The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (16 page)

Marbie felt curious. She shook her head, trying to shake herself back into herself. She read the vision again, and felt even more curious. For she had
never told the aeronautical engineer
about her lifelong fear that long sharp items (such as umbrellas or fence posts) would somehow end up in her eye.
She had never even told him about the event with the flying beach umbrella.

And yet here, curling in her hand, was a
vision
containing not only her fear, but also the
solution
to her fear. He was going to break the arrow tops
off the fence
! Like the ends of fresh asparagus.

Her hand, which was holding the travel flashlight, trembled violently, and the light slipped and rustled through the branches to the ground. She looked down. And there was the car in the street beneath her, turning into the apartment garage.

GET OUT NOW
, Marbie typed into her pager, fingers shaking. She sent the message thirteen times before Fancy finally acknowledged it. A few moments later, she saw Fancy leaping smartly from the window to a tree, and elegantly stepping down its branches.

Marbie phoned the A.E. from work the next day and expressed wonder at his vision. He did not seem surprised at her wonder. In fact, he seemed despondent because, it turned out, he
hated
writing his visions. He said that, as a writer, one felt a
compulsion
to write, much like the compulsion that some people have to tear out their own hair. He would give anything, he said,
not
to be a writer, for writers have
expression
in their soul, which is tearing and scratching to get out! Worse, he said, far worse, to tear something out of your soul than simply to tear it from your head.

It was his secret anguish, his writing of visions, and it surprised him too, this anguish, given that he was generally practical, objective, logical, just as an
engineer,
a
scientist!
should be. But the artist, sadly, was within him.

Also, the A.E. said that he found his visions were at their best just before he fell asleep. So each night when he hopped into bed, he set his alarm for ten minutes hence. Then he let the visions scratch their way out (the agony!) as he fell asleep, and the alarm ensured that the latest visions were not lost in his dreams forever.

He said he got this idea, of setting the alarm, from a particular genius of the past, whose name he could not recall, who used to tie bells to his fingers and sit down for a sleep. The bells would wake the genius just as he began to doze, and he would quickly scribble out the ideas he had had while falling asleep.

Marbie said that there was a famous composer who used to tie weights to his little fingers to strengthen them for piano playing, but often this just broke the fingers.

At school, Listen was a sentry.

In most of her subjects, she had found places to sit away from Donna and the others, although in Science, she was not allowed to change benches. So she still had to sit with Donna and Caro, and when they did experiments together they were very polite.

At lunchtimes, she hovered around the tuckshop door, like a sentry. She stood on the tips of her toes, scanning the crowd at the counter.
Where are my friends?
her facial expressions said.
Why so slow?
She had to open up her sandwich and eat it, all the time watching and guarding the door. Then, finally, when she had finished her sandwich, she gave up and went to the library until the end-of-lunch bell rang.

Recess was the most difficult time because there were fifteen minutes to fill, and you were not allowed into the library. You were never allowed into a classroom; everybody had to sit outside on the lawn, even though it was so cold these days that girls huddled together, or rubbed each other's hands between their own to make them warm, or sometimes groups of girls got up and did the can-can in a row.

The point was, there was nowhere to hide, and fifteen minutes to fill.

Sometimes Listen thought about just going out onto the lawn and joining a group of huddled girls. If she stayed completely silent, they might not notice.

Sometimes, also, she thought about going out there onto the lawn, among the garlands of girls, and simply sitting on the grass. She could sit alone, eat an apple, read a book, and
who cares what anybody thinks
?

There was never a single person eating lunch on the lawn alone.
I am the only one in the entire school with no friends,
she realized. Or if not,
Where do they go? Where are the other lonely people? Why can't we join up and be friends?

It was exhausting enough filling up the time at school. She also had
to hide in the Vodaphone shop in Castle Towers on weekends, so that Marbie and her dad would think she was out with her friends.

