The Magickers (4 page)

His eyes watered with the effort of not looking. He needed to be out on the field warming up. Would class never end?

Mrs. Cowling returned to the front of the class and stood, her fluffy brown head tilted to one side. Thankfully, the school clock was just behind her, above the chalkboard. She smiled and said cheerfully, “To repeat, this final essay must be five hundred words long, in ink, and due by Friday. I want to see your best effort! This is your final grade of the year, and I am hoping to hear that many of you qualify for Honors English next fall!” She glanced toward Jason and smiled slightly. They'd talked about that after class. He liked writing, and she liked what he wrote.

Immediately, Martin Brinkford's hand shot up. Someone at the back groaned even as Jason bit his lip. Brinkford could talk for hours, endlessly, about nothing, and Mrs. Cowling had to let him. It had something to do with Brinkford's father being a generous donor to the school's many needs and charities.

“Yes, Martin?”

Tall, with cold blue eyes, and surfer-blond hair, Brinkford sat at the back with the big square boy called George Canby. “Will a computer printout be accepted?”

Mrs. Cowling smiled brightly. “Although a typed paper would be easier on my eyes, no. I want to see the essays done in your very own words, thoughts, and handwriting. I know you all have it in you to be very interesting and original.”

Brinkford sank down into his chair. “I don't get my papers off the Internet,” the blond-haired boy said, his mouth twisted sulkily.

“No, of course, you don't,” Mrs. Cowling said. “But others may be tempted, so I've decided this is a fitting way to handle it. I want only your best thoughts!”

Jason resisted the notion to out-and-out stare at Martin. He was all but certain it was Brinkford and Canby who'd trash-canned him and Sam. Brinkford gave him a mocking look back.

The buzzer went off, as if punctuating her words. “See you tomorrow,” Mrs. Cowling ended. “Oh,” she added. “Tommy and Jason, please stay after a moment.”

Jason, poised to leap from his desk chair as if shot from a cannon, deflated and fell back onto the seat, staring at her. If she was going to ask about the dumpster again, he still couldn't say anything.

“Silence is golden,” Canby said as he passed by. He made his sneakers fart on the linoleum floor as he headed to the classroom door.

Jason rolled his eyes and slumped farther down in his desk.

The other students left in a blur of motion and a thunder of noise, until the classroom stood empty but for the three of them. “Jason, I'll be just a moment with Tommy,” Mrs. Cowling said, and drew the thin, lanky student aside at her desk.

Jason got to his feet, slowly. The sun and grass called from outside. The soccer tryouts fairly screamed. Sam passed by again, jogging around the end of the field. He looked out the window with a longing so intense it hurt somewhere inside of him. Average, ordinary Jason—but out there he could show them what he was made of. Tough, long legs for speed and cornering. Quick eyes. The ability to angle downfield and wait for a pass. A kick at the goal. A noun is the object of the sentence. . . .

Jason blinked, as Mrs. Cowling's soft answer to Tommy penetrated his thoughts. A whole year of this and Tom “No Neck” Spears whose head was shaped like the football helmet he wore nearly year round had no idea what Mrs. Cowling was repeating to him. Jason stifled another groan. He'd be here all afternoon if she wanted him to wait until Tommy understood grammar. The asphalt just outside the windows rippled in the afternoon heat looking like a slick black sea. Beyond it, the green grass of the athletic fields lay like paradise. He sighed.

She gave him a look past Tommy's ears and put her hand on the boy's thick shoulder. “Just a moment, Tommy. Jason, I'll be right with you. Take a look on my desk and see what you think?”

He shifted.

“Well . . . okay. Sam's waiting for me. Soccer tryouts and everything.” He thought of distracting her. All he could think of was the soccer sign-up table, dressing, warm-ups, stretches.

“I suppose you have your heart set on that camp,” she repeated, her eyes behind her spectacles big and owlish. Her fluffy brown hair puffed out slightly on its own.

“I'm going with Sam. If we make it. Which we will.”

