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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "The Cork on the Current"  "I don't know Lacie's sister," you protest. "Or her boyfriend. How will I recognize them?" As Tiffany busies herself with her phone, you add, "Besides, why can't you get one of their other friends—one of those guys—to do it?" You point back in the direction those two other guys went. "They know them. Don't they? "Jonas and Bree won't listen to them," Mattie says. "But they'll listen to me?" Before Mattie can answer, Tiffany holds up her phone to show you the screen. It shows a boy and a girl, sitting at a table shoulder to shoulder, smiling brilliantly into the lens. You recognize them from this afternoon, at the German restaurant, as the boy and girl who were flirting hard with each other. Almost you buckle under the pressure. But instead you raise your hands and say, "Look, I don't know them." "Doesn't matter!" Tiffany says. "Will, you've got to—!" "This isn't any of my business. I wouldn't know how to get them out of there anyway. I'm not a cop!" Tiffany gasps and gapes at you, then turns away with a look of disgust. Mattie makes a face. For a moment you hover in place, feeling useless and impotent. Then, with nothing more to say, you turn for the bar. * * * * * There's no one at the bar that you know, and when you go into the dance floor you are overcome by a sense of futility. With the girls mad at you, Dean and Patrick are the only guys here that you feel like you can hang out with, and Patrick is busy dancing while Dean has disappeared. Your curfew is not far off (you note when you check the time on your phone), so it just seems easiest to throw in the towel on the evening. You arrive home in plenty of time before the deadline, and go upstairs to bed. Church the next morning is a drag, and your disappointment with the night (and with yourself) worsens when you turn your phone back on afterward to find that there are no messages from anyone. You were, you realize, secretly hoping that your disappearance from the club would have been noticed, and someone would have texted to check in with you. Or, you'd at least have got some follow-up attention from that gang. But no, nothing. But maybe it's all for the best. You have a bad conscience about not helping Tiffany and Mattie last night, and no matter how many times you tell yourself that you couldn't have helped, you feel that it would have been better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all. Basically, you were just a coward. Eventually, your conscience gets so bad that you text Patrick, asking him to call you back when he has a moment. That moment comes less than a minute later. "Hey man," he exclaims when you pick up. There's voices talking behind his, and music. "What's up? Lookin' to get lucky again?" He chortles. "I was just calling to ask if Lacie's sister got home alright last night." "Yeah, sure, I guess. Gimme some of that." "What?" "Oh, come on, I let you have a bite off'a my Snickers!" Lots of voices and laughter. "Patrick?" "Yeah, I'm here. It's Fresca, right?" "Fres—? Lacie's sis— Hello? Patrick?" Patrick grunts. Then he burps. "Yeah, you wanna come over here or something?" "Are you talking to me?" "Yeah. You know Jenna, Jenna Burr? I want one of those too." "Patrick!" "What?" "Will you talk to me long enough I can get an answer?" "Oh, sure man. Whaddaya wanna know?" You give up. "Where are you, and I'll come over." "I told you, I'm at Jenna's. Oh God, what flavor's this shit?" * * * * * It takes you a couple of minutes, what with Patrick paying more attention to the people he's with than to you, to learn where Jenna Burr lives. Your dad is laying down for a nap, so you tell your mom you're going and will be back in time for supper. You're not sure why you're taking the trouble to drive over to the house of a girl you don't know, just to ask Patrick if Lacie's sister got home safely, especially since he seemed to think that she did. You tell yourself that you just want to be sure, and since Patrick clearly can't concentrate on the phone, you will have to ask him to his face. But some of it, surely, is because you want an excuse to get out of the house and do something. And maybe you just want to remind Patrick and his friends that you exist. Jenna Burr lives on the northeast part of town, in a gray zone where the dilapidated housing near the old industrial quarter begins to fade and merge with nicer, more modern housing. The houses are still small, and they all look as though they've been standing a little longer than they were designed to stand for, but the neighborhood