by Hiatt, Bill
“What about Coach?” I asked worriedly. Some members of the coaching staff had never quite forgiven me for not playing high school soccer.
“Leave Coach to me,” replied Dan with a little grin I had never seen before. Now that I thought about it, these days whatever Dan wanted from the football coach, he could get. Dan had always been a good player, but this year he was on fire, skyrocketing from someone who might get into a local college on the merits of his football career, maybe with a little scholarship support, to someone who colleges from other parts of the country were now at least hinting could get a full ride. Besides that, the team had won all its early games, including one against last year’s league champion. As far as Coach was concerned, Dan walked on water, so I didn’t doubt he could get me cleared to weight train with the team. With that in mind, I decided to press my luck a little.
“Do you think you can get an invite for Stan as well?” Dan looked at me as if I had suggested a new rule that would prohibit cheerleaders from dating football players.
“Dude, I know he’s your friend, but he’s no athlete. Mathlete, maybe…”
“He’s trying to get in shape, though, and it would mean a lot to him.”
I watched Dan teeter on the edge of refusal but, as if inspired by some hitherto unsuspected muse, I had the greatest lightbulb moment in months.
“You said team managers can join the workout.”
“Yeah, but Schoenbaum isn’t a manager, and there are no openings right now.”
“Well, how about creating another position, like team tutor? Dan, I hear some of the guys are having trouble academically. Let Stan in, and he’ll tutor for free in math and science, and I’ll do English, history, and foreign language.” And there went hours a week down the drain, but I knew how much an opportunity like this would mean to Stan, especially in his current mood.
Dan, surprised by the suggestion, nonetheless knew I was right. Some of the guys were in trouble, real trouble. The school’s free tutoring program had fallen victim to budget cuts, and some football players’ families were getting squeezed pretty hard by the recession. Also, the close proximity of Montecito tended to drive up tutoring rates in the area. Then there was the fact that Stan was already operating at college level, having aced every high school math and science course, most before he was even in high school. He probably had a deeper knowledge of the subject matter than many of the college-aged tutors available, making him a better bet even for those students who could afford someone else.
“Well, don’t get your hopes up…but I’ll see what I can do” he added grudgingly. I did get my hopes up, though—and I was right. The coach jumped on board right away. Some of the players raised objections, the right to work out with the team being a fairly closely-guarded privilege, but in the end Dan, who was team captain as well as quarterback, had his way.
When I told Stan, he was like a kid at Christmas, or, well, actually Hanukkah, if you want to get technical. Unfortunately, his mother was a little more like the Grinch.
“Stanford, I don’t want you doing weight training. Football players work out much harder than someone like you would be able to, and you might hurt yourself.” Geez, Lady, why not just wrap the kid in plastic and keep him on a shelf somewhere?
“Mrs. Schoenbaum,” I began, “there are three professional trainers present at all times, not to mention Coach Miller and his assistants, who are there at least part of the time. They won’t let Stan do anything he can’t handle.”
If looks could kill, Mrs. Schoenbaum’s glare at me would have gotten her convicted of homicide. “Tal, I know you mean well,” she said, with an emphasis on mean that suggested I was much too incompetent to actually do well, “but you don’t understand Stanford’s situation. He isn’t the same physical…type…that you are. And he doesn’t have the luxury of scattering his energies in all directions.” Meaning, I guess, that I could, being the slacker that I was and doubtless destined to work at McDonald’s after graduation. I had always suspected that Mrs. Schoenbaum didn’t like me. Now I was sure of it.
“He needs to stay focused if he wants to get into Stanford,” she finished. Sometimes she seemed more like Stan’s manager or agent than his mother. I knew she loved him on some level, but I thought she loved the destiny she had mapped out for him even more. There was an intensity to her, a determination that almost scared me. Like my mom, Mrs. Schoenbaum probably had been beautiful once, but unlike my mom, it wasn’t worry that wore away at that beauty. Instead, it was the burning, pulsing mass of her vicarious ambition for Stan, constantly threatening to go super nova somewhere within her.
