by Hiatt, Bill
Lightbulb moment. “You mean, that’s why he’s been such a jerk to me until just recently?”
“Exactly. Because he thought you, well, this isn’t a word he would use, but he thought you rejected him. He thought you didn’t care, and being a young boy in our society, instead of just talking to you and trying to understand what had happened, he had to pretend not to care. You were probably preoccupied. You didn’t know what he was thinking, and by the time you had a handle on your own situation, it was too late. He had already slipped into the pattern of being a jerk to you. Many people deal with pain that way. They lash out at the person they blame.”
I don’t want to paint myself as a complete male chauvinist, but like a lot of guys, I didn’t necessarily expect epically hot women to be as sharp-witted as Nurse Florence.
“Then, for some reason, Dan tried again with you this year, you responded, and he began to think of you as like a little brother again. That’s why he wants you to choose between him and Stan. Ironically, that’s also what he is afraid of—that you will side with Stan, effectively rejecting him again.”
This conversation was turning out to be better than a whole month in therapy. The only problem with it was that it was too good. Maybe I didn’t know Dan as well as I thought, but I knew him well enough to know he would never open up that much to the school nurse. And then there was the unlikelihood of a school employee giving me so much information about another student. Surely Nurse Florence had crossed the confidentiality line at least a little. Even in a day loaded with more coincidences than a bad soap opera, I couldn’t swallow that many improbabilities. Clearly, some of the pieces of this puzzle were missing.
“What’s wrong, Tal?” I guess my doubt must have showed on my face.
“I’m sorry, Nurse Florence, but I can’t see how you can know Dan that well. I doubt his girlfriend—” I ignored the momentary twinge— “knows half of what you just told me.”
“I’m very perceptive,” she said with what I’m sure she intended to be a knowing smile, but it only made me feel creepier. I could tell she was being evasive.
“That can’t be all there is to it, Nurse Florence. No offense, but you aren’t telling me everything. I know you aren’t.” In this lifetime, I had never so openly questioned an authority figure. I was more than a little nervous, but I wasn’t about to back down now. Too much had already gone wrong to take chances.
Nurse Florence studied me for a moment, then stopped pretending to work on my lip and sat down next to me.
“You’re right, Tal. The truth is, I walked in Dan’s dreams and figured out what was going on. I had to know him if I was going to choose him.”
“What? Dream walking?”
“Oh, you’ll remember if you think back far enough. It wasn’t that common in the literature, but early Celtic shamans, like those of many other people, had the power to enter the dreams of others. With enough practice, you could do it yourself.” So the school nurse was a shaman? Anyone else on campus would have laughed in her face, but I knew too much to dismiss her story without further thought.
“What did you mean, ‘choose him’?”
“I guess you’re a little ‘punchy’ today, Tal. I thought you would have figured out by now that I’m trying to tell you it was I who sent Dan to be your protector.” My eyes widened in surprise.
Carrie Winn had told me she was the one. Obviously, one of the two women had to be lying, but which one?
“Even before the pwca showed up, I knew something was going to happen, so I started looking around for ways to protect you. I couldn’t be with you all the time—no way to explain that to people. No, I needed someone who could, with a little help from me from time to time, protect you, someone who could be with you quite a bit without arousing suspicion. Stan would have been the logical choice, but he just wasn’t strong enough. Dan at first seemed completely inappropriate, but when I found out you used to be friends, I walked in his dreams, and gradually I put together all the details I just gave you. When I was sure, I approached Dan directly in his dream and made a pact with him: I offered him the ability to play his best game every time he stepped on the football field if he would protect you. I should point out, for whatever it’s worth now, that our bargain only covered moments when you called for him or when I sent him, moments when he knew who you really were. Everything else, the workouts with the team he arranged for you, hanging out at lunch, getting you interested in soccer again, everything, though it certainly served my purpose, was none of my doing. It all came from him. I think it was the subconscious awareness of his interaction with you that led his conscious mind to make one more try at friendship. Now that he again has your friendship, losing it again is more than he thinks he can bear, though he’d never admit that—except in his dreams.”
I just stared at her, not knowing whether what she told me was the gospel truth or a cunning concoction of lies and half-truths.
“I know, I should have told you sooner,” Nurse Florence added, apologetically.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I think you’ll find those of us with an…unusual nature tend to be secretive, almost by instinct. I haven’t exactly seen you announcing who you are to the whole world.”
“Fair enough, but why tell me now?”
“Because the situation is far worse now than it was, and you and I need to work together much more closely. There is…an enemy in this town, someone who wants to exploit your particular gifts. I have always known that was a possibility—that’s why I came here—but until a short time ago, the danger was only hypothetical. Now it’s real.”
The wording was different from Ms. Winn’s, but the substance was the same.
“Who is the enemy?”
“That I haven’t yet figured out. But you know how magic is—it decreases with distance, unless the one wielding the magic works through a link, as I sometimes do with Dan, but even then, the object of the magic has to be close to Dan for the spell to have much effect. You’re a bright…wow, I almost said ‘boy,’ but given your three thousand years or so of experience, that label doesn’t really fit. Anyway, you are bright, so tell me…any theories, based on what I’ve said?”
