Haven [1] A Stranger Magic (6 page)

At first Sarah lied about what happened. She did not want to tell her mother—it just sounded too crazy. In the end, the truth came out, but to her surprise all that her mother said was “Suppression keeps you calm; calm places you in control.” But she said it as if she was thinking out loud, reciting it from memory or something. When Sarah asked if she believed her story, her mother replied, “The pipes are old; the whole house is falling apart, Dear.”

Sarah didn’t press the issue. Her mother had to be right. There was no way Sarah had anything to do with that.

Too much had happened this week with finals, finding out that Barry cheated on her, and worst of all, her so-called friends knowing what Barry had done and never saying a single word. Apparently, getting sick the day of a party was unacceptable girlfriend behavior punishable by cheating. If she had not overheard Blake Miller talking about it to one of the cheerleaders in the hallway, she would have never known. As it was, it took her a week to find out. Her girlfriends hadn’t said anything; they probably enjoyed humiliating her, and they couldn’t wait for the fall-out between her and Barry to happen.

So now, on top of all this, she had to deal with Marcus too. This creep, this low-life who was going to insult her family! Insult her dead father and the only parent she had left? No. Not today. Today she would not be calm. Today she wanted to be angry. Her anger was like a caged lion—beautiful, powerful, and dying to be set free.

Sarah walked between the two buildings with her hands clenched and knuckles white. She was determined to make Marcus suffer for every innocent kid he had ever picked on. For every girl he had ever humiliated. For every loathing comment that had slithered out of his mouth.

Marcus continued to laugh and motioned for her to come closer. Sarah kept walking until she was consumed in the shadows between the two buildings. She stopped to face Marcus.

“Take it back, Marcus!” she said. She was so angry that her hands were shaking. She let her backpack slide off her shoulder onto the ground.

Marcus was still grinning, as if he were a cat and she was a small, pathetic mouse.

Her anger was fueled by his vile remarks about the father she had never known, and her mother who tried so hard to take care of her and her brother. He had no right to cheapen that. She wanted to wipe that pathetic grin off his face.

Sarah reached down and picked up a rock the size of a baseball.

“You’re joking, right princess?” he said, looking at the rock.

“Shut up, Marcus, I told you to shut your mouth!”

“Or what? You’re going to throw a rock at me? Sweetheart, you’re gonna have to do a lot more than that to shut me up!”

Sarah reared back, and with all her might threw the rock as hard as she could. The rock soared through the air, but fell far from its intended target. It landed several feet to the left of Marcus.

He bellowed with laugher. It was a deep, gravelly, smoker’s laugh. To Sarah it was like nails on a chalkboard. It made her skin crawl.

Marcus bent over and picked up a rock of his own from near his feet. He had stopped laughing; his wicked grin faded into a taut thin line across his sallow face.

“Guess whose turn it is now, princess?” His stare narrowed and his eyes met Sarah’s. She could see the malice in his eyes. He hated her as much as she hated him.

Sarah stood her ground. She was breathing heavily and she could feel her pulse pounding in her head. She clenched her fists until her fingernails dug into her palms. She could feel her arms tremble.

Suddenly, there was loud rumble and several things happened at once. Deep cracks began to spread from the edges around a manhole that was between Sarah and Marcus. The cracks spread across the ground and up the sides of both buildings in the alleyway. Water burst from the manhole sending its enormous cover twenty feet into the air. The heavy steel lid came crashing down near Marcus. The cracks in the walls sprayed water through the crevices, and the sounds of pipes bursting and buckling behind the walls rang out.

Marcus fell to the ground, his eyes wide and face pale. “Earthquake!” he cried out. He got up and began to run.

Sarah could barely see him as he ran farther down the alleyway. She could feel the ground shake beneath her. She stumbled and fell to the ground, landing on her side. Water rained down on her and bricks fell from the sides of both buildings onto the street. She let out a loud scream.

Quickly, she got to her feet, turned, and began running as fast as she could toward school. She didn’t stop for her backpack or the traffic light at the end of the alleyway. Latecomers who were gathering across the street parted as a drenched girl ran past them, terrified. Sarah ran to the back of the campus toward the gymnasium. She didn’t stop running until she reached the back door. Quickly, she opened the door and closed it behind her. She looked down the hallway. No one was there. Everyone was in class. Sarah turned around, looking through the two small windows of the door. Fire trucks had pulled up next to the alleyway.

She leaned her dripping head against the door and tried to catch her breath. Her body was still trembling.

What in the world did I just do?

W
hen first period rolled around Sam was beginning to feel a little optimistic about the last day of eighth grade. But before long the optimism vanished. His first class was gym, a class that he did not excel in at all.

Coach Pillars was a tall, rather portly, balding man. He had the brilliant idea of playing dodgeball for the last day of the year. Sam hated the idea. Having balls thrown at his head at light speed did not sound like fun to him.

Like always, Sam was chosen last, next to David Johnson who had broken his leg about six months ago and still had a limp. And, like always, he was the first person to get out. This time it was Mark Preston, ex-football player, who threw the ball from the opposite end of the gym and smacked Sam in the chest. The sheer force of the impact took Sam off his feet. Next to get out was David; he took a ball to the face.

When class ended Sam made his way into the locker room to find his locker door wide open. His deodorant, towel, pants, and shower gel were all on the floor. But there was no shirt. His vintage 1976 KISS Destroyer t-shirt was gone. Sam began to panic. He got that shirt for Christmas last year from his mother, and there was no telling how much she spent on it. It was his favorite t-shirt!

Sam looked to the two remaining people in the locker room, David Johnson and Steve Allen.

“Hey, did either of you see who did this? My shirt is gone!”

