Wayward Son Read online

Page 4

“Micah…” I tried to make my voice softer, smaller. “Maybe you could go to California with us. We could use your help.”

  “I have my internship.”

  “Well, we’re flying into Chicago anyway. If you change your mind—”

  “Agatha might be in danger, right? You should fly straight there.”

  “I suppose that’s true.…”

  “And we’ll talk when you get back,” he said. “When things settle down for you.”

  And then he hung up.

  And that convinced me that I was right to plan this trip. It’s been far too long since Micah and I have touched base. Whatever we need to talk about, it will be better to do it in person.

  11

  BAZ

  Bunce’s boyfriend lives in a subdivision inside a suburb.

  “The houses are so far apart,” Snow says. Now that we’re off the motorway, we can hear each other speak again. “It seems a bit greedy, doesn’t it? Just to take up as much space as you can?”

  “They’re not that far apart,” I say.

  “Not to you; you grew up in a mansion.”

  “I grew up at the top of a tower,” I say. “With you.”

  “It’s that one!” Bunce says, pointing.

  I park in the driveway and start to get out of the car, but Bunce pushes me down and climbs over me. “You guys wait here.”

  “I want to see Micah!” Snow says. “Are you embarrassed by us?”

  “Yes,” she says, “but I’ll come back for you anyway. I just want to see him alone for a moment.”

  She smooths down her T-shirt, but she still looks like she spent the night on a plane—and Bunce tends to look a bit absurd, even at her freshest. She dresses like she’s still in Watford uniform, or wishes she was. Short, tartan skirts. Knee socks. Mary Janes or brogues. The only concession she’s made to civilian life is a series of oversized T-shirts. I wonder if she even realizes she still wears so much purple and green.

  Bunce gets halfway up the driveway, then turns back, holding out her hands and mouthing, “Stay there!”

  “We get it!” Snow shouts. “We embarrass you!”

  She throws her hands in the air, and runs up to the house.

  Snow and I are alone. He reaches out and touches the gear stick. “It’s still warm.”

  I nod.

  “Does it feel different?” he asks. “Than your car at home?”

  “Hulkier,” I say. “Harder to control.… Do you want to try it?”

  Snow’s still holding on to the gear stick. “I can’t even drive an automatic.”

  “I—” I shrug. “I could teach you?”

  “Here?”

  “Why not here? No one will notice. There’s no traffic.”

  Snow looks very young, his eyebrows scrunched down, like he isn’t sure he’s allowed to try this. I open my car door. “Come on.”

  I get out, and he climbs across to the driver’s side, rubbing his hands on his jeans. (Simon Snow in America: jeans and a white T-shirt, skin already pinking up from the sun.)

  I take his place in the passenger seat. “All right,” I say, sounding a bit like Coach Mac, “the handbrake is on, so we’re not going anywhere.”

  “Right.”

  “Now, press down on the clutch. It’s the pedal on the—”

  “I know, I’ve played Gran Turismo.”

  “Fine. So, the clutch is always down when you start and when you change gears. Feel it out for a minute.”

  He pumps the clutch harder than he needs to, but I don’t correct him. Easy does it isn’t in Snow’s behavioural vocabulary.

  “Now put your hand on the gear stick.”

  Snow grabs it. I lay my hand over his and try to shake his wrist loose. “Relax. We’re just practising. The car is off, and the brake is on. We’re just seeing how it feels.…” I move the gear stick back and forth. “This is neutral.” I push his hand over and then down. “And this is reverse.”

  Up, over, up. “First.” Down. “Second.”

  Up, over, up. “Third.” Down. “Fourth.”

  Snow nods his head, looking down at our hands. “There’s a diagram on the knob,” he says.

  “Right. But you can’t look at it when you’re driving. Just feel.…” I move through the gears again.

  “Got it,” he says.

  I take my hand away. “So, get back into neutral.…”

  Snow lifts his hand to peek at the knob, then moves it over.

  “It can be a lot to manage all at once—it’s frustrating at first.”

  “Who taught you how to drive?” he asks.

  “My stepmother.”

  “And she got frustrated?”

  “No,” I say. “She was lovely. I got frustrated. Go ahead and release the handbrake—it’s just there.” I put my left hand on his shoulder, then reach across his lap with my right, pointing.

  “Did she use magic?”

  “To teach me to drive?”

  Snow fiddles with the brake. “Yeah.”

  “No. You’ve met Daphne. She hardly uses magic for anything.”

  “But you could use magic to drive?”

  “I suppose, but then you wouldn’t learn.” I nudge him with my elbow. “Go on, James Dean, start it up.”

  “Just turn the key?”

  “Yeah, and give it some gas.”

  He turns the key, and the car lurches forward and dies. I catch myself on the dashboard. “Good.”

  “That wasn’t good, Baz.”

  “It was fine,” I say. “It’s normal. I should have double-checked that we were in neutral. Try again: Clutch. Neutral. Ignition. Accelerator.”

  The car starts fine this time. Simon revs the engine and looks at me, laughing with delight.

  I give him a moment to enjoy it. “We’re going to move now. This is where it gets tricky.”