“The person who threw us into Annwn has to have been at the Founders’ Day Celebration?”
“Yes—again, unless that person was not physically present but had a link to someone who was, maybe even to an object.”
“That doesn’t seem to narrow down the list of suspects much.”
“The same person must have been on campus today.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked nervously. I really wanted to be alone and think, but if I could keep her talking, she might give me some clue who she really was.
Apparently, she was either my strongest ally, or my worst enemy. If Ms. Winn’s earlier claim were true, then Nurse Florence’s couldn’t be, and yet Nurse Florence knew who I was, knew all about me. If she was not my secret ally, then she had to be my enemy, for surely that was the only other person who could know as much about my situation as she did. There was no third possibility.
Unless, of course, Ms. Winn had been lying in the first place, in which case she had to be the enemy.
Damn! Life was never simple.
“I think your enemy was on campus today because the day has progressed so oddly. It can’t have been lost on you that some of your friends are…not themselves. Or does the idea of Eva O’Reilly, the most beautiful girl in school, apparently doing a strip tease for the school nerd in a relatively public venue seem normal to you?”
“Stan’s more buff now,” I said in reflexive defense.
“Hardly buff enough to cause Eva to completely lose her mind. Well, I didn’t have the opportunity to check her, and Stan doesn’t show any sign of magic, but the three football players all show signs of something.”
“I used magic when I was trying to keep them from killing Stan.”
Nurse Florence shook her head. “No, I think it’s more than
that. I couldn’t spend long enough with any of them to be really thorough, but something is amiss. In theory, Dan ought to be immune to that kind of tampering, but he was grimy with someone else’s magic, and the attempts to break the tynged on him may have somehow unbalanced him. In any case, the motive is clear—someone wanted the biggest blowup possible.”
“Someone with the power to open the gates of Annwn wants to attack me with teenage drama?” I said, not succeeding in keeping the skepticism out of my voice.
“Someone with the power to manipulate people wants you to be alone. I can’t think of a better way to do that than to get you in the middle of a Dan-Stan showdown in which you could conceivably alienate all your friends in one stroke.”
“If that’s true, what can we do about it? Magic everyone back to the way they were?”
“NO!” snapped Nurse Florence with surprising intensity. “That kind of magic must only be used in the gravest circumstances, and maybe not even then. Would you have had Merlin or someone else ‘magic’ Lancelot, Guinevere, and Arthur back to the way they were before Arthur found out about the betrayal? No one did, and with good reason: it would not have worked. Oh, someone could have made them forget, but with passions so strong, with betrayal so blatant, the memories would have kept coming back, or, if they did not, nonetheless unaccountable feelings of mistrust would still have driven them apart eventually. Someone would have been reduced to working them like puppets to keep them together, and Camelot would still have fallen, just in a different way.”
“So you think Dan…”
“I think teenagers feel everything intensely. Dan doesn’t have as much reason to feel betrayed as Arthur did, but to Dan the feelings are just as real. No, you have to fix this situation the normal way, or it will never truly be fixed.”
“Well, you’ve given me a lot to think about. I guess I should go home and figure out how to get Dan calmed down.”
“Good idea,” agreed Nurse Florence, standing up. “I have the feeling our enemy is getting ready for a big move. We must be ready.”
I thanked her and stepped out into the hall. I knew the conversation had only lasted a few minutes, but it seemed as if hours had passed, probably because I felt so tired. Well, tired and frustrated. I still had no idea whether to believe Ms. Winn or Nurse Florence. There were certain, ah, teenage guy reasons to believe Nurse Florence, but I knew I couldn’t afford to do my thinking below the waist in this kind of life or death situation. I didn’t doubt there was an enemy out there who wanted to kill me and a friend who would protect me at all costs, but I didn’t know which was which. Basically, that’s why I didn’t mention my conversation with Ms. Winn to Nurse Florence. If Ms. Winn had been the truthful one, I could be betraying her to Nurse Florence. I had to be sure who was who before telling either of them about the other.
I had just stepped out the front door of the school when I noticed Stan standing across the street, obviously waiting for me. I was feeling more and more exhausted and honestly wasn’t ready for a conversation with him, but I couldn’t really avoid him now. No one else was around, and I couldn’t exactly pretend I hadn’t seen him, so I walked over to him. His eyes were post-crying red, and his skin looked unusually pale, almost waxy.
“Tal, Tal, I’m sorry. I’ve messed everything up,” he said despairingly.
My first impulse was to reassure him, to hug him and tell him I’d make everything all right again. No one had been a better friend to me, but I just couldn’t bring myself to tell him what he so desperately wanted to hear. I was confused, exhausted, and gouged by old memories, memories of Dan and I playing soccer together, memories of Jimmie dying—God, how had I let so much get buried in the avalanche of my past lives? Yes, Stan had always been a brother to me, but knowing Dan felt the same way about me, knowing how he had felt abandoned by me before and feared the same kind of loss again, as well as knowing, though not understanding, what Stan had done, paralyzed me. I couldn’t reject Stan, but neither could I whole-heartedly accept him either. Forget about what Stan had done to Dan; what about what I had done to him? I had no intention of choosing between the two of them any more than I could choose between two biological brothers…but wasn’t letting Stan off the hook so quickly like choosing him over Dan, rejecting Dan on purpose just as I had unwittingly rejected him before? I didn’t really know what to do. My head seemed to be filling with sludge, and I had a hard time thinking at all. I just stared numbly at Stan, until finally he hugged me.
