The Bridge (8 page)

He couldn’t imagine how much trouble he’d be in if his grandfather knew about the information he had already slipped to Bryce.

“For the experiment?” Bryce came into the office and sat on the corner of Ann’s desk, close enough to make Everett’s heart beat harder.

“Experiment?” Everett’s grandfather repeated. “I haven’t heard of any experiments you were conducting.”

“He didn’t tell me either. Apparently I’ll think he’s crazy or something.” Bryce said, having no idea of the line Everett was balanced on.

“Crazy?” Everett’s grandfather smiled.

“It’s nothing.” Everett looked at Bryce and tried to convey a message through his eyes.

Bryce shifted his jaw and made a slight nod. “Whatever you say. So, what lessons are you taking? Private or group?”

“It is forty dollars either way,” Ann said, “so you may as well take private lessons.”

“Private will suit you much better,” Everett’s grandfather said.

“I also teach private lessons sometimes, so….” Bryce shrugged, smiling devilishly.

Everett struggled to moisten his mouth without looking like he had oral problems. “Oh? What days?”

“It doesn’t matter. If Kwang Jang-nim lets me, I’ll teach all your lessons. I’m pretty good with kids my age since, you know, I am a kid myself.”

Ann swatted Bryce off the desk with a rolled newspaper. “Bryce is an assistant instructor. He’ll be promoted to an actual instructor when he turns twenty-one, but for now he’s limited to assisting and hosting private lessons. He has a year of private-lesson experience, but if you want someone more qualified, you can train with Antonio.”

Bryce made an X with his arms and pretended to cut his throat with the top V. “You don’t want Antonio. He leads the boot camps. That should tell you enough.”

“He’s the head master of the dojang. Very experienced and smart with his technique. You’ll learn more from him than from Bryce,” Ann said.

Bryce leaned on the desk and gestured to Ann. “She didn’t deny it. She agrees Antonio is harsh.”

Ann didn’t respond with anything more than a sigh.

Everett’s grandfather finished filling the info sheets and slid them to Ann with finality. “Who do you want?” he asked Everett.

There was no question about it. “I’d feel more comfortable with Bryce. Antonio would scare me silly.”

“Excellent choice. You should read my online reviews. I’m really good.” Bryce shook Everett’s hand.

Bryce’s knuckles were bruised and scabbed, as if he had taken bare fists to a punching bag. Everett brushed his thumb on one scab. It was thin and fresh.

“I have dry hands,” Bryce said.

Everett could see though the lie. Bryce had the hands you found on someone who was extremely hands-on and took care of their skin. His hands were rough, but moisturized. Those scabs weren’t from dry skin.

Bryce gently pulled his hand back. He smiled, but it wasn’t confident. He rubbed his knuckles, watching Everett with uncertain eyes.

“When do you want to start?” Ann asked.

“He’s free all weekdays, and after three on weekends,” Everett’s grandfather said.

“Private lessons are five to seven on weekdays and three to eight on weekends. Choose any time you like. Bryce is free for them all.”

“Is there a limit?” Everett asked.

“Only with space reservation. Our policy is first come, first serve. Make sure you schedule a free time on the online calendar.” Ann pointed at the link on an informational sheet. “Your login is your student ID and last name. We can have two private lessons at a time, so feel free to sign up if someone is already signed on.”

“Try not to sign when Antonio’s there. He might borrow you as a practice target for his student,” Bryce said.

“Bryce and Antonio aren’t on the best terms,” Ann said, as if that explained everything.

“What are you talking about? We’re best friends with a great rivalry.”

The dojang’s doors opened and voices drifted into the office.

“I’ll greet ’em. Call me later.” Bryce slipped a hand under Everett’s bangs and brushed them over his head.

Everett fixed his hair and blushed under his grandfather’s scrutiny.

“HOW CLOSE
are you to Bryce?” Everett’s grandfather asked during the drive home.

“I don’t really know him.”

“How much does he know about you?”

The atmosphere shifted in seconds. The air was tense, and it tightened Everett’s breaths.

“He doesn’t know I’m a witch,” Everett said, trying to keep his bitterness low.