“I'll be right with you, then.” She turned her back on him, not seeing his disappointed fidget as he drifted to her desk.

She was not the English teacher they'd started with at the beginning of the year. That had been Mrs. Ervin, but she was going to have a baby and had left in February. He'd gotten along all right with her, but Mrs. Cowling was another matter. They'd gotten along
great.
She was fun in the classroom and shared a lot of neat things she brought in for them all to look at and, even better, she liked to read almost as much as he did.

He leaned on her desk, impeccably clean, as always. He'd never seen a teacher without piles everywhere. If there was something on her desk, it was always a neat something to touch, examine, ponder about. Once she'd brought in a miniature sarcophagus with a fake mummy inside and everything.

Today, a crystal ball sat on the battered wood top. He reached for it without thinking, and turned its coolness over and over in his hands. He looked into its clear, colorless depths. Could he see his fortune in it? Could anyone? He turned it again. A wave of color rippled through it and he looked around to see if he had sent a prism of rainbow light on the walls anywhere. Nothing.

The crystal ball warmed to his touch. He cradled it.
Give me luck,
he thought. For soccer! He stared into it and saw a warped image of himself. Scratches across the nose, lopsided mouth, eyes peering curiously.

Jason held the ball closer. How could it reflect like a mirror? He narrowed his eyes to examine the crystal ball better. A dark shape welled up inside. Grasping, a five-fingered hand seemed poised over his reflection, about to snatch him up. He blinked.

His hands trembled slightly. The dark hand shifted, turned, sailed about and became an immense black-winged bird that soared through the inner Jason, and then everything went clear—

“Jason?”

He jumped. Mrs. Cowling caught the crystal ball as it sprang from his hand. “Did you see anything?”

“I . . . I . . . I'm not sure.” He shut his mouth firmly.

Her mouth twitched. “This is what I had for you.”

She picked up a bound notebook from the desk. It had been resting under the ball. He flushed as he realized that, and she handed it to him.

“It's your story, the one I entered into the state Imagination Celebration. I thought it was something you should keep, always.”

“Wow.” He held the notebook. The cover was embossed with a dragon breathing flames. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for letting me read it, and enter it. I hope—” She paused. “This isn't a good time to talk about it, is it?”

He shook his head.

“Run to tryouts, then.”

Backpack in hand, Jason bolted for the classroom door. He skidded through the polished hallways and out the door. Waves of heat hit him as he emerged, blinking. He turned the corner of the building and slowed, trotting to the locker rooms to change. The sound of cleats on asphalt clattered behind him and he turned to see a wave of boys engulf and swerve around him. They were gone in a moment, jogging back to the field and its edge, a cloud of sweat following them.

Jason spotted the temporary tables dragged under the breezeway for sign-ups and darted over. Two men sat behind it, smiling at him, one of them a big square man who looked as though he had never run a step in his life, and the other a crew-cut, thin man who was wearing a faded soccer shirt and running shorts. “Little late.”

“Sorry, teacher wouldn't let me go. I signed up at the pre-sign-up,” Jason said, words tumbling out.

“Did you? We should have you on our list, then.”

The big man eyed him. “Got to have good grades. Can't have poor students on the teams. Rules.”

“It wasn't for that.” Jason craned his neck, trying to read the lists upside down. He stabbed his finger at his name. “There. That's me.” His name was squiggled next to Sam's.

“Is it?” The skinny man squinted at the list. “You don't look like you're headed for middle school.”

Jason shifted under his backpack. “Well, I am. That's me.”

“Ever played team soccer before? Get coaching?” The big man scratched his eyebrow vigorously.

“Just at school last year before I moved here. But I'm fast.”

“Takes hard work, not magic, to make a team.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

The skinny man cleared his throat. “Well. You'd better change clothes and get out and warm up. They're already running sprint trials. Take this, clip it on, and see Benny . . . he's in the dark blue Rovers suit, all right?”

“All right!” Jason grinned and took off for the locker rooms.

