Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver)

by Hiatt, Bill

  Salvation finally came from an unlikely source: poor Mrs. Schoenbaum, who had to wait through all this public relations buzz to hug her son. She might have had to wait longer, but she has always been a determined woman, and tonight she would not be denied, even by Carrie Winn. Her appearance, of course, was another perfect photo opp, in fact two: Mrs. S. hugging her son for dear life, and Mrs. S. giving his brave rescuer, yours truly, a peck on the cheek. In both cases Ms. Winn managed to deftly work her way into the shots. After the peck on the cheek, Mrs. S leaned close to me and whispered, “Thank you!” with such force it was genuinely moving.

  At that point, Stan’s parents tried to whisk him away, but it is hard to whisk right through a solid wall of reporters, even for Mrs. S., and for a moment they got mired in the mob. Then Nurse Florence, who had finally gotten off the bus, said, politely but forcefully, “In deference to the ordeal this family has gone through tonight, let’s give them some privacy, shall we?” Ms. Winn, who had been just about to part the crowd for the Schoenbaums, looked more than a little annoyed that someone else had stepped in. However, making a virtue out of necessity, she parted the crowd for me, and, just as I expected, when the reporters got out of the way, my parents emerged, a study in contrasts, simultaneously smiling and tearful. After a family hug, we started a retreat toward our house. Then I noticed Dan, face like a thundercloud, standing near the edge of the crowd.

  “Mom, Dad, I need to say thank you to Dan. It’ll just take a minute.”

  “Okay, Tal, but not too long, okay? It’s almost two a.m. now, and you have a big day tomorrow.” I looked at her confusedly.

  “Why is tomorrow so big?”

  My mom chuckled at that. “Don’t you remember? You were invited to the pre-homecoming game party at Ms. Winn’s house, and tomorrow is the day before homecoming—I’m sure that’s when the party was scheduled. I think I was told it was for the coaching staff, players, managers, and you and Stan, the team tutors. I don’t know if Stan is going to be up to it after all this, but I think you should go if you can, especially since Ms. Winn seems so impressed by you. It can’t hurt to have a friend like her.”

  Great, another opportunity to become a prop in the Carrie Winn self-glorification pageant.

  “Okay, Mom, I’ll hurry.”

  Keeping to the shadows so as not to attract the attention of any more reporters, I finally managed to end up next to Dan.

  “Well, Dan, do you want me to get you released from your bargain tomorrow?” Dan looked at me, his face almost devoid of any emotion.

  “I’m going to give it a day or two before I decide,” he said finally. Well, that was better than nothing. I had been sure he was ready to get as far from me as possible. Encouraged, I decided to press my luck.

  “It would mean a lot to Stan if you forgave him.” Dan’s eyes flashed angrily at that.

  “Are you getting ski reports from hell, Weaver? Because that’s about when I’m going to forgive Stan.” I probably should have stopped at that point, but you know the old saying, “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

  “Dan, he could have been killed tonight. He spent hours thinking he was going to die. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “No,” he replied curtly, “it isn’t. And you, no more fighting dirty, no more using Jimmie to manipulate me.”

  “I apologize for that, and I’ll never do it again. As for Stan, what is going to satisfy you? What can he do to make this right?”

  “Well,” began Dan slowly, “there is an old football team tradition. It goes back to 1996, the year the school was founded. When someone wrongs a member of the team, the offender has to fight that member.”

  “What, so you can beat Stan up again? Dan, you already bruised him up pretty badly, and you did your best to humiliate him.”

  “No, not that kind of fight. Boxing. Olympic rules. Well, ‘kiddie rules,’ really. You know, junior boxing. Coach will referee. Tomorrow is the perfect day, because there’s no practice. We can easily squeeze in a match between the end of school and Ms. Winn’s party.”

  “Stan isn’t going to box with you. He’s been through enough.”

  “No boxing, no forgiveness,” said Dan adamantly.

  Tired as I was, I had another idea.

