Funny Tragic Crazy Magic (Tragic Magic Book 1) (8 page)

I
woke up with Joe’s knees resting against the back of mine; his left hand was on
my shoulder. I felt safe for the moment, but it didn’t feel romantic as much as
it felt like he wanted to make sure I was still there. I stretched my legs, and
Joe turned away from me pulling the top sheet with him.

Ms.
P. stood in Joe’s room with her arms folded.

“Joe,”
I said, “We’re dead.”

I
sat up, ready to explain that nothing happened; I still had my shoes on for
goodness sake. Joe woke and called out for me. That would have made me happy
except that it just earned us more trouble.

Ms.
P. escorted me into the front room and sat me down on the couch. All the while,
I was trying to explain myself and point out I was still wearing my shoes so
obviously nothing happened. However, she ignored me and went back in for Joe.

He,
for some reason (I had no idea) wasn’t currently wearing his shirt. I put my
head in my hands. He was so not helping the situation. She sat him down in a
seat far away from me and then began pacing the living room.

“Where’s
your shirt?” I asked.

Ms.
P. interrupted me, “You will speak when spoken to.”

You
could tell she was flustered. Adults are always flustered when speaking in Ye
Olde English. It’s just a fact. She turned to Joe.

“Where’s
your shirt?” she asked.

“I
was wearing a sweater, and it got hot so I took it off,” Joe said.

“Joe,
go put a shirt on,” Ms. P. ordered.

Joe
stood and for a second I looked over at him. I could see the muscles on his
back lean and pulsing. He had a farmers tan. I looked away. Ms. P. was watching
me.

I
tried not to blush. Ms. P. squatted down so her eyes were level with mine.
“Larissa, you are a good girl, you need to know that these actions you are
taking have serious consequences…”

“Nothing
happened,” I said emphatically. “I’m wearing shoes.”

“Larissa,
a good girl doesn’t lay down in a bed with a boy.”

I
put my head down on my arms. Joe entered the room.

“Joe,
you have missed too many classes this semester.” Ms. P. said. “I can’t excuse
any more without threatening my position. Then I come home to find you in bed
with my best student? You made a promise that this year would be different,
that you’d be done messing with girls.”

“Hey,”
I said, standing up. “Stop. Joe is a great person. You don’t know what… Look, I
made a mistake, and I’m sorry. I went into Joe’s room and tried to wake him up
so we could go to school, but I fell asleep. That’s all that happened. We will
make up our homework, I promise. I’ll help him. Nothing happened. I’m still…
wearing… shoes!”

I
walked to the door.

“I’m
going now.” I looked over at Joe one more time and he was smiling at me, as if
he saw the joke in all of this.

Ms.
P. stopped me with her next sentence, “I’ll be speaking to your mother about
this, Riz.”

“Good
luck with that,” I said as I closed the door.

“Joe,
you’re grounded.” Ms. P. yelled. “School and home, that’s it...”

I
walked to my car trying not to smile.

When
I got home, there was a message on the machine. I ignored it for a minute,
opened up the dinner cupboard for a can of soup, and pulled my notebook out of
my backpack. Joe had drawn the new rune in my notebook before he even woke me
up. The new rune from the front door of the abandoned house stood out on the
page. Maybe it’s just my OCD, but I wanted more than anything to give this rune
a name.

This
was probably a dumb thing to do, but I drew the rune on the kitchen counter. At
first, nothing really seemed very different, but then it felt like the shadows
started collecting in the corners of the room. As I moved my hand past them,
they jumped out at me and landed in my hair. I wiped away the rune as quickly
as I could, but still there was this feeling of anxiety that wouldn’t leave me
alone. Even the silence of the house seemed louder.

I
wrote in my notebook a clear label under the rune.

The
freak-out-er.

The
Grandmothers wanted us freaked out. Accomplished. They wanted us to know that
they knew Joe could do runes, and that they were watching us. They left my
sister’s princess shoe to tell me they knew I was involved with Joe, and that
they could kill me as easily as they did Phoebe.

