The Wicked: A Love Story

“Are you witches?”

“Well, you already know we aren’t,” Tanitha said.

“Then,…” Dan felt at a loss, “what are you?”

“You are the one who came here and knocked on our door with that lame line,” Tanitha said, “knowing full well there’d be no candy here tonight. And yet you came, so the better question is who are you? And what did you come here for?”

“I…” Dan started. “I… Came to find… I dunno.”

“You do know,” Kruinh said, softly.

“Something more,” Dan said. “I came to find something more.”

Kruinh nodded.

“That is what we are,” he said. “We are that something more. Or part of it.”

Dan did not say anything else because he didn’t know what else to say. He had a strong feeling that whatever came out of his mouth might be foolish, and there was a consciousness in him that had never been present before, and it was saying Enjoy this moment. Enjoy these people, this cake, this coffee. This is one of the only times you’ve had coffee. This is one of the only times you have been…

There was no worry about meeting his friends on time. He knew that he would. He knew that in this moment he was in an alright place, that he would never have been here if he wasn’t supposed to be.

This is one of the only times you have been…

“This is a good… dinner,” Dan started.

“You know it isn’t that,” Kruinh said without raising his eyes.

“Laurie brought a frittata,” Tanitha noted. “We could have that.”

“Um,” Kruinh began, swilling coffee, “I thought you’d made it.”

“You most certainly did not,” Tanitha said.

“Tanitha does not have,” Kruinh began, “should we say it, cooking skills.”

“That’s what the servants are for,” Tanitha said, grandly, and though she laughed, Dan thought she was only half joking.

“This is breakfast for you?” Dan said.

“That it is,” Tanitha answered, “and you should be glad that we woke up early tonight. I don’t know,” she turned to her father, “Maybe there is something about this night. For all of us. I can feel it.”

This is one of the only times you have been… Yourself.

Tanitha rose to take the frittata out of the oven, and Kruinh, taking out a silver case and pulling up a cheroot, lit it. As the sweet smoke drifted to Dan’s nostrils, Kruinh said, “And tell us about Dan Rawlinson.”

“There isn’t much to tell.”

“No?”

“Maybe,” Tanitha said, setting the frittata on the table, “there isn’t much to tell… yet.”

“I hope there is,” Dan said. “One day. Eventually. Me and my friends are trying to start a band. It never comes together.”

“Maybe you should get better friends,” Kruinh suggested.

The frittata was delicious, and Dan said so. He said, “You all can’t… predict the future or anything.”

“Not anything like that,” Kruinh said. “We are distinctly unmagical.”

“Then why does this night feel magical?” Dan said.

Tanitha said, “A witch would say the whole world is magical.”

“But—” Dan began.

“I am no witch,” Kruinh said. “And rarely have I met one.”

“A meeting with their kind is rare,” Tanitha said, and then she looked at Dan’s empty plate and looked to the clock.

“It’s time. Your friends must be on their way back to the car.”

She rose, pulling the shawl that had fallen from her shoulder and Dan, after shaking Kruinh’s hand, left with Tanitha through the great living room that was filled with old sofas and fat chairs, homely tables and a great stainglass hooded lamp looking from the yard onto the street. There, on the other side of the hedge and past the trees was Will’s Dad’s car with Will leaning against it, tapping his foot, and here were Jack and Riley coming down from the right with plastic bags swinging.

“Thank you so much,” Dan said. He did not say her name. It seemed too forward.

“Be safe, Daniel Rawlinson,” Kruinh called as Tanitha led him to the door.

At the heavy door, suddenly Tanitha took his face in her hands and kissed his forehead.

“That’s a protection,” she said. “And in the end, it will guide you back.”

“Wha?” Dan began, put Tanitha opened the door and shoved him out saying, “Go, before they leave you.”

Dan ran off the porch steps. At the bottom he stopped and memorized the metal numbers 4848. 4848 Brummel Street. Well, then. And he ran down the walk and onto the sidewalk, and Will looked up and said, “Where were you?”

When Dan opened his mouth, Will said, “Never mind. We need to be heading back.”

The moon was fat and white, and the street was lit by few lamps. When he hopped in the backseat and took one last look at the house of Tanitha and Kruinh, he could not tell which one it was. Was it that one, or the one next to it? But hadn’t there been a cupola? Ah, but for now there was no time to look. He would look again. He would return, but for now they were headed back to town.

Dan Rawlinson was not a fighter. He was not confrontational, and he had never expected to find himself in the dean’s office of Saint Ignatius High School. Sitting across from him with a bruised cheek was the silliest boy in this school, Myron Keller, and what a stupid name was that?

Dan still doesn’t know how the fight happened. Jack had gotten involved and then Kris Strauss had gotten involved, though reluctantly, and Dan had to get involved once Will did. You had to be loyal, and it wasn’t really that big of a deal, but Myron did get hit in the face with a tray and Dan had punched Mike Linder, though by accident, and it hardly mattered because in the end the ones that Dean Shep had seen where him and Myron and so here they sat.

Myron crossed his arms over his chest. He was an annoying kid, tall and skinny. He wore a turtleneck all the time and a blue blazer, and had a bulging Adam’s apple along with a big nose bordered by eyes like headlamps in a big round head that sported a shitty page boy haircut.

“You should have stayed out of it,” Myron told Dan, his big eyes now forming blue slits.

“You shouldn’t have started it.”

“I didn’t start it.”

“But here we are.”

“Here we are,” Myron echoed.

Then Myron screwed his face up and said, “Why did you paint your fingernails black last year?”

“Why did you parents name you Myron?”

“It’s a family name, and no one calls me that.”

“Yeah they do.”

“My friends call me Myre.”

“The friends who you ended up in this office because of?”

“Same way you ended up here.”

“Maybe,” Dan said.

Then he said, “You all walk around like you’re so stuck up. Swim team, polo and all that.”

“I’m not stuck up,” Myron said. “It doesn’t make you stuck up to know your own worth.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means—”

“It means you’re rich,” Dan said.

“I am not rich.”

“That’s not true. Your family owns Schiller Beer, and a bunch of other stuff.”

“They own it. I don’t. Myron said.

“But you do have money,” Dan said.

“So what?” Myron turned red and looked visibly upset.

“I think Mike and Jeff and all those assholes you hang out with use you cause you’re rich and you buy them shit. That’s what I think.”

“You sure do have a lot of opinions for someone who doesn’t really know me.”

“I don’t have that many opinions,” Dan said, “but I’ve got that one.”

“Well,” Myron said. “You know I’m not stupid, right?”

“I guess.”

“I know why some people hang out with me. I’m not dumb.”

Dan shrugged.

“It’s just not right,” Dan finally said.

“Why do you care?”

“Because your friends should stick by you and be your friends because of you, not… use you.”

“Well, maybe I’m not lucky as you with friends.”

“Maybe you should make better friends and tell everyone else to fuck off.”

Myron looked at Dan, and then he burst out laughing.

Dan tried to stop himself, but as Myron continued laughing, Dan laughed too.

“That’s not like me,” Dan said. “That’s not the kind of thing I say.”

“Is it true you’re starting a band?”

“I’ve been trying to start a band all year,” Dan said.

“Me too,” Myron said.

“Oh?”

“Well, not starting so much as thinking. I’ve been trying to get my cousins in on it.”

“That’s lame,” Dan said.

“I know, that’s what they think too.”

“A band,” Dan said.

“Yep,” Myron said. “A band.”