Alchemist Academy: Book 1 (3 page)

He climbed over the fence and hopped down to his side.

I stared at the fence, breathing through my mouth and thinking of the things he’d said and done. I was probably reading too much into it, but I almost thought he’d been flirting with me. Actually, I was sure of it.

The front door of the house opened.

Janet was home.

I ran through the kitchen and opened the door to the basement, eased the door closed behind me, and tiptoed down the stairs. Light was shining in through the small basement window, illuminating the pile of laundry next to the mattress on the floor. Just like I’d left it last time, and the musty smell still remained.
How pleasant.

I reached behind the paint can on a shelf and pulled out my tattered copy of
A Tale of Two Cities
, then rushed back up the stairs and inched the door open. I watched as Janet walked into the kitchen. Quietly, I crossed the family room to the side door. I knew she hadn’t noticed me because she hadn’t screamed, nor was I given some mundane, last-second chore to do before her horrible friends arrived.

The side yard had grass on the ground, and was only a few feet wide. I liked it there. A fence enclosed the whole thing and I found it to be a quiet place I could escape to and read.

The loud air conditioner kicked on next to me. So much for being quiet. I sighed and moved away from it. If I got lost in the book enough, I wouldn’t hear it.

Who runs the air conditioner when it’s only seventy-five degrees?

Fifty pages in, I set the book down and looked at the top of the fence. It had to have been thirty minutes by now. The party guests had arrived and a cackle of laughter flooded out from Janet and her friends. The little one should be opening his presents soon, and the thought of them finding the broken iPad sent my heart racing.

There was a tap on the fence and my new best friend jumped over, landing next to me. Warm air blew past me and carried with it the distinct smell of Mark. Like soap with a hint of something else I couldn’t place.

“I came to rescue you.”

A lump formed in my throat and I croaked out, “I don’t need a rescue.”

Mark glanced back at the gate blocking the party from me. “I just spotted your little brother opening presents.”

“Stepbrother.”

“Fine, let’s get out of here. I promise to get you back before either of our moms notice.”

“Stepmom.”

He reached out and offered both hands. I placed mine in his and he pulled me all the way up to my feet. Wiping off my butt, I glanced down the narrow fence line toward the sounds of the party. I heard the
oohs
and
aahs
from the crowd as Spencer opened another present.

“Come on,” Mark said. His soft hand enveloped mine. I normally didn’t like it when someone touched me, but this… this was okay.

I followed him to the front gate and he let go of my hand to open it.
He’s just being neighborly,
I reminded myself.
Then why is he looking at me like that?
Each time he did it, my stomach fluttered and I sucked in a quick breath.

We walked past all the parked cars and down the street lined with houses. Each house was the same design, but each owner seemed to take pride in their lawn and the small landscaping differences.

“Where to?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on. There has to be somewhere you go, somewhere unique.”

My eyes lit up. “There is, but you have to promise to not tell anyone else about it. It’s sort of my little space away from it all.” I gave him a stern look and waited for his nod.

“I can keep a secret.”

My hands grasped at each two-by-four nailed into the tree. At the top of the makeshift ladder, the hatch door flopped open with a little push and I climbed through into the room. I took quick inventory of anything that might be embarrassing. I grabbed my worn copy of
Fifty Shades of Grey
and tossed it out the window just as Mark’s head popped through the hatch door.

“Aren’t you a bit old to have a tree house?” Mark asked, looking around.

“You can be seventeen and still enjoy stuff, you know.”

He hoisted himself into the room and hit his head on the ceiling. “Ouch.” He rubbed his head.

I saw judgment spreading across his face as he scanned the room. It had a single chair by the window and a pile of books stacked next to it.

“It’s awesome. Did you build this?”

“Nah, I was just walking in the woods one day when I found it.”

“So, naturally, you claimed it?”

“I guess. I’ve never brought anyone out here before.”

“Until now? Well, I’m honored to be your first guest.” Mark bowed and then walked to the window. “You can see the rooftops from here. Isn’t that red one yours?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Oh my god, you’ve read
To Kill a Mockingbird
?” He picked up my tattered copy.

“Yeah, like five times.”

“Atticus Finch is a hero of mine.”

“Most of the boys around here wouldn’t know Finch from Potter.”

“I’m not most boys.” He set the book down and stared out the window. He had a wonder to his look, like he absorbed everything with an infectious positivity. Even the dark clouds around me felt brighter with him around.

“No, you’re not. Where did you come from?”

“We … well, we….” he stammered, then tried again. “We came from Baker, California. Home of the world’s largest thermometer. What about you?”

