“No,” I lie.
“Then let me remind you. Much like today, you and Xave were surrounded by thugs.”
“I was throwing punches like a tornado,” Xave says, chiming in.
“None of them connecting,” I mutter.
“And Rhett was just standing there letting his face get tenderized,” Xave continues.
“I shouted, ‘Cops!’ and the bullies and crowd took off running,” Beth concludes.
“See,” I say, “if not for my knack for attracting attention, we might not even know each other.”
“I still don’t get why you don’t stand up for yourself,” Beth says.
“Rhett wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Xave says. “It’s just not in him.”
“What should we do after practice?” I say, changing the subject.
“You’re a freaking giant, Rhett,” Beth says, continuing on as if I hadn’t spoken.
“A real Big Foot…” Xave adds.
“I barely come up to your waist,” Beth says.
“…with fists the size of meat cleavers,” Xave says.
I throw my hands up. “Okay, okay, I get it. I should be doing the hitting, not getting hit. I should be book blogger turned Superman, right? Defender of the weak, protector of the bullied. Look, I just don’t like violence. The thought of hitting someone’s”—I make a face—“nose or chin or cheek grosses me out.” Even talking about violence is making me queasy. I can’t help it—I’ve always been this way. When the other boys were wrestling and playing “Cops and Robbers” I was more interested in books, happy to get lost in someone else’s adventure.
“Then aim for their stomachs,” Beth says.
“Or their kidneys,” Xave says, waggling his eyebrows encouragingly. “Or if you want to act like a little girl, a good shot to the nuts will drop ’em like the sacks of feces that they are.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. None of those options are any more appealing to me. “Pass,” I say.
“You’re hopeless,” Beth says, but from her smile and the way she squeezes my waist, I can tell she won’t hold it against me. “Well, I’d love to stay and talk strategies for inflicting pain on jerks like Todd Logue, but I’ve got to run. Our issue spotlighting the inequality of Salem’s Return won’t get written and edited by itself.”
She gives me a quick peck on the lips and skates away, adjusting her glasses when they slip down her nose.
“Hey, Beth!” I say, stopping her.
“Yeah?”
“What did you say to Todd?”
Smiling, she strolls back over and stands on her tiptoes to whisper in my ear. “I told him I had a source that told me he used to wet the bed, and that I’d run the story in next week’s newspaper if he didn’t leave you alone.”
I snort out a laugh. “Whoever told you that about Todd has a death wish,” I say.
“I made it up,” she says.
“But…how’d you know it would work?”
She offers a sly grin. “Because bullies like Todd are always overcompensating for their own insecurities,” she says.
Shaking my head, I grab my helmet off the ground, reacting to Coach Bronson’s whistle. After kissing Beth on the cheek, I run onto the field.
“What? No smooch for me?” Xave calls after me. He has a knack for embarrassing me in front of my teammates, as if they need any more reason to make fun of me.
Beth hoots and hollers and claps. “Superstar!” she shouts.
My face warming, I turn and look at the bleachers so I won’t have to see the rest of the players—whose stares I can feel on the back of my neck—but Beth and Xavier are already huddled over his tablet, immersed in homework or a funny video or my latest blog, which they never fail to give me a hard time about.
A burst of energy plumes in my chest as I watch them. My embarrassment vanishes like a ship in the Bermuda Triangle. Beth and Xave and me. Inseparable.
Chapter Two
“How’s the Salem’s Return issue coming?” I say to Beth when she and Xave meet me to walk home.
Beth frowns. “The more research we do, the more the whole thing stinks,” she says.
“Like Rhett’s football cleats?” Xave says.
“Worse,” she says. “Do you know how it all started?”