David, who had been hit in the head eight times out of the nine games they played, was sitting on one of the locker room benches with his face in his hands.

“I can’t see my hands Sam, much less anything else,” he said.

Steve shut his locker and said as he walked by, “Just so you know—it wasn’t me, but if I were you, I would start with the toilet stalls.” Then he smiled and left the room.

“What? Noooo!” Sam cried in disbelief. He ran to the first stall and kicked the door open. There was no shirt. Sam continued to kick open each door one after another until he came to last stall. There he saw his vintage KISS t-shirt on the edge of the toilet. To his relief it was not in the water. But as he stepped closer it became all too clear. The vintage t-shirt had been torn into three separate pieces, two of which were floating in the used toiled bowel.

Sam’s heart sank. He loved that shirt and now it was gone forever. How in the world was he going to explain this to his mother?

After putting on his pants he threw the remains of his locker in the garbage. Sam was not taking any chances; there was no telling what the perpetrator had done to those things. He quickly made his way to the school office. He felt ridiculous walking through the hallway wearing his sweaty gray t-shirt from gym class. But that was far better than the t-shirt he found in the lost-and-found. Since it was the last day of school there were only two shirts left—one red, one pink. Sam chose the red. As fate would have it the t-shirt had white letters that said, “I See Ninjas!” in bold across the front.

He tried to talk the principal into letting him go home early or wearing his gym shirt the rest of the day. Both ideas were shot down. The gym shirt was school-issued and needed to be turned in that day. Leaving early was not an option, not without written permission or a phone call from a parent, or having his mother pick him up at school. All of which were never going to happen. The last thing Sam wanted to do was tell his mother about his KISS t-shirt lying in several pieces at the bottom of a toilet.

Unfortunately, gym would be the highlight of his day. School seemed to drag on.
Thank God it
’
s the last day,
Sam thought.

He made it through the rest of the morning unscathed. By lunch time he was starving. As he approached his locker with his stomach growling, Sam recalled the first thing Travis had said to him that morning: “Hey, your mom said pack a lunch”. He never had.

Sam slowly stopped walking, took in a deep breath and told himself,
Just breathe, Sam, just breathe
. He turned and grudgingly walked back in the direction of the lunch room.

He only had fifty cents to his name so he got a carton of milk for lunch. It would have to hold him over till he got home, if he made it that long without starving to death. He spent the entire lunch hour waiting for Travis, but Travis never showed up. He had gym right before lunch. Travis was always late, but never missed lunch. Sam knew that was not a good sign.

When the school bell finally rang at the end of last period Sam had to contain himself from bolting through the doors and screaming out FREEDOM AT LAST!

Kids ran from all corners of the building. They looked like ants leaving their hill. Sam, who was feeling extremely self-conscious in his new adopted wardrobe, waited patiently for Travis in front of the school. Like always, Travis was late. Finally, after about twenty minutes or so, he surfaced. At first, Sam did not recognize him. His head was hanging low, and he was wearing a different shirt too.

As Travis came closer what had happened became all too clear. Sam could feel his blood pressure starting to skyrocket as he stared at Travis, appalled. The sheer humility Travis wore on his face spoke volumes as he weaved through the crowd of kids who were laughing at him.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Sam said through gritted teeth.

The shirt Travis wore was bright pink with large, bold black letters that said, “I Don’t Skinny Dip, I Chunky Dip.”

“What happened to your shirt?” Sam asked quietly, trying desperately not to draw any more attention to them than necessary.

“Someone stole it in gym!” Travis replied, defeated and embarrassed. “Hey, what happened to yours?”

“Don’t ask!” Sam replied. “Let’s go and find a rock to crawl under.”

They both turned in time to see Daniel Harris, the school prankster, walk by with his group of knuckle-draggers.

“Aw, look at the twins! Did you fish that out of the toilet too?” he yelled pointing at Travis. They all laughed and pointed in Sam’s and Travis’s direction while climbing into Daniel’s SUV.

Suddenly it all made sense. Daniel was in Travis’s gym class and Billy, Bobby, Timmy, and Todd were in Sam’s. Sam’s and Travis’s numbers had finally come up. Daniel and his group of idiots had been the ones to take their shirts. They had pulled one last prank before school ended and Sam and Travis had been the victims.

“Can this day get any worse?” Sam moaned as he turned and walked toward home.

“Hey, I kind of like your shirt,” Travis said.

“Figures,” Sam replied.

The walk home was less than thrilling. Travis rambled on about
Star Wars
.

“You know I love the movie but come on! First you try to save the princess, then you kiss her, then you find out she’s your sister! I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking I would have shot myself in the face with a blaster!”

Sam paid no attention to Travis’s ramblings, except for the part about Travis sucking Jell-O off Paul Axtell’s plate. Apparently Travis took a late lunch after acquiring a new shirt. He went with the detention group. They always took the late lunch to keep them separated from the rest of the student body as part of their punishment.

“So, I ask him, ‘Can I have your Jell-O?’ He says, ‘No.’ So I put my finger in it. He said, ‘I don’t care what you do to it, Travis, I’m going to eat my Jell-O.’ So I look around to make sure there were no teachers standing by. Then I leaned over and sucked it right off his plate!” Travis laughed, “You should have seen his face!”

Sam laughed too. He found that entertaining in a strange kind of way, mostly because Paul deserved it. Paul was always putting his finger in people’s food at lunch.

It was starting to get cloudy. Things cooled off as a light breeze blew in from the north. The weatherman had talked about rain for days, and it looked like he was going to be right for a change. They needed the rain.

Sam had waited all day to ask Travis about the chocolate wrapper he had found last night. He was sure it wasn’t from around here. But, one more opinion wouldn’t hurt, he thought.