“I’ve lived here most of my life.”

“You like Summerford?”

“God, no. The people here are awful. The school is terrible.” I didn’t know why I was trying to make it sound so bad. Was I trying to be cool?

“It can’t be all bad. A pretty girl like you… In a town like this.”

His calling me “pretty” set off a mixture of alarms. Bridget had mastered the use of sarcasm to such a high degree that it felt natural to question any compliment sent my way. I touched my straight black hair and looked at my pale skin.

“I….” I didn’t know what to say, and glanced at the hatch.

“You don’t take compliments well, do you? What would one of the boys in this town say? How about, ‘You look as fine as a polished John Deere’?”

I chuckled. “They might say, ‘You look as fancy as a pig in a parade.’”

He laughed. “I have no idea what that means.”

“I don’t either.” I smiled. I couldn’t help but smile when he did.

He took a step closer to me. “I know we just sort of met, but I feel like I know you. Is that crazy?” he asked.

His soft eyes melted my insides. I felt the same comfortable way. It seemed stupid, but I did. Like an idiot, I wanted to tell him all about my family and my problems at school. Of course, I bit my tongue.

Mark turned from the window and rubbed his stomach. He took in a quick breath and opened his mouth but then closed it.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine.” He took his hand off his stomach. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but I just have to ask you something about my mom. She visited you today at school, right?”

“Yeah, for some strange chemistry experiment. She had each of us mix up something.”

He moved closer. “What did she have you do?”

“We poured something that looked like water onto a pile of flaky stuff in a bowl.”

He rubbed his chin. “And then what happened?”

“Why does it matter?” I crossed my arms.

“It’s the difference between our relationship being simple or complicated. Did it just melt into a liquid?”

“No, it misted and turned into a white stone.”

Mark winced and rubbed his eyes. “There’s something you need to know, Allie.” He sounded as if he was about to dish out a lecture.

I set down the book
Wool
on the shelf and waited to hear what I needed to know.

He opened his mouth and raised a pointed finger….

“Mark,” a woman’s voice called from below.

He closed his eyes for a second and moved close to me, then put a hand on my shoulder and his perfect face moved near mine. My thoughts went wild in preparation for a kiss, but his lips landed close to my ear.

“Don’t trust my mom,” he whispered. “And don’t make another thing for her.”

“Mark, get down here now. I know you’re up there.”

He turned from me. “Coming, Mother.” He stood and watched my face.

My mouth hung open. Flirting was one thing, but this was just weird. Don’t trust his mom?

Mark opened the hatch and climbed down the ladder. Through the opening, I peered past him to Ms. Duval standing below. She had her arms crossed, but when she saw me looking she smiled and waved.

“Hello, Allie. I hope Mark was being appropriate.”

“He was a perfect gentleman,” I called back to her.

Mark shook his head as he took the last steps off the ladder. When he reached her, Ms. Duval whispered into his ear. Then she said, “Allie, I like to get to know all of Mark’s friends. Could you please join us for some tea?”

Mark took a step behind his mother and shook his head, mouthing the word
no
.

His words hung around in my head.
Don’t trust my mom.
“I think I’d better be getting back to my house.”

“Very well, but I won’t take no for an answer next time. After all, we’re neighbors and I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other.”

Mark waved to me. “To be continued. Remember what I said.”

Ms. Duval put a hand on his shoulder and nudged him away.

Janet was pissed.

School had been canceled today because of some electrical fire. I knew she relished the time she had by herself, and with my dad gone for most of the year, she had plenty of it. I wasn’t even sure where he was, maybe the Middle East?

“You’re going to have to watch Spencer,” Janet said.

“Mom, I’m ten now. I can watch myself.”

She patted his head. “The big one-oh.”

“I can watch him,” I said.

“I wasn’t asking,” she spewed. “I’ll be gone for a few hours and when I get back, I expect your chores to be done.”

I stopped my eyes from rolling. Janet hated that. “Yup.”

“Only Spencer is allowed into the fridge or the pantry.”

He smiled. It gave him some power over me, being the one who knew the combinations on the locks.

She knelt close to his face. “If anything happens, sweetie, call me on my cellphone.” She frowned at me before she left.

With Janet gone, Spencer went into the kitchen and worked the combination lock on the refrigerator. He hovered over the lock so I couldn’t see it. I left the kitchen and went to the backyard, anything to get away from his snotty face. I stared at my first chore of the day: cleaning the mess left over from the party.

