“I don’t know how they got in, okay? Jesus, Emory, I checked the wards last night before I went to bed, like I always do.”
“Okay, okay,” said a short chubby redheaded man, standing with his hands behind his back and looking at Beverly. “I just assumed those things were tamper-proof.”
“So did I!” she yelled at him. “Don’t you think I assumed the same thing?”
“Hey, come on guys,” said Jeremy, hands spread in a calming gesture. “We’re all a little upset. No need to take it out on each other.”
The front door opened, and Charlie heard footsteps walking down the hallway. His jaw dropped as his Chinese teacher, Chen Laoshi, walked into the kitchen.
“Hi, Julia,” said Randall, giving her a hug. “Want something to drink?”
She winked at Charlie and said, “Tongxue hao.”
Without thinking, he said, “Chen Laoshi hao.”
She walked over to him and leaned over the counter. “Yes, it’s true, I’m a member of the secret club. We’re not all white, you know.”
“Oh, I wasn’t thinking …”
But she turned away from him and grabbed a banana from the bowl on the island.
“Will somebody please explain to me exactly what is going on?” she demanded, commanding the same respect that she used in her classroom.
* * *
“I grabbed some of the woman’s hair while we were fighting on the floor, and I used it to create a binding.”
“But how did you do it so fast? That’s what I want to know,” said Rita, looking at Beverly with awe.
Now they all sat in the living room, spread over the sofas, small couches, and chairs.
“Oh, please. I was pumped up on adrenaline. Anyway, thanks to a story Charlie told me of something that happened in California, I got the idea to use the binding to stick her to the ceiling.”
Charlie couldn’t believe that he had in some way helped foil the intruders.
“I think it scared the man—apparently his name is Tony—it scared him enough to try to escape with Charlie in that moment, rather than attack. It gave me the chance to rush over and get some of his hair too.”
“So, you could call it a ‘double bind?’” Randall interjected.
“Ha-ha!” laughed Jeremy, rolling his eyes. “Your forays into witch humor once again underwhelm us!”
“No, the only double bind came when Randall walked in and wanted to know what was going on. He broke my concentration and I couldn’t hold the bind anymore. They came off the ceiling and escaped out the window.”
“Nice going, badass,” said Emory, swatting at Randall’s knee.
“Well, I didn’t know what was going on. I heard loud noises coming from Charlie’s room and went to investigate.”
“You were very brave to walk in there, honey,” said Beverly, giving him a peck on his cheek.
“But clearly they were afraid to attack anymore, Beverly,” said Chen Laoshi. “You must have shown considerable strength and fortitude.”
“They don’t get to touch my nephew,” she responded, eyes narrowing in menace as if the intruders were still standing in front of her.
They talked more about the breach of the ward, which seemed to be some sort of witch security system that was supposed to keep out what didn’t belong. Apparently all of the witches used something like it at home for protection. They debated whether they could rely on them anymore.
“Grace must be behind it,” said Emory. “She’s the only one who knows the spells,” he said.
“I’m afraid I have to agree with you, Em,” said Beverly. “I didn’t know you could find out how someone else’s ward worked and breach the thing.”
“This means our ability to be secure has just plummeted,” said Chen Laoshi in a low voice. The others looked around at each other.
“Think of the implications,” she said. “Grace and her kind storm in to our homes in the middle of the night, wreaking havoc among us, learning our secrets,” she paused, then looked over at Charlie, “and taking our children.”
Several of the adults looked at Charlie too, and for once he didn’t turn his head away or blush red like Christmas tree lights. Instead, he returned their gaze, realizing that there were much scarier things on the planet than being looked at by grown-ups. Strangers breaking into your home at night and trying to kidnap you was now at the top of the list.
Finally he directed his attention back to his Chinese teacher. “Chen Laoshi, what does ‘hen weixian’ mean?”
“It means ‘dangerous,’ Charlie. ‘Very dangerous.’ Why do you ask?”
