Funny Tragic Crazy Magic (Tragic Magic Book 1) (11 page)

I
bought a children’s workbook for Fee’s birthday. It was for kindergarteners.
Phonics. I wrapped it in neon pink wrapping paper and glued on a store-bought
bow.

Then
I didn’t know what to do with it, so it sat on my dresser next to both of Fee’s
sparkling shoes.

After
staring at it for more than a half hour, I left my room, went to the kitchen
and dialed Joe’s number.

“Hello,”
Joe said.

“It’s
Fee’s birthday today,” I said, “I mean it would be…”

“I’ll
be right there,” he said.

I
hung up the phone, walked back up to my room and picked up Fee’s present. I put
it down a few seconds later and stared at it for a while.

I
picked it up a few more times before I heard Joe walking up my stairs. I left my
door open, not that it mattered. Joe walked toward me with his arms up to give
me a hug, but I handed him the present instead.

“I
don’t know what to do with it,” I said.

I…You
know, I don’t really want to dwell too much on Fee’s birthday morning. Let’s just
say it sucked and then move on.

Anyway,
so about three hours later, Joe and I were standing in front of my family’s
graves. They were buried a few towns away, so no one would find them. My
parents shared a gravestone, and Fee had one of her own. It was smaller, a dark
gray stone with a rune carved above her name. It was the rune for
protection
,
the same rune that hung over my door. I ran my fingers across the stone feeling
the rise and fall of the indentation, my fingers shooting sparks, as they do when
I’m around real runes. The present leaned against the stone. Water from the
snow seeped up into the package and through the knees on my jeans. It was a
sunny day with a cold wind that blew through my hair and stung as it brushed
against the tears on my cheeks. The sunlight reflected off the snow, leaving
sparkling light that made me close my eyes and ripped against retinas already
tender from crying.

When
my tears were gone, and I couldn’t find the energy to make any more, I stood. I
looked at Joe, his sunflower eyes reflecting back at me. The only thing I
really felt for him at that moment was grateful. Who cared if someone
manipulated him into meeting me; thank God they did. I didn’t know what I would
do without him.

That
breaks my heart to write.

I
walked to him and he held his arms open for a hug, but I shook my head. I was
done with that.

“If
you had a tattoo, where would you put it?” I asked.

He
looked at me, confused, and then answered, “My arm, probably, but up high, so
my mom couldn’t see it.”

I
nodded emotionlessly. “Take off your coat.”

He
did, all the while looking at me as if I was speaking Spanish. He was wearing
his short-sleeved blue shirt we bought together at the thrift store. I pulled
his sleeve up to his shoulder and then started drawing the rune for
protection
,
glancing for reference at my sister’s gravestone. The rune was an intricate
one, completely balanced on all four sides, a mesh of curves that connected
like eternity, with no beginning and no end.

I
sighed when I finished and pulled my hands down by my side. Joe looked over at
his arm, and he smiled as if he liked it.

“It
will look like a tattoo if any rube looks at it,” I said. “
Protection
is
the strongest rune I know; it doesn’t wash off, or rub off unless the person
who drew it takes it off. And I won’t. I want you to be safe.”

“So
could I like jump off a cliff and bounce?”

“No,”
I said. “It’s not a bulletproof vest, you moron. You could maybe jump off a
second story window and not break anything. But jump from too high, or crash a
car too fast, and there’s only so much it can do. My family still died. But
it’ll help.

“You
should draw it on yourself,” Joe said

“No
need,” I said “My mom drew it on me when I was born.”

“Where
is it?” he asked, looking at my body.

I
crossed my hands over my stomach. “None of your business.”

Joe
smiled in his patented way, and I laughed. It felt good to hear laughter that
day. Things had gotten too serious.

I
thought for a moment, and then shook my head. “Beside’s, I’m not in any danger.
They only brought us together so I could watch you, be a spy for them.”

“Why?”
he said. “I’m nothing special.”

“You
can do runes, Joe. I know you don’t want to, but that still means you are a
freakishly strong… Mage.” I pulled Joe’s sleeve down, and then he put his coat
back on.

Something
occurred to me. “You know what’s strange?”

“Everything,”
he said, as he zipped his coat closed, “Everything is strange.”

