Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) (15 page)

“A grandfather’s clock,” Yolanda said.

I chuckled and marveled at the large
item. “Couldn’t we have moved to, I don’t know, a grapefruit or something?”

“Come on, Cam,” Liesel said. “Time’s a
wasting.”

---

I spent twelve hours each day for the next
three days in that cavern, Yolanda and Liesel working with me to the point of
exhaustion. But I could take it; I knew what it was like to train. I played
basketball all throughout high school, all the way to the end, even when I was
in my mid-seventies and waiting for my heart to give out. I trained in my
younger years for football, baseball, soccer, and tennis, and I spent three
summers as a camp counselor at Lake Almanor running around with kids all day
every day for months on end.

I had to admit, though, that I had never
experienced anything like this: the concentration, the determination, the
pressures,
the
risks. Growing up I knew I had athletic
abilities; I just never knew I had these
witchly
abilities. Hell, I didn’t even think there was such at thing as a male witch,
or a witch, for that matter! It wasn’t about performing jumping jacks all day,
or sprinting from one side of this large cavern to the other. It was about
using my head, and trying to focus on specific images. Spending all these endless
hours working on expanding my abilities was absolutely grueling, and what kept
me going was the thought of everyone I knew, including my close friends and
family, suffering in agonizing pain if I didn’t perform up to Liesel’s high
standards. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. I wanted to become the most
powerful witch in the western hemisphere, and I wanted to take Hannah down
before anything tragic was to happen to anyone I loved.

By Friday I was lifting three hundred
pound rocks, with only the power of my mind. By Saturday night I was shooting
the green lights out of my palms, albeit chaotically, and without a proper
target. On Sunday, our final day of training before we left for God knows
where, Liesel’s mission was to make it so that I could shoot these green lights
out of my palms at a specific target. It felt so strange to be capable of this
miracle, to do something almost no one else in the world could. I kept asking
Liesel why I hadn’t been capable of these powers before, and she kept telling me
this specific cavern brings out the hidden abilities of all witches. But then I
kept asking her, if that’s the case, once I step back into the real world,
aren’t the powers going to hide themselves again? She said no. She said since I
was finally aware of my capabilities I would be able to bring them to the
forefront day or night, in public and in private, for the whole world to see.

“But don’t think that means you should,”
she said. “I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite, Cam, but, except for the
case of Hannah, unleashing your powers in public is a recipe for disaster. Once
we take her down, you’re going to have to control yourself. These powers are
not meant for show and tell, or for entertainment value.”

I just nodded and told her, “I know,”
even though, deep down, I knew I was going to have to give Kimber and Wesley a
fun magic show on a weekend after Hannah was defeated, and everything in life
had gone back to normal.

Now here I was, on Sunday afternoon,
trying to shoot the green light out of my right palm into another one of those
plastic cups, which was sitting up top the bar stool about thirty feet away
from me. I was only able to shoot the light once every five minutes or so.
Liesel told me once I could get the concentration down pat, that I could shoot
as many as one every five
seconds
. I
didn’t believe I would ever get to that point in such a short time, but it gave
me hope. By 2 P.M. I had skimmed the right edge of the cup.

By 2:30 P.M. I finally hit it, directly
in the center, making the water inside come streaming out of the smoking hole
at the front. Liesel jumped for joy, and Yolanda raced to her Jeep Wrangler,
leaping up and down as if she had just been proposed to. Liesel and I hugged,
and I tried to keep from crying.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Fine.
Great, actually.
It’s finally hit me, what I can do here, and I’m ready, Leese. I’m ready to
take your sister down. I’m ready for this to be over, all over. Finally. So we
can get back to our normal lives.”

“I’m so glad,” Liesel said, turning
around. “Where’d Yolanda go?”

I looked past Liesel to see Yolanda in
her car, talking animatedly to someone.

“She’s over there,” I said, pointing.
“She’s on her phone.”

“What?” Liesel turned around and crossed
her arms, suspiciously.

I followed suit with my arms. “Who do you
think she’s talking to?”

Liesel shook her head and started walking
toward her sister’s car. “I don’t know. But I’m gonna find out.”

