The Art of Practicing Magic Alone

Three- Who Needs The Police?

Goldie preferred to make an entrance. At midnight, I heard a knock on the glass and when I clicked on my desk lamp, I heard her muffled voice: "Let me in, it's cold." Her face was pressed against the window, cheeks red from the night air. I unlocked the latches and watched as she struggled to lift herself inside, first throwing in her bag and then trying to make her body small enough to fit through the hole.
"I don't know why you don't just go through the front door. I knew you were coming. I could have left it unlocked or something."
Breathless, she sprawled out on my bed, "What fun would that be? I like coming through the window. It's the closest I'll ever get to being a spy."
"I may be even closer." I hadn't stopped thinking about Ellis's proposition since he left. I went back and forth in my mind about whether or not to tell Goldie. He hadn't told me explicitly not to tell anyone but I was smart enough to know that murder wasn't something you just went around babbling on about. It wasn't gossip. On the other-hand, I knew that I wouldn't be able to come up with a definite decision without bouncing the idea off of someone else. Goldie was the only person I knew I could tell without worrying they'd run to their parents. Goldie was also the only person I genuinely considered my friend.
"Before you tell me everything that happened with lover boy, are there left-overs?"
"Don't your parents feed you?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"You've seen our fridge. It's all gluten free, dairy free, fun-free."
"Touche, there's food in the fridge."
While Goldie scavenged for something to eat, I looked out of my window and across the way to Ellis's house. There weren't any lights on, which was a good sign that the night was going to pass with no trouble from his father. I thought of what he must feel like going to bed in the same house as someone he believed murdered his mother.
"Are you stalking him now?" Goldie was behind me with a steaming bowl of stew. She was wearing her pajamas but still had on the same heavy blue eyeshadow that she'd been wearing at school earlier that day. I could see that some of it had transferred onto the lense of her glasses. I shot her a pointed look and got up from the window.
"Your mom won't care that I'm staying over, right?"
I shook my head, "Nah, it's a friday. Besides, today she told Ellis that you were like family so you can probably move in if you'd like."
"I might take you up on that offer actually. My mom and dad have been super clingy as of late. Senior year is really taking its toll on them and I'm afraid they might kill and stuff me if it means I won't ever leave."
I shuddered, "I won't ever get over what you guys do over there."
"I keep telling you, just come over one day during business hours and I can show you how the whole thing is done. It's a lot less freaky than you're imagining it is."
I'd visited Goldie's house before plenty of times but always avoided the shop downstairs. The upstairs apartment was surprisingly free of their handiwork except in the living room where three pheasants were perched on the mantle. The first time I came over, her mother sat us all down in the living room and made an earl gray tea. While she talked and poured the tea into small china teacups, I couldn't help but feel as though the birds were staring at me- their dead, beady eyes piercing the back of my head. When Goldie and her mother went to the kitchen to grab more sugar and biscuits, knowing that I couldn't get up without her knowing, I used my magic to turn the pheasants around.
"I don't know if that's true. It's just sad and gross." I stuck my tongue out.
"The animals are already dead, Ernessa. It's the same thing as keeping someone's ashes in an urn."
"I don't think that's the same thing."
"Whatever. I came here for some juicy boy gossip so cough it up."
I thought of what to tell her first. So I told her that Ellis caught me coming out of the woods a year ago and I had invited him to dinner. To which she said: "So, he was full on stalking you and you just invited him over? Good decision making, Nessa."
"Our moms were friends," I replied before continuing the story. "Today he was waiting for me again when I came out of the clearing and said he wanted to take me up on my offer."
"Hold up, what are you doing in the woods so often anyways?"
"I like to go in there to think, it's much quieter in there."
"You get weirder every time I talk to you." She laughed.
"Well your parents play with dead animals so there's that. Can I continue?" I quipped. She put up her hands in surrender. "So, he came over for dinner and it was actually really nice. My mom told us some stories about his mother which I think he really appreciated and then afterwards, we talked on the back porch."
"About what?"
"Well, he said that he was sorry for being such a flake all of the time and was going to be a better friend to me."
"I didn't realize you guys were friends. He didn't even come to your Bar Mitzvah."
"I didn't have a Bar Mitzvah. What are you- sometimes I don't even know what you are saying to me. I'm not even jewish."
"You could be."She shrugged and shoved another spoonful of soup into her mouth. "And what else happened? You kiss under the stars or something? Did you get his number?"
"No and no. We just talked about his mother and her passing and," I said the next part rather quietly and quickly, "He thinks his father murdered her and he wants me to help find out."
Goldie spit a little soup out, "He wants you to do, what?"
"He wants me to help him found out what happened to his mother and if his father was involved."
"Does he think you're Nancy Drew or something?"
I looked at her and smiled. "I thought the same thing."
We looked at each other for a while. She took some more sips of her stew and tapped the spoon against her lips as she processed what I had told her.
"Are you going to do it?" Goldie was staring at me wide eyed.
"I can't exactly say no, can I? It's a delicate situation and he chose me to be apart of it."