No,
my family died in a car accident. The Grandmothers didn’t kill them.

Right?

I
glanced at the blinking light on the cordless phone base. I pulled the can
opener from its place in the silverware drawer, opened the can, and tossed a
bowl of soup into the microwave. Nothing like a home cooked dinner.

After
the microwave beeped and I took my first bite of the lukewarm soup, my
curiosity got the better of me. I pulled the cordless phone from its base and
dialed #987. A minute of robot-ese asked me if I wanted to check my messages --
and by the way how obnoxious is that? I called the number to check my messages,
so what else would I want to be doing? Robots are not that intelligent.

Anyway,
I had one message, and it started playing.

“Theresa,
this is Maggie Penrod, we met last week at Parent Teacher conference. I’m Joe’s
mom. I’m sure you know Joe.” Her breath crackled as she sighed into the phone.
“If you could call me... What we feared has happened. They’ve moved beyond
friends. Please give me a call so we can set up consistent ground rules, and,
you know… keep these kids from throwing away their futures. Okay. Um… I’ll talk
to you soon.”

The
message robot asked if I wanted to erase the message, and I hung up knowing
that the message would automatically save.

Ms.
P. met my mom last week. How was that possible? My eyes naturally glanced at
the protection rune my mom left still glowing viable.

Meg.
Meg would know. I dialed her number and took a bite of soup while I waited. Her
brother answered and harassed me for a minute as only a twelve year-old boy
can. Then eventually I got Meg on the phone.

“Hey.”
I said.

“Wow,
you do exist,” she said.

Her
feelings were hurt. I didn’t realize that all that time I was spending with Joe
usually went to Meg. I was that obnoxious girl who got a boyfriend and then
ditched all her friends. And Joe didn’t even like me.

“I’m
so sorry, Meg,” I said. “I know I haven’t been a good friend to you lately.”

We
talked for a minute about what was going on in her life: swim practice, history
tests, and her mom taking away her IPod because she brought it with her to
church… Rube stuff. It felt good to have a normal minute in between all this
craziness. When she asked where I had been today, I lied and told her I wasn’t
feeling well.

“Hey,”
I said trying to sound like the idea just popped in my head, “You were at Parent
Teacher conference, right?

“Yeah,”
she said, “the swim team was selling cookies. You want any?”

I
thought for a second. “Sure. Did you see my mom there?”

“Umm...
Yeah, for a second.”

My
stomach muscles clenched. “Did she seem, I don’t know, weird?”

“What,
are you getting a B or something?” she said.

“Yeah,
something like that.”

“Well,
I just saw her for a minute while she was passing our table,” she said. “I said
her name and waved, and she turned and looked around. She looked right at me,
and it was like she didn’t recognize me. Me, the girl who she made matching
Halloween costumes for when we were seven, and made stop sleeping in her
backyard when I was nine.”

Meg
laughed at the memory, and I laughed too, though not convincingly.

“She
was probably just distracted,” Meg said. “I didn’t think anything of it. She
hasn’t really been the same since that car accident.”

I
spoke quickly, “Yeah, with the new job and her traveling all the time she’s
been really stressed.”

“Makes
sense,” Meg said.

I
sighed. I hated lying to Meg.

“I
gotta go,” I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Moon Blossom.”

“Okay,
Star Twinkler. Shine bright.”

We
laughed together and then I hung up the phone. My soup had gone cold. I didn’t
want to eat it, so I dumped it in the trashcan and then put the bowl in the
dishwasher. I made brownies instead--from the box, not from scratch the way my
mom used to make them. From the time I put the brownies in the oven until I
took them out, there were no sounds in the kitchen except for the clock ticking
away.

I
was going to eat the whole batch by myself, but something told me that
grounding wasn’t going to stop Joe from doing whatever he wanted. I saved two
corner pieces for him.

