The Mortician's Son (BoyxBoy)

C H A P T E R . O 3

~ III ~

O B S E S S I O N  W I T H  D E A T H  D O E S  N O T  E Q U A L  I N T E L L I G E N C E

Blake sat crossed-legged on the floor, watching the five-foot hole Nathan had disappeared through minutes before. He did not exactly know why he was back here in the mansion with the mortician's son again. The black-haired teenager figured it was some sense of curiosity. Nathan was unlike anyone he had ever met before. Or maybe it was because he wanted to see if the brunette was going to perform more magic, because by now Blake was more than convinced that Nathan was a witch, or at least had some form of powers.

The eighteen-year-old twirled his pencil around his index finger before he spoke.

"Did you lock Katie Nakano in the vending machine outside the cafeteria?" he asked, recalling the dramatic scene that ensued during the lunch hour when the girl was discovered, frantically screaming her lungs out and banging on the glass as hard as she could.

Nathan's head rose from the hole. He was wearing a yellow hardhat again. Though the black-haired teenager couldn't see it from where he was sitting, there was also a black light in Nathans's hands. To detect blood, the brunette explained.

"Yes," Nathan answered and disappeared into the darkness once again.

"How did you do it?"

"Can't tell you. It's a secret secret secrety-secret." There was a sound of footsteps moving away from the hole. The brunette's footsteps.

"He's a witch!" Katie Nakano had screamed at the by standers once the janitor had opened the door and freed her. "That freak's a witch, I tell you! One minute I was talking to him and the next minute I was in here!"

"Why did you do it?" Blake asked, following the noises with his eyes.

"She was being a bitch," came the answer.

Blake laughed at his frankness. "How so?"

"She cornered me while I was heading to class, saying something about staying away from you. I think she was just saying that because of the rumor and I tried to tell her that it was a misunderstanding. Then she called me a bad name, so I put her in the vending machine."

"But why the vending machine?"

"To scare her, of course."

"Hm... of course…" Blake said, nodding out of habit. "Nathan?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Are you a witch?"

"Hmmmmm… I guess if you want… Sure."

This didn’t exactly answer Blake’s question. But the older teenager figured that this was just Nathan being as enigmatic and mysterious as ever. He glanced down at his homework, scrutinizing a question he hadn't understood earlier.

"Explain the use of calcium in the muscle," Blake read out loud. It was another habit of his to read out the problems he couldn't figure out, half-hoping that the answer would come to him just by doing so.

"It's an ion used for contractions," Nathan said from below him. The black-haired teenager jumped a little.

"What?"

"It's an ion used for contractions," the brunette repeated. "When the muscle receives the action potential, calcium ions are released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum, which caused troponin and tropomyosin to move and the muscle contracts."

It sounded correct, so Blake wrote it down. "Nathan, you're taking Anatomy and Physiology also?" he asked. This would mean that the brunette was in the same grade as him.