by Russell Moon
The school building itself looks like a long, low, sprawling concrete Wonder Bread factory.
“Earth!” Three guys together yell from a top-down red Mustang. There is no way they are not football starters. You can smell it.
It is immediately apparent that Eartha is wildly popular. Not a single student fails to acknowledge her, no matter how rushed they are, no matter how much first-day-of-school hubbub there is. She waves greetings more like a queen than a regular returning junior. And I notice that I am noticed. Some people just look, some nod or give a tentative half wave, but several I catch checking me out. They look at me from funny angles, then snap away when I see them.
One large, adult-looking student whizzes by before I can even get a proper look.
“This him?” the guy asks, then pretty much vanishes when Eartha shoves him.
“A new guy never arrives in this place without warning,” she shrugs.
I get a small kick out of this. “You’ve all been warned about me, huh?”
“Oh, yes,” she says, holding the front door open for me.
She says it so convincingly, in a voice deeper than her regular voice.
A voice that’s not Jules’s voice.
I shiver.
The entire morning is spent getting class assignments. Mostly it is filling out forms, waiting in lines, having thirty-second conferences with teachers, coaches, and guidance counselors, then standing in some more lines. It is a very up-to-date school, so every time I make a decision—yes, I think I will take third-year Spanish; no, thanks anyway but debate club, tempting as it sounds, is not for me; I’d prefer study hall to typing—I have a new computer printout in my hands within seconds. The system is so responsive to my thoughts, I half expect my lunch selections to be waiting for me in the cafeteria.
As arranged, Eartha meets me in the caf at twelve forty-five. I am seated, waiting for her, when she comes up to me.
“I pulled you a tray,” she says. “Hope you don’t mind. Lasagna, garlic bread, chocolate milk.”
I am staring at it. “No, not at all. This is all great.”
When I look up again, the contents of the plate no longer matter. I won’t be able to eat them.
“Oh, Marcus,” Eartha says, “this is Arj. Arj, this is Marcus.”
“Yo, Marcus. Welcome,” Arj says.
He is Doone Howe. Unfairly handsome, blond, tidy Doone. Doone’s six-foot, point-guard build. Doone’s cheery smile.
“Doone,” I say in a choked voice.
“Arj,” he repeats, still friendly. He takes the seat across from me. I can only imagine how I must seem to these people. I feel like I’m being strangled and thumped in the chest at the same time.
“You’re doing it again,” Eartha says wearily, “that thing where you call people names other than what they tell you to call them.”
I nod. Where she leads, I will follow. For now.
“Been hearing quite a bit about you,” Arj says.
“Really?” I am staring.
“What are you staring at?” Eartha asks, slicing her very firm lasagna into tidy little triangles. I look up at her.
“Nothing,” I say, and begin staring at her. She chews, just as Jules did, does, with neat, mannerly precision. Her jaws hardly seem to separate enough for her to masticate, and she dabs her full lips with a napkin after each and every bite.
“Yes, you were staring, Marcus, and now you are doing it to me. Flashbacks again?”
“He has flashbacks?” Arj asks. He sounds very concerned. Why should he sound very concerned? He just met me. I wouldn’t care if I heard he was having flashbacks.
“This is it,” I say coolly to Eartha. “You guys are gassing me somehow. It has to stop. All right, maybe I did something, back there, in the woods….” I turn to Arj. “But it was your fault if I did, because it was your party, and if…”
Just then, it comes to me strong. I snap up out of my chair. “You did it, right? Right, right, you’re the one who kept feeding me the beers…stupid me. There I was, after my whole life in Port Caledonia thinking, duh, what a coincidence, people start being friendly to me the very night before I leave. What an idiot. Nobody is that nice. What was I thinking? You sadistic monsters.” I make the effort to pan over the two of them equally, looking from one to the other and back again. I don’t know how or why Jules would be involved, but how could she not be? The thought makes my heart hurt. “You’d been working on this for ages, hadn’t you?”
