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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "Slick 'n Slide"  "That sounds like a great idea," you tell Lorenzo. "But it's due at five, and it's already late. It was due this morning, but I forgot to bring mine in." "Well, how about this," he says. "I'll go home and get that photo, and meet you back up here in time for you to turn it in." "You really want to help me out?" you ask. You feel blindsided by his offer. His smile is plump and smug. "Sure," he says. "And if anyone asks where you got it from, you can tell them I gave it to you. Or, you know, you don't have to tell them at all." But something about the way he says it tells you that he'd really like for people to know that he's the one who had that photo originally. * * * * * You're anxious all the rest of the day, worried that Lorenzo will change his mind or won't be able to meet you at the school with that photograph. So when school is over, you race home to pick up that book—which you were originally planning to deposit in the capsule—so you'll be sure of being able to give Mr. Walberg something at least. You're still on your way back to the school when Lorenzo texts to ask where you are. You hold him off with a brb until you swing into the student parking lot, then you shoot him a longer text telling him you're on your way inside. Where u? you ask. It's in front of the school library that you rendezvous, and it's a little after four-thirty: plenty of time to get down to Mr. Walberg's classroom, but cutting it close enough that you were anxious all the way home and back. Lorenzo has a small manila envelope, out of which he pulls a photo. It shows a kid with dark hair wearing a tan jacket, standing in the quad in front of the drama building. He looks kind of like a young Tom Cruise, with a similarly magnetic smile. "So who's this guy again?" you ask Lorenzo. "Paul Griffin. He used to be a student here, like, twenty years ago. He's an actor now, he was on that TV show, Enchanted U, on the CW?" The show is vaguely familiar, but the actor isn't. "It's a good contribution to the capsule," Lorenzo tells you, "because it doesn't just show one of the school's alumnae, but it shows him while he was a student here. That's the drama wing," he says, pointing at the building behind the figure, as though you wouldn't recognize it yourself. "Yeah, that's cool, that's great," you say, and you relax with an intense relief. Even if Mr. Walberg takes a full letter grade off your score, this photo should be worth a solid B for the assignment. He might even give you a B+. An A-, for ingenuity, maybe, with extra credit? "This is real lifesaver, man," you tell Lorenzo. "I can't thank you enough!" "You don't have to thank me at all, Will," Lorenzo says. He claps you on the shoulder. "It's just something I thought I could help you out with. I'll stick around here till you're done with Mr. Walberg, come find me, tell me how it went." * * * * * It goes fine, though you have to give Mr. Walberg a little song-and-dance. His eyebrows go up when you hand him the envelope, and he asks what happened to the book. You tell him that while you were getting it, you mentioned to your mom what it was for, and she remembered she had that photograph and suggested you take that in instead. Won't she miss it? he asks after you explain who it's of, and why it would make a suitable contribution. You tell him that you guess she won't. Of course, you have the same question for Lorenzo when you find him back in front of the library, where he's leaning against the wall and reading his cell phone. "My mom's got the negative someplace," he says. "Anyway, she's scanned it into her computer. In fact, what I gave you, I just printed it out from there." He detaches himself from the wall and turns to walk back down toward the student parking lot. "Where did she get it?" you as as you accompany him. "She took it. She went to school here too, same time as him. I think she was a year or two behind. She used to tell me that he was almost my father." "Really?" "It's what she used to say. I'm not sure the biology works out like that, of course. If he was my dad, would I have been me? Or would I have been someone else? You know. And would he have gone on to be an actor if he'd stayed here and been my dad? Would my dad have gone off to be an actor or something else if he hadn't married my mom? It's not really worth thinking about, you know, what would have happened if things had gone different." "I guess not. What does your dad do?" "He's an administrator at the hospital. Yeah, he probably wouldn't have been an actor." He tells you a little more about his family, and asks about yours (though he doesn't sound very interested) until you reach the parking lot. He asks where you're parked and what you're doing now. You tell him you have to go home, because you are technically grounded on account of Saturday night. "Oh right," he says. "You got laid." He looks at you with a faintly contemptuous gaze, and you have the impression he doesn't believe what he just said. "Well, I hope it was worth it," he says. "I don't have a curfew, so I never have to worry about stuff like that. So is that your truck?" he asks, nodding in the direction you had pointed. "It's pretty sweet," he says, and saunters off toward it. You trail him, wondering what he's going to say next to one-up himself over you. But he says nothing further, only he shades his eyes to look in through the passenger-side window. After a moment, he grunts and asks, "What's that book in the passenger seat?" "What book? Oh, that's the thing I was gonna put into the capsule. I went home and got it, brought it back it back up, in case you couldn't find that photo." He gives you a look, as though insulted by the idea he might not have been able to follow through on his offer, then asks, "Can I see it?" Without waiting for permission, he opens the passenger-side door and lifts it out. Part of you wants to yank it away from him and tell him to leave your shit alone. But he's done you a real good turn with that photo, so you bite your tongue and watch as he examines it. He starts by peering at the gold pentagram stamped onto the spine, then opens the book to glance through the pages. His gaze lingers only briefly on the page with those weird, shifting faces—not long enough to have noticed the illusion, probably—before flipping the page to where the text starts in earnest. His brows knit together, and his lips twitch soundlessly, as though he's reading it. But after only a minute he tries flipping deeper into the book only to be stymied by the tightly bound pages. "The fuck is wrong here?" he mutters. You were waiting for this chance, and you tell him about Arnholms' misadventure with the book: How they had it in their special collections cabinet with a price of two-hundred-something dollars without bothering to look at it closely, and how they had let you take it for two dollars when they found that all the pages—except those at the front—were glued together. Lorenzo's expression combines skepticism with disgust as you tell him this. He snorts when you're done. "That's quite a story," he says. "And you bought it to put it in the time capsule? Why?" "I don't know. I don't even think I bought it for that. I think I just saw a chance to pick up something for two bucks instead of two hundred. I just dropped it in my room when I got home, forgot about it." You make a face. "Forgot about the assignment too." "Huh. Thing is, it looks real." Lorenzo runs his fingertips over the open page. "Like it's a real, old book. It might not be a book, you know." He tries again to pry some of the pages apart, then raises it to his face to peer closely at the edges. "Like, I can't even get a fingernail in between some of these pages, and you ought to be able to do that if they were just pasted down. You'd ruin the pages if you tried peeling them apart, but you ought to be able to do that much, at least." "So what are you saying?" "Oh, I don't know," he says. He frowns intently at the book, then suddenly thrusts it at you. "Maybe it's just a prop from some old theater, a fake someone made up, like those fake books on bookshelves that some people have, where they have a TV or a liquor cabinet behind a fake bookcase. Anyway—" He glances around. "I should be getting home." * * * * * You hear from him later that evening, though. Ironically, his text comes in while you are texting Caleb, telling him about the good turn Lorenzo did you with that photograph. Caleb has just got through warning you that Lorenzo never gives something away without there being strings attached, when the text from Lorenzo appears: If you don't want to keep that old book, he says, I'll give you fifty dollars for it. * To sell the book to Lorenzo: "A Hustle Both Ways" * To keep it: "Noises Off" |
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