I clutched a vinyl
Star Wars
tablecloth and pulled it free from the tape holding it down. At least they didn’t want to save it all; I could destroy it as I tore it all down. Spencer would never have the same themed party two years in a row.

The pile of trash grew as I grabbed, yanked and tore down their celebration remnants. Even his wrapping paper lay on the grass, next to the careless people’s red cups.

“That’s a serious mess.”

I jumped back from the voice and clutched my chest. “Jeesh, you scared me.”

“Did I?” Ms. Duval said over the fence. “How about that tea?”

Mark’s voice pounded in my head.
Don’t trust her
. “I’ve really got to clean this stuff up.”

“I told you I wouldn’t take no for an answer the second time.” Her stern face left no room for arguments.

I put my hands on my hips and glared at the paper wrappings and plates scattered around the yard. How much trouble could there be in tea? Maybe Mark would be there. “Let me get Spencer set up.”

How to keep a ten-year-old busy? First I set up his video games on the big family room TV, then I gave him an invitation to come to the backyard and help clean up if he wanted. With Spencer definitely not coming to the backyard, I left the house.

Ms. Duval was still standing behind the fence, her head peeking over. I walked toward her, and when the fence opened, she was standing on the other side.

I stopped. “I didn’t know we had a gate back here.”

“I can’t have you climbing over fences, now, can I?”

I tentatively stepped through the opening and entered her backyard. It was about the same size as mine, but the grass was overgrown except for the strip leading to the broken-down mower. Ms. Duval shut the gate and I jumped at the noise.

“Please, let’s go to the dining room.”

I followed her into the house and took a seat at the table. The house looked mostly empty, save for a few open boxes scattered around. She brought out a pitcher of iced tea and poured me a glass.

“Thank you.” I took the glass. “Is Mark here?”

“He’ll be home soon.”

I sipped the tea. Cool and refreshing. I drank more and looked around the room. A few boxes were unpacked, and a full hutch stood next to door way to the dining room. Beakers and vials lined its shelves. I took another sip and studied the different objects, many I remembered from the cart she had brought to school.

“You like it.” Ms. Duval stood and walked over to it.

“Another one of your chemistry sets?”

“I’m not a chemist.”

“Oh, I thought Mr. Briggs said you were.”

“He did. I just didn’t correct him. It’s impolite to correct people in their houses.”

I nodded and kept studying the displayed items. “What are you, then?”

“I’m an alchemist.”

“Like, you’re trying to create gold?”

She laughed—a pleasant laugh that I was shocked to hear.

“Some do, but not me. I’m more interested in the achievable goals. Like what you did in school yesterday.”

“What do you mean? I just mixed two ingredients together. I didn’t even choose what they were.”

“Then why didn’t the experiment work for any of the other students?”

“They must have done different things than I did.”

“Why don’t you tell me about the iPad you broke yesterday?”

I stood up from my chair. “How do you know about that?”

“I spent a bit of time at the party yesterday with your stepmom. She blamed it on your inability to wrap a gift properly. She’s a wretched woman, isn’t she?”

Maybe Ms. Duval wasn’t so bad. I sat back down. I was sure Janet had gone on and on about what a fool of a stepchild she had, who couldn’t even wrap a gift without creating a disaster.

She continued, “But that’s not how it broke, is it?”

“I don’t know. I just held it and it broke.”

“Were you feeling anything the moment it broke?”

I looked at my hands and then back at the door. I couldn’t look her in the eyes, but I felt her stare. “I was mad,” I blurted out.

“This isn’t the first time your anger has caused things to happen, is it?”

I thought about the sidecar falling off. “No.”

“What if I told you only one in a hundred million people can do what you did yesterday?”

“I’d say you’re crazy.”
There goes my mouth again.
I hoped I hadn’t offended her.

She smiled coolly. “You have a gift, and I suspect, a very strong one. If you like, I can show you something.” She opened the door to the hutch and pulled out a couple of vials and a mixing bowl with a spoon. She placed them on the table in front of me. The bowl looked like a large metal salad bowl with a long wooden spoon sticking out of it.

“Certain people,
special
people, can infuse their emotions into matter. It appears you have that gift.”

I raised an eyebrow and checked the tea in my glass. Maybe she’d laced it with something. I couldn’t have heard her right.

“Okay, I can see you’re skeptical.” Ms. Duval raised an eyebrow and I squirmed in my seat. She pushed the bowl closer to me. “Just mix these two ingredients while you think of something that makes you angry, and I think you’ll see exactly what you’re capable of when you put your mind to it.”

“Just pour them in this bowl and mix?”

