Funny Tragic Crazy Magic (Tragic Magic Book 1) (15 page)

Joe
took me home. I sat on my couch, swaddled in the throw blanket, a cup of hot
chocolate in my hands. Joe sat next to me, not touching me. His eyes looked
over me as if he thought I was an egg about to crack. I put my head on his
shoulder, and he wrapped his arms around me.

I’d
like to say I could tell you how I felt. I’d like to explain how terrified,
defenseless, and broken I felt, beaten at the hands of a crazy man while people
stood and watched. While Ash stood and watched. I thought I could trust him.
There aren’t words, at least not any words that I know, which can explain that
feeling.

But
the worst part was afterward. When I was safe. When I was in my home, protected
by the rune on the wall, and in Joe’s arms… I should have felt safe. I should
have felt rested and peaceful, comforted inside and out, but I… I felt cold.
Empty. My home, and Joe’s presence, didn’t fill the emptiness. All I wanted was
that honey feeling, that warm healing feeling Leo benevolently bestowed on me,
that pure joy that destroyed everything it touched.

I
wasn’t the same person that I had been that morning, linked arm in arm with my
best friend. Joe didn’t understand, and he didn’t ask… I guess he didn’t even
know me, not anymore.

I
didn’t even know myself. My family was hiding me from the Grandfathers. My own
father was staying distant from me in order to shield me from the eyes of his
friends. If my father had been there that night, would he have stood by and
watched? Would he have had to?

They
knew that I was my mother’s daughter, and with her gone, the notebook should
have been in my hands. They would have been right; they would have been beating
a Grandmother, but… I wasn’t enough. The Grandmothers took the notebook from
me, because they knew I didn’t have it in me to be one of them. All my
planning, all those hours of brainstorming, and searching the internet for
clues… Did I even want to find the notebook? Did I want to fulfill my family’s
legacy if it meant…

Joe
put his arm under my knees and pulled my legs over his lap. With my head on his
shoulder and his arm around my side, it felt almost as if I was a baby. I
looked up and smelled him, my nose brushing softly against the underside of his
chin. He smelled the same, that woodsy and honey smell that I love so much. I
looked up at him, and he just looked straight ahead, not glancing at me, not
needing anything from me, just there, there when I needed him.

I
leaned into him again, and instead of my nose brushing against the underside of
his chin, it was my lips. Just once. Just one quick kiss that I hoped wouldn’t
ruin everything. Joe didn’t move, so I bent into him and kissed him once more
in the same place. Joe bit his lip.

“Riz...”
he said, and I could hear the ‘no’ in his voice.

“Please,”
I whispered. “Please, I don’t want to think anymore.”

Joe
looked down at the ground, and he sighed. Was I that hideous to him? What was
wrong with me? Tears itched as they ran down my face. Joe moved his hand from
behind my knees and ran his fingers against the side of my face, his thumb
brushing the tears away. He bent down and kissed my forehead, his lips softer
than I expected.

He
sat back tall, and his fingers brushed where he had kissed, and then tucked a
strand of my hair behind my ear. His eyes found mine at last, and there was a
question there. I lifted my hand and brushed my fingers against the side of his
face, feeling his eyebrows, the wrinkle of concern in the arch above his nose,
and then back alongside his hairline. I bent into him, kissed his cheek, and
then held my cheek against his as he kissed the underside of my jaw.

I
put my head back on his shoulder, and took a breath.

He
said my name with more tenderness than he has ever shown me, and the hairs on
the back of my neck stood out. His sunflower eyes searched into mine and then
he leaned and put his lips next to mine.

And
then he kissed me.

I
just want to stop there. I want to stay in that moment in my memory, package it
up, and hold it in. It makes me smile, just remembering how perfect it all was,
how natural. How much it felt like… home. I can’t explain it, I just want to sit
here and feel it again.

It
wasn’t a long kiss, and when Joe pulled away, I wanted more. I put my fingers
through the hair at the nape of his neck. I brushed his cheekbones with my
thumb.

“I…”
he started, his eyes turned away from me.

“What?”
I asked, smiling.

“I
can’t do this.”

“Tough.”
I touched his nose with the hand not enwrapped in his hair.

“Larissa…”
Where was the tenderness he used when he said it before? My name felt flat as
it fell from his lips. Felt foreign. “It’s just that this means something
different for me, than it does for you.”