“Oh, nothing. I just heard someone say it in a dream.”
CHAPTER 36
Community in Jeopardy
IT WAS LIKE A GUN HAD gone off, for all the adults started speaking at once.
“Uh-oh!”
“What dream? When?”
“Who said it?”
“Do you have other dreams in Chinese?”
His reserve didn’t last, with all the adults gathering around him and talking at once. Charlie froze, not knowing what to do or say. Randall pushed himself into the middle of them and said, “Hey! Hey! You’re overwhelming the kid. Just slow down.”
“Butt out, Randall,” said one of the women Charlie didn’t know. “This isn’t any of your business.” She was short and plump and had shorn gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses. She looked like the kind of person you saw staffing the information desk at the library.
“Look here, Joan,” his uncle said, pointing his finger at the woman and glaring down at her, “this is my house, and it’s my nephew, and it’s all my business, so if you can’t pipe down when I say to, then you can go … go … suck a duck!” he finished, eyes wide and nostrils flared.
The woman’s mouth flew shut. She glared back at Randall but didn’t say anything.
The rest of the group stared at his uncle, and a few even smiled with respect.
A snort and a giggle came from somewhere amongst the group. Charlie looked over and saw Jeremy with a hand pressed to his mouth trying to stifle his laughter.
When he saw Randall staring at him too, he stopped laughing and looked chagrined. “Rand, Rand, I’m sorry. I’m trying not to … it’s just … ‘suck a duck’?” And he turned and doubled over.
Beverly responded for her husband. “He was trying not to drop the F-bomb in front of our teenager,” she said.
But the tension seemed to have lessened.
“How did you all get here, anyway?” asked Randall, looking around. “It’s not like Beverly called you all. There hasn’t been that much time.”
“The cats,” said Rita. “The neighborhood network knew something was going on, and it looks like we all got alerted.”
“I’ll explain later,” Beverly said to Charlie, who had looked at her with eyebrows raised. “There are more important things to talk about right now.”
“I think we should call for a general meeting,” said Emory. “If Julia is right, there could be serious ‘wayshun’ or whatever she called it.”
The others nodded.
“I think we also need to get Malcolm back home, and quick,” said Beverly, looking over at Charlie.
“What for?” Joan asked.
“Because. Right now we have anywhere between ten and twelve unpopped kids in our community. They could be leaking just like Charlie is. Sorry, honey. The reason we all got a little excited back there was that it sounded like you had the kind of dream you can have when you’re in prime need of popping. Things leak out. Like it did in the kitchen in California. When a lot of leaking like that happens, it’s best to be popped. The longer you wait, the harder it might be to do.
“Anyway, these kids are at their prime and yet unprotected. They’re probably giving off some sort of signal to Grace and her people. If we pop them …”
“Then we’re just asking for trouble,” Joan interrupted. “It’s like giving kids a loaded gun. They won’t know how to use it.”
�
�Joan, you and I have been over this. Thousands of times! They already are loaded guns. With the safety lock on. Who’s to say that something can’t come along and knock off the safety? We’ve got to pop these kids and teach them how to defend themselves.”
“It’s too dangerous rushing into it like this. You know how wild it can be to have a few popped kids all at once. But twelve? Do we have the capacity to handle it?” Joan asked, rubbing her hands together in worry.
“I don’t know,” said his aunt. “I honestly don’t. But Grace is forcing our hand. If we don’t act now, the whole community could be in jeopardy.”
CHAPTER 37
The Soccer Field
CHARLIE HAD A HARD TIME staying awake in school the next day. Chen Laoshi’s class was the easiest, since it was the first period of the day, and also because several students kept patting him on the back and calling him a foosball star.
“Chen Laoshi, Chen Laoshi, you should have seen him! Hen hao, hen hao!” they said. She simply smiled before turning everyone’s attention back to their newest chapter dealing with Chinese measure words. Charlie had wondered if Chen Laoshi would seem different this morning, but she was her usual self, insisting that the students pronounce the strange words and use correct tones.