She nodded and then shrugged, "I don't know, Ness. He hasn't exactly been the most consistent person in your life, you don't owe him anything. Besides, this seems out of your... jurisdiction."
"He's not my father. He doesn't have to be super present."
"You know what I mean," She said, "He hasn't been there for you. At school, you may as well be non-existent to him. I just don't want you to fall into his sneaky spider web because he decided to take an interest in you for once."
Despite her having a tendency to say things that made no sense to me, I couldn't pretend that this was one of those times. She looked at me with a sincerity uncommon for her.
"I get it. I just... I want to do it. I feel like it's something that I'm supposed to do." She raised an eyebrow but I knew she wouldn't fight me on it any further. Goldie liked adventure.
"So what does this even mean? How do you go about finding out if his mother was murdered?"
I shrugged, "I'm hoping that he already has a plan and I can just tag along."
"Oh come on, don't be that girl. If anyone can catch a murderer, it's going to be you. All that luck you have built up inside is just waiting to be used."
I laughed. I hadn't considered if I was going to use my "luck" to help Ellis in this endeavor. I had been using it to help him in small ways like healing a bruise, but was I going to whip it out to help us break into secret offices with hidden files? Would I use it to get people suspected of a cover up to confess? The idea itself went against what my mother had taught me about using my abilities but the thought lingered nonetheless.
"Are you scared? Like, what if his dad did kill his mom? I've been over here when they fight and it's scary. If he really did hurt her, he's more than just some drunk." Goldie pressed her lips against the bowl and sipped the broth, not breaking eye contact with me.
"I've really only had this information for a few hours so I haven't had time to contemplate fear. I-"...
I was cut off by a loud noise just outside of my window. I recognized the sound as glass shattering and immediately ran to and kneeled by the sill. Goldie put her bowl down on my nightstand and joined me. I lifted the window a little to allow myself to hear better and watched as the light turned on in the window across from my own and the sound of yelling floated into my room.
"Speaking of the literal devil." Goldie whispered.
A large object crashed against their window and I felt my heart jump. Ellis had always emerged from these nights with scars and burns but now the thought crossed my mind that maybe he wouldn't emerge from it at all. I started to pull at the talisman around my neck but knew that interfering in such a direct way would be against my mother's wishes. Besides, I couldn't do much with Goldie right next to me. I turned to look at her and I could tell that she was as worried as I was. She put her hands to her lips as if she was trying to find the right things to say.
"Get your shoes on." She said finally.
"What?"
She got up and started to put her jacket on, "Come on, put on some shoes."
"What do you think you're going to do?"
"We're going to make sure your boyfriend doesn't get full on murdered."
The night was cold and unforgiving, fall leaves crunching beneath our feet. I followed behind her as she led us closer and closer to the side of his house that faced my own. With each step, I became more and more aware of the weight of my feet and the sound that emerged. I found myself rising to the tip of my toes and shushing every time I thought Goldie made too loud of a noise. Beneath the window, we looked at each other with a renewed sense of purpose and let our eyes just barely move above the sill. The curtains were essentially obsolete- all sheer and dingy. Inside, I could see the glow of an overhead ceiling fan and a few overturned chairs. The noise hadn't stopped but instead moved into another room that was beyond my reach. I listened intently as his father cursed.
"You're mother should have put you down!" He screamed at one point.
Then: "Fuck that bitch for leaving me with such a burden."
And: "You're real fucking lucky."
I shook my head. The last thing word that came to mind for Ellis's situation was lucky. I ducked down and whispered to Goldie: "What do we do now?"
She shrugged, "I don't know. I just thought if we could see what was happening, we could call the cops if something went wrong."
"Do you have your phone?"
"No, I thought you had yours."
I rolled my eyes. "We aren't good spies."
Behind us, the light in my mother's room clicked on. Both of our bodies instinctively dropped to the ground.
"Shit." I whispered. Above us, Ellis's father was still yelling about wishing his son had never been born. In unison, a loud crash came from the Fisher house and the kitchen light in my own house turned on. Usually, I wouldn't have been worried about being caught out in the middle of the night. My mother's set of rules were fairly lax and most geared towards recreational drugs and how to correctly use my abilities. Yet, I knew that there'd be consequences if she find out I was eavesdropping on something as personal as a father abusing his son. Accidentally hearing it from the comfort of my room was one thing, spying on their house was another.
"What do we do?" Goldie whispered, her glasses on the tip of her nose. Our bodies shook from the cold November weather and our knees sunk further into the dirt the more that we crouched. I knew that if my mother was in the kitchen, there'd be no way for us to sneak in unnoticed. The yelling increased and I worried that my mother would step out onto the porch to show her disdain from a safe distance.
"Stay right here and I'm going to go see if my window is still unlocked."
"Wait," She said frantically, "What if he catches me out here?"
"He seems pretty occupied on his current victim. You'll be fine."