“He knows you carry salt with you. He knows you do ‘experiments.’ He knows you want to keep these ‘experiments’ to yourself because they’d make you sound crazy.”

Bryce also knew he was moving to Sundale, but that didn’t scream anything about Everett’s nature. Maybe Everett really was a crazy teenager who loved salt and experiments with salt. Nobody knew witches used salt for focuses anyway. Everyone believed they used caldrons, wands, broomsticks, pointed hats…. If Bryce suspected anything paranormal of Everett, it would be hunting creatures.

“That’s hardly enough to even hint that I’m a witch. If anything, he thinks I’m weird.”

“One secret will lead to another.”

Everett hissed and shifted his attention to the houses they passed. “Then why did you let me take private lessons with him? If you don’t have faith in my secrecy, why didn’t you stop me?”

His grandfather lowered his voice to a resigned murmur. “You need time to be a teenager.”

“I may not be a regular teenager, but that doesn’t mean I’m missing out on anything.”

Normalcy was foreign to him. He was the son of two witches, the grandson of four witches, and the great-grandson of eight witches. He had been guaranteed a life of witching the moment he was born.

He didn’t have a stolen childhood to cry over. His childhood hadn’t been normal, even in comparison to other witch children, but it existed.

“You need to experience life as a normal teen,” his grandfather said.

“That’s ironic,” he couldn’t help but say because private lessons with Bryce gave him an opening to further investigate the dojang’s paranormal haunting. “Normal teens don’t take private lessons with their crushes.”

His grandfather chuckled. “You admit he’s your crush.”

He had only mentioned that to get his grandfather on another topic.

“Do you approve of him?”

“He carries himself with absolute confidence. He reminds me of two boys I knew in college. Both confident, both loud, both charming. Women loved them. But one used his charm to manipulate people. The other was an angel. He used his charm for nothing. I hope your Bryce is the angel.”

Everett ran a finger over the wings on the folder. “I hope so too.”

BACK HOME,
Everett’s grandfather tried to contact Omar and received no answer.

Everett curled with a blanket on the couch and read a book he had picked up from a “Free Book” stand on the way home.

“Call the Order,” Everett said.

“I’ll call tomorrow, after Omar flakes again.” His grandfather dialed Omar’s number again.

“He’s going to have a dozen missed calls tonight if you don’t stop.”

“The longer we postpone your lessons, the more danger we put you in.”

He slapped his book shut. His grandfather’s visible unease with Omar’s absence made it difficult to follow the plot.

“Omar is a regular witch, right? If a regular witch can teach me how to be a Bridge Master, why can’t you?”

“Some witches are better suited for instructing, but I’d like to teach you aura concealing. It’s a Bridge Master’s first safety measure. Come here.”

“Should I get my salt?”

“You need to learn independence from focuses, but your safety is vital, so go ahead.”

He grabbed his bag from his room before joining his grandfather at the chess table.

“Aura blocking is vital for Bridge Masters. Your aura acts as a tracking device for normal witches and paranormal creatures. Some view it as a balance of power. The weak can track the strong, but the strong can’t track the weak.”

It was almost funny how much weaker Everett was in comparison to normal witches. They surpassed him by miles.

“If someone tries to expose my aura, will anything show?”

His grandfather opened the salt bag. “No, but it is safer than being tracked 24-7.” Any living thing without an aura was begging for examination. “Now, put your hand inside. What do you think you should visualize in order to block your aura?”

“A wall?”

“Try it. There is no correct answer, but some visualizations will work better than others. Let me know when you’re ready to test your block.”

Everett imagined a wall concealing his glow. “Try it.”

A small force, like a finger, poked inside his mind.

His grandfather shook his head. “Still there.”

He changed the wall to a glass shield. “How about now?”

The finger returned, its presence weaker.

“Your aura is muted, but it is still strong.”

He tried a combination of bricks and glass.

“It is worse than before.”

They went through nearly a dozen revisions before Everett found a suitable visualization.

He sucked his aura into a box and stored it in his mind. With the aura safely contained within, only he had access to it.

He withdrew his hand from the salt. “Is it gone?”

His grandfather nodded. “That was faster than I anticipated. I shouldn’t be surprised. Your parents were also fast learners.”