I
ignored him, “How many Witches have you seen since you came to Plymouth?”

“Imitation
Erica, threatening Witch, Giara, and you,” he listed.

“That’s
four and no men. Isn’t that weird?” I started walking away from my parent’s
grave, happy to have something to occupy my mind.

“I
don’t think the Grandfathers know you exist, Joe,” I said. “If they did, you
would have been inducted into the society. You would have been invited to go
golfing or whatever it is they do.”

Joe
held open the door of my car for me, and I got in. I was silent as he moved
around the car and sat in the driver seat.

When
Joe put his seatbelt on, I realized something else. “What if… I think the
Grandmothers are trying to hide you from them. Trying to rob a commodity,
weaken the Grandfathers.”

Joe
started the car; he didn’t look worried, but that was Joe. He still thought he
was indestructible. “Okay, so what do we do?”

“We
need to find a Mage. The Grandfathers will need to know... they’ll be able to
protect you.”

“Maybe,
but one, I don’t need protection; I got this.” He said, gesturing to his new
rune, “And two, we don’t know any Mages.”

Ulgh.
That dumb kid. The Grandfathers would be able to protect him from the
Grandmothers. And from me. “That’s the problem. I really don’t know any…” I
wished my dad had been more open with me, introduced me to his friends,
anything.

An
idea hit me, “Except…”

No,
that really wouldn’t be a good idea.

“Except
who?” Joe seemed eager.

This
was the only way to protect him. We had to, at least try, to find him.

“Your
dad,” I said turning back to the road.

Joe
slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “No!”

“Joe,
calm down,” I said.

“There’s
no way I’m gonna…”

“I’m
not suggesting you ask him to take you fishing,” I said. “You can punch him in
the face if you want to, and then tell him you’re an Instinct. After he gets
out of the hospital he will tell the Grandfathers, and someone will find you.”

Joe
was silent.

This
wasn’t a good idea, I thought.

“I
can do that,” he said, looking away from me.

“I’m
sorry, Joe.” I took a deep breath, and started talking softly, hopefully
showing Joe I was sensitive to the fact that this was sensitive to him. “Okay,
how are we gonna find him… Do you know his name?”

“Maybe,
Larissa, you grew up in a happily ever after fairytale where people fall in
love and get married and then the stork magically delivers a newborn on their
front step,” he said, ”but I didn’t. No, I don’t know his name. I don’t know if
my mom knows his name, and I’m not going to ask her.”

“Do
you think she’s written it down somewhere?” I asked. “I mean, she’s an English
teacher; she’s got to have written it down.”

“She’s…
she’s always written journals,” he said.

“Perfect.”

Joe
sighed. “Alright, we can look at her journals. No promises that we’ll even find
anything. And I’m not reading them; I told my mom I wouldn’t.”

“Well,
luckily I didn’t,” I said.

I
smiled at Joe. He didn’t notice. Was I being a crappy friend, forcing Joe to do
something horrible? If it kept him safe, was there anything that I wouldn’t do?

“I’m
really sorry, Joe.” I said.

We
got to Joe’s house about a half hour later, parked in the driveway, and then
walked to the garage. Ms. P.’s pickup wasn’t in the driveway, so we knew she
wasn’t home.

The
garage was detached from the house and had one door that lifted straight up,
instead of rolling up like the garage at my house. They always parked their
only truck in the driveway because the garage was stuffed full of boxes. Most
of the boxes were left over from their many moves around the country. I
remember Ms. P. talking about how every time she moved, she never got around to
unpacking that one box. Every move she just added another one to the pile. I
guess the garage was where all those boxes ended up. Joe climbed over a few
boxes and then started digging inside. I followed behind him and started with
the boxes on the left.

“You
guys really need a better organization system,” I said, ruffling through pages
full of Joe’s homework from the third grade. The rune for water was drawn on
several dog-eared corners. There were old electricity bills, student loan
payments, and Joe’s birth certificate. I checked, but the line for father was
blank.

“Thanks
Miss OCD,” Joe said. “If you want to organize all of this, nothing’s stopping
you.”

“You
say that like it’d be torture, but that’s my idea of a good time,” I said.

I
moved on to a different box. This one had a bunch of batteries and owner’s
manuals.

