Jackson Courter -- Hex
Diana wore a grimy blue sweatshirt spotted with burn holes the size of cigarette butts, and a pair of pink sweatpants. She heard the hum of the electric current in the lights overhead. To her it seemed louder than all the other noises in the classroom.
Mrs. Lockart stood at the front of the class with a laser pointer in her hand. She traced the East Coast with the red dot as she listed the thirteen original colonies to the class. Seventh-grade U.S. History was a two-semester course, but by late April the class had barely advanced beyond the founding of the colonies.
Diana’s textbook lay squarely on the desk in front of her. Published two decades ago, its glossy red-white-and-blue embossing was peeling off of the cover, exposing the raw cardboard underneath. She opened the book to a section she had marked with an index card. Mrs. Lockart noticed Diana’s movement out of the corner of her eye. The girl would usually be asleep on her desk, she thought.
“Tammy, I’m pleased to see you so engaged. Can you tell us who the king of England was at the time of the Boston Tea Party?”
“She wants to be called Diana now,” someone shouted from the back of the classroom. “Like the princess.”
“Please,” Mrs. Lockart hissed through pursed lips. “Tammy, go ahead.”
The girl put a spindly finger on the page and leaned in.
“The Salem Witch trials led to the e-exe-cution of nin-nineteen people. Unlike the m-mod-ern American le-gal sys-tem, the trials that took place in Salem had no st-stan-dards for en-sur-ing fair and impar...”
“Tammy, we studied the Salem Witch Trials last month. We’re on the Boston Tea Party now…. Can you tell us something about the Boston… Tea… Party?”
The class stirred in laughter.
Diana stared straight ahead. Her stare reminded Mrs. Lockart of a photograph of an infantryman in World War II, the picture that had spawned the term “Thousand-Yard Stare.”
“Can you tell us when the Boston Tea Party happened?”
The girl searched the page she had just read from.
“1693?”
She didn’t hear what the teacher said next. She looked out the narrow rectangular window in front of her. A field stretched out as far as she could see. The rows of tiny sprouting corn plants looked like legions assembled for battle. They stood still, waiting for the final order, for the general mounted on a white horse to ride through the ranks to the front of the formation. With a shout of command, he would aim his sword toward the ramparts where she was sequestered, sending the brave armies crashing through the keep. He would hoist her onto his steed and shuttle her away from the vile dungeon, to freedom.
Stashing the textbook under her desk, she produced a smaller book from her backpack. Its title read, Spells For The Princess Diviner. Her brother had gotten it for her from the library a few months ago. From her pocket she took a teal crystal, a little larger than a marble, and held it between her thumb and forefinger, like the book had taught her.
She read the spell on page 36, prescribed to the princess to summon her prince.
“Come prince val-val-iant. Ferry me away on your st-steed...”
***
The slow cooker was on the fritz. After only three hours, the slurry of chicken breast and mushroom soup that had been meant to be ready by the evening had burned. Don yanked the plug out of the socket. He would just take Amanda out for dinner.
He walked into the bathroom with the bag from the drug store. On the vanity, he arranged a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. He placed a bottle of shampoo in the shower, set out in her way, neat, square. With new towels, new toiletries, and the bill from the housecleaner, he had already spent over a hundred dollars. He studied his arid face in the mirror and wondered whose mirror she was looking into.
***
Diana paced around the castle yard, her amber hair blowing in the mild spring breeze. After her captors fed her the noon meal, they usually permitted her a few minutes of fresh air before locking her back in the dungeon.
Over in the parking lot, the upperclassmen tore over the ragged pavement in their second-hand pickup trucks, whooping at each other as they narrowly avoided collision. She noticed someone, an adult, parking in the front row. She recognized him. The sight of him made her heart thump nervously against her ribs. He was thin and hunched, with wispy black-and-gray hair covering the top halves of his ears.
She had met this man before. He was a courtier of some kind, one of the sly, devious little men who could be seen lurking around the castle. She took the crystal in her left hand, the “sinister” hand, her book had called it, the one used for hexes. Fixing her eyes on the malicious little man, she rolled the crystal in her fingers. Be gone, foul troll. She arched her brow and glared at him as he walked to the office door.
The guards ushered her back inside the keep, through a labyrinth of hallways, and into a cell.
“Hey Tammy, come here for a second,” her homeroom teacher said as she hung up the phone.