I stare down at them with malevolence, and triumph. I have rooted them out. Maybe. Partly.
From their blank expressions, it would seem they feel otherwise.
“He’s been having some readjustment problems,” Eartha says to Arj. Like two consulting physicians. Arj nods at her. Then he addresses me.
“Please sit down,” he says kindly.
I resist. I am defiant. I look out across the cafeteria to find that I am attracting no small amount of attention, and this worries me tremendously. I am torn between my need to resist and my need to be unnoticed.
There is a hand on my arm now, and the issue is over before I can even deliberate. Eartha’s touch has caused my knees to bend involuntarily, and I am lowering myself into my seat as I stare into her wide, wondrous eyes.
“Jules,” I say imploringly.
“Eartha,” she says evenly, making a chopping motion on the table between us.
I turn to Arj. “Doone,” I say.
“Arj,” he says, smiling.
“So then why are you people so patient with me, if you think you’re somebody but I think you’re somebody else?” I ask.
“He asks a good question,” Arj says.
Eartha nods, but then goes back to eating.
“Can I have a look at that?” Arj asks, indicating my course schedule. I hand it over.
“And eat your lunch,” Eartha says. “You’ll never get any better if you don’t eat.”
“Better? Am I sick? Is that it?”
“No. But you are weakened. And you’ll need to be strong.”
“What exactly will I need to be strong for?”
“Cool,” Arj says. He has been staring at my printout and his own, hard, like he is trying to burn them up with his stare. Then he takes Eartha’s schedule and likewise stares it silly.
“This is just great. We all have exactly the same schedule. What do you know?”
“What do you know?” I echo. The difference is, when I ask “What do you know?” I want someone to answer me.
“Fair enough,” Arj says, and Eartha agrees. He hands us back our schedules. “We do need to talk. It’s been kind of unfair, the way you were just plunked into the middle of all this.”
“Yeah,” I say righteously. Then, “The middle of all what?”
“We’ll bring you up to speed on everything this afternoon at the Key Club meeting.”
“Ah, after-school activities? No. Key Club meeting? Sorry, I’m not in any Key Club.”
“Sure you are,” Eartha says, pointing at the bottom of my schedule. “Says so right there in black and white; you’re all signed up.”
And so I am. I stare at my schedule, the schedule that I labored over all morning. It shows classes and a club I never asked for. What the hell is a Key Club, anyway?
Fine, I’ll go. The wheel is obviously turning, and I can’t jump off.
“Okay,” I say, leaning right close to her. “But I’m going to find out, aren’t I, Jules? I’m going to finally find out.”
We are almost forehead-to-forehead.
“You know, you have the most deadly cool eyes,” she says.
After school, when I enter the basement room that is the Key Club office, I feel like the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. Until I offhandedly mention this fact, and the temperature jumps twenty degrees.
“That better?” Eartha says calmly.
Better. Hmm. Would I rather be a little chilly, or control the weather? I get a trill of chill anyway.
“Bette
r,” I say. “Thanks.” Thanks for what, I’m not sure.
They are lined up, neatly and respectfully, to be introduced to me. I shake hands as I am introduced to the core management of the club, called the Council of Youngers. In addition to Eartha and Arj, there is Marthe, with both skin and hair the same caramel color, who offers her hand like I’m supposed to kiss it (“A pleasure to finally get to meet you”); Baron, who squeezes real hard and does not shake (“That’s my chair you’re sitting in—everyone knows the green chair is mine”); and chunky, squint-eyed Winston, who takes my hand in both of his and shakes so vigorously and so long he almost does Baron’s work of jerking me out of the seat (“Comrade, brother…”). It is all very orderly and orchestrated and has the feel of a coronation or a papal audience. Key Clubbers outside the Council mill about, playing games with ridiculous oversized decks of cards, drinking Cokes, and periodically bursting into spontaneous huddles, doing something you cannot make out unless you are in the huddle with them.