Ms.
P. showed up about a half hour into organizing. She smiled at our choice of
activities and then almost sprinted back into the house with her groceries so
we wouldn’t rope her into helping. It took about an hour to find the journals,
and Joe was the first one to find them (probably because I kept spending far
too much time looking at Joe’s baby clothes.) It just seemed strange that such
a hulking giant of a good-looking guy wore outfits that were smaller than my
forearm.

“Okay,”
Joe said, “it’s your turn.”

He
held my hand so I could climb over the box of stuff and then left me to it,
throwing my carefully organized piles into one of the empty boxes.

I
turned away from him so my OCD wouldn’t be showing and then sat down to read.
This one box was the most organized box I’d seen, and it was still a mess of
chaos. Journals from every year cluttered the box with their varied covers.
Some were plain colored; some had flowers or puppies on the covers. Each had yellow
masking tape sealing the book with the year the book was written and the words,
‘Joe, don’t touch.’

It
took me a couple more minutes, but after doing the math, I found the two
journals that would probably give me the answers that I wanted. At least they
would be my best hope. I ripped the tape on the earliest and started reading.

Ms.
P. as a teenager (or Maggie as I started thinking of her) was a lot like me.
Typical almost, what with her over-analysis of boys who may or may not like
her. Her days seemed normal. She mentioned friends and big homework
assignments. But then, a name started cropping up over and over. Ashford. He
smiled at her at a party, then ignored her in the halls. It seemed like Maggie
was religious, her family was as well, and there was a lot of mention of church
and religious activities. This seemed strange to me, as neither Ms. P. nor Joe
were churchgoers now at all.

Neither
was this Ash guy. It seemed like Ms. P. had a thing for the bad boy, which I in
no way related too.

Reading
the journal started feeling like reading a novel, and for a moment, I forgot
this was a real person’s life. Then right when things got good, when Maggie and
Ashford admitted their feelings for each other, I realized something. This love
story didn’t end happily, in a couple more days, some dark Mage would step out
of the shadows and take something precious from a woman I admired. I read the
next few pages reluctantly waiting for the shoe to drop and the bad day to
happen.

But
it didn’t.

“Joe,
were you a premature baby?” I asked.

Joe
looked up. He was playing an ancient game boy he must have discovered in our
perusal through the boxes.

“No.”
He looked back down.

I
went back to my reading with a confused, “hmm…”

The
story went on, pages and pages of Maggie, happy and in love. Then all of a
sudden, they broke up. Teardrops blended the words as Maggie wrote about how it
was because Ash didn’t think she was special enough for him. Then the writing
stopped, even though there were several empty pages left over.

I
looked through the box for the next year, but I couldn’t find anything. The
next journal I could find Joe was two years old already, and there was no
mention of Ash or anything.

I
looked over at Joe. No wonder Ms. P. freaked out so much with the completely
accidental sleeping thing that happened.

“Your
mom wasn’t raped,” I said.

“What?”
he asked.

It
was all there. Ash’s vivid blue eyes. The wonder of it all. Maggie didn’t just
fall in love with a bad boy. She fell in love with a Mage.

Then
she got pregnant, and her strict religious family… I don’t know. What happened
that made her say she was raped? Where was the missing years of journals? Did
someone wipe her memories?

“Look,”
I said, pointing to the journal, “your dad’s name is Ashford, and I don’t think
he knew your mom was pregnant.” I smiled. “He seems like he was a cool guy
actually.”

Joe
walked over; it was clear he was fighting believing me, and I don’t blame him.
It must be difficult to hate someone your entire life, and then one day realize
they weren’t so bad. Devastating really.

“Joe,
you’ve got a dad.” I said, standing up and looking through a few more boxes.

Joe
sat down, his back against the cardboard box, and he read his mom’s journal.

I
found a few more boxes in the corner we hadn’t opened yet, and I dug through
them while Joe read. I found one at the very back of the garage, behind all the
others, covered in dust and filth. A thick line of masking tape covered the
top. I broke it open. Inside the box I found regular notebooks full of homework
assignments, folded love letters from our man Ash, and under a letterman’s
jacket with the name Maggie sewn in, I found a collection of yearbooks.
Bull’s-eye.

“We’re
going to find him.” I said with a smile.