“Yes, but you must focus your anger into them for it to work properly. Is there a strong memory you can summon to make yourself angry?”

“I think I can find one.”
Or a hundred.

Curiosity moved my hands to the vials. Blue liquid in one and clear in the other. I shifted in my seat and lifted the vials above the glass bowl. I took a deep breath and thought of Janet and Spencer last month on my birthday. They’d thought it funny that no one knew it was my birthday until a letter came from my dad. Keeping the letter from me, they’d laughed while I chased Spencer around the kitchen, trying to get it from his hands. I screamed when he tore it into pieces.

I poured the liquids into the bowl and stirred the spoon around, creating a maelstrom. It bubbled and swirled. White mist filled the bowl. Ms. Duval leaned over and blew. I coughed at the fumes and waved them away from my face.

She raised the bowl in her hands. Her eyes went wide as a round blue stone about the size of an egg rolled around, then she adjusted her expression back to a sweet smile and placed the bowl on the table.

I looked at the blue stone, settling at the bottom of the bowl, and reached my hand in.

“Don’t touch it!”

I nearly fell off my chair. Ms. Duval grabbed the bowl.

“You have to be more careful. These things are … delicate.” She pulled a cloth from the hutch and used it to pick up the blue stone. She dropped it into a penny purse, then snapped it shut.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I noticed you’ve taken a liking to my son.”

I choked on some of the tea I’d just sipped. “Yes, well, we only just met.”

“I can tell he likes you.” She smiled and sat down across the table.

He liked me? I’d picked up on his little flirtations, but hearing another person say the words made me feel all warm inside. I smiled and took another sip of tea.

“Why, I haven’t seen him look this healthy in weeks. I should thank you.”

“What do you mean? Is there something wrong with him?”

“Oh, I thought he might have told you. Please don’t let him know I said anything. He’d be mortified, I’m sure.”

I frowned at Ms. Duval and looked to the door, hoping Mark would arrive and I could look at him, inspect him. “I didn’t notice anything wrong. He looks ridiculously fit, actually.”

“He feels if he keeps himself strong and fit, his body will be better at fighting the disease. We’ve kept it bay for so many years, but it’s a losing battle.” Ms. Duval wiped her eyes.

“I’m so sorry. I had no idea. What do the doctors say?”

“They said to make him as comfortable as I can and give him as normal of a life as possible. I just thought you should know before you get too involved.”

She made it sound like he was dying. I leaned forward and set my glass down. My hand started shaking. “There has to be something we can do. What’s it called? I can Google it. I bet there are alternatives.”

Ms. Duval leaned forward and set her glass on a coaster. She whispered, “There
are
things that can be done, but—”

“What’s going on?” Mark interrupted.

I jolted upright in my chair and wondered how much he’d heard. He breezed into the room wearing a thin black shirt and jeans. I scanned his body, searching for something to show me what the problem was. His eyes narrowed and he looked from me to his mom.

“Honey, you’re home early,” Ms. Duval said. She shot me a look with a slight nod of her head.

“Hey, Mark. Your mom invited me over for tea.” I grabbed my glass and took a sip, but I kept my eyes on him. He looked as healthy as anyone I’d ever seen. Could this be what Mark had been talking about with his mom? Was she lying as a tactic to keep me away from Mark?

He looked at me for a second with hints of anger dancing at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Guilt swept over me. He had told me not to trust her and here we were, having tea.

He glared at his mom. “I told you to leave her alone.”

“We were just having a friendly chat.”

“I think I’d better get going,” I said.

Mark took the glass bowl off the table. He gazed at me and sighed. “What did you do?”

“I just mixed a couple of vials together.”

He took a deep breath and scowled at his mom. She held his gaze with contempt and I felt years of tension built up between them. They locked eyes and I held my breath, waiting to see who’d look away first. Mark gave in and gripped the edges of the bowl with his white-knuckled hands.

“I’m going to go,” I said.

“Come on, Allie. I’ll walk you home.” He set the bowl on the table and gave it a spin before giving his mom one more sharp look.

Before the bowl stopped spinning, I was out of there. In the backyard, Mark stopped next to the fence and put a hand on top of it.

“I thought I told you not to trust my mom,” he whispered.

“She wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was just tea until she busted out a chemistry set.”

“Alchemy.”

“Whatever.” I fumbled around with my hands. I wanted to ask him about his illness and why he hadn’t told me. Was it even real?

“I’m sorry.” He touched my arm. “But there’s something you need to know about my mom, and I think about yourself. She can change things … create stuff from other stuff.” He took a deep breath. “What did she have you do in there?”