“Please, Tal, please, I didn’t mean it!” I was a marble statue in his arms. Eventually he let go and looked into my empty eyes. His own eyes started tearing up again.
Again I wanted to reassure him; again I didn’t. Finally, I managed, “Stan, I’m wiped out right now. We’ll talk tomorrow.” My tone was neutral, but Stan had certainly expected more from me. He looked at me as if I had spit in his face, then turned and walked slowly away. Only a few steps from me, a shudder went through him, and he started sobbing quietly, but he kept right on walking away.
What was wrong with me? Even then I could have run after him, could have pulled him out of the darkness that was engulfing him. I could have, but I didn’t. I just stood there until I could no longer hear or see Stan. Then I walked home, feeling mindless as a zombie in some second rate horror movie.
What I needed was sleep. What I got instead was the horror movie sequel.
At about eight o’clock, I got a frantic phone call from Mrs. Schoenbaum. She must have been truly desperate to call me.
Stan never got home that day. She actually hoped he was with me—quite a twist there. The only alternative in her mind was foul play, but I knew differently.
Stan had run away, or worse.
And it was my fault.
CHAPTER 11: RESCUE
Stan had a dangerous combination of intellectual brilliance and an almost complete absence of street smarts. In other words, he could figure out how to put a lot of distance between himself and Santa Brígida, even with very little money, but not have the foggiest idea what to do with himself once he got away. He’d been missing since…when had I left school? About four o’clock, I thought. Four hours. In that time, he could easily have covered a lot of ground. I needed to call in the cavalry, and pronto.
My first call was to Carrie Winn. Some of you would raise an eyebrow at that, but even if she turned out to be my nemesis, right now she was pretending to be my friend, and she pulled serious juice with city government. Sure enough she took my call, and within minutes she had arranged for the Schoenbaums to file a missing person’s report hours before they could normally have done so. Not only that, but she told me the police chief would make the search for Stan a priority. All that really did, however, was make Stan’s parents feel like something was being done. I was pretty sure Stan was far outside the city by now. But local law enforcement passed Stan’s information along to police departments all over Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, so that there was a much better chance of finding Stan. However, police manpower only stretched so far, especially in a place as big as Santa Barbara. I needed to do more.
I stepped into my backyard and sent a call for help whispering through the wind. In minutes Dan was at the front door.
“What’s up?” Dan asked sullenly. He clearly was not happy with me at this point—and he was about to get a lot less happy.
“Stan’s missing.”
“Stan!” He said the name as if he were spitting it out. I just ignored his attitude.
“He could have been abducted, but I think he ran away. You’re going to help me find him.”
“I told you, Weaver,” he said with a hostile glint in his eye, “you have to choose. Him or me. And if it’s him, I’m out of here. Whatever bargain I struck obligates me to protect you, not your little weasel.”
“Listen to me, Dan,” I said sharply, but without magic, which, given his already enchanted state, probably wouldn’t work right anyway. It was time to put Nurse Florence’s theory to the test
. “I’m not choosing between you. Each one of you is like a brother to me. I never had a brother, but you did, and you know what it’s like to lose one…”
“You bastard!” Well, not the reaction I was going for, but clearly I had hit a nerve. “How dare you compare Jimmie’s, Jimmie’s death to this? Stan brought this on himself. I took that little nerd in, made him part of the team, made him part of my family, and he spat on all of that. He spat on me. He might as well have spat on Jimmie’s grave.” Dan was shaking now. Aside from this afternoon, I had never seen him so emotional.
By this time our sleepy little street looked like Main Street at high noon. The Schoenbaums knew a lot of people, and they were turning out in force, presumably to help search for Stan. My parents rushed past Dan and me, heading down the street toward Stan’s house to see what they could do. There were a lot of people milling around on the sidewalk, and I hoped their presence would get Dan to restrain himself. It didn’t.
“Silence!” I whispered, magic throbbing through the word. I didn’t have much to lose at this point, and, somewhat to my surprise, Dan’s mouth clamped shut, though he struggled against the compulsion, and he started shaking even more. I was afraid some passerby would think he was having a seizure.
“Listen to me! What Stan did was wrong, very wrong, and I’m not trying to defend what he did. But, man, anything could happen to Stan out there. Anything.” I took Dan’s arm because physical contact would help. I didn’t try to control his mind, but I did project a series of images into it, images bred of my own waking nightmares: Stan hitching a ride and getting picked up by some pervert, Stan dirty, ragged, and living on the streets, Stan getting mugged and ending up dead. Then—and I’m not proud of this, but I didn’t know what else to do—I played back the same images, but with Jimmie instead of Stan.