Funny Tragic Crazy Magic (Tragic Magic Book 1)
Read Funny Tragic Crazy Magic (Tragic Magic Book 1) Online
Authors: Sheena Boekweg
Funny
Tragic
Crazy
Magic
Sheena
Boekweg
This book is a book of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue
are drawn from the authors imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 Sheena Boekweg
All rights reserved.
Summary: After her
parents died trying to keep her life secret, a young girl must find her
mother’s magical notebook to save the boy she loves, without anyone noticing.
SECOND EDITION
Cover Design by Boekweg Books
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN: 1482793792
ISBN-13: 978-1482793796
For my mom, who gave me the paper,
my husband, who gave me the cover,
and my dad, who gave me the words.
“Magic is believing in yourself. If you can do that,
you can make anything happen.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I’m
not supposed to say anything about what happened. I promised.
However,
I never promised I wouldn’t write it all down.
Don’t
worry, Giara. No one will ever read this. Once it’s all down, I’ll light it on
fire. I just have to get it out of my head.
No
one would believe it anyway.
In
case it does get out, in case someone decides that this pile of paper might
mean something, remember, it never happened. None of this is real. Nothing like
this is even possible.
That
cover it, Giara?
My
name is Larissa Alvarez, and right now, I am sitting in a mental hospital. I
know… cliché, right? If I was making up this story I would have started it in a
better place, but that isn’t where the story starts. That’s where it ends. Try
not to forget that while you are reading.
I
guess it started when I met Joe.
No,
actually, it started earlier than that. It all really started on the day my
parents died. I was in my room. Billy Joel was playing on my iPod, and my
freshly vacuumed carpet clung to my toes as I stood in front of my mirror. I
kept messing with the rune for
transformation
, but I couldn’t get the
shape right, so my hair frizzed up in the back.
In
my defense, runes are difficult to draw on the back of your own neck. I didn’t
realize at the time I could have drawn it on my stomach or something. I just
knew my mom always drew
transformation
runes on the back of her neck. I
didn’t realize there was another way.
My
parents were in the kitchen talking about the price of ground beef. I’m sure my
little sister, Fee, was in front of the television, and Dora (or something
equally depressing) was on the T.V.
I
wasn’t really paying attention to them; it was later when I thought back to the
last moments I had with them that these details stick out. It’s crazy what I
remember. My memories come back in flashes now. Just moments stuck forever,
like still pictures stamped on my brain.
I
walked out of my room and into the kitchen, leaving my iPod still playing. The
music seemed to soften the sudden silence from my parents in the kitchen.
My
mom’s notebook was on the counter next to her purse. I took it without her
noticing. She and my dad were in this intense conversation, their words blocked
out by the rune for
silence
, a triangle shape drawn in glowing light on
the backside of both of my parents’ hands. I took the notebook and sat down on
one of our leather couches in the TV room. The leather felt cold against my
neck. My hand went through Fee’s hair without me paying much attention to it.
Her tiny fingers resting around my ankle made me feel self-conscious about my
unshaven legs.
Runes
filled every page of my mother’s notebook. I should have stopped and smelled
the notebook, breathed in the clean and ancient paper, touched the leather
cover, or taken in my abuela’s handwriting and the way my mom curled the edges
of her runes. I didn’t. I skipped past the important runes, the knowledge that
would have saved a life more important than my own, because I was intent on
having perfect hair for Sarah Johansen’s party that night. I wish I hadn’t been
so shallow then. I wish I’d done a lot of things differently that night.
The
sound of my parent’s argument filled the kitchen, so I knew the runelight had
faded. The moment the rune ended, I caught my mom yelling the word
“Grandfathers!” and my dad saying, “I’d never do that.” Then there was silence.
A
few seconds later, my mom walked into the room. Her face softened when she saw
me reading her notebook. “Is there anything you wanted me to answer?”
“No,”
I said. “I’m just trying to fix my hair.”
My
mom’s smile faltered, but she helped me find the
transformation
runes
and pointed out that my rune wasn’t curling right. She smiled as she helped me.
Magic was about the most important thing in my mom’s life, other than me and my
sister. I think because I knew it was important to her, I didn’t want anything
to do with it. Not really. Maybe I was a little jealous of how much time she
spent dealing in magic, or maybe I thought she loved magic more than she loved
me. I don’t know. Maybe I was just self-absorbed. That’s always possible.
It
was just hard trying to be a normal teenager when I knew I had freak written
down to my DNA. Hiding my magic from all my friends felt like a lie. I think I
tried to keep the secret as small as possible, so I wouldn’t feel guilty for
not telling them.
After
a minute, my dad walked into the front TV room with his notebook. His glasses
perched crookedly across his nose. He asked, “Are you ready?” to my mom in
Spanish, and she nodded.
“Dad
and I need to go out. Could you watch your sister?”
I
should have said yes, but there was Sarah’s party, and I didn’t want to miss
it. Everyone important at East Point High was going to be there, and I was one
of only two sophomores invited. If I didn’t go, then Erika Fisher would hold it
over me until I graduated.