“Studies show that people who stay physically fit can achieve higher cognitive levels than those who don’t,” offered Stan, more timidly than if he were making the same argument to me.
“This issue is not up for discussion,” replied Mrs. Schoenbaum coldly, her tone carrying the finality of a prison door clanging shut. “You will not be working out with the football team.” By this point I was readying a quick Welsh chant to wrench agreement from her no matter how much resistance she put up, and I knew she would put up a lot. Fortunately for her, at that point Mr. Schoenbaum walked in.
“What’s this about Stan working out with the football team?” he asked cheerfully, his presence an enormous contrast to that of his wife. I knew Stan might not speak up, so I did.
“Stan’s been invited to do weight training with the team. It’s actually a big honor.”
Mrs. Schoenbaum snorted at that. “It’s actually a big danger and a big distraction.” Oh, no—the two Ds!
“Dear, perhaps we should discuss this in the other room. Stanford, why don’t you and Tal go upstairs for a few minutes?” Clearly, Stan was so eager to get away from his mother that he would have teleported up to his room by sheer force of will if that had been possible. I was equally eager, though in my case the ability to work a little background persuasion was my primary concern. I could tell we had Stan’s father already. In his own way, Stan’s father pushed just as hard on Stan as Stan’s mother did, but at the end of the day, he was still a dad, and a lot of dads want their sons to be athletes, if only subconsciously. I’d be willing to bet that somewhere, at the far, far back of his mind, Mr. Schoenbaum had a vision of Stan somehow absorbing physical prowess from the team by osmosis, and becoming, if not a real football player, then at least someone who could play touch football in the park at a family picnic and not fall flat on his face.
Stan’s mother, however, would not be easily won over, even by Stan’s father. So I sat at the top of the stairs, singing a little “mood music,” making Mrs. Schoenbaum calmer and more receptive, chipping away at her opposition rather than smashing it. Mr. Schoenbaum did the rest.
In the end Stan got a qualified parental blessing. (“Only if you maintain your grades and fulfill all your other responsibilities.”) Stan’s mother was still visibly sullen, but his father was beaming, obviously delighted by whatever strange turn of events gave Stan a chance to work on self-esteem outside the arena of math and science. I could see pride in the way he looked at Stan, and at that moment, I wished that my dad would look at me that way.
The first workout was a little strained, with some of the team members ignoring us, and in particular giving Stan the big chill, but they thawed out pretty quickly. One factor working in our favor was that the tutoring really did work. Stan was better than anyone would have thought at explaining complicated concepts in a simpler way (better actually than some of our teachers). Once some of the football players started coming back with Bs on quizzes in subjects where they had been getting Ds, Stan suddenly became one of the guys. The team members I tutored also did better, though the change was not as dramatic, since they had been having more trouble in math and science than in their other subjects. What helped them accept me was my music, oddly enough. Dan suggested I could help get the team pumped before games. How Dan knew that would work, I couldn’t imagine, since the Voice had told me specifically that ordi
narily, he wouldn’t remember anything about my secrets. In any case, it did work. I did the school fight song and a couple other appropriate numbers, with a little something extra behind them—not enough to be like cheating, but just enough to get each player to do his best, just as Dan seemed to be doing already. Even the coach noticed the difference in the way the team performed; though he didn’t ever say anything directly, he looked at me differently.
For Stan the experience was practically life-changing. A lot of the players offered him tips during his workout, complimented him on his efforts, and made small talk of a kind normally reserved for team members. It was the most sustained positive attention Stan had ever gotten from jocks in his life, not counting me, and it was clear that the whole experience was doing wonders for his self-esteem, just as I knew it would. But the workouts were just the beginning. High school society is like a complicated ecosystem, and our interaction with the team changed our relationship to the rest of that system. Sometimes the players hung out with us outside of workouts. Sometimes we had lunch with them before practice. Rapidly our social status soared far above its earlier position. I was used to being something of a loner, except for Stan, and so I didn’t really care…oh, who am I kidding? I loved it, I loved it just as much as Stan did, if only because being part of the football clique gave me times during the week when I could forget about whatever diabolical forces were hiding just out of sight, waiting to pounce on me.