I left her there and ran back across the divide between our two houses. I had an idea but I knew that it wasn't something I could do in front of Goldie, or anyone for that matter. The window into my room was unlocked and I pushed it open. The simple thing to do at that point would have been to call Goldie over and climb inside, but my mind was still with Ellis and the drama unfolding at his house. On most nights, the yelling had only inspired mild annoyance and worry but the revelations about Ellis's mother brought my feelings of worry up to the surface.
I glanced across the way at Goldie, who had re-positioned herself at the window in order to see the chaos unfolding inside. Taking care that she wasn't looking in my direction, I grabbed at the talisman at my neck and braced myself on the house. The spells I had tried in the past were small, child's play, and I worried that what I had planned next would be far out of my reach. My hands strange glow warmed the night air around me and I closed my eyes, envisioning a world of black. I took my hand off of the talisman and placed both hands against the soft soil. In my head, I thought of nothing but darkness, of Ellis's home and mine until I heard Mr. Fisher scream, "Fuck!". I opened my eyes and was happy to discover that the lights in both of our house had went out. I placed my hands in my pockets and called Goldie over as quietly as possible. One by one, we slipped into the house with little complication and when we were both in, we laid on the ground of my bedroom floor breathless.
The glow in the dark star stickers that stuck to my ceiling started to gleam and I watched them intently. Goldie, who was beside me, had stopped her heaving but I was still out of breath. The weight of the spell was more taxing than things I had done in the past. All the same I felt empowered, like I could do anything, which was a feeling I wasn't used to. I wanted to share my triumph with someone but I knew that there was no chance of that happening and instead, whispered under my breath my tale of triumph to the stars.
My door opened after a few minutes. My mother stood in the doorway with a small candle lit in her hand. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, we're fine. Did the power go out or something?" I asked.
"That's what it's looking like. I just got a call on my cell phone from Ms. Davies across the street. She lost her power too so I'm thinking it's a street wide situation."
A part of me warmed, "Well that's unfortunate. Hopefully it comes back on soon."
"We can only hope." She looked down at the floor next to me, "I didn't know you were here Goldie."
"I came in through the window." Goldie smiled.
"I knew there was a reason I liked you."
Goldie shot a finger gun at my mom who took one last glance around the room and then at me before saying, "If there's anything you two need, don't hesitate to knock on my door or send me a text."
"Thanks, mom."
She shut the door behind her and almost immediately, the lights turned on, effectively silencing the stars. Goldie rolled over onto her stomach and faced me.
"You lucky bitch."
We both began to laugh hysterically, our chests heaving, our stomachs tightening. The laughter gave way to more laughs which made us clutch at our abdomens for relief. Goldie's glasses fell off of her face, tears streamed from my eyes. When we stop, she looks at me very intently.
"I think it's a good thing that you're helping him." Her voice is once more serious.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I still think you should be careful and you have to tell me everything but I agree that it's the right thing to do."
"I'm glad you think so. You're the only person I can bounce these thoughts off of."
Later that night, we both laid in bed, Goldie lightly snoring next to me. I stared up at the plastic stars and thought about the entire street losing its power because of me. I looked at my hands and thought of my grandmother. She died when I was ten years old but knowing that I was just like her still gave me the same excited feeling in my stomach that I had when I was young. I pictured her as a very powerful woman and I longed to be just like her. That night, I had only intended to take the power from our two houses but it had extended far from what I thought I could reach. It both scared me and made me feel proud of myself. Taking the power from his house gave him the chance to get away and I was more sure than ever that helping him was something that I was capable of doing.
***
The morning came quicker than I expected. Having spent half of the night talking to Goldie and the other half lying awake in bed, thinking about what had happened. The glow of the rising sun seeped in through my opened blinds and as it crawled across the floor towards me, I heard the Fisher's screen door open and shut. I slipped out of bed and peaked out from behind the blinds. Ellis stood on the edge of his porch, staring at our house. I gasped and took a step away from the blinds, worried that he could see me. I paused for a second and opened the blind again, only to see that he was still staring intently in my direction. I reached for my sweater that was hanging on my door and and quietly exited through the back door.
Ellis noticed me almost immediately but we didn't say anything. Silence seemed to be our essential state. I stared at him through the warm glow of the sun and the morning dew, hot air rising out of the mug in his hand.
"Hey neighbor." He said, breaking the silence.
"Morning."
"Sorry about the noise last night."
"Don't worry about it." I replied. My socks were wet and I shifted uncomfortably.
"Did your power go out as well?" He asked.
"It did, yes." I repressed a small smile and bit my lip.
"Thank God for it," Ellis took a sip, "It seemed to distract my father for quite a while."
He set his cup down on the porch and swung his legs over the side, jumping down and crossing the path into our yard. I came to the edge of our porch and looked down on him, his face pressed against the wood panels.
"You aren't going to come up here?" I asked.
"Nah, I need to be able to run back to my own house if my dad wakes up."
"Oh okay... I thought about what you told me last night."
He didn't respond, just looked at me really closely.
I continued, "I'm in."
"You are?" Ellis's hazel eyes glistened or I wanted them to or it was the sun reflecting.
"I am."
I looked down at him and knew that he was grateful. He didn't even have to say it.