I
argued with my mom for a while, my sister Fee looking on with her angel brown
eyes as I explained how much I hated spending time with her, how I hated being
the live-in babysitter, and how much I wanted to have my own life. I remember
saying I wished they would all just leave me alone. After they died, my own
voice saying that awful thing filled my ears at frequent intervals as I sat alone
in my house for months on end.
My
whining worked, and they took my sister with them. They never brought her back.
I
didn’t drive the black SUV that crashed into my parent’s Honda. I didn’t drive
the Honda to the north end of the valley where they had no business going. It
wasn’t my fault my parents died.
But
it was my fault my baby sister died. My selfishness caused it.
I
was at the party when I found out. How my hair looked, what I wore, what cute
boy was looking at me… that all stopped mattering the second I got the call
from the hospital. I started crying in front of everyone. One of the seniors
videotaped me with his camera phone and then posted it on YouTube, so I could
go back and relive it whenever I wanted to.
Giara
Templeton took me to the hospital. She’s one of the Grandmothers, the highest
station in the Witch hierarchy. Giara is… beautiful. She’s blonde with razor
sharp features and cold eyes. Perfect. I’d been intimidated by her on the two
other occasions I had seen her. The first was when I was accepted into the
Fellowship of Female Witches. The second was at a Costco by a sample for bagel
pizzas. I noticed, even through the avalanche of grief that overtook me, when
she came to Sarah Johansen’s house to pick me up, that her shoes didn’t match.
I
don’t remember anything about the trip to the hospital, but I do remember being
in my mom’s room when her heart monitor went to that shrill stillness. Her
purse and her notebook were on the floor under a chair. I know the notebook was
there.
Giara
led me out of the room, and I sat in the hallway as she talked heatedly on her
fancy cell phone from behind the partially closed door. I still managed to hear
her yelling, and caught a glimpse of her smug smile when she won the argument
about what they should do with me, before she closed the door in my face.
My
rube uncle still lived in Mexico, and, numb as I was, I started wondering if my
Spanish was too rusty to sound fluent. No such luck. As a fully accepted Witch,
I was technically a grown up. I should be able to take care of myself.
Giara
seemed strangely calm about the decision as she dropped me off at my empty
house. She told me, before she closed the door in my face once more, that if I
needed anything, I should call her for help. She would watch over me. From
Chicago. Not exactly the guardian my mom would have wanted. The Grandmothers
left me on my own not… four hours after my entire family was killed. Not the
warmth you’d expect from a Grandmother.
A
couple days later, when the Fellowship returned all my family’s belongings
through USPS, my mom’s notebook was gone. There was a short note taped on top
of this white box full of priceless mementos saying they never found her
notebook. I searched through that package for hours. Everything else was in there
except for the notebook, and one of my sister’s princess shoes.
My
own notebook had only four runes written on it in purple glitter ink. They were
mostly all
transformation
runes, the makeup and curling irons of
Witches. But luckily, I had the sense to put in the rune for
fire
, (how
else would I have heated up my eyelash curler?) or else that empty house would
have been a cold place to live until the life insurance money kicked in.
For
a while, I ran on autopilot. I still went to school. That must tell you how
numb I was. I could have totally skipped, but the idea didn’t even cross my
mind.
At
school, my social standing dropped, and my grades improved. I couldn’t face
lying to my friends, so all I did was stay home and study.
I
still had friends; people cared about me. But I just couldn’t really face them.
No one at school knew my parents had died, not even my best friend Meg. The
Fellowship took care of that with a simple
hiding
rune. I’ve seen the
rune for
hide
often enough, and I know its power when I see… or more
truthfully, don’t see it. Everyone knew my parents had been in an accident, but
they took my ability to share my grief with my friends away as surely as they
had taken my mom’s notebook. I should have protested, told my friends anyway,
but every time I tried, the words froze in my mouth, and I got this sick
feeling at the pit of my stomach.
I
was alone. The only freak in a school of normals. Joe always called them the
rubes. I think he came from a line of circus people or something. See, in the
circus, they call regular people rubes, because all they see is the magic, they
never see the strings. It kind of fit. The name stuck as most things Joe said
did. Stuck to my brain and etched its way in.
I
started adding to my notebook, writing experimental runes in my house when the
rest of the student body watched reality television or wrote reports on the
French Revolution. I finally became the kind of Witch my mom wanted me to be.
Just too late for my mom to see.
When
my notebook of real runes had grown to a grand total of seven, I started making
plans of how I could get my mother’s notebook back. It was my right. My legacy.
There were runes in there from her abuela… maybe her abuela’s bisabuela. They
had no right to take it.
I
started making the plans that would destroy my life. They wouldn’t have worked
if I had done it by myself. My life would have gone on in its own pathetic,
hidden, non-earthshaking way.
Then
everything changed. Like most things in my life, that plan I made to break into
the Grandmothers’ Study and steal back my mother’s notebook was only made
possible when I met Joe.
That
lying jerk.