After the meet-and-greet, Arj and Eartha come up to me as I sit in Baron’s green chair.
“I suppose you’re wondering…,” she says.
“What does she mean, finally meet me? How long has she been waiting?”
“Don’t be so modest,” Arj says. “You’re the event of the season, man.”
There’s that chill again. “I wish you wouldn’t say stuff like that. No kidding. I don’t want to be an event. Of any season. I just want to be a guy. Just a regular, like, junior.”
Arj laughs, a warm, big laugh, like it’s not at my expense, even if it probably is. He claps me on the shoulder and says, “Sorry, but there ain’t no regular juniors in this group, junior.” He waves his arm over the gathering.
I stare at them dubiously. Nobody, really, is doing anything special in the great and special group. What the hell is this great and special group, and why?
“Group?” I ask.
“Yes,” Arj says, nodding agreeably. “Group. Our group, your group. Team, if you will.”
“Team,” Eartha repeats.
They are clearly having trouble with this very simple definition. I’m sorry I got the whole thing started.
“Family,” Arj says, warming to the subject. He seems happy with “family.”
“I already have a family,” I say.
Eartha is out of patience. “Arj, it’s been a long trip for him already, you know? Let’s skip the semantics and—”
“In time,” he answers smoothly, but with an edge.
“What?” I ask.
“Time is now, Arj,” she says firmly.
I’m getting tense. Tense, I have plenty of tension already. “Listen, group is fine with me. I didn’t mean to start any—”
“Yes, Marcus, group is fine,” Eartha says, putting a hand lightly on my shoulder, “but coven is probably more to the point.”
It is as if all action in the room has ceased. Every head swivels, and everyone stares in our direction. I can feel my mouth hanging open.
Arj gets stern.
“A little abrupt, don’t you think, Eartha? We do have a protocol.”
They have a protocol. A coven and a protocol. They have words, definitions, semantics. I don’t even have ground under my feet anymore.
“Maybe we should just have a cake and balloons and a banner that reads, Welcome to Blackwater, and By the Way, You’re a Witch,” she says.
Which is about all I need to hear.
“Wait,” Eartha says as I make for the door.
“No,” I say. “I feel like I’m intruding. I’ll just see myself out, thanks.”
“Please,” Arj says, catching up and taking me, firmly, by the upper arm.
I stop, stare at his hand, then shake loose from him.
“All right, this is enough,” I snap. “I don’t particularly care what you freaks are up to down here. But you got no business pulling me into it.”
“You’re already into it,” Arj says.
“Oh, really?” I say. “Well, watch me get right the hell back out of it.” I stomp toward the door.
My hand is reaching for the knob, when from right over the top of me comes the green chair, missing my head by an inch before slamming into the door.
I turn around and stare. If it’s down to a staring contest, then I lose, because several pairs of eyes are now peeling the skin right off me.
The temperature has fallen again. After a tense standoff, Eartha begins to approach me.
“Stay away,” I say, holding both hands out in her direction.
Not only does she not advance on me, she retreats, as does everyone else. Like they are actually scared.
I’ve never scared anybody before, ever. At least, that I can remember.
I mentally catch a vision of myself. I have assumed a pose. Where I thought I was just holding up a stop sign, I have instead altered it slightly, so that all ten fingers at the end of my outstretched hands are pointing at her. I have never done this before, don’t know why I’m doing it now. It appears to scare this collection of nut cases. I feel like an idiot.
“Shut up,” I say, though nobody’s said a thing. They follow my order, however, and shut further up.
I am out in the hallway and approaching the stairs at a trot when I hear Eartha calling me. I do not stop.
I have to get out of here. Not just here, the basement, the Key Club, the building. I have to get out of here, this school, this town. I feel this powerful pull on me, back to Port Caledonia, back to previous days, back to undo the foul whatevers back there in my past, so I can get out of this nightmare that seems to be punishing me.
I burst through the exit, to fresh air and real life and…
Eartha.