“Oh.”
I moved my hand from his hair feeling deflated. Each second I sat there, close
to Joe, the feeling in the room and inside my heart grew more and more awkward.
He just sat there, as if expecting me to say something, give him some kind of
response, but what could I say? Sorry I’m not good enough for you. Sorry for
wanting something you can’t give?

I
moved the blanket and walked into the kitchen for a glass of water. When I came
back into the room, Joe was gone. The cup that had held the hot chocolate which
brought me a measure of comfort was on its side. It was empty.

I
walked up to my room and lay down on my bed, pulling the blankets over my head
so I didn’t have to face the world. Inside, I still longed for that sick honey
healing, and for Joe’s perfect kiss, both of which threatened to reach inside
and destroy me. With a smile on my face, I would let either one of them destroy
me just so I could feel something.

Behind
my closed eyes, I could see Leo giggling, and then moving so quickly to destroy
me. In my mind, Joe stood behind Ash, watching my torture, and not moving or
doing anything to stop it.

He
just looked at me, and mouthed the words, “I can’t.”

The
next day, things were awkward. But I tried to pull myself together enough to go
to school, to face the normalcy of the day and the dreaded extra distance that
Joe put between us. I loved him. I knew that. I knew that now more than I ever
knew it before.

Mostly
though, as I walked through the crowded rube-filled halls of my high school, I
was angry. People wouldn’t look me in the eye; they shied away from me, gave me
space to pass by them. I wasn’t angry with anyone in particular, I was pissed
with myself for not knowing more, for not being able to defend myself. For
allowing myself to be a ragdoll, tossed around.

And
so, every spare minute when I should be taking notes in class, or writing book
reports, or talking to my friends at lunch (Joe sitting far across the other
end of our group not even glancing at me) I was working my way through my
notebook. I memorized the rise and fall of the runes, the placements of dashes,
the shapes… I did everything I could to make it sink in, to find a way to make
sense of the chaos that was the runes. Runes are orderly. Instincts are chaos.
Why would Runes need to know this disorganized mess of lines and dashes? It was
like trying to learn a foreign language, but a foreign language that had no
rules.

For
example, how did I write the rune for
stay
on the air? I thought runes
had to be written on something. I thought that one rune could only affect one
thing at a time. How did I freeze eight people at the same time? How was that
even possible? And that man Robert. He was obviously a Grandfather by the respect
all those men showed him. Yet his
silence
rune didn’t last nearly as
long as one I could draw.

It
was as if I was stronger than he was, as if runelight worked better for me…
Why? None of it made sense to me. There had to be order to it, there had to be
a pattern…

I
needed Joe. I needed pattern boy to work through the runes with me, help me
find a way for all of this to make sense.

I
was in seventh period when I realized this. I stood up from my desk without
raising my hand or asking permission. I just left the classroom. The teacher
let me go without saying anything to me. I walked past Joe’s biology class, but
he wasn’t sitting in his seat, so I went into the girl’s bathroom and searched
my notebook for something useful.

It
was like, before, I was almost scared to use the runes, scared to be anything
other than normal, except for the vainest of magic. Not anymore. I was a Witch.
I was different from everyone else. I wasn’t normal. I wasn’t who I pretended
to be.

I
sighed and then looked at myself in the mirror, and drew the rune for
find
on my forehead, like a bull’s-eye for everyone to see. It was difficult drawing
the unknown rune backwards, using the mirror in the empty girl’s bathroom.

When
the rune hit, an image of the school ran through my mind. It was as if my mind
ran out of the classroom and found Joe outside in the parking lot, walking past
a bunch of cars.

I
looked back in the mirror, and the freak that was me, stared back. I didn’t
want anyone to see me like this. I guess I wasn’t quite comfortable enough with
my freakiness for others to know yet, so I flipped through my notebook, and
then did the rune for
invisibility
.

It
was a working rune, so I ran through the halls and out the front doors, hoping
to get there before my magic ran out. I couldn’t find Joe, so I closed my eyes
and focused on my memory of Joe’s sunflower eyes, and
find
ran through
other students’ cars to the very back of the parking lot.

Walls
surrounded the school, kind of the way a prison would. Joe walked along on the
top of the back wall grumbling to himself.