  “It’s already tricky.”

  “You’re going to keep the clutch in, change into first, then gently press the accelerator as you ease up on the clutch.”

  He shakes his head, like I’m talking nonsense.

  “The clutch allows you to switch gears,” I say. “And you need to be in gear to move forward. The accelerator makes you go.”

  “So clutch, then first—” His hand wobbles, but he gets there. “—then accelerator.” We jolt forward.

  “Excellent.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah … but we’re gonna hit that mailbox.”

  Simon looks up from the gear stick. “What do I do?!”

  “Steer away.”

  “Oh. Right.” He jerks the wheel. “Agh. Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. You’re doing really well.”

  “Why are you being so nice to me? Back when I was genuinely good at things, you were never this nice. But now that I’m fucking up—”

  “You’re just learning. Keep steering.”

  “Right, right. Just down the street?”

  “Just down the street.”

  “Get your wand out,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “Worst-case scenario.”

  “We won’t need it.” I put my hand on his shoulder. Every muscle in his torso is clenched. “You’re going a bit faster now—”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s fine—just, can you feel it? It wants to change up.”

  “What does?”

  “The engine. It’s straining.”

  “Oh, right. Yeah. So I—”

  He changes smoothly into second.

  “Crowley, that was excellent, Snow.”

  “Let me try—” And he’s in third. Which is too fast for a residential neighbourhood, but well done, all the same.

  “Smashing, Simon. You’re a natural.”

  “That was okay?”

  “Yeah, very.”

  “It’s easier when I don’t think.”

  “As you’ve often told me.”

  “Baz?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s a car—there’s a car!
I don’t know how to stop!”

  12

  PENELOPE

  Micah’s mother answers the door, and she seems confused to see me. Which makes sense. I do live in London.

  “Mrs. Cordero,” I say, “hello.”

  “Penelope … it’s so good to see you. Micah didn’t tell me you were coming.”

  “Oh, it’s sort of a surprise,” I say. “It all came together really quickly. Is he here?”

  “Yeah, come in, of course.”

  I step into their house. I love this house. I stayed in the spare bedroom when I came to see Micah two summers ago. All the rooms are huge, and only the bedrooms and bathrooms (there are four bathrooms) have doors. And everything—all the walls and furniture and the two dozen kitchen cabinets—is in peaceful shades of cream and tan.

  There are at least three tan leather sofas.

  There are two beige sitting rooms.

  There’s wall-to-wall carpeting exactly the shade of porridge.

  Ugh, it’s so comforting. My house is every colour, none of them planned. And our furniture is whatever colour it was when my father spotted it at a yard sale. Also, our house has stuff everywhere. Micah’s family must have stuff somewhere, but you never see it. The only things on the coffee tables (how many coffee tables are there? easily nine) are cream-coloured vases with cream-coloured flowers and tan, marble lamps.

  “I’ll just—” Mrs. Cordero looks nervous. She must know Micah and I have been arguing. “I’ll go get Micah.”

  I sit on one of the leather sofas, and a cream-coloured Pomeranian wanders up to me.

  Micah’s parents are both magicians, which isn’t always true in America. They have no standards for these things here, and some magicians go their entire lives without meeting a mage who isn’t a relative. When magicians hook up with Normals, their kids usually have magic, but not always, and most people believe that diluted mages aren’t as powerful. But that might be because they get less training. There’s almost no scholarship on the matter, Mum says.

  Micah thinks English magicians get too hung up on magic. “My family uses magic,” he says, “but it’s just part of our identity.”

  Utter nonsense. If you can speak with magic, you are a magician first and foremost—bother the rest of it.

  Micah’s parents both work for health insurance companies. They use their magic mostly at home, for housework.

  The Pomeranian is trying to jump into my lap, but she’s too small. I pick her up because I feel sorry for her, not because I feel like holding a dog.

  I really think this is all going to be okay. If Micah and I can just talk face-to-face. The last time I was here, everything clicked. We felt like a real couple for the first time.

  “Penelope?”

  “Micah!” I stand up, bringing the dog with me. Micah!

  “Penny. What are you doing here?” He isn’t smiling. I wish he was smiling.

  “I told you I was coming.”

  “And I told you that you shouldn’t.”

  “But I was going to be here anyway—”

  “California isn’t here.”

  “You said we needed to talk, Micah. And I agreed. We should talk.”

  “I’ve been saying that for six months, Penny, and you’ve been putting me off.”

  “I haven’t—”

  Micah’s arms are folded. He looks so different from the last time I saw him. He’s growing one of those awful moustache/chin-beard combos. When was the last time we Skyped?

  “Micah? I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t want me here. I’m your girlfriend.”

  He looks like I’ve just said something ridiculous. (Something like, “I’m going to grow a moustache/chin-beard thingy, what do you think?”) “Penelope … we’ve hardly talked in a year.”

  “Because we’re both busy.”

  “And we talked even less the year before that.”

  “Well, those were extreme circumstances, you know that.”

  “You can’t avoid me for two years and still think we have a relationship.”

  “Micah, I wasn’t ever avoiding you, why would you say that?”

