, this wall bit me! Where's the damn light switch?” There's a commotion behind me as she attempts to find the switch, and I should probably help with that, but I'm drawn forward.
My eyes have adjusted, and just beyond the perimeter of the bright rectangle on the floor is a man's shoe, connected to a man's bare leg. The cuff of his pants is pushed up to just below his knee.
“Mister, do you need some help?” I ask. There's something familiar about his trousers.
A light comes on, and Julie says, “Ta da!”
We must both see it at once, because we scream together.
The man is lying in a pool of blood, and he's not moving. For a split-second, I'm a child again, crying out for my mother, who won't stop bleeding and won't wake up.
I blink, and I'm back in the pawn shop again. Julie screams a second time, though I'm silent as I look over the man.
I know him. His name is Newt, and he's one of the two witches who tried to murder me earlier this summer.
“I thought you were dead!” I stammer at the corpse.
“Who?” Julie says, now kneeling next to me. She calmly picks up his hand and checks for a pulse. Seeing her hold his hand gives me a shiver of revulsion.
“I thought I killed him already this summer ...” During the explosion, I would have finished, had I not seen the woman standing in the doorway.
“Freeze! Police!” the woman yells.
Julie drops the hand, which makes a thud on the ground.
The woman's arm moves. I pull Julie behind me to block the bullets with my body.
Chapter Two
Five minutes later, Julie points out that the cop didn't even have her weapon drawn, and clearly I was overreacting, as I often do, though I did earn some points by attempting to save Julie's life.
The police officer, a petite, dark-skinned woman with a big presence and an even bigger voice, takes down our statements as the pawn shop fills with people—detectives and police officers and crime scene people in white coverall-type things.
The way the police officer shouts at me makes me want to confess, even though I haven't done anything wrong today except stare at girls' legs.
“WHAT BUSINESS did you have in a pawn shop in the first place?” she demands.
“Just curiosity,” I say.
The woman gives me a squinty-eyed look similar to th
e one my grandmother makes when she suspects I'm lying.
Julie says, “Tell her about the bee.”
“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “The truth is, I could have sworn I saw a bee fly through the glass window, and I was curious to see if it was inside the store. I know it's ridiculous, but today is Halloween. Weird things happen on Halloween.”
The officer scribbles down notes in a strange handwriting style. “This magical bee. Was it a bumble bee, honey bee, or a wasp?” Her demeanor is serious, showing no sign she's pulling my leg.
“Bumble bee,” Julie offers. “One of those fat, bumbly ones. It went buzz-uzz-zz.”
“How fast was the bee going when it went through the window?”
“Fast, for a bee,” I say.
The woman looks directly at my left hand, which is in front of my jacket pocket. My pocket contains the dead bee and the other thing I picked up. I hold my breath, wondering if she's reading my body language and knows I'm hiding something, though I can't imagine how the bee is relevant. The bee didn't shoot bullet holes in the victim's chest. Thinking fast, I move my hand down further and adjust my crotchberries.
There, I wasn't hiding anything but a little jock itch. Look away, officer, look away.
She flips shut her notepad. “If you happen to remember anything else, give me a call.” She hands business cards to me and Julie: Detective Wrong.
“Not a typo,” Detective Wrong says, answering our unspoken question. “Detective Wrong, always in the right place at the wrong time.”
I'm wondering exactly how wrong her timing is. Did she hear me blurt about how I thought I'd killed Newt? People must say strange things when they see their first dead body. For me, it was actually my third dead body, if you count my parents, who died in a murder-suicide when I was small. My father was very angry with my mother, and when he killed her, he performed the magic ritual that gave me my magic power. He wanted to protect me from ever being betrayed by a woman.
I get sad when I think about my parents, so I try not to think about them often, and I stay away from drinking, because booze makes me unable to block the memories. My life's not so bad. I was lucky my grandparents took me in, because Gran loves me. She's going to be some upset when she finds out I witnessed a crime today. She might even cry. Come to think of it, maybe I'd better not tell her.
Witches and Ghosts Supernatural Mysteries Page 126