Black Magic (3 page)

The front door was open with just a punctured screen door to fend off the mosquitoes. Ricky walked in without knocking. Parents were never home before evening at the Vreeland house. Zach Vreeland sprawled on the bumpy living room couch, feet braced against the lip of a coffee table. He wore the unofficial uniform of the group, jeans with missing knees and a dark Tshirt. His advertised a band called Metal Maidens today. His cheeks were covered with acne, the red, lumpy painful kind you couldn’t pop to make go away. He kept his shaggy brown hair long to cover it. A seventh-grade academic retention made him a year older than the rest of the Outsiders.

Zach’s fingers danced over the game controller in his hands. His eyes were glued to the widescreen HD TV that hung on the wall. The Vreelands might eat mac and cheese for dinner, but they had a killer TV. Animated soldiers ran across the screen and blasted enormous alien scorpions with laser rifles. The TV volume was maxed and each blast of the soldier’s weapons filled the room like overhead thunder.

Barry Leopold sat next to Zach. The pudgy kid wore the kind of owlish glasses that might have looked cool on Harry Potter, but only served to amplify the boy’s eyes into a permanent look of wonder. His mother cut his dark hair as if an inverted salad bowl had been the guide. The holes in his jeans knees were cut so recently that they had yet to sprout white cotton fuzz around the edges. Barry mashed the controller in his hands, desperate to save his soldier, who was taking serious hits from the scorpions’ stingers.

“Dudes,” Ricky said as he stood behind the couch.
 

On screen, a scorpion impaled Barry’s alter-ego soldier and then slapped him down against the ground a half dozen times. The soldier flashed red and dropped its weapon.

“Son of a bitch!” Barry said. It was funny to hear him curse, as out of place as the sound of screaming guitars coming out of a 1930s cabinet radio. The effort to sound cool made him seem even less so. “Now look what you did, Ricky. You broke my concentration and I’m dead.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Ricky said. “You were kicking that thing’s ass until just this second, and I screwed it all up.”

“You’re dead, loser,” Zach said to Barry. He hit the pause button and the action froze on the screen. “Switch out.”

“But Ricky—”

Zach picked a BB pistol up off the coffee table, pointed it at Barry’s meaty shoulder with only the vaguest attempt at aiming. He pulled the trigger. The gun popped.

“Hey, what the hell?” Barry said. He pulled up his sleeve and exposed a tiny red welt.

“Low pressure, woosie,” Zach said with derision. “You got the padding to take it.”

Barry dropped the controller in defeat and left the couch. Paco Mason took Barry’s place.

Paco was a wiry little kid with a nose like a ski slope. The frayed white denim around the holes in his jeans stood up like brush bristles and swayed with each stuttering step. Perpetually ADHD, all his movements had a jitter to them. His eyes lit up as he took the controller.

“This is the ultimate, dude,” he said. “Let’s waste some aliens.”

The game restarted and Paco’s fingers flailed across the controller. His soldier looked like a marionette controlled by a meth head. Volume of fire overcame its random nature and he racked up points.

The four of them had banded together as the Outsiders over the last few months. They all had issues that kept them out of the mainstream. Zach had been at the bottom of the pecking order since he’d been held back. Now kids his age looked at him as if he was retarded and the younger kids in his class thought he was a freak since he was so much further into puberty. Ricky was poor and his Mexican parents farmed. Paco was jittery as hell, and always in trouble for something, usually involving fire.

But Barry had it the worst. Short, fat and spectacled, he might as well have had a big red bully bull’s-eye tattooed on his forehead. Asthma kept him out of PE and sidelined in the schoolyard. Watching one of Barry’s panicked grasps for his inhaler was practically an invitation to punch him. His horribly overprotective mother was a constant source of humiliation. If he hadn’t fallen in with the Outsiders, even
they
would have wailed on him after school.