Of course. Everyone does. A woman who could breathe fire. A circus performer. But not just her—there were three of them. Sisters, calling themselves The Pyros. Only it wasn’t just that they could breathe fire, but that they could seemingly create it from thin air. Snap their fingers and a flame would appear. Of course, it was all just an illusion. Magic isn’t real. However, the Pyros were so good that people started to think they were real witches. A couple of religious groups accused them of being devil-worshippers. Of course, it didn’t help that a national media organization had a slow news week and grabbed onto the story, broadcasting snippets from the sermons condemning the witches. Like every other snowball that gets a big push down a hill, the story got bigger and bigger, until the story became an issue, and the issue became a problem.
Enter the politicians, who only made things worse. Because of the potential for panic, a law was signed preventing “real” magic from being performed—whatever that meant. The media coined it Salem’s Return. I can still remember the first trial. My mom was obsessed with it. She said it would redefine the type of country we’d be for the next century, that it was the most important event since the Civil War. When the Pyros were sentenced to burn, she wouldn’t leave the house for three days. Said we’d become monsters.
According to the judge, death by burning was justified because of the unique circumstances surrounding the guilty. They were witches. Burning them was “the only way to destroy their evil.” Of course it didn’t help that when they tried to burn the sisters, they supposedly wouldn’t burn.
“Yeah,” I say. “But the whole thing was a trick. Someone wanted to incite fear so they made it look like the so-called witches wouldn’t burn.”
“They showed it live on TV,” Xave says.
“Yeah, so they could prove to the world that the sisters were REAL witches,” Beth says. “I think it was all staged. Another illusion, just like the tricks the Pyros did with fire. Whatever the case, it worked. When they couldn’t burn them, they—”
“Drowned them,” I say. I remember my mother’s face after it happened. After months of protesting she looked defeated. She didn’t say a word that day. Since then they’ve used burning as the primary method of execution, with drowning used only if burning doesn’t work.
“Sometimes the government makes me want to move to Switzerland,” Xave says.
“Why Switzerland?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.
“Mostly the chocolate and the cheese,” Xave says, not missing a beat.
“That was a decade ago,” Beth says, bringing the conversation back to her favorite topic. “The fires haven’t stopped burning since.” Although there have been many groups protesting the anti-witch laws, in which my mom is a proud member, their efforts have been unsuccessful. More than a hundred witches have been executed so far, although it’s hard to keep count with the death toll rising by the month. The executions barely even get any news coverage anymore; they’re as normal as car accidents in L.A. and murders in Detroit.
“No one even cares about the death count anymore,” I point out.
“That’s where the conspiracy gets a little interesting and a lot disturbing,” Beth says. “There are all kinds of theories out there, most of which contradict each other, but one thing everyone seems to agree on is that the reported witch death count is but a fraction of reality.”
“You mean, like, it’s closer to two hundred witches?” Xave asks, huddling closer to Beth’s side as we walk.
“No,” Beth says. “Try a thousand.”
My mouth drops open. “A thousand?”
“And that’s on the low end of the estimates. Some sites say they have sources that peg the number of executions at more than five thousand
witches.”
“But that’s…” The word I want to say leaves a bad taste in my mouth as it rolls around on my tongue.
“Genocide,” Beth says, reading my mind.
“It makes the Salem Witch Trials look like a child’s birthday party and lethal injection appear as boring and humane as giving a child a timeout,” Xave says.
“It’s just not right, and that’s what I’m going to say in the newspaper,” Beth says.
With at least half the students’ parents likely in support of the anti-witch laws, her article will mean even more bullying for the three of us. But that’s Beth—she’ll never back down from something she believes in. And that’s just the way I like her.
“We’re behind you all the way,” I say.
~~~
When I get home, I leave my dirty cleats on the front porch and push through the door. My mom is folding laundry on our beat-up brown couch in front of the TV.
“Hi, Mom,” I say, the word not even sticking in the back of my throat the way it used to.
“Hey, Rhett,” she says, her gaze fixed on a news program. “How was practice?”
“Not terrible,” I say.
“How’s Xave?”
“He’s Xave,” I say.
