Chapter Twenty
I pull completely away from Al. Everything is black again, but I barely notice. My hands go to my head where I start desperately attempt to fix the mop I’m trying to pass as hair and rub the circles out from under my eyes. I didn’t know it was possible for me to look so bad. I never look so disheveled, even in the mornings.
Why had no one said anything?
“You’re panicking,” Al says. “That’s good.”
I pull a face and quickly return to attempting to make myself look presentable.
“I mean, not good about your panicking, but I’m assuming it means it worked. You could see through my eyes. Why are you pulling at your hair?”
I stop tugging and cover my hair as best I can with my hands. “I look like a crazy homeless person.”
“A very attractive homeless person.”
From the way his voice catches as he says the last words, I think he must have only realized what he was saying after it was too late.
“I mean, most homeless people don’t exactly look...” He coughs as he realizes he’s not helping himself and I can’t help but laugh, my hands falling to my sides. “Magic. I’m teaching you magic.”
A sudden thought occurs to me and causes my throat to become dry and itchy. Even though I tell myself not to say anything, the words start spewing out.
“Rose said something today. During our walk.”
“Oh?” he asks casually. Obviously he has no idea about how sweaty my palms are. I suddenly wonder how well my deodorant has lasted.
“It wasn’t a big deal; it made me wonder, is all. She said something about how you can’t kiss a sorceress without accidently stealing their power.” I laugh nervously. “So I guess you and I won’t ever—“
“No,” he cuts me off harshly. The sudden shift in his tone sends my already vibrating nerves jumping into high gear, every muscle in my body tense. “Absolutely not. No. That will never happen.”
“Right.” My voice cracks, giving away my frazzled state if my body language hasn’t already done so. “No, of course not.”
The bed shifts as he stands up. “I’ve taught you enough for now,” he says in the same dark tone. With no other warning, the door creaks before clicking shut.
“So glad I said something,” I say to my phone.
I want to get up and run or stretch or do something active to settle my nerves, but I have the feeling the room isn’t very big and I don’t want to follow Al out. Instead all I can do is sit there with my foot tapping the floor.
After poking my cell a few times, I give up and toss it onto the bed. I can’t do it blind. I should have concentrated on the magic rather than asking such a stupid question. If I could attempt the spell again, I’m sure it would last longer this time. It felt so strange and wonderful for the brief second it worked.
Each bump of his skin, the tickle of his hair, and then the moment of fire as the magic inside of me finally found the link between us in order to make the jump into his head race through my mind as though I’m experiencing it again.
At first I don’t realize anything’s happened. I’m remembering the feeling after all, not recreating the magic. Or so I think. And then he opens his eyes. I almost jump back when something comes at his face with no warning, but I realize at the last minute it’s his hand. He rubs for a second before his hand drops away and out of sight.
I want to look around the room at everything to see the walls, the window, the ceiling, but he doesn’t comply. Instead he focuses on the floor for a long time. It looks more or less like a normal hardwood floor, though there’s more space between each strip of wood than in most modern homes. And it’s stained a strange greenish color. At least, I assume it’s not natural.
Finally he turns his focus on something else. A bed. There’s someone under the brightly colored quilt, though he doesn’t look at their face. Instead he focuses on the bumps I assume are the person’s feet as they lie on their back.
It drives me insane not being able to change the point of view no matter how much I move my own head. I have the feeling once I’m concentrating on my body again I’m going to have a kink in my neck from forcing it into weird positions while trying to shift Al’s vision.
By the time his eyes travel up to the face of the person in the bed, I’ve already guessed it’s his sister and he’s talking to her. Not being able to hear what he’s saying makes me feel deaf, though part of my mind can clearly make out every sound of the room I’m actually in. Still, I have an urge to rub my ears, but I refrain in case the movement causes me to break the connection with Al.
For the first time since making the link, Al focuses on exactly what I want him to look at. His sister has a round, almost childish, face; though I get the feeling she’s around the same age as me. Her skin has turned a chalky color from the lack of sun and exercise, but otherwise it looks like any other teen’s face. Although she appears to be asleep, something about her feels wrong. She doesn’t seem relaxed enough, or restless enough, or something.
And then her eyes open and everything snaps back to the darkness of my own vision. I expect to hear Al’s cry of astonishment and for him to call to his parents. But nothing happens. I want to go out and check for myself, but the sudden lack of sight is more crippling than when I first woke up. The bed feels like the only safe place in the entire world.
She opened her eyes. It has to mean something. It can’t be normal for her to open her eyes. I never did. Did I? But he’s not shouting, and before I jumped out of the spell, Al showed no signs of being surprised. It must be...normal.
It’s awful.
How can he stand it? How can he stand having her look like she’s awake and fine when there’s absolutely nothing left inside of what makes her who she was?
“All right,” Cindy enters the room without any warning. “I know you think I’ve been a total bitch since you woke up and okay, yeah, maybe I sort of have, but...hey, what’s wrong?”
I try to make my face do anything other than scowl, but it doesn’t want to cooperate. I shake my head ‘no’ as answer to her question.