  “Okay, you’ll have your boxing match—with me.”

  “You know I can’t box with you. I can’t get my fist close enough after the bargain I made.”

  “I know, but if I’m standing in for Stan, someone else can stand in for you. How about Shahriyar? Obviously, he can throw a punch,” I said, pointing to my split lip. Shahriyar had only been at our high school since the beginning of the year. Prior to that he had lived in Beverly Hills, and before that somewhere back east. At some point, he had gotten considerable boxing training, as well as kick-boxing, Tae Kwan Do, and mixed martial arts. If Dan really wanted me to get beaten, he could not have chosen better than Shar, so I figured mentioning him made the offer more tempting. I was right.

  “Okay,” said Dan finally. “I accept the substitutions you propose. Meet me tomorrow in the gym. I’ll let Coach and Shar know.” Then he turned and disappeared into the night, without so much as a “goodbye.” I sighed and walked back to my house. Most of the crowd, including reporters, had left. The news crews were packing up. With no more press, Carrie Winn had vanished as fast as ice in August.

  I was exhausted, once again worn down to the point where it was a miracle I got up the steps on the front porch. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I lapsed into dreamless sleep, almost sleeping through my alarm the next morning.

  CHAPTER 12: NEAR HOMECOMING

  Over breakfast, I got treated to several journalistic interpretations of last night’s “glorious” events: one from the Santa Brígida Herald (which I think Carrie Winn owned), one from the Los Angeles Times, Santa Barbara edition, one from an online school newspaper, and one from a local news anchor. Normally, my mom was strict about not watching the TV during meals, but now even she could hardly tear her eyes away from it, at least until my story finished.

  “Tal, you must be so proud!”

  Yeah, I would be, if I hadn’t started the whole mess in the first place.

  “What I am is tired of everyone making such a fuss about it,” I said, more irritably than I intended. Mom looked hurt by my tone, but didn’t say anything. Dad, however, was a different story.

  “Don’t take that tone with your mother,” he said, somewhat absently, still staring at the Times article.

  “Sorry, I just think what I did is getting blown way out of proportion.”

  “Oh, by the way, one of Ms. Winn’s people called while you were in the shower. The limo will be here to pick you and Stan up at five,” said Mom with unintended irony.

  “Limo!” I pushed my chair back angrily. “I am not taking a limo! Stan and I could practically walk there, anyway.” My parents both looked at me as if I had just walked out of a spacecraft.

  “Dear, her place is north of East Valley Road, practically out of town.”

  “Whatever!” I snapped. Then I thought about the way I was acting.

  “Sorry, Mom. I’m just tired today.”

  “Maybe you can take a nap this afternoon. I’d hate to see you act like this with Ms. Winn,” said my dad, looking at me this time and raising an eyebrow.

  Yeah, maybe I can squeeze a nap in between getting my brains beaten out by Shar and the party—we’ll see.

  “I have a meeting after school, Dad, but maybe I can lie down for a few minutes.”

  Not content with that, Dad hammered me for a while about how important an opportunity this was, how Carrie Winn could really open doors for me later in life, so I should make the most of the opportunity, blah, blah, blah. Actually, he had a point, but after last night’s media circus, it was hard for me to look at Carrie Winn in quite the same way. In fact, it was getting harder and harder not to think of her as my enemy, though I didn’t have the proof I needed to be sure yet. Anyway, eventually I got away fr
om my parents and almost jogged to school. I didn’t stop for Stan; he had texted me that his mom was keeping him home from school, though he would be going to the Winn party. His staying home was a relief. At least I wouldn’t have to lie to him about what I was doing after school. I didn’t want him to know what was happening until it was all over; he had enough to deal with as it was.

  The first few classes went smoothly, but then I got a summons to report immediately to Ms. Simmons’ office.

  Have you ever noticed how seldom people are called to the principal’s office to hear good news?