I
was right. He walked through my front door at one in the morning. I was sitting
in my front room reading a Brandon Sanderson novel with a throw blanket over my
legs. The phone was on the ground in front of me.

“There
are brownies in the kitchen,” I said.

While
he was dishing up, I dialed the message open and then put the phone on speaker.
He sat down on the couch next to me, my toes brushed against his legs, so I
slid them underneath me.

After
the message played, Joe in a remarkably astute way, said, “so?”

“So?”
I said, “Seriously! Okay, first off, how did she meet my mom a week ago? That’s
not possible. Someone must have
transformed
to look like my mom, found
out, I don’t know, stuff about us, the water thing probably, and at least that
we are spending a lot of time together. Then what, three days later, the
Grandmothers lay a trap to give us a warning. Which means, I’m guessing here, a
Grandmother was talking to your mom?”

“You’ve
been bottling this up since you got home haven’t you?” he asked.

“Shut
up,” I said. “And yes.”

He
laughed and I stuck out my tongue at him.

“This
is serious. Okay, where was I?” I took a deep breath. “Second, how am I gonna
get my dead mom to talk to your mom about us…” I held up my fingers and made
quote signs, “dating.”

“Don’t
worry ‘bout it, Riz. My mom will calm down.” He put his hand on my knee. “You
and I both know we’re just friends, and she’ll figure it out too, eventually.”

I
looked down at the carpet. He moved his hand.

“Seriously
Larissa, don’t worry,” he said. “She loves you; it’s me she can’t stand.”

Why
was Joe’s mom the only one in that family who loved me? That’s what I’d like to
know.

“She
loves you, Joe.” He looked over at me, the sunflower in his eyes focused on
mine as if I was their sunshine. “I know she does.”

He
gave me a half smile. “Thanks for standing up for me.”

I
shrugged. We just looked at each other for a moment, I could feel heat from his
eyes focus in on my lips for a second, and then he looked away.

“Okay,”
I said. “So Joe, you want to help me steal something?”

Joe
laughed once and leaned back on the couch. “Hells yeah. What do you want? You
want to break into a bank? Fort Knox? I could totally do it.”

“And
then totally get caught,” I said.

“How
would they catch me?” He said with a cocky emphasis on the word ‘me.’

“Um,
with cameras,” I said. “Oh, and then a field of agents who would know you can
walk through walls and carry guns. Like it or not Joe, you aren’t invincible.
They shoot you, you die.”

Joe
faked being shot and then pretended he died, collapsing over my legs, which was
funny then but isn’t now.

I
laughed. “We’re not stealing any money.”

He
sat back up. “Oh man, I’ve been waiting for the chance to get some real money
since that first wall opened up.” Joe scratched the side of his neck.

“Technically,
we’re not stealing anything,” I said, “just retrieving something that’s mine.”

“Done,”
he said.

“You
know how I’ve told you before about my mom’s notebook,” I started.

“That’s
what we’re stealing,” he finished for me. “Done. Do you know where it is?”

“No
clue.”

“Well,
that makes it harder, but we can still do it,” he said.

I
smiled at his bravado. I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy though. Even if I
did know where my mom’s notebook was at that point, getting away with it would
be impossible with only ten runes.

If
only there was a way to get my hands on someone else’s notebook, just for a
minute. I could borrow a few more runes. Give myself more of a chance to get
the notebook back.

I
didn’t really know any other Runes. Except… I laughed. This was the dumbest
idea I’ve ever had. So dumb, in fact, it might work.

“But
first, we have to ‘borrow’ something I’ve got no right to,” I said.

“Every
time I see you, Rizzo, you get more interesting.” He smiled, and I rolled my
eyes. “So what are we borrowing?” he asked, his eyebrows rising up and down
like Groucho Marx.

I
smiled.

“We,”
I said, trying very hard not to get excited about the casual use of the word,
“are going to borrow a Grandmother’s notebook.”