STALKER

Chapter 51 - 6th STILL

We sat out in the garden for hours, enjoying the mild winter sunshine. We talked in whispers as if we were in a confessional. Granddad stood at the back door the entire time, watching us and brooding. We picked at the food and drank the beer one can after another until both of us were a little lightheaded. Weirdo who normally speaks in abrupt, cryptic sentences, or slips in smart-arse one-liners, let loose and told me about his childhood. It was a mirror image of mine. I suppose it made a peculiar sort of sense that we would eventually cross paths. As kids, our psychic abilities made us different, misfits. Our families reacted in totally opposite ways to those abilities. In my case, my parents tried to ignore and suppress them with counselling, medication, and endlessly flooding me with their love and attention. While Weirdo was immersed in all things supernatural as if they wanted to ring everything special out of him.

I won't bother with the jargon Weirdo used but basically, his mother and grandmother are witches; they are Wicca practitioners. He glossed over most of it, the rituals and coven community; it came down to the simple fact his childhood was a far cry from being ordinary. But ordinary was all he wanted, ordinary friends, and an ordinary mother and father. The harder my parents distanced me from my abilities; on Weirdo's side the more it was imposed on him until he started to rebel in his teens after his father left.

So now I understand the strange vibe at his mother's house the minute I walked in the door,  the ghostly residents, and super creepy Nana Ovia. I can see why he skirted around just how odd his family was. It's not like it's easy to say my mother's a witch.

I filled him in on what my childhood was like and we both agreed that being ordinary is underrated. I was lucky enough to have brothers to save me from being lonely, he wasn't so lucky.

....

"So what made you finally decide to go traveling? I can't imagine your mother and grandmother wanting their little Petru out of their sight, from everything you've said I'm surprised they didn't lock you in your room." I was lounging back on an old banana chair, my stomach was full and I'd just opened a bottle of nice red. I was looking at it swirling around in the glass, feeling content and happy with myself.  I was enjoying a lazy afternoon and our strange conversation.  "Did you just get fed up one day and decide that's it...I'm off."

Weirdo was sitting rocking on his chair glaring at the back door. "Is he still there? I can't feel him."

"Yep. Still watching us." I gave John a little Queen Mother wave and then turned back to Weirdo.  "So, did you creep out at night while they were asleep?"

"You have an overactive imagination. It was easy actually. It's kind of a tradition in our family to spend some time traveling." He sighed and refilled my glass and poured himself one. "We've got this right of passage tradition that we need to perform to get us ready for the next life." Weirdo moved his chair into the last sunny spot in the garden, turning his back to Granddad. The setting sun, gold and mellow and lit up his mop of curls. He almost looked like he had a halo. The top half of his face was in shadow beneath his fringe; but the lower half shimmered, his freckles dark against his pale skin. He stretched out his long legs and settled back in the chair.

"Usually people get heirlooms handed down through the family, like all the old stuff in your room. Like the ring, you're wearing." He pointed at my hand and I automatically turned the ring on my finger. "I assume that belongs to his lordship behind me."  I nodded.

"With us it's different. Mother's lot believe we've lived multiple times and our traveling is a sort of pilgrimage to find parts of our old selves, so we don't make the same mistakes." I was intrigued, it sounded rather cool.