(Co-authored by Seuzz)
The work is a lot harder and more fraught that you had even dared to fear. There are many times over the next five hours that you are sorely tempted to give up, and only the fear that a half-finished sigil might be more dangerous than a completed one impels you to continue.
One of the chief problems is that most of the symbols that Blackwell has copied into his notes are not themselves described in the primer, and you feel yourself taking your life into your hands each time you add one to the work box. Even worse: Some of the symbols that Blackwell has jotted down, when you find them in the primer, turn out to require special, advanced handling, for they cannot be added directly to the work box but must be constructed step-by-step inside separate work boxes and added to the main work box via a connecting "line of power." You and Robert pore carefully over the primer to understand how to build a these intermediate sigils, and both of you pale the first time you pull off the trick, as the snake-like form you've scrawled into a separate work box actually uncoils and slithers along the inky line to weave itself into the main sigil you've been working on, leaving empty the box that you constructed it inside.
But between the primer and your own leaps of faith (faith that Blackwell got the formulas right) you reach a final culmination when you inscribe the work box with the symbol for "close and empower", and a complicated wheel explodes from the box to cover half the worksheet. You and Robert both fly back in your seats.
"Is something wrong over here?" You both gasp and flinch at the hard voice that sounds behind your shoulder. A hatchet-faced librarian is leaning in, glaring hard at you.
"N-no", you stammer.
"Then please keep your voices down", she hisses before marching off to be swallowed by the library stacks.
Robert chortles. "Betcha she'd'a freaked if she knew what we were up to!"
Betcha she'd'a freaked, you think, if we'd done it wrong and she found a couple of frogs sitting in our chairs.
"So is that it?" Robert asks when you don't reply. "Are we done?"
"If we did it right."
"You think we did?"
"I dunno", you have to admit. "I don't remember what the sigil in the book looked like, exactly. I mean, it did kind of look like this."
"So how do we tell?"
You don't answer, but lay your fingertips gently atop the paper. It's probably your imagination, but you think you feel the faintest vibration, and the faintest crackle of electricity, inside the ink strokes. Robert watches you, then lays his own fingertips next to yours.
"Only way to test it", you tell him, "is to try making a mask with it."
His eyes light up. "Cool! Let's do that now!"
"Except we'd have to go back to the school basement, and I don't want to get in another fight with Lucy."
His face falls. "Can't we just go get my stuff out?"
His stuff. Robert's just not going to let go of the idea that your "Arts and Crafts" project now belongs to him. "We'd still have to go back to the basement."
"So when—?"
"Let me think about it. We need to get her out of there, at least long enough for us to sneak in." You pull at your lip. "Taylor likes taking her out." You grimace. "He likes taking her down to the river, probably."
"So can we call him, get him to do that now?"
You make a face, then shake your head. "No", you sigh as you open your book bag. "I told Dad we were coming here to do homework. We should do that, in case he tries calling our bluff when we go home."
Robert looks disappointed, so you tear out the worksheet with the sigil and hand it to him.
"Here, hide this with your stuff", you tell him. "Don't fold it, just slip it inside a book." His eyes light up again, and you smile to yourself. Besides making him feel good about trusting him with it, you figure it might be safest with him. You can't shake the paranoid feeling that your dad might go snooping through your stuff and find it if you kept it. But he's not as likely to go snooping through Robert's stuff.
--
Monday afternoon. You promised yourself this morning that you'd take the day like a normal school day, but you quickly got caught up in a mood of suppressed hysteria. It's like the night before Christmas, you think. So many awesome things waiting for me to open and try out, but I can't get to them yet.
Your mood is at a fever pitch by the time you dash into your final class of the day: Astronomy. You're far more alert in there than you usually are, for your dreams come back to you with a vividness that makes the classroom itself feel like a lucid dream. So strong is their pull that when the final bell rings you run up to Mr. Cash at his lectern to ask if he can recommend you any good books about the planets. "There's lots of good books out there, Will", he tells you.
"I don't mean science books", you blurt out, and then all at once you feel very shy and doubtful. "I mean, not about their atmospheres or any of that stuff. I mean about—" But you can't quite lay your tongue on the words that you mean. What you saw in your dreams doesn't correspond to anything that you've ever heard about the planets in any science book or science lecture. "I mean, like, poetry", you stammer.
Mr. Cash stares, and you feel yourself shrink up. It's not fun when Mr. Cash stares at you—with his salt-and-pepper crew cut and his long face, he looks too much like Christopher Lee. Even with his American accent, his voice booms like Count Dooku's when he gets angry. But now he just replies with a lofty disdain. "Maybe you'd better talk to someone in the English department", he growls.
But instead of taking his advice, you go looking for Scott Bickelmeier instead. He cut you dead earlier in Calculus, but he looks relieved when you brush up against him at his locker. "Hey, I was gonna come looking for you," he says. He looks wrung out with stress.
"Any chance you could take Lucy out on the town today or tonight?", you ask.
"What for?" Now his expression turns guarded.
You chew on your lip, then blurt out the confidence: "I want to get into the shit we got stored in the basement. Without her around, you know?"
Scott's expression tightens further. "What for?"
You feel yourself bridling. "What do you think for?"
Scott gives you a very even look. He glances over the top of your head to study the crowded hallway behind you, then leans in to talk to you in a very quiet voice.
"Look, I get it, Will", he says. "But I don't want to be in the middle of it. You have to understand Lucy. She’s worried about you. I know she got angry with you yesterday, but that's because she's worried. She really does like you, Will."
You blink hard. But not in the way I want her to like me, you want to retort.
Instead, you say, "Well, that's nice, and I like her too. That's how come I want to help her out, but the only way I can help her out is by playing around with this stuff she doesn't want me to play around with!"
"Are you sure?"
"That it's the only way? Pretty sure!"
"So what do you need into the basement for this afternoon? No wait, lemme ask you to help me out."
"With what?"
Scott glances around again. "You remember my friend Sawyer? I told you about him and the, uh, accident with him and me and ... Taylor?"
Sure, you remember Scott and Taylor's accident. Hard to forget, when you've got the Scott-disguised Taylor standing right in front of you. But Sawyer? Sawyer who? What was his deal?
"We were all goofing around with masks," Scott tells you, and he says it so quietly through stiff lips that you can hardly make out the words over the babble of the crowd surging past and jostling you. "Sawyer put a mask to his face, and he fell into a coma. He's in the hospital. I was going to go up there this afternoon and see if there was any way of helping him."
You stare at Scott. Sawyer put on a mask. If that's all it is, then why does he need you to go up to the hospital with him? He knows how to take a mask off someone; he's had a lot more practice than you at taking them off and putting them on.
Then you see it in his eyes: He's not asking because he needs your help. He's asking because he wants to know if you're really about helping people, or if you're only about goofing around with magic because it's fun and cool.
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