“How did you do that?” I demand. I am not even scared, exactly, though that makes no sense to me. I’m pissed off. “How did you do that, Eartha? You telling me you can fly, or walk through walls or something?”
She shakes her head. “Of course I can’t.”
“Good,” I say, calming down only slightly. “You want to start talking sense consistently now, please?”
“Arj delivered me.”
“Arj delivered you?” I bark, and am sort of ashamed of myself. Her eyes, Jules’s eyes, are all warm and rounded at me. I don’t talk to anybody like that. I have manners. Especially with her.
She is composed. “He moved me.” She leans conspiratorially close. “Moved me, you know? You know about moving, don’t you, Marcus?”
I nod, almost involuntarily. I am shaken, my stomach flipping. I am terrified that somebody knows. I am relieved that somebody knows. I want to touch her.
“The thing is, we need you, Marcus. And believe it or not, you need us as well.”
“How do you know anything about me?”
She smiles, takes me by the hand, and leads me back inside.
“That’s the kind of group we are. That’s the kind of community you’re in. We know. We watch. We watch out.”
Petrified. Thrilled. Petrified. To say I have entered another world already would be to understate it badly.
When Eartha and I reenter the room, it is as if there is a flying circus being performed for our amusement. The card game I half witnessed earlier has been resumed. But the players are now spread out in a ten-foot-circumference circle, and the cards are changing hands continuously, rapidly, and all by themselves. The air among the players is alive, like a tank full of tropical fish, as bright, large playing cards swim every which way, players snagging them out of the air and then setting them free just as quickly.
The two Council members I had met, Baron and Winston, are pulling some form of telekinetic sumo wrestling. They stand three feet apart, and do nothing but stand, stare, glower. Nothing seems to be coming of it until gradually they begin leaning, leaning into each other as if into a hurricane wind, until it seems they have to fall into each other. They don’t. They separate. Winston’s feet, planted firmly, slip backward an inch. Two inches, ten inches. They are sweating, grimac
ing, and finally Baron lets out a barbaric sort of roar that sends Winston skittering across the floor like a downhill skier in reverse, until he is flat against the wall.
People are balancing books and pocket calculators and jockstraps in the air, all looking very serious and somewhat bored, until, out of the corner of my eye, I catch the sailing green blur and turn just in time to duck the chair as it whips once again over my head and cracks into the door. The green chair appears not to like me.
I turn to face Arj, but in the next instant the green chair has glided up behind me, buckling my legs. I am sitting, and the chair is moving, like a roller-coaster car, toward Arj. Just as it reaches him, it squeals to a halt. I sit, looking up at Arj, wondering where my life has gone. And where it will be going from here.
“You could have just asked him to come over,” Eartha says dryly to him. “Drama queen.”
“He needed to be shown.”
Everyone has stopped juggling now and is gathering around me.
“Shown what? Your awesome power, right?” She is snappy, tough, and playful at the same time. She is, again, Jules. “Well, Marcus, there you have it, Arj’s power. Show’s over, ’cause there ain’t no more. All he can do, more or less, is move stuff, same as everyone else in this room.”
“Well,” I say, still looking up at Arj, “I think it’s pretty damn impressive.”
“Thank you,” Arj says, bowing to me and sneering at Eartha. “Everyone other than the Council of Youngers can now leave.”
I get up out of my chair.
“Not you, Marcus,” Arj says.
“Ah,” I say, finding myself protesting very little with this guy, even though he does not seem in any way outwardly menacing. “So, are you, like, the head guy?”
They all laugh, until Arj turns on them, and everybody other than Eartha stops. He turns back to me.
“No, I’m flattered, but I’m not the head guy. But you’re going to meet him. At the party on Friday night.”
I cannot stand it. Of all the things I want to do (not many) and don’t (plenty), a party is absolutely the most not thing on my list. I don’t want to meet anybody else. I don’t want to eat and drink, and I sure as hell don’t want to be merry.