This choice: Try to convince Lucy otherwise • Go Back...Chapter #26Friendship is(/or) Magic by: Nostrum   You lay the primer and Scott’s mask on the table. Lucy might be right. You don’t need magic to be better. But the events of these past days made it too clear for you.
Magic is real. It’s fascinating. And it’s dangerous.
You’ve never been as excited by anything as you are with the prospect of being a magician. You’ve gotten this far, and destroying everything would feel like burning a million dollars – stupid, considering all the good you could do with it.
"Alright", you tell Lucy, "so maybe I don’t need this stuff to stop being a loser. But I’d be a fool to destroy everything. I could do so much good with this!"
"Will!" Lucy grasps the primer and shakes it angrily before throwing it aside, almost knocking Scott’s mask aside. "Nothing good can come of this. Nothing!"
"Of course you’re gonna say that! All you’ve seen is the bad stuff!"
"And I don’t need to see anything else! Face it, Will! You just like getting off on this stuff. You're as bad as the professor."
"No I'm not!", you retort. "Just listen to me a minute, okay? Just now I had this awesome dream. It was like I could see all the planets, and I could see them for what they really are. Like, they were mixed up in this magic stuff, like they're part of it. I dunno. But I felt like I belonged with them, and with whatever it is that this stuff can do. Call me crazy, maybe it sounds stupid, but I have to keep going!. I could do good things with this, Lucy!"
She only glowers at you. You make a face back. It's clear she's not going to give up. But neither are you.
"I know you’re not gonna accept it", you tell her as you grab up Blackwell’s notebook, the primer, and your notes. "I get you. So I won’t bother you with this anymore. I’m gonna take it all away, and I’m not gonna even come here anymore. But here’s the deal. I wanna be a magician, but I don’t wanna be another Blackwell. And I feel I can’t do this alone. I’d appreciate if you guys kept me off that deep end, but I can’t force you to help me." You pause after turning to the door. "When my brother wakes, up tell him I'm outside."
You sit in your truck, seething with anger, but wondering if this really is the right choice. When your brother crawls into the truck with you, you drive home. Neither of you speaks.
--
Sunday morning. You spend church service in a daze, too focused on the primer to pay any attention to the sermon. As soon as you arrived home, you immediately rush to your room and tackle the primer, looking at the sigils from the experiment and trying to make sense of them. You notice each sigil has a meaning – one of the sigils meant "flip", and the other represents a coin. As you revise the procedure once again, you notice how each step was meant to build on each other – as if programming an instruction on a computer, using code, until you could execute a program. You struggle to make sense of this observation as you hear someone turning your doorknob, and you instinctively hide the primer behind you.
It's your father. "What are you doing?" he asks.
"Homework", you shamelessly lie. "Studying for a test, but I can’t seem to get the hang of it."
"I can help you if you want."
"No!", you exclaim. "I mean ... I think I could do better studying somewhere else. No distractions, you know? Maybe the library?"
"Hmm." Your dad’s hum chills your nerves. "Fair enough. Just don’t be late getting home."
"Alright. Thanks, Dad." As soon as he's gone, you hide the primer on your book bag and hoist it on your shoulder. You grab the keys and step down the stairs, only to hear the rumble of footsteps behind you.
It's Robert. "Hey. You going back there? To the old school?"
"No, so you can bug someone else instead."
"I can always tell Dad about—", he starts to whisper.
You wheel on him. "Shut up, you little dipshit!"
"So where you goin’, then?", he challenges you.
"Somewhere I can think in peace. Which means, nowhere near where you’re around!"
Robert catches your shoulder. "Must be to work with those books you got, right? Hey, maybe I can help you! Maybe I can see something you’re not."
You seethe at the suggestion that Robert might be helpful, but you feel so drained that you actually give in to the idea. "Okay", you tell him. "Go grab your books."
"Why?"
"Because I told Dad I was gonna do homework. We'll tell him you're going off to study with me too."
Robert rolls his eyes, but rushes back to his room. Downstairs, you call out to your father. "Hey, Dad. Gonna take Robert to study with me."
He glances up over his newspaper. "Keep your phone turned on. I want you back here as soon as possible if I call, alright?" You nod, and with Robert hot on your heels you trod off to the garage.
Unmindful of what you're doing, you drive off towards the community center, but make a sharp turn as soon as you notice. With no destination in mind, you drive around aimlessly before settling on Potsdam Park, by the river, as a hangout spot.
When Robert can't stand the silence between you anymore, he pipes up. "Yo, what the hell happened yesterday?"
"Watch your language."
"Fuck you. But yesterday, that girl was pissed off when I woke up. What happened?"
"Nothing. We just had a talk is all. We don't see things the same way. Why do you have to ask so many questions?", you add. "Sometimes I feel like I did some big sin on my childhood and God punished me with you."
"Maybe it's for all the shit you’re pulling right now?", he chortles. "Stealing my stuff, trying to keep me off the deal."
"Just do me a favor and shut the fuck up, alright?"
The silence from the other side of the cab tells you that you've gone too far, and you glance over. Robert is pale, his face frozen.
"I'm sorry, Robert," you mutter. "I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at Lucy. Yeah, we had a fight and I'm still pissed off at her, and you just set me off again."
"What'd you fight about?"
"The stuff we're doing. She wants me to throw everything away, destroy it. The books, the supplies. Everything."
"No way! My stuff?", he asks. (He's really fixated on the idea that the supplies belong to him. You don't mention that, as he left it back at the basement, Lucy has probably destroyed it all by now.) "How come?"
"Because she doesn't like it. It scares her. And you know what?", you continue, feeling your anger rising again. "She can't even appreciate that I'm doing all this stuff in order to help her! So you know what else? Screw her if she's gonna be an ungrateful bitch!"
"Hell, yeah!", Robert yells.
"Hell, yes", you agree.
Then you begin to brood. "She's thinks I'm gonna turn out just like that professor. And I'm not going to. Not if I can help it."
"And she doesn't know what she's missing", Robert says.
The corkscrew turn in the conversation catches you off guard. "What do you mean, 'what she's missing'?"
"Bro, has she put on one of those masks before?" Robert asks. "Have you?", he asks when you shake your head. "Well, it's the coolest thing ever! You should have seen your face when I got all up in your grill! I could’a kicked your ass if I wanted to! I could kick Casey’s ass if I went after him with that guy’s mask!"
"Those things are not toys", you warn him. "You could get hurt! My friend Taylor—"
"So we'll be careful. We could do good stuff and have fun at the same time with them. It doesn’t have to be one or the other!"
You do a double-take at him, and find his enthusiasm catching. You've never done much with him—usually you're trying to shake him off—but now, after the fight with Lucy (which probably also ended your partnership with Taylor) you feel glad to have someone who thinks this stuff is as cool as you do.
You're passing a Panera, and on an impulse you jerk the wheel over and bump into the parking lot. When you jerk to a halt, you extend a hand to your dumbfounded brother.
"Alright, partner, you tell him. "Let’s get to work." You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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