Learn How to Love (Boy x Boy)

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞

I threw the book onto the floor, and swore loudly. I was so pissed off. Why was everything so difficult to be mad at?! I couldn't be mad at myself, I couldn't be mad at my parents, and now I couldn't even be mad at Luke fucking Salazar?!

"You fucking asshole!" I cried, kicking an empty cup across the floor. 

My treehouse was my safe place, where I spent most of my time when I couldn't be at my grandma's. It was huge, and had been here since my parents bought the house. I had redecorated it with LED lights, beanbags, and a huge bookshelf spanning across one entire wall. It had a trap door with a rope ladder that I could pull up at night, and I had an air mattress in the corner where I slept when I didn't feel like breathing in all that second-hand smoke from my parents. It had a small circle window that I could look out of at the nearby highway. At night you could hear semis, trucks, and vans speed down the road. I usually played music throughout the night to drown out the sound of all the cars. 

I had stopped by my grandmother's house to see if anything had changed. I didn't know if my parents were going to sell the house or not, but when I got there I saw that my mom was already there- and she was shoving stuff into boxes. I asked her what she was doing, and after taking a long drag on her cigarette she told me they were selling all of my grandmother's stuff for cash. I freaked out and yelled at her that she was just going to spend it on booze and drugs and she told me to go home. I stole a couple boxes and stashed them beneath my bed. 

"I fucking hate you!" I wailed, crumpling into a heap next to my beanbag chair. How could they do this to me? To grandma? All of that stuff was important to her, important to me! I loved everything that my grandmother had. I'd take all of it if I could. I looked at the book through a gaze blurred by tears. My grandmother's spell book, the one she kept on a table in her living room. It was the same book that taught me how to read. Every day we'd pore over the spells and pictures, sounding out words and ingredients. Even if it wasn't actually magic, it was still a part of me. I picked up the book, clutching it against my chest as I sunk into my worn down beanbag chair. It felt kind of weird having it here. Grandma's weird, witchy obsession were always kept in her house. I was never allowed to bring them to school for show-and-tell, no matter how much I begged when I was younger. The treehouse was like my number one safe place, and somehow I didn't want to mix it with my others. I groaned. Why was everything so confusing?

I flipped through the first few pages. They were all yellowed, and some of the words dripped down the page like blood, the ink blending into the words below it. The edges were crumbling and worn, after years of being turned back and forth by my grubby toddler hands. Grandma never got upset when I tore a page or accidentally made a rip in one of the fragile edges. She'd put some strange paste over it, something like glue, to mend the tear and it'd be good as new the next morning. Kid me thought it was magic, but she always assured me it was just a mixture of glue and some other things. 

This book was about the Seven Sins. All of the curses and spells were to fix someone's evil ways. Envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath. There were spells that could turn the laziest person into a ball of energy, and curses to make the most vain person the ugliest in the world. I stared at the first spell. Supposedly, it was supposed to make a greedy "tax-collector" break out in hives until he repaid everything he had taken from them. It was an old book, okay? Since I didn't pay taxes yet, I kept flipping through the book. I recognized most of the spells, and could read some of the ones that were blurred from my own memory. I was almost near the end, when something slipped out of a place further in the book. A tiny square of paper clattered to the floor. I frowned in confusion. One of grandma's bookmarks? She hadn't read the books since I was a kid, as far as I knew. But the piece of paper was snow white, like it had only been in there for a couple of days. A small smudge on the corner of it was probably from the ink.

"The hell?" I mumbled, reaching down. 

I picked up the piece and flipped it over. Scrawled over the front in permanent marker was a single word- "mijo". My throat closed. 

"Damn it!" I cried, throwing the piece of paper away. It was my grandma's handwriting, that much was certain. She probably wrote it a few days before the crash... what was the point of it? Why did she write it? I flipped through the book until I found the page that it had fallen out of. This page was a little different, it looked... newer. That didn't make any sense, this book was probably over a hundred years old- how was there a new page, right in the middle of it? It was probably my mind playing tricks on me, desperate for something to distract my mind from my own emotions. I did it a lot. Whenever something upset me, I looked for anything to talk about other than how I felt. It pissed Sadie off. Grandma must've used it as a boomark, marking this specific page.

I stared curiously at the writing scrawled across the page.

Humans are just like animals, but they try to seperate themselves from their animal brethren. Their sins are directly alike to those that animals make. Greed, gluttony, lust, they are all characteristics of the soulless creatures that share our world. When humans try to place themselves above their four-legged companions, their feathered kin they become morally corrupt. Humans must learn to accept the good and the bad. They must learn to live in harmony, the same way animals do, begrudingly. Accept the things you cannot change, and change the things you cannot accept. This curse is hardly a curse to anyone but the person it is cast upon. It will connect them to their animal brethren once more, and help them realize the error of their ways. Life needs the bad and the good, but the bad does not have to prevail everytime. 

ITCH NEI BELLO
HARAMITCH ERACE
POLLAR FRAIT ITCH UMBE

I traced my finger over the words. "Itch nei bello..." I murmured, sounding out the words. Grandma told me a lot about how you casted spells. The way you were supposed to say it, the way you needed to wave your hands around, dramatic shit like that. I wish I could use this curse, use it on Luke. He'd probably be turned into a pig or something. Maybe a rat. I chuckled just thinking about it. Maybe he could be used for science. If he was turned into something like an alligator or a monkey, he'd be on of the few albino animals of that species. I'd be doing science a favor. I smiled at the idea.

"Itch nei bello..." I began. "Haramitch e-erace?" I stumbled over the second line. The spell was one of the simplest, but I wasn't sure how to sound it out. I had failed german for the same reason, I had no fucking idea where all the throat sounds went. "Itch nei bello, haramitch erace, pollar frait itch?" I was almost there. I wondered how grandma always managed to speak them clearly. I couldn't remember her ever once stammering while reciting one of them, back when she was teaching me how to read. I wondered in my mom ever got to experience it the same way I did. 

"Itch nei bello, haramtich erace, pollar frait itch umbe!" I said, my voice as strong as I could make it. Nothing happened, obviously. I sighed and shut the book, slipping the square of paper back between the pages. I wasn't sure what I had expected, but I felt even worse than before for hoping anything could actually happen. I knew I'd said the spell wrong, anyways. I hadn't even said anyone's name, like you were supposed to do. I tossed the book across the floor and slumped against my beanbag chair, ashamed at how disappointed I felt. Oh well.

"Stupid fucking book..." I groaned. "Stupid fucking Salazar."