Once on the field, his small regular school locker jam-packed with his clothes and backpack, he felt better. Sam cornered him outside the lockers.

“Where have you been?”

“Mrs. Cowling kept me after. She had my story put into a book, it's really cool.” He tugged his soccer shirt into position. “Help me find Benny.”

“That's him.” Sam pointed downfield. He spotted a harried-looking guy with frazzled red hair and a stopwatch in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Benny looked at him as they jogged up. “What do you need?”

“I was late getting on the field. Where do I go?”

“Right here. What age group in the fall?”

“Starting middle school.”

Under Benny's frazzled red hair, shocking blue eyes stared at him. “Middle school?”

Jason nodded.

“All right. I run you two at a time. Brinkford! Got your running partner.” Benny waved a hand. “Stretch, warm up, and wait. It'll be a few minutes. If you see someone walking around dressed like a soccer ball, that's our mascot. Get a rules handout from him.”

“Okay.” Jason turned away from Benny, his heart sinking as tall, weedy Brinkford stared at him over the tops of the others' heads. Sam nudged him.

“Brinkford's such a slime.”

“Suppose he makes the camp, too?”

Sam shrugged. “You, me, we'll bunk together. Brinkford can go ooze somewhere else.”

Jason bent over to stretch. Blood pounded in his ears as Brinkford sauntered up.

His classmate lifted the corner of his lip. “Running against me? You wish.” He turned his back and said something to his shadow, and laughter echoed. George Canby glanced at him and made a remark back, and both boys bent over in glee.

Jason felt his ears pound. He trotted over to the edge of the grass, circled by a running path, Sam in his wake. “I've gotta make camp. Otherwise, it's a summer with Grandma McIntire. I won't even be able to see you!”

“You'll make it. Just remember, you don't have to beat Marty. You're running against the stopwatch time. He's the fastest kid here. Even being second to him, you'll probably beat a lot of other guys' times. Okay?”

“Okay!” He nodded at Sam.

Martin Brinkford stood a good head taller than Jason, with longer legs. He might not be able to stay even, but that wouldn't matter. It didn't matter if he won. It mattered only if he ran faster than a lot of the others. Even if all he saw were Martin Brinkford's heels, it was the stopwatch he had to worry about. But the laughter stung.

Jason hung at the back of the group, watching boys split off two by two and grunt and thunder their way across the field to where another soccer coach stood with a stopwatch in each hand. Old, weathered wooden bleachers framed the imaginary finish line. From time to time, girls sat there watching, or finished runners sprawled there, waiting for their turn to take the passing tests which involved dribbling a ball through a cone obstacle course using only their feet to keep the soccer ball in line, to an odd adult or two who just seemed to be there to cheer on their son. Just such a person perched there now and although Jason watched him, he could not quite clearly see who sat there, although the agility with which he leaped to the very top row of the bleachers almost certainly knocked him out of the parent category.

A sharp whistle split the air.

“Okay, to the line . . . Brinkford and Adrian. Let's go, hustle, hustle!”

Jason moved over to the coach's side. Brinkford looked him over slowly, grinned, and moved into position.

Jason almost closed his eyes.
It didn't matter who won. What mattered was the time on the stopwatches.
He took a deep breath and shook his hands loose. Martin Brinkford made a noise almost like a cat snarling. Jason rolled his neck and shoulders, trying to calm a suddenly jittery stomach.

“On your mark.”

He fixed his gaze on Sam standing across the field.

“Get set.”

Jason inhaled.

“Go!”

Martin Brinkford took off like a shot, Jason barely half a step behind. He dropped his chin, concentrating on pumping his legs faster, driving him after Brinkford. The gap between them widened, then closed.

His feet pounded the grass and ground. He narrowed his eyes. Martin grunted slightly and began to draw away again, but they were close, so close to the coach already! Breathing hard, Jason focused on the goal line.

Sam began jumping up and down and waved his arms. Urging him on. Jason dug in. His lungs were on fire. Brinkford sprinted barely ahead of him. He was catching up!

Something blurred in the corner of his eye.