Stan liked our changed circumstances for a completely different reason. He put so much effort into running with me and weight training with the football team that it wasn’t long before he started looking more muscular. Not that he was ripped, or anything—that would take months and months, if it happened at all. Not all guys can build muscle that way. But he was clearly getting some definition; his arms and legs looked less like match sticks, and his chest had begun to make his shirts look a little too tight. As if on cue, puberty started giving him some breaks. In just a few weeks, his voice got decidedly less squeaky, and he began a growth spurt that made him seem, if not like a junior, then at least like a sophomore.
Imagine my surprise to overhear two cheerleaders talking about “the little cutie,” and then realize that they were talking about Stan!
“That’s my boy,” I said to myself, and walked off whistling, not for some magic purpose, but just because I felt like it, something I hadn’t done since I was twelve.
As for me, I knew I was much more combat-ready now. I also knew that my rise to social prominence made me a more desirable catch, and that I even had a potential choice of girlfriends. Sure, their attraction might be somewhat superficial. I was, after all, the same person I had been when those girls hadn’t really known I was alive—a little more muscle and a different rung on the social ladder hadn’t changed that—but, when all is said and done, sixteen-year-old guys, with or without memories of a thousand prior lifetimes, aren’t necessarily looking for spiritual fulfillment in a relationship. They are, almost invariably, looking for…oh, let’s just be honest, sex. Now I would like to think that wasn’t all I was looking for—I’m not a complete dog. Nonetheless, I’d be lying if I’d said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. The societies in which my earlier selves had lived had somehow generally avoided trapping people in the weird paradoxes of our society, in which girls are discouraged from having sex and guys are encouraged to have it, by their friends (and sometimes, more covertly, by their fathers) if not by society as a whole. I had always been very careful not to lay that kind of trip on Stan, who had been until just recently too tightly wound anyway. In fact, with his social status changing, I’d actually given him a “wait for the right girl” not-exactly-abstinence-but-pretty-much-the-same-in–the-short-run talk. Stan giggled a little bit over my mixed efforts to give him brotherly advice. I didn’t think he realized how close he was to getting picked up on the female radar, and perhaps it was just as well. I never told him about the cheerleaders. I didn’t want to get his hopes up, or, even worse, make him feel as if he had to do something right away.
Like a rock hitting the surface of a pond and sending out ripples, the changes Stan and I were going through affected others as well. My mom gradually stopped looking at me as if she expected me to break into a million pieces. My dad’s transformation was even more gradual, but I couldn’t remember seeing him happier than the day I told him I was thinking about trying out for soccer. (Truth be told, Dan twisted my arm a little bit on that one, but I was glad he did.) Hell, even Mrs. Schoenbaum loosened up a bit, partly because Stan seemed to be able to take the time to work out and still be the academic star she needed him to be, and partly because the high-priced private college counselor she had hired thought the experience would be good for Stan. (It’s truly amazing how the most mundane advice can sound like the wisdom of Solomon when you are paying big bucks for it.) Anyway, I got the big invite to Rosh Hashanah dinner at Stan’s. For the first time I could remember, Mrs. Schoenbaum didn’t treat me like some juvenile delinquent out to corrupt her son. I made what could have been a serious mistake, though. I joined in a conversation with Stan’s cousins and slipped into Hebrew again without meaning to. But you know what? Nobody noticed.
It was as if I were a member of the family.
September would, in fact, have been the teenage version of bliss, except that I needed to think about more than just all the usual teenage things. That part of my life lay across the surface of a much more complicated reality, masking it but not erasing it. As well as my life seemed to be going, there was still the need for combat readiness in the background. I was taking care of the physical part, but there was also a mystical part. I needed to master all of my abilities, and I hadn’t tried either shifting or entering Annwn, the Otherworld. Depending on who my enemies turned out to be, they might be capable of either—or both. I needed to be able to do whatever a potential adversary could, and as long as I could access some of my abilities only as memories from previous lives, I would not be able to count on them in a battle situation. Then there was the question of getting my magic to interact with modern technology more effectively.