Everett’s smile was painful and fake as he knotted his bag.

THEY ATE
lunch on the shop’s second floor. The apartment was in better shape than Everett last remembered. His grandfather had already begun cleaning it. The kitchenette and dining room were tiny, but easy to maintain. Their electricity use would be less than in the house.

His grandfather put a cleaning supply kit on the kitchenette counter and instructed him to wipe down the kitchen.

The bookstore was a corner shop, so the kitchen window had a nice view of one of downtown Sundale’s busy intersections. Everett peered out the window in between cleaning the crannies of the kitchenette.

The shop opened for several hours in the morning to catch early bird Sunday shoppers. Sundays were busier here than in downtown Ashville. Sundale had more shops, and during the day there was a more favorable shopping atmosphere for families. At night, Sundale’s bars and clubs provided entertainment for the rowdy crowd, and the town’s party animals came out to play.

Ghosts would be coming here for bridge access, and Everett would have to provide it in the midst of a crowded area. And there were security cameras on the stoplights of the intersection, so anything crazy Everett did would be recorded.

His grandfather peeked into the apartment. “I have to use the toilet. Can you watch the shop for me?”

“How long does it take to use the toilet?” Everett asked.

“I’m an old man. Do not put high expectations on me.”

Everett went down the wooden staircase and made a note to himself to polish it when he got the chance.

A group of teen girls crowded around the bestseller rack. Two boys cruised in the nonfiction aisle, talking about making a move on the girls. Everett went by unnoticed.

He sat behind the checkout counter and kept an eye on the teens and the security camera feed on the old TV under the counter.

When the girls checked out with six books, the boys got in line behind them.

“Those boys are looking at you,” Everett said, taking his time with scanning the barcodes.

“We know. They’re really creepy,” one of the girls said, leaning forward so Everett could catch her whisper.

Typically, teen boys stirred the most trouble with their rowdiness. Girls were like tranquilizers. They calmed the boys, but they suffered the stares and stalking.

“I’ll stall them for you.”

“That’d be amazing,” another girl said.

While Everett checked the boys out, he touched the salt packet in his pocket and made a few books fall off a shelf.

Dizziness hit him like a brick, and he wavered.

One of the boys leaned over the counter, his hand raising and lowering from its edge as if he wasn’t sure if he should touch Everett. “Dude, you all right?”

He nodded. “Just a little woozy. Could one of you pick those books up?”

One of the boys went to reshelf the fallen books, looking a little woozy himself.

“Do you need a doctor or something?” another boy said.

“I’m fine. Is this all you’re buying?”

He checked them out slowly, his dizziness making him accidently charge them twice. He apologized for his sloppiness.

His grandfather came down the staircase. “Everett, are you feeling dizzy again?”

“Just a little spell. I’m fine.”

His grandfather gave him a knowing look. “I’ll take over. Why don’t you rest upstairs?”

EVERETT HAD
finished cleaning the kitchen and living room by the time the shop closed. His grandfather hadn’t forgotten about the spell.

“Just a little spell? You looked pretty pale.”

“The boys were stalking girls so I stalled them by making a few books fall over.”

His grandfather silently grabbed a broom and went to the hall. “I don’t think you understand how important it is that you conserve your energy.”

“I can lengthen my endurance if I keep practicing.”

“You shouldn’t do it on a whim. You need a mentor.”

“I’d have one if Omar was here.” Everett mopped the bathroom tiles vigorously. “I think he’d tell me to consistently cast spells. He’d give me a workout to expand my energy pool.”

His grandfather paused in front of the bathroom doorway. “He’d teach you how to efficiently cast spells. Your endurance doesn’t matter if you know how to use your current pool.”

“I know how to use it. I know the spells that drain me of the most energy. I know the spells that require all my energy.”

“You don’t.”

Everett glared. “I do.”

But he didn’t. He used to. Bridging spirits used to bite a huge chunk out of his energy, but when he had bridged the ghost girl, he only felt a slight pang. He had even been able to maintain the bridge without meaning to. Exposing paranormal traces were exhausting some days, nothing more difficult than raising a hand other days. Maybe he was growing into his Bridge Master role.