  As soon as I got to the office, Ms. Simmons briskly ushered me in and closed the door, another bad sign. She offered me a chair, sat down behind her desk, and locked eyes with me.

  “Tal, is it true that you and Shahriyar are having some kind of unsanctioned boxing after school?”

  “It’s not unsanctioned, Ms. Simmons. Coach Miller is refereeing. I was thinking of joining the local boxing club, and Shar said he’d show me what boxing was like.”

  Ms. Simmons leaned back in her chair and stared into my eyes even more intensely.

  “You lie so smoothly, if I didn’t know the truth I would believe you.” I looked at her as if she had just slapped me across the face.

  “Don’t look like I’ve wronged you. We both know that this bout is some kind of footballer ritual.”

  “It’s not against the rules,” I said, without thinking.

  “If that’s the case, why lie about it? No, Tal, there is payback of some kind in the air, and I will not allow it. Boxing is dangerous enough under the best of circumstances…”

  “It’s junior boxing. You know, more protective headgear and stuff than in real boxing.”

  “Do not interrupt me!” said Ms. Simmons slowly, emphasizing each word. “When people fight in anger, I don’t care how much protective gear is involved—there is still danger. In any case, this subject is not up for debate. The boxing match is canceled. I’ll call Coach Miller right now and tell him.”

  “No, you won’t!” I almost shouted, in Welsh, with considerable magic wrapped around the words. Ms. Simmons dropped the phone and stared blankly at me for a couple of seconds, then started dialing as if nothing had happened.

  Getting people to forget little things was easy. Changing their minds about subjects on which their opinion was not particularly strong was easy. Getting them to change their minds when they had strong convictions was doable but risked damaging the person if their resistance was too determined. I knew Ms. Simmons well enough to know she was strong-willed, and on this subject she believed too strongly that I could get hurt. No, beating down that protective impulse, to say nothing of the professional ethics that reinforced it, would be so fundamentally a violation of her will that it would have to injure her. I couldn’t do that. At the same time, I couldn’t let her stop the fight.

  “You need to call Coach Miller, but it will have to wait. You just got a tip that one of our students left school without permission and is likely to commit suicide at any minute.”

  Ms. Simmons put down the phone. “Tal, I will call Coach Miller, but right now I need to take care of another important matter, a very time sensitive one.” She was playing it cool, but I could tell she was really upset. “However, if somehow I don’t get in touch with him, I am forbidding you to go through with this fight. Understood?” Well, I should have seen that coming and preempted it. I thought overwhelming her need to protect me with a bigger emergency would solve the problem, but apparently she was going to try to take care of both situations.

  I started singing and hit her with the most concentrated burst of magic I could, then caught her quickly as she slumped to the floor, asleep. Lucky for me Ms. Simmons took good care of herself and wasn’t overweight, since I had to drag her into her desk chair. Then I laid her head gently on her desk.

  What a mess! I had kept her from immediately stopping the fight but hadn’t saved myself from possible disciplinary action after, and I had frightened her with a totally bogus crisis. In a busy office like this, I couldn’t keep her asleep for very long.

  At least I had gotten better at removing memories selectively, so I didn’t need to worry about injuring her in the attempt. I just sang to her quietly to forget the false suicide report, as well as any knowledge she had of the boxing match. Then I told her to wake in ten minutes, and just in case, I got on the intercom in her voice, a trick I’d been working on, and told her secretary not to disturb her for a few minutes.

  I tried to slip out of the office inconspicuously, but Ms. Blount, the gray-haired guard dog / principal’s secretary, looked at me with profound suspicion as I walked past her. Had she heard me singing? Or did she know something about the boxing match? Either way, I couldn’t do anything about Ms. Blount’s memories. The door to her office was open, and I could hear other people talking in the outer office. If I magicked her, she would not remember, but anyone the spell was not directed at could remember. I pasted on my best fake smile and walked right past her. She did not stop me, but I think she wanted to.