By the time he went to biology, he was exhausted.
His lab partner, a thin quiet boy named Jarrod, had to nudge him a few times in the side to wake him up.
“Sorry,” Charlie whispered to the other boy. “Slept badly last night.”
“I hear you, dude, I hear you,” Jarrod said, sounding more like a worldly old man than a fifteen-year-old science geek.
Each time the bell rang and he walked from the classroom out into the hallway, he half-hoped and half-worried that he would see Diego waiting for him. But the boy never showed up. Charlie was torn. He felt very awkward about what happened the night before in the car and wasn’t looking forward to facing Diego again. But he was afraid that their short friendship had come to an end due to a misunderstanding. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how unhappy he would be if they weren’t friends anymore.
Beverly had asked him to text her a few times during the day at school just to make sure he was all right. She said that Chen Laoshi would be watching out for things and that there were a few others at the school who were community members and could keep an eye out for anyone unwelcome entering the school’s premises. When he asked her who the others were, she just smiled and said he would learn over time.
“But text me anyway, okay? It’ll make your old aunt relax a bit.”
He thought about how she had single-handedly taken care of the two intruders the night before. “Old aunt” certainly wasn’t the description that came to mind. Tony’s “ninja witch” seemed more accurate.
Over the next two days, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Beverly told him that Malcolm was cutting his trip short and would be back soon. She and some of the others had gone from home to home making new wards to protect the members of their community. Other than that, there was nothing else they could do.
“I know they say that the best defense is a good offense,” she said over dinner one night, “but we wouldn’t even know where to begin to strike.”
“Well, from what you all say about her, Grace will probably be giving plenty of opportunities for more points of contact soon,” added Randall. They finished the rest of their meal in silence.
On Thursday after school, two days after the Tanners’ party and the attempted kidnapping, Charlie heard a familiar voice as he gathered his things from his locker and got ready to walk home.
“Hi, Charlie.”
He turned to see Diego standing next to his locker. Fear mixed with excitement, worry blended with anticipation, all of it flashed through his chest before he could even register any of it. But the simple pleasure of seeing the other boy won out, and he felt his mouth curve into a smile.
“Diego. Hi.”
“How ya doing?”
“Good, good. Um, hey, it’s good to see you,” Charlie said. “Really good.”
“Yeah? Well, likewise, my friend. Likewise. Look, sorry about the other night. I shouldn’t have …”
“You shouldn’t have apologized, and you don’t need to now,” Charlie said.
“No, wait, that’s not what I mean. I shouldn’t have … um, can we go outside, maybe talk somewhere else?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure.”
They left through the main door and down the side walkway, which led to the rear of the school and the large sports field. The girls’ soccer team was warming up at the far end.
They sat down on the side of a hill above the field. Charlie could see the Olympic Mountains in the distance. He had begun to look at it every day. Unlike Mt. Rainier, which was often invisible due to cloud cover, the peaks of the Olympics were clear nearly every day. He liked the regularity of the view.
A massive maple tree towered over the street corner. Charlie noticed that several of its leaves had begun to shed their summer green, their edges showing yellow and red. It was hard to imagine fall colors among all the green in the area. He wondered if things would look very different.
“What I wanted to say,” Diego continued, “was that I’m sorry for not being around the last few days.”
“There’s no need to …”
“Just hear me out, okay? I got scared, Charlie. And I felt stupid. I should have told you directly that I was gay. I chickened out and instead said what I did about being president of the GSA. That was pretty bogus of me. Anybody can be president. It doesn’t mean you’re straight, gay, or whatever. I was kind of speaking in code, because I was worried.
“The fact that you didn’t know isn’t your fault. I should have been upfront about it.”
A crow squawked in the tree above them, and both boys looked up.