Barry sat to one side and massaged his left shoulder. He could not hide the anxiety on his face. Ricky sat next to him. Barry moved his hand from his shoulder and straightened up in his chair. Something exploded on the TV screen and the boys on the couch cheered.

“Don’t sweat Zach,” Ricky said. “He was raised by wolves.”

“It didn’t hurt,” Barry said, his voice an octave too low.

“You know you need to shoot the green diamond on their heads,” Ricky offered.

“Huh?”

“The aliens. Nail that green diamond and they go down in one shot instead of having to slice them to pieces.”

Barry’s eyes widened to fill his glasses. “For real?”

“For real. Try it next time. Take my turn.”

“Okay,” Barry said with a grateful look in his eyes.

Ricky propped his feet up on the table. Zach shot the stinger off an alien. All was right with the world.

Chapter Seven

Downtown Citrus Glade was dead as road kill the next morning and not just because it was Sunday.

Back when Apex Sugar had the mill going, it was a different story. The six blocks that centered on Main and Tangelo bustled with activity. Hundreds of workers lived in Citrus Glade. The town provided all they needed, including movie theaters, car dealerships and a thriving downtown square. Fourth of July parades were good for two dozen floats.

But that Citrus Glade was gone. Like an aging actress with a fizzled career, the town tried to keep up appearances. But just as thicker makeup cannot cover the ravages of time, fresh paint on the town’s central water tower and a politician’s stirring speeches could not mask the town’s internal economic rot. The tax base evaporated like summer rain on blacktop. Services dwindled. Stores closed. Many moved.

Downtown now was a shell of its former self. All the two-story brick buildings were there, the sidewalks and streetlamps ready to guide customers from shop to shop. But empty storefronts dominated the square. The movie theater marquee had shed all its neon finery and the “Roxy” lettering underneath it had long peeled away. Glade Hardware made a valiant stand at one corner, Gentry’s Drug at another. Harper’s Video rented DVDs and repaired electronics and thus had cornered the market on obsolete business models. A few small businesses populated the rest of downtown, scrapbooking and antique shops that only broke even with free rent.

That morning, Zach Vreeland pedaled his bike down the empty street, past the parking meters the few visitors roundly ignored. His knees poked through the big square holes in his jeans with each pump of the pedals. The ninth grader had about outgrown the BMX bike, but a new one wasn’t one of his parents’ priorities

He’d mastered his new
Scorpion Assault
video game to the point of boredom. He’d texted the rest of the Outsiders that he’d be here. Now he just awaited a four-person flash mob.

He hopped the curb and did a lazy slalom down the uneven sidewalk. He jerked the bike to a halt in front of what used to be Everyday Shoes. The empty shop sported a repainted black facade with a glossy shine. The old tiles in the recessed doorway glowed like they had when first laid in the 1950s. A
CLOSED
sign hung in the door. Sunlight shimmered on the polished display window. Black Gothic letters with gold trim crossed the glass in a wide arc. They spelled:

MAGIC SHOP

Underneath in smaller print it said:

ILLUSIONS AND PRESTIDIGITATION

Zach’s reflection in the glass disappeared as he pulled his long brown hair from his pimply face and leaned in for a closer view. A new wall behind the window blocked the view to the rest of the store. Two old posters flanked the middle. The one on the right had the word
Houdini
across the top and a painting of the great magician hanging upside down in a straight jacket inside a water-filled box. The poster on the left was a drawing of a man at a table in a bejeweled turban, left hand around a crystal ball like it was an old friend at a dinner party. He stared straight out from the sheet with a mesmerizing gaze. Lettering at the top read
The Amazing Alexander of the East
and
Futures Foretold
.

Only one item sat in the display area. Three joined silver hoops hung on a black post. They gleamed against a black velvet background.
 