  At lunch I took Eva aside—not to the woods, you can be sure, but down one of the classroom halls that usually stayed empty much of lunch. There I told her the truth about Dan’s situation. Oh, she didn’t believe me at first, despite her close call in Annwn. Luckily I had taken to carrying White Hilt with me, in a scabbard that hung by my side, naturally charmed to be unnoticeable. It is amazing how fast a flaming sword can burn up people’s skepticism. Since she had already seen White Hilt in action, seeing it again reassured her that she was not crazy and that I was not playing games with her.

  “Well, now I feel terrible,” she said, looking around as if she expected an accusing Dan to pop out of the lockers.

  “There’s a lot of that going around lately.”

  “I thought for sure he was playing some sick game with me…but he really didn’t remember. And now, look what I have done to him, to Stan…to you.”

  “Stan and I don’t blame you,” I replied gently. I started to pat her on the shoulder, then thought better of it. “As for Dan, he really loves you, or he wouldn’t have taken what happened so hard. You will find your way back to each other.”

  “I heard about the boxing match,” said Eva worriedly. “I’ll go to Dan and get him to stop this nonsense.”

  “Eva, I said you would find your way back, not that you would be able to do it in the next ten minutes. Right now, he will just ignore you. This fight has to happen. I need to get Stan forgiven.”

  “And your getting beaten to a pulp is the only way to do that? Sometimes guys are so unbelievably dense.”

  “Well,” I said, raising an eyebrow, “I am troubled by your lack of faith. Maybe I’ll beat Shar to a pulp.”

  Eva snorted derisively, then realized how that sounded. “I’m sorry, Tal, I know you’re in good shape, but have you seen Shar lately? He’s built like Hercules—and he knows how to box.”

  “Well, again, thanks for the vote of confidence, Eva, and I’ll see you later—if I’m still alive.” I don’t think she appreciated the attempted humor, but I went whistling off down the hall, using my most self-confident stride.

  “Guys!” she muttered as I turned the corner.

  What little remained of the day dragged on uneventfully. Finally, the last class ended, and I hustled to the gym. Shar had his own equipment of course, but I didn’t. However, Dan borrowed the necessities from the local club; apparently he could still get pretty much anything he wanted in the community. A couple of the players led me to the visitors’ locker room to change, just as if this match were real. Clearly, Dan had been careful. Head guard, mouth guard, gloves, boxing trunks, jersey, groin protector—new, I was assured—everything fit perfectly. Since most guys have no idea about other guys’ sizes, except maybe for brothers, I could only assume some of the girls must have made extremely educated guesses. That would suggest some of them had been watching me pretty closely—good news, but not something I had time to
focus on now. I sang myself into heightened stamina. I wasn’t trying to win, mind you. In fact, I intended to lose, but I needed to stay standing as long as possible. Also, because I wanted to keep track of the audience’s reaction, I shifted a little, just enough to give me keen, animal-like hearing. I still wasn’t comfortable shifting into a complete animal form, but I had found ways to gain some enhanced abilities without visibly changing.

  I got a shock when I entered the gym. The bleachers were set up, and they were packed. I had expected the football team itself, and maybe a few cheerleaders, but the match seemed to have attracted all the cheerleaders and a large number of other students. No wonder Ms. Simmons had found out what we were planning! Hell, all she probably had to do was stand discretely in the main entryway before school and listen to the conversations of students passing by. The question was, even with her earlier memories of the match gone, how could she miss something this big happening right under her nose? Well, I couldn’t worry about that now. If she found out, she found out.

  With such a mob I thought at first I had enhanced my hearing for nothing, but I saw Shar talking to Dan, and I tried to focus on them. What I heard surprised me.

  “This is stupid, and you know it!” said Shar. “Tal’s been nothing but a friend to us. Okay, his buddy Stan messed up, but not as bad as you thought, and anyway Tal doesn’t have the training. This isn’t a fair fight.”

  “He asked for it,” said Dan, clearly feigning disinterest in what Shar was saying.