“Then I felt really stupid about what happened Tuesday night and too embarrassed to see you after that. But I’ve talked to Tawny about it these last few days, and she said I should just tell you instead of avoiding you.”
“Oh. I’m glad you did, Diego. I felt stupid about the other night too. And then I thought I’d been, you know, a total jerk, and pissed you off or something, and you didn’t want to be friends anymore.”
Diego laughed. “And here I thought you didn’t want to be friends with me.”
“I guess we both got kind of worried, huh?”
A soccer ball came flying through the air toward the hill where they sat.
“Block those balls, Melissa!” Diego yelled as he jumped up, grabbed the ball, and threw it back.
“Thanks, guapo,” said a girl in the goal box.
“She’s a senior this year. She’ll probably get a scholarship anywhere she wants for soccer,” he told Charlie as he sat down again. “She’s the best girls’ goalie this school has ever seen and has turned everybody at P.A. into fans. The games are packed!”
They didn’t say anything for a long time. They watched the girls practice and listened to the coach yelling at them.
Charlie had a feeling Diego was used to talking more than being silent.
“You want to go for a hike sometime?” he asked Diego.
“Yeah. Where?”
“Well, it’s not very big, but I’ve been taking Amos, my aunt and uncle’s dog, down to Carson Park.”
“Cool. I haven’t been there in a long time. Have you been to Lincoln Park yet?”
“No, where’s that?”
“It’s down by the Fauntleroy ferry dock. Carson Park has more windy trails and stuff. Lincoln Park is much bigger. It runs along the Sound. Anyway, yeah, cool, I’d love to go to Carson Park. When?”
They decided on a hike after school the next day as long as Diego wasn’t busy. Apparently his uncle came over from Yakima on a weekly basis, and Diego would help him out at a few of the farmers markets in the area. His uncle hadn’t told him yet whether or not he would need the help.
“That reminds me, about Linc
oln Park, going on hikes and stuff. There’s something else I want to tell you, since I’m just outing myself anyway,” said Diego, then smiled and looked shy at the same time. “I’m a witch, Charlie, and I thought you should know.”
CHAPTER 38
Bully, Bully, Bully
CHARLIE FELT HIS JAW DROP. How hadn’t he known? Why hadn’t Beverly told him? Was this one of those surprises he had to figure out on his own at school? It didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t she have told him? Maybe it was the same way nobody had said anything about Chen Laoshi.
Diego laughed hard. “You look shocked, Charlie. Don’t be so surprised. It’s not like it’s a creepy, black-hat-and-broomstick kind of thing. Have you ever heard of Wicca? It’s an earth-based religion. I became a witch a few years ago.”
Charlie was having trouble keeping up with the conversation. “Is your mom a witch too?” he whispered, looking over his shoulder.
“You don’t have to whisper, Charlie. People at school know. We even have Wicca meetings once a month.
“Anyway, no, my mom isn’t. She’s Catholic. Like everyone else in our family. I was raised that way. But I didn’t want to go to Mass anymore. Tawny got into Wicca in middle school just to piss off her parents, and then she really started to enjoy it. She explained it to me one day, and it just made sense. We started doing outdoor rituals, and I really liked it.”
“What kind of rituals?” Charlie asked, beginning to wonder if Diego’s concept of “witch” was different from his own.
“You know, nature stuff. The four elements, asking the gods for help with stuff like our parents, or school. We also ask for help to be the best people we can be.
“It’s not black magic, Charlie, so you don’t have to worry about that. There’s this law in Wicca called the Threefold Way, or the Law of Three. It says that whatever you put out into the world comes back at you threefold, so if you wish something bad on someone, it comes back to you three times as bad. So we just concentrate on good stuff. Stuff for our friends, our family, the world, you know.
The Boy Who Couldn't Fly Straight: A Gay Teen Coming of Age Paranormal Adventure about Witches, Murder, and Gay Teen Love (Book 1, The Broom Closet Stories) Page 21