is well-kept. There's about four or five cars parked in front of the house. The weather is nice so the front door is open, and you have to wrap loudly on the screen door to make yourself heard over the music that is playing within. Through the door you can make out a hallway and a room at the end of it, with shadowy figures backlit by the windows behind. These shift and liquify, but the door is answered by a girl who comes in from the living room, whose windows look out onto the front lawn. "Hey," she says with a smile as she pushes open the screen door. She is tan and healthy all over, and she looks strong in her tank-top and shorts, particularly in her legs. There's a boyishness to her face—a boldness, sort of—but she's pretty, and her head is framed by a mane of dark-blonde hair. "Yeah, is Patrick here?" "Oh yeah. Hey Patrick!" she yells back into the house, and doesn't budge from the door. "Patrick! Hang on," she tells you, and lets the screen door swing shut on you as she returns inside. Okay, you tell yourself. She doesn't know me, so why should she let me in? A long moment later, she returns with Patrick. His eyes pop with pleasure when he sees you. "Hey man!" he says. "You leave early or something last night? I looked for you and no one knew where you went." "Yeah, I left." "Who'd you go with?" His eyes glint. "Did Lacie's sister get home okay last night?" "Yeah, I guess," he says. "She was at the Warehouse." "Yeah?" He says it like you've just told him the time and temperature. "Well, her friends, Tiffany and ... Mattie? They were all worried about her when they found out. They asked me to go out and get her, take her home or bring her back to Legends or something. And ... I didn't." "Yeah." Again, he sounds only vaguely interested. "Well, I just wanted to make sure that she got home. That nothing, um, happened to her because I didn't go out and—" "Well, I dunno, man. You should call Lacie and ask her, if you're worried about it." "I think she's going to be mad at me. Tiffany and Mattie were mad at me, I think, when I told them I wasn't going to out there to get them." "So screw 'em, whadda you care?" You can't quite believe this attitude he is taking. But maybe you are the one who is acting a little crazy for worrying about it? "They were just so worried about her being out there, I thought maybe, you know, something might have gone wrong out there, so—" "If Bree was out there, she was out there with friends, man. No reason anyone should'a got worried or excited. Hey, you wanna come in? I thought you were coming over to, you know, hang out." He pushes the screen door open. You peer around it into the house. "Who's here?" you ask. "I don't know if I know anyone." "Pfthbt, like that matters! It's Jenna and some of her friends. You know Jenna? "No." "Well, come on in, I'll introduce you." He pushes the door wider and steps aside for you. So you go in. It's not crowded, there only being five other people in the living room: four girls and a guy. Two of them are parked on a short sofa, while the other three sprawl on the floor amidst some cushions and pillows. Most of them have their phones out, but they are mostly laughing and chattering at each other. Patrick introduces you around to them. Jenna is the girl who answered the door. The other girls are Christine Coolidge (the only one besides Patrick here you know), Ella, and Piper. The guy—a buff-looking dude in a muscle shirt and jeans, but with a friendly smile despite all that—is Luke. They all say "hi" to you, but don't seem much interested otherwise. "Yeah," Patrick sighs you as he leads you back into the kitchen, where there's another girl (who is bent over her phone, texting, and who goes unintroduced). "We all hung out last night, danced and danced. Dang, I'm wiped out." He opens the refrigerator, and takes out a Coke for you. "You wind up here, spend the night?" you ask. You mean it as a joke, but the look Patrick gives you—he rears back and his eyes get big, and he sucks in a deep breath—suggest that the idea is not such a joke as you meant. He glances over his shoulder at the girl, and leans in close to you. "I'm only here now 'cos of Piper," he says in a very low voice, "her and Jenna are friends. Me and Piper—" He nudges you, shrugs. "I felt like I had to hang out with her today." He twists off the cap of the Coke he got off for himself, and chugs most of it back while holding your eye. Then he rips a belch. "So, we're hanging out here, gonna get a pizza later, if you wanna stay." * To hang out here: "A Foundation in Fantasy" * To go home: "Lost in the Mess" |
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