  “You weren’t anything about me! We weren’t anything. I talked to my grandmother more than you.”

  “Am I competing with your grandmother now?”

  “Not like I was competing with Simon Snow.”

  The Pomeranian barks.

  “You know that Simon and I aren’t like that.”

  He rolls his eyes. “I do. Actually. But I know that he matters to you—in a way I never have.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me you felt this way?”

  “Ha,” Micah says. Like I’m being the worst kind of funny. “I tried. I’d have better luck talking to a tornado. You are a tornado.”

  I’m so confused. “We don’t really have tornadoes in England.…”

  “Well, you’re a gale-force wind, Penelope Bunce. You just do what you want as forcefully as possible, and nothing else matters. I’ve tried to talk to you about this so many times, but you just blow right past me.”

  “That’s not fair!” I say. I’m losing my cool.

  He isn’t. “It’s more than fair—it’s true. You. Don’t. Listen. To me.”

  “I certainly do.”

  “Really? I told you I was tired of being in a long-distance relationship—”

  “And I agreed that it was tiring!” I say.

  “I told you that I thought we’d grown apart—”

  “And I said that was natural!” I half shout.

  He’s still looking at me like nothing about me makes sense. “What does it even mean to you to be in a relationship, Penny?”

  “It—it means that we love each other. And that we have this part of our lives figured out. That we know who we’re going to be with in the end.”

  “No,” he says, sounding—for the first time in this conversation—more sad than fed up. “A relationship isn’t about the end. It’s about being together every step of the way.”

  “Micah?” A girl steps into the living room. “I heard shouting, and your mom said it was fine, but—”

  “It is fine,” he says softly. “I’ll be back down in a few minutes.”

  The girl keeps looking at me. She has long dark hair and wide hips. She’s wearing a flowered sundress. “You’re Penelope,” she says.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Erin. It’s so nice to meet you.” She comes at me with her hand out, but I act like it’s taking all I’ve got to hold on to the dog.

  “I just need a few minutes,” Micah says. “I can explain—”

  “Good,” I say.

  He looks back at me, like I’m still being unbelievably foolish. “I wasn’t talking to you, Penny. For God’s sake.”

  “Micah, what is this? Are you breaking up with me?”

  “No,” he says. “I already have, half a dozen times. And you just won’t hear it!”

  “I’m certain you never said, ‘Penelope, I’m breaking up with you.’”

  “I said it every other way! We went two months without talking, and you didn’t even notice!”

  “I’m sure I was working on something very important!”

  “I’m sure you were, too! Something much more important than me!”

  At this point, I’m very tempted to say, “No, Micah, you’re wrong. This is a mistake, and I don’t accept it.”

  And maybe I would if this Erin person weren’t standing right there. I think she’s a Normal, unless she’s got a wand up the back of her dress—nothing she’s wearing could hold magic. Cheap bangles and flip-flop sandals. If it weren’t for her, I’d announce, “I’m leaving now. Call me when you’re feeling reasonable.”

  Instead I say, “My mother set eyes on my father in third year and knew immediately that they’d be married someday.”

  “That’s not us,” he says. “That’s practically nobody.”

  He’s right.…

  …

  … How mortifying.


  I walk out of the house then, without saying good-bye to him or Erin or Mrs. Cordero. I’m halfway down the walk when Micah catches up with me.

  “Penelope!”

  “I don’t want to talk to you anymore!”

  “No, you—you’ve got my mom’s dog.” He takes the Pomeranian from my arms, and it barks like it wants to come back to me. Micah jogs back into the house.

  I’m crying, and I can’t believe I have to face Simon and Baz now. I can’t believe I have to explain this to them.…

  The car is gone.

  They’re not here.

  13

  SIMON

  I’m driving, I’m actually driving. I mean, it’s a housing development called Havenbrook, not the autobahn, but I’m behind the wheel and operating multiple pedals, and if I think too hard about it, I push the brake instead of the clutch, and the car shakes and dies—but that’s only happened twice, and Baz is acting like I’m some sort of natural-born talent. “Perfect, Snow,” he keeps saying. And I wish he was saying, “Perfect, Simon,” but I’ll take “perfect.” He’s got his hand on my shoulder, and I feel like there’s nothing I’m doing in this moment to let him down.

  “I think you’re ready for an actual street,” Baz says.

  “I’m not ready for other cars.”

  “The only way to be ready is to do it. There’s no practice traffic.”

  We’re driving past the Havenbrook Estates entrance. I can see the main road. “Should I try it?”

  “Yeah. Do it, Snow. Live dangerously.” Says the vampire teaching me how to drive.

  “What about Penny?” I say. I’m stalling.

  “I can’t imagine she’s missing us, but I suppose we could check.”

  “Do you remember the address?”

  We both look up. Every house in Havenbrook Estates looks like the same house, slightly rearranged, and painted one of five muted shades.

  “I think it was light brown,” Baz says.

  “This light brown,” I say, pointing at a house, “or that light-light brown?” I point at another.

  “That’s not light brown, that’s a warm grey.”

  “They’re all sort of a warm grey,” I say, “even that green one.”

  “I don’t see a green one.”

  “That one there.”