I
went closer so I could hear what he was saying, but when I was almost there,
invisibility
ended, startling Joe when I popped into existence. He turned, lost his balance
and fell, his left leg sliding through the cinderblock wall. He landed so low
on the ground, his foot disappeared into the ground. He climbed through the
wall, brushing dirt off his clothes and not looking at me.

“How
long have you been there?” Joe asked with embarrassment.

“I
just got here. Why? Were you talking about me?” I said, wiping the rune for
find
from my forehead. Joe put his hands against the wall, jumped, and pulled
himself up so he was sitting on the wall facing the school again, watching it
like the school was the most interesting thing in the world.

I
sighed. “Can we talk?” I asked, my neck already cricking from looking up at
him.

Joe
didn’t answer for a second. “Sure,” he said, his eyes far from mine. “What’s
up, buddy?”

Buddy.
I didn’t answer him for a second, but glanced through my notebook. Maybe I
could add some height, and then I would be able to climb up there the way Joe
did. I did a quick
transformation
rune on my arm, and the world shrank
away from me until I was looking down at the wall. I turned and sat, wiped the
runelight away, and shrunk back to my usual self. I sat about five feet away
from Joe, and looking at his face, I think five feet away was still too close.

“That
was awesome,” Joe said finally.

I
wrote a note by the rune in my notebook, and then smiled up at him. I looked
away first.

“Larissa,”
he said, “yesterday, I shouldn’t have…”

“Don’t
worry about it, Joe,” I interrupted him before he could tell me he only wanted
to be friends. I was so sick of hearing it.

Joe
sighed and walked over to me as if he had a weight on his shoulders. He sat
down facing me, one leg bent up at the knee, the other dangling over the side
of the wall on the school side. The parking lot was still.

“I
kissed you, Riz.” The way he said my name reminded me of the tender way he said
it before.

His
eyebrows creased, and I wanted to smooth that indentation out, or kiss it away.

“I
asked you to.” I said instead.

Joe
swallowed; I could see the muscles on his neck tighten.

I
looked away. “Could we, maybe, forget yesterday happened, and just go back to
normal?”

Joe
looked over at the school, the sunlight lighting up his profile. The bell rang,
and students spilled from the school like water from a pitcher. He wasn’t going
to give me a response, at least not the response I wanted, so I pulled out my
notebook and held it open so he could look at it.

“Joe…
Buddy. You promised you wouldn’t do any runes, and you need to keep that
promise or else the Grandmothers will come and kill you.” And it will be all my
fault, I thought but didn’t say. “But I need your help.”

Joe
allowed himself to look at my notebook then, and I could see the burning
curiosity behind his eyes.

“What
do you need?” he asked, flipping through the pages.

“There’s
a pattern here, but I don’t see it,” I said. “I don’t… The runes don’t make any
sense to me. Could you help me? Please, make sense of all of this.”

Joe
held my notebook closer to his face and scoured the pages.

“The
runes have existed for thousands of years. They have to have a system. I just…
I wish I had someone to teach me. No…” I laughed once without any humor, “I
wish I cared more about this when my mom was dying to teach me.” That was a
poor word choice. “But, now… All I have is you, Joe. You’re the one person I
can trust.”

Joe
smiled, but it wasn’t his normal smile, it wasn’t as free and as open as it
always was. He stared down at the runes; his fingers started twitching as if he
was drawing them in his mind. I reached forward and held his fingers, and Joe
stared at my hand on his, as if it meant something. I casually pulled my hand
away.

I
looked down at the ground, it seemed much further than I expected. My fingers
brushed my hair behind my ears and then I spoke.

“Please
say I didn’t mess things up yesterday, by being needy, and stupid,” I said. “It
was a mistake, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I refused to cry.

If
I ever cry again, it will be too soon
, I thought.

Joe
jumped down from the wall, like it wasn’t seven feet tall. Then he turned,
smiled at me, and cocked his head, “Let’s let the Pattern Boy work his magic.”

I
jumped down from the wall too. My nerve endings shot up from the bottom of my
feet up to my neck at the impact. I grimaced.

“What
a great superhero name,” I said when I could talk again. “What should mine be?”
I followed him to my car.

“What’s
wrong with Larissa?” he asked.

Yeah,
that’s what I wanted to know.