She liked Mrs. Kendall. She might not have called her Diana, but she always spoke with her alone. Most of the other teachers spoke to her from the front of the class, with everyone watching and listening.
“I need you to go to the office, okay?” She spoke in a gentle voice. “You remember Mr. Brison? He’s here to see you. I know you don’t want to go, but when you get back you can help me reorganize my desk, okay?”
Diana walked alone down the dank corridor. Through the glass front doors she saw the light of day and thought about running, but knew she wouldn’t get far before the sentries overtook her. She was directed into the conference room and sat in front of the thin man. He smiled at her. She couldn’t tell if he was young or old, and decided that he was about her parents’ age, but surely had no children of his own. He set a notebook in front of him, but didn’t open it.
“How are you, Tammy? How’s school?”
His questions reminded her of the ones her parents would ask her after one of them had been away for a long time.
“So, Tammy, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Your brother, Caleb, was arrested this morning. He was caught shoplifting. He also had marijuana. Tammy, have you seen your brother use marijuana? If he’s your guardian he isn’t supposed to have marijuana.” He looked at her with wide eyes, so wide that it looked like his eyelids had completely recessed into his head.
She clutched the crystal in her left hand.
“Tammy…”
"Diana! My name is Diana!”
He stared at her silently for a few agonizing moments.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to stay with your parents. Your father says they’re getting back together,” he said, affecting an optimistic tone. “You can stay at your brother's place tonight, but tomorrow…”
“I ain't staying with my parents. I’m staying with Caleb. I will it be done!” She held the crystal up in the air. The man’s bulging eyes followed it as if it were an insect.
“Look at you, Tammy, your clothes are filthy. And you look malnourished. It’s not a safe space for you at your brother’s apartment.”
"Come prince valiant! Rescue me from this foul troll!”
The man opened the notebook and began writing.
***
Carlini’s was a surprisingly authentic Italian restaurant hidden amid the prairie. It shared an old brick building with an antiques shop, and its diners came from the greater tri-county area, filling the tiny town square with their cars.
Don and Amanda sat across from each other at a table situated between the passageways which led diners in and out of the restaurant.
“Think about Tammy. What’s best for her?” Don said.
His appeal met Amanda’s brow. She looked down absently at her tortellini.
“She can stay with me,” she said.
“Have you been clean?”
She looked quickly upward from her plate, fixing her eyes on his sunburnt forehead.
“How’s the rental-property business going?” she snapped. “Are you ass-deep in debt by now, or just knee-deep?”
His nose always started to itch when he got angry. An elderly couple was inching their way past them, which forced him to suppress the outburst that he almost made.
Out of the passageway emerged a man in a blue uniform. He was pushing a dolly stacked with cases of wine. He was tall, with a sharp, scruffy jaw. Amanda’s eyes lifted as he passed their table. Don perceived a look of recognition in her face.
A few minutes of silence went by and the man reappeared, steering the empty dolly in their direction.
“Hey Mandy! Isn’t it past your bedtime,” the man said.
“Hey stranger,” she said, cocking her head to the side, letting her blonde hair fall over her shoulder.
The itching in Don’s nose spread to his forehead, then to his scalp. He stood up with a clenched fist. Grabbing him by the collar, he thrust his fist into the side of the man’s face. Once, twice, three times, he lost count.
Amanda stood with a wine bottle in her hand and swung it randomly at the two grappling men. The next discernible sensation Don felt was his hands being locked together behind his back as a monotone voice recited the Miranda rights.
***
Diana lay on the sofa in the dark, turning the crystal over in her fingers. Abruptly she became self-conscious of her fidgeting and tossed the crystal away in disgust. The streetlights outside glowed through the window blinds and cast golden stripes against the wall. She heard the lock turn. Caleb appeared in the doorway. She leapt up and ran into his arms.
“Hey sis.”
“You’re out?”
“For now. I’ll probably get away with probation. I think the judge let me off easy ‘cause I’m taking care of you.”
“Not for long. That dude Brison said I have to stay with mom and dad. He said they’re back together.”
“Well, in a way they are. They’re in jail. Them and some other dude got into a fight. It was like a family reunion in there. I don’t think you’re going anywhere any time soon, kiddo.” DSS
Jackson Courter of Urbana, IL., is a bookseller and has been a teacher. A graduate of WIU in Macomb, IL, he is a linguist and is "exploring the intersection of linguistics and cartography."
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