Marbie read the A.E.'s other visions, but none of them spoke to her in the same direct way as the one about the sharp fence posts. That particular vision she pinned to the corkboard above her desk, and read each morning like a mantra.

It is curing me,
she thought to herself, in wonder. Whenever she feared a long, sharp item these days, she would close her eyes and imagine the aeronautical engineer prancing plumply alongside a fence, snapping off the sharp bits one by one. In her imagination, he turned to her with an armful of fence ends clutched to his chest, and he blushed, and lowered his head.

One Tuesday afternoon, Marbie looked at the phone on her desk and thought,
Well!
Because why had he not called?

She had not had a chance to say:
No more tennis,
so why had
he
decided no more tennis? All of his own accord. (Did he have a
vision
that she had meant to say it?) Of course, the weather had turned gray and chill, and there was talk that it was going to get freakishly cold, so maybe tennis was no longer appropriate. Bare legs would goosebump as they ran toward the net. Still, he could have called for a chat.

She phoned Listen to see how she was. The night before, she had said to Nathaniel, “There's something going on behind Listen's eyes.” And Nathaniel had agreed that Listen seemed different.

“I'll try harder to get her to talk,” Marbie promised. “I'm kind of sad because I thought she and I would hang out together, but she's always out with her friends.”

Now, on the phone she said, “What are you doing tonight?”

“Going ice-skating with Donna and the others,” Listen said at once. “It was so great when we went on the weekend? Sia was, like, super fast, but
Caro wouldn't let go of the gate. Me and Donna held hands and just spun around and around till we got dizzy. So, we're going again tonight; maybe every Tuesday night from now on.”

“Sad,” said Marbie. “I was going to see if you wanted to come to the movies with me.”

“Huh.” Listen was quiet. Then she said, “Maybe another night?”

Marbie hung up and called Nathaniel. “I just have to come to terms with it,” she said. “Listen prefers to be with her friends, so probably that's why she seems depressed when she's with us. She's so sweet and polite though, when I asked her out tonight, she suggested we do something another night. I guess I should leave her alone.”

“Me too,” Nathaniel agreed. “If she's in that phase she definitely doesn't want to hang with her dad.”

Marbie wandered out of her office and found Tabitha and Toni gasping in the corridor. It turned out that Abi and Rhamie had joined an A-grade basketball team, abandoning the office competition. “Call me old-fashioned,” said Toni hotly, “but Abi is just
not
an A-grade player!”

“Let's have some wine from the small boardroom fridge,” suggested Marbie, “and discuss it.”

They slipped into the boardroom, one at a time, and closed the shutters so that Abi and Rhamie would not find them. Then they discussed what a bad basketball player Abi was, although, they conceded, now and again Rhamie was an excellent shooter.

Later, they moved on to the Night Owl Pub, where Abi and Rhamie found them and said, “What's going on?” Toni explained, with a strong but occasionally trembling voice, that she and Tabitha felt betrayed. Abi and Rhamie were shocked, and it turned out it was all a misunderstanding! Because Abi
had
sent an e-mail around about the A-grade team, inviting Tabitha and Toni to join too. But Tabitha and Toni had both
deleted the message, thinking it was that virus going around. So it was nobody's fault. They all congratulated each other on being such good basketball players, and Toni cried.

Marbie herself was not on the team, so she could be objective, and they thanked her for that, once the dispute was resolved. “You're so
tall,
” said Rhamie, as usual. “You'd make a great keeper!” But the others just laughed because Marbie always let the ball slip through her fingers.

At that, Marbie put down her frothy Irish ale and said, “I don't feel so good.”

“That's because you had wine before beer,” declared Abi, and then she chanted: “Wine before beer, and you'll feel queer; beer before wine, and you'll feel fine.”

“Is that true?”

“Of course it's true,” said Rhamie, “it rhymes.”

Then Abi and Rhamie remembered their husbands, gathered their handbags, and made a joke or two about basketball.

A moment after they had gone, Marbie gasped with realization, and whispered to the others, “How did Abi know I had wine before beer?” Tabitha and Toni also gasped, for they had kept their meeting in the small boardroom a secret.