“How’s Beth?” She pulls her stare from the TV for just long enough to waggle her eyebrows. Yep, she’s the closest thing to a real mom I’ve had in a long time.
“She’s great,” I say.
“There’s fruit on the table if you’re hungry,” she calls after me as I head to the kitchen. I dump my sports duffel and backpack on a couple of chairs and grab a banana, peeling it as I move back into the TV room.
There’s a rattle of footsteps scurrying down the stairs as Hurricane Jasmine approaches from upstairs. “Rhett!” my seven-year-old foster sister cries. “I thought you’d been kidnapped.” She throws her arms around me and I almost drop the banana.
“Um, why?” I ask.
“The witches,” Jasmine says, looking up, her chocolaty skin vibrant in the late-afternoon light.
“Jaz, I already told you,” my mother says, turning to face us with a swirl of blond hair. “The witches aren’t dangerous. They’re not even real witches. They’re just people, like you or me. They’re not the ones to blame for all of this. We’re to blame. Our fear and hate.” Finally I realize what my mom’s watching on TV—what had her so engrossed.
“A curfew?” I say, reading the headline at the bottom of the screen. A newswoman is jabbering on about how the witch threat level has just been raised. How there are more of them than we first thought when Salem’s Return began years earlier.
“The witches are starting to fight back,” Jaz says, her voice no more than a whisper. “They say no one should be out after dark.”
“Seriously?” I say in disbelief.
“Seriously,” my mom says. “It’s utterly ridiculous. The whole country’s gone half-crazy.”
“More like full crazy,” I say, slipping my cell phone out of my pocket when it rings.
When I press a button to answer it, Beth says, “Have you seen the news?” before I can say anything.
“My mom’s ready to march on Washington D.C.,” I say, which earns me an eye-roll.
“Is that Beth?” Jaz asks, tugging at the side of my shirt.
I pull away from her, shaking her off. “Now do you think I’m wasting my time with my article?” Beth asks.
“I want to talk to her,” Jaz whines, trying to grab the phone.
I hold it higher, out of reach. “I never said you were wasting your time,” I say. “I just said witches aren’t real. But that doesn’t mean the fake witches should be killed.”
“Here here,” my mother says, raising a pair of my underwear like a banner.
“What about the curfew? Do you think that’ll stick?” I ask, holding Jaz off with one arm.
“Who knows?” Beth says. “Before all this started, I’d say no. But now…”
“Hey, my sis wants to talk to you,” I say, hoping to avoid getting clawed by Jaz’s purple-painted nails.
“Sure. I love your sister.”
When I offer the phone, Jaz grabs it with two hands and starts all over again with, “I was worried you and my brother had been kidnapped!”
As Beth tries to reassure my sister, I turn my attention back to the TV, where the newswoman is elaborating on the current situation. “Multiple anonymous threats from pro-witch organizations have evidently come through various law enforcement agencies over the last forty-eight hours. Although our sources were unable to provide specifics, they did say that the threats were violent in nature and suggested a large-scale response to Salem’s Return. Citizens are being urged to remain in their homes with their doors locked whenever possible.”
“Unbelievable,” I say.
“As if,” my mother says. “More likely I’ll be accused of being a witch and get tied to a stake than a ‘witch’ attacking our house.”
“Don’t say stuff like that,” I say. The last thing we need is cops on our doorstep because my mom joked about being a witch.
Jaz hands me the phone. “Beth says she’ll talk to you later. She has conspiracies to unravel.”
“Thanks, I think,” I say.
Just before I head upstairs to get a shower, I notice Jaz locking the front door. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“The witches,” she says, as if that explains everything.
I shake my head and take the steps two at a time to the second floor.
A half hour later I’m showered and back downstairs watching TV with my sister while my mom makes dinner. The front door rattles as someone tries to open it.
“The witches!” Jaz cries, clutching my side.
There’s a click and the door eases open. “Anyone home?” my father hollers.
Jaz runs to him, wrapping her arms around his leg. “You’re not a witch,” she says.