Zach thought that was weird. He remembered, when he was a kid and Dad had money to burn, he had a birthday party. Some guy in a clown suit came to perform. Honestly, the guy in the white face paint and big shoes gave him a case of the creeps. His balloon animals all looked like twisted-together hot dogs. But the clown had a set of magic rings. As the birthday boy, Zach got to touch them to prove that they were solid. Then in front of everyone, the clown juggled the silver rings. They flashed in the sun like some Hollywood special effect. Then fast as lightning, he linked and unlinked the rings. At the time Zach thought it was magic.

On the other side of the door, a hand snaked into view and flipped the door sign over to
OPEN
.

It’s ten-twelve a.m
., he thought.
Who the hell opens a store at ten-twelve? On a Sunday?
 

Nothing else was happening out here. He leaned his bike against the front of the store and walked in. A bell tinkled to announce his entrance.

The shop was empty. The walls were painted black. A layered curtain of beads covered the doorway between the shop and a rear storage room.

Lyle Miller sat on a vacant display counter. A huge brass cash register took up the other end. Lyle wore a solid red silk button-down shirt. He gave Zach a grin that made Zach think of a spider in a web, though he didn’t know why since spiders don’t smile.

“C’mon in,” Lyle said. “Lyle Miller’s the name.”

Zach gave him a quick snap of his head in return. “Zach.”

“Welcome to the shop,” Lyle said.

“Dude,” Zach said with a quick glance around, “you got nothing to sell.”

Lyle slid off the counter and stepped to the front display window.

“It’s called ‘just-in-time inventory’ in the business world,” Lyle said. “I only carry what I need to sell.”

He reached in through a door in the back of the window display and pulled out the three rings. He looped one through his arm and it slid down to his elbow. He held the other two, one in each hand.

“
Bakshokah shuey
,” Lyle said. He swung the two rings together. When they touched each other they rang instead of clinked, like someone had struck a musical triangle. He handed them to Zach. Zach tugged at them and they remained united.

“So what’s the trick?”

“No trick,” Lyle said. He took the rings from Zach, scooped them side by side, and peeled them apart. “It’s magic.”

“Bull. There’s always a trick.” He took the rings from Lyle and examined each one. Flawless, continuous metal. He slammed them together and they would not join.

“It doesn’t work because you don’t believe,” Lyle said. “And you won’t believe because it doesn’t work. A nasty cycle. Elements attuned to magic can do amazing things. But without belief, you cannot channel the power to make the magic happen.”

Lyle reached into his pocket and pulled out a polished gold coin the size of a quarter. The edges were uneven and engravings worn, as if the coin had passed through millions of hands over hundreds of years. He tossed it to Zach.

“Put that in your pocket,” he said. “And then try again.”

Zach had enough of this weird dude doing party tricks in his empty store. He tossed back the coin and turned to return the rings to the display.

“I can see how you would be afraid,” Lyle said. He bounced the coin in his hand. “The power of magic intimidates the weak.”

Zach spun back to face Lyle.

“I ain’t afraid of nothing.”

Lyle delivered a victorious smirk and tossed the coin back to Zach. Zach slipped it in his pocket.

“Now,” Lyle said. “Focus.”

Zach felt like an idiot. He held one ring in each hand. He closed his eyes. Nothing.

“The phrase,” Lyle said. “
Bakshokah shuey
. Say it.”

This was so lame. “
Bakshokah shuey
.” Zach sighed.

The coin in his pocket warmed. His arms tingled, like they bristled with static electricity. He swung the rings together. When they hit they emitted a high musical note. But Zach didn’t feel them hit. He opened his eyes. His heart skipped a beat. The rings were joined.

“Awesome,” he whispered.

He let one of the linked rings drop. He flipped the other off his wrist and into his palm.
 

“
Bakshokah shuey
,” he said with conviction. This time he felt the tingle right away, like the magic had found its path of least resistance and now sought it out on its own. Something in the back of his brain purred like a kitten. The two rings pulled toward each other as if magnetized. He let them swing together. Ping! A chain of three.

Zach’s jaw went slack.

“Feel that power?” Lyle said.