After they had analyzed this for a while, Tabitha and Toni had to run to their step class, and Marbie thoughtfully finished her frothy Irish ale. She was just about to pick up her own handbag, so she could get the express train home, when two hairy hands fell on her shoulders.

Remember me?

I'm writing from the 73 bus. There's a huge, sweaty guy beside me, and his big butt takes up more room on the seat than it deserves. It's Wednesday, 2 p.m., and I should be at work but I'm not.

Here's what happened.

Last night, I went to the Night Owl with the girls from work. The girls left—Rhamie and Abigail to their husbands, Tabitha and Toni to step class. I had my drink to finish, so there I sat, and behind me? Leaning over my shoulder, breathing beer into my cheek, two hairy hands on my shoulders?

The aeronautical engineer.

I hadn't seen him for two weeks, at least. Not since he gave me his visions. I'd almost forgotten him.

But there he was in the Night Owl Pub.

“Hello,” he said, leaning over me, a murmur of a smile around his beery lips.

“I have a suggestion,” he said.

“Not tennis,” I said.

He pretended to look shocked. He mimed a tennis ball hitting him in the stomach, but recovered quickly, and the smile was less a murmur, more a shout.

“All right,” he agreed, “not tennis. I had this idea, is all.”

Then he leaned closer and spoke into my ear: “Come to my house, tomorrow at 3, take the 73 bus, it stops outside my door.” He told me his address. “And you know what we'll do?” he whispered.

“What?” I whispered back.

Then he winked, spun on his heel, and disappeared.

Here's the amazing thing. I took the 73 bus, rode through icy streets, saw his house approach, reached my hand to the
STOP REQUEST
button—and stopped.

I'm not going there. I'm on my way home now, to fix this.

Yours,

Perplexed yet Determined

It was Wednesday, they had made cheese soufflé in Food Technology, and Listen was hopeful. The bell had rung for recess, and they had not even washed up! The other girls groaned, while Listen quietly filled her sink with soapy warm water.

“Never mind, girls!” cried the teacher generously. “Out you all go! I'll clean this up later!”

Listen pretended not to hear, and concentrated on the cheese chunks in the grater.

“Come on, Listen, I'm sure that's clean,” called the teacher, ushering the last girls from the room. “Go along and get some fresh air!”

Outside the classroom, Listen checked her watch. It was 10:46. There were still fourteen minutes to fill. She leaned over, untied her shoelaces and retied them, went to the end of the corridor and retied them again. Then she took the long route to the bathrooms, around the back of the building, always hurrying, sighing and checking her watch, so that if anybody saw her she was just rushing off to meet her friends.

In the bathroom, she washed each hand with soap, and dried them at the heaters with great care. Now it was 10:51. There were still nine minutes. She hesitated outside the bathrooms, looking both ways along the empty balcony. One direction would take her into the admin office, where she could pretend she had lost something and fill in a lost-property form. The other took her to the Grade Seven classrooms, where they were not supposed to be. Her eyes wandered the locked doors of 7A, 7B, 7C, and 7D, and then stopped at the next door along. She had never noticed that door before.

It was a darker gray than the other doors and did not have a number or letter. As she watched, it was slowly opening. A school handyman was emerging, his arms stretched wide around a large cardboard box. Once out of the room, he looked both ways, kicked the door closed behind him, and grunted. Then he disappeared down the fire escape. She did not
even make a decision. She just strode along the balcony, opened the gray door, and walked inside.

It was cramped, dark, and smelled like mushrooms. She could see the shadowy shapes of boxes stacked precariously, shovels, rakes, and shelves lined with aerosol cans. Also, against the far wall, a tiny bulb illuminated a panel of switches.
Fuse box,
she thought, and felt pleased with herself. Growing up in a campervan, she had learned how to change fuses, tires, and halogen lights. She had helped her dad install a dishwasher once.