“It’s the blindness thing, isn’t it?” She sighs and flops onto the bed beside me. Instantly my arm closest to her starts to itch. I scratch it absently, though I know it won’t help. The feeling will only go away if she leaves and takes whatever magic she’s got with her. “Look, I know I’ve been pretty insensitive about the whole thing, and I understand I’m the last person you want to talk to right now. But Al? Really? You’re going to talk to him and not me?”
I don’t say a word though I’m sure my scowl deepens.
She waits a moment before for me to defend myself, but when I don’t she sighs. “Not why I came in here. Listen, I’ve been doing some thinking, and maybe this whole blindness thing is temporary. That kind of thing happens sometimes, right? When someone looks at something too bright for too long and loses their sight, but then it comes back. It might take a while, but it comes back.”
Maybe I should be more positive about her theory, but I don’t know how looking at a bright light and getting your magic sucked out of you are at all similar.
“So yeah, it’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s worth a try, right?”
I don’t know if I zoned out for a minute or if she missed a sentence or two there, but either way I’m completely lost. “What?”
“It might not do anything,” she warns. “I can’t say my magic has been having a huge success rate throughout this whole adventure, but—“
“Adventure?” I laugh with derision. “You think of this as an ‘adventure?’ We both nearly died and I ended up in a coma because someone ripped my magic out of me, leaving my body to rot without me inside. Great adventure.”
She barely lets me finish before saying, “Poor choice of words, I hear you.”
“I don’t think you do, Cindy.” I stop her from continuing. “You have never in your life heard anything I, or anyone else said unless it pertained to you. You c
ouldn’t be bothered to mention the fact Al is a wizard. He could have tried to take my magic at any point while you ran off on your idiotic ‘adventure.’ Do you give a crap what happens to me, or would it all have been a whole lot easier if I never woke up?”
“Don’t you dare.” Her voice cracks as she says the words. “You think I haven’t been sick with worry about you? You think I haven’t been awake every second since this happened thinking of ways to fix you? Ways to make you okay again. You think I don’t give a shit about you? Obviously you know nothing about me. Not very surprising. After all, you’re Princess Lou. You have your head so far up your ass you don’t see what’s going on around you. And yes, I know that’s a bad analogy right now, but you know exactly what I mean.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “You think I don’t pay attention?”
“I think you spend so much time making Mom or your latest boyfriend or your terrible friends think you’re so perfect you don’t know what else you could be anymore. You used to be interesting. You used to actually care about other people. Now all you do is go through the motions and hope no one notices you were dead inside long before your magic was sucked out of you.”
I want to shout something back. Scream at her. Tear off her face. Do something. But I can’t. I feel limp. It’s like she can see inside of me and knows exactly what to say to hurt me the most.
But it’s not true. Not entirely. Maybe I was headed there before. I’d been doing everything I was told, become friends with the people I was expected to become friends with, but I started to change. I took up Taekwondo though I knew no one approved.
What had Al said? Something about how I thought of fighting as another dance?
“How should I act, more like you?” I ask. “Go out with guys I don’t like. Get into dangerous situations for the thrill? Change my looks every other day?”
A sound of disgust rises from her throat. “You should act however you want. I don’t care what you do. You should be you. And stop judging everyone else because they don’t do everything exactly how you think they should.”
“This hasn’t been an adventure.” I bring back the point I made before the whole shouting match started. Even to my ears I sound like I’m sulking.
“And if you’d have let me finish, you’d already know I’ve been out looking for magic to help you.” She stops to let her words sink in and make me feel a whole lot worse about my explosion. “Ass.”
The last bit describes exactly how I feel. But, I can’t apologize and I definitely can’t say what I’m thinking without her making some snide comment, so I half laugh and grumble, “I hate you.”
“Hate you too, sis.” She rubs the top of my head affectionately. “Now I’m going to put some stuff on your face. Let me know if any of it works.”
“Wait! My face? What are you putting on my-Blargh!”
Something cold, wet and slimy spreads over my forehead, smears over my eyebrows and then gently presses onto my eyelids. I pull away, but Cindy only puts more of the gunk onto my face.
“Stop moving,” she says, a little too pleased with herself. “I have to really get it on there. The more you fight me, the more gets in your hair.”
As though I didn’t already look bad enough. “It’s in my hair? Ugh!”
I bat her hand away and run my fingers through my now goopy locks in horror. When I pull my hands away I realize my mistake. Now it’s not only on my face and in my hair, but also on my hands. Great. I don’t have anything to wipe them on.
She finally sighs. “I guess that’s enough. Don’t move while I do the spell.”
I stop leaning back though I point one finger at her in warning. “If you do something to ruin my hair or burn off my eyebrows or something, I will kill you.”
“Don’t worry, Lou.” Hers hand grip my shoulders as she forces me to lean toward her a little. “I work in illusions and visions, not with burning stuff.”
I take a deep breath and prepare for the strange tingling feeling of magic.
“Plus, if I do destroy your face I can illusion it to look the same. No prob.”
“What? Wait!”
But it’s too late, the tingling and burning has already started as Cindy says a few words in a foreign language. I didn’t know she knew anything other than English and maybe like four words of French.
I squeeze my eyelids shut tighter as the magic shifts to focus completely on my eyes. I’ve never needed to rub them more. And then the feeling stops.