So much to do, so little time to do it—in more ways than one!
CHAPTER 6: PRACTICE IMPERFECT
I confess, I was a little nervous about trying to change into an animal. I must have watched too many werewolf movies as a kid, particularly the ones in which the wolf seems to have to rip itself out of its human form. Even though I could remember the experience from my past lives, and so I knew shifting was really nothing like that, the whole idea still gave me the creeps. As a result, I decided to start with a more familiar subject: Stan. (If the pwca could do it, I was sure I could as well.) That whole idea gave Stan the creeps, but he played along, letting me study him for some time.
“Okay,” I said at last, “I’m ready.”
“Let’s get this over with, then,” replied Stan.
I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, and began to sing, letting the sound surround me and the magic flow through me. (The singing was not strictly speaking necessary, but I had learned that song made any of my magic workings stronger, and I needed to feel confident in my first shift of this lifetime.)
It took me a few minutes to achieve the right state of mind, but once I did that, I simultaneously felt a momentary, almost electrical jolt throughout my body and heard Stan gasp. I glanced over at the mirror and saw two Stans side by side, though one was wearing baggy clothes that were clearly too big for him.
“Wow!” I said and realized that the voice still sounded like mine.
And that was the biggest problem with shifting into another human form, at least if the purpose were to impersonate that person, as Uther had when he took on the shape of Gorlois to lay with Gorlois’s wife, Ygraine. (Not that I had any such thing in mind, at least outside the realm of fantasy!) Changing was easy enough with a little practice. Changing in such a way that I could fool other people who knew my subject well required a high level of exactitude, which in
turn required an almost excruciatingly intense focus. Other forms of magic I tried, from shifting someone’s mood a bit to shifting the weather, seemed like child’s play by comparison. The first time I had Stan’s body right, but not the voice. The second attempt I didn’t get Stan’s curly black hair; I kept my straight dark brown hair instead. The third time the eye color was wrong, a darker brown than it should have been. It took days of practicing concentration before I could do a shift that Stan pronounced satisfactory. To put the transformation to a real test, I changed into some of Stan’s clothes, went downstairs, and fooled his mom. So far, so good.
Next came variations. Could I be basically Stan, but deliberately get one or more characteristics to vary, as the pwca had been able to do? I tried taller Stan, buffer Stan, and several other alternate forms, and each one worked. Once I had the basic pattern of a person down, making custom alterations came naturally.
While I was at it, I realized that I could cheat on workouts really easily by just shifting my own body into a more muscular condition. That didn’t seem right to me, but in any case I couldn’t maintain a shift indefinitely, so I still needed to keep my real body in shape. However, adding muscle mass temporarily might be a good gimmick in battle, at least if I were fighting someone much stronger than my natural form. In just a few days, I felt that my combat readiness had improved substantially.
But these successes brought me right back to the need to practice non-human forms. In some ways shifting into an animal form would be easier, unless I had to imitate a specific animal for some reason, like someone’s pet dog, for instance. Then I would need the same precision I would for a human impersonation. Just being a dog, though, as long as I got all the parts in the right places, shouldn’t be hard. Actually, the shift itself was less trouble than basic logistics, like what to do with my clothes before and after a shift. The first time I tried a dog, Stan and I were on a quiet stretch of beach. When we were sure no one was around, I shifted into a rather handsome German shepherd, if I do say so myself. I frolicked in the waves for a while, as some dogs like to do, and fetched a stick for Stan a few times. Stan praised my movements as being very dog-like, at which point it seemed like a good idea to become myself again, but then the reality of the situation hit me: how could I shift back to my normal self without being stark naked on the beach? Even though nobody was around, someone could always appear unexpectedly. I had to shift my German shepherd vocal cords back to a close enough approximation of my own to be able to explain the problem to Stan. He laughed himself silly, but then he laid a beach towel over me so I could change back without inadvertently flashing someone. From then on, most of the animal shifts got practiced in my bedroom or his, not in the open.