“I guess you’ve all heard the news,” Dad says, walking inside with Jaz still stuck to his leg. He hangs his tool belt on a hook in the closet. After retiring from the military, he became a handyman, quickly gaining a reputation for being able to fix almost anything.
“Jaz thinks the witches are going to kidnap us, Mom thinks the government is made up of fools, Beth thinks there’s a major conspiracy, and Xave wants to move to Switzerland.”
“And what do you think?” Dad asks me, picking Jaz up and throwing her on the couch beside me while she laughs gleefully.
“I think there are no witches and the sooner we all realize that the better,” I say. “I mean, didn’t we learn our lesson after the Salem Witch Trials? We were idiots then and we’re idiots now. Some things never change.”
“I’m with you, Son,” my dad says.
As he moves to the kitchen to kiss my mother hello like he always does, I wonder how it’s possible that my life is this good. Maybe I’m not connected to any of the people in my life biologically, but I love them just the same. My parents, Jaz, Xave, Beth—they are the best of the best. That thought sticks in my mind all through dinner until I lay down to sleep. When I think back on my darker days, they almost feel like just a bad dream. A distant nightmare. I smile as my eyes flutter closed and sleep takes me.
Chapter Three
Shrieks and screams tear me from an already forgotten dream. They’re not human, the howls. Well, maybe some are, but certainly not all—not the ones closest.
As I sit up sharply, heart leaping forward to sprinting speed, another ear-rending
screeeeeeech!
shatters the night. Metallic. That’s the only way to describe the sound. Like we’re in Oz and the tin man is being ripped in half by impossibly strong hands, reduced to shredded hunks of scrap metal.
Screeeeeeech!
I flinch away from the window, as if it might burst inwards, but no…whatever’s tearing through the metal is outside. At least for now.
Voices from the other room, muffled at first and then raised, shout, “Jasmine!
Stay in your room!”
“What’s happening?” my sister cries through her door.
“Just stay inside!” Dad’s voice thunders through wood and plasterboard. “Rhett! You, too! My gun, Trudy!”
“Take it,” my mother says. There’s a double click—chook-chook!—and my father’s heavy footsteps pound past my room and rumble down the staircase.
Kicking my legs over the side of the bed, I almost trip on the sheets, which are tangled around my ankles like vines. I high step and manage to slip free. Two long strides and I’m at the window, peering into the unlit yard, searching for the source of the ruckus.
Under the glow of the half-moon, the wrought-iron fence around our front yard is shining, mangled, and ripped in several places. The white, wooden gate at the end of the brick path is missing…no, there it is! Two jagged halves lie on opposite sides of the yard, splinters scattered like straw. Whatever did that is strong beyond imagination…
There are shadows on the lawn.
The dark echo of the big rosebush, tenderly cared for by my father; a wheel barrow, still half full of mulch, casts a black spot amongst the lush, green grass; the shadows are moving. Not the roses or the barrow, but others, darker and lurking, creeping toward the front door.
There’s a bright flash of light and the rosebush bursts into flame, its thorny stems painted with chaotic red and orange strokes. Glowing orbs appear in the midst of one of the moving shadows and they’re—they’re—
—staring at me.
Unnaturally large eyes in the dark. The shadow raises a finger, points at me through the glass…
The wheelbarrow rockets through the air, spinning and sending clumps of brown mulch flying in all directions, heading right toward me…
I dive and duck just as the window explodes inwards, glass shrapnel raining all around, tinkling like crystal wind chimes. There’s a whoosh! and a whoomp! and a heavy crash as the barrow bashes into my door.
A scream. Jasmine.
A shout. My father.
A gunshot. Then another.
Covered in shimmering glass shards, I push to my feet, ignoring the spots of blood welling up from my skin and the pinpricks of pain. The wheelbarrow is on its side in the hall, having destroyed my bedroom door. I barely spot my sister’s bare foot as she climbs past and toward the staircase.