As Liesel headed across the cavern toward
the car, I heard a scary noise come from my left, up the hill toward the exit.
At first I thought it was my imagination. But within a few seconds, I knew it
was the real thing.

Oh
my God.

“Oh my God,” I said out loud.

It was the sound of footsteps.

AARON

“He’s a fifty-five-year-old bear, Aaron.
Why in the hell would you want a date a guy that old, and that freakin’
big
?”

Aaron laughed. “I like them older, James.
How many times do I have to tell you?
The guys our age?
They’re pitiful. They’re so self-absorbed and stupid. I can’t stand them.”

“Yeah, but they’re cute,” James said. The
kid was seventeen but tried to pass for twenty-one in San Francisco’s Castro
District. He had skipped a grade and was weeks away from starting his freshman
year at San Francisco State University. Aaron would soon be heading into his
sophomore year.

“
Cute
only gets you so far.”

“It’s gotten me plenty far,” James said
with a wink.

“Yeah, but at the end of the day, we all
get older, and our looks fade. I find intelligence the sexiest trait of all.
A man with a rich history, with a wealth of knowledge.
That’s
the turn-on! That’s the way to
get into my pants! Not a smooth, dumb twink without any real world experience.”

“Well…” James didn’t seem to know what to
say. “I beg to differ!”

“Fine,” Aaron said. “You can have the young
ones. Leave the older ones to me.”

“You are sick.”

“I’m sick? You’re not even of age and
you’re flaunting yourself to any guy that
moves
!”

“Yeah? Well how else would
you
have met me?”

Aaron laughed, stood up from the dumpy
chair in his little apartment, and inspected himself in the mirror next to the
front door. He had on a black pair of jeans with a purple long-sleeved shirt.
It was supposed to rain later that night, so he made sure to grab the umbrella
on top of the dresser.

James made his way over to Aaron and
stared over his shoulder into the mirror. The two had only known each for two
months but acted like they knew each other for a lifetime. James had bumped
into Aaron at one of the many gay bars in the Castro District and tried to pick
him up, but instead the two became friends and James became his roommate at the
beginning of May.

James pressed his hands against Aaron’s
arm. “I’m scared, Aaron.”

“I know. I am, too.”

“You say I try to be of age. But the
truth is… I don’t need to try anymore. Look at me. I look like I’ve aged ten
years in the last ten days.”

Aaron wanted to tell James the remarkable
true story of his high school friend Cameron Martin, who he had played
basketball with, who he had jokingly asked out to the prom, and who had aged seventeen
to eighty-five last year, and eighteen to one in April. When Aaron threw
Cameron his bachelor party, he was astonished to see a young man no older than
eleven being straddled by the big-breasted strippers. And now, just a few weeks
later, it seemed like everyone was starting to catch his occasional disease. It
was too early to suggest that what was happening was an outbreak of some kind,
but Aaron was trying his best to keep living the best he could, as if there was
nothing wrong. Cameron hadn’t hid under a rock last year when he had to face
the entire student body as a fifty-year-old, sixty-year-old, seventy-year-old;
he had resumed his life as if he was just like any other student at Caughlin
Ranch High. Aaron liked to follow that thinking, even though, on the inside, he
was terrified.

Aaron turned around and grabbed the sweet
but naïve James by the hands, as if, for a brief moment, he wanted to act
patriarchal. “We’re going to be OK. I promise you. What’s happening to us…
well… it’s actually happened before. I was a witness to it. And everything
turned out all right. I swear, it’s all going to turn out OK this time.”

“People are freaking out, Aaron. They
think it’s the end of the world.”

“That’s absurd!”

“Well, how do you know?”

“I just do,” Aaron said. “And trust me.
Whatever’s going on, there’s a logical explanation. For all of it.”

James looked like he wanted to start
crying, but he just nodded and picked his nose, not discreetly, as he made his
way back to the couch to continue the first half of
17 Again
on TBS.

Aaron quietly tiptoed out of the
apartment and didn’t turn back to say goodbye.

The older man’s apartment was across
town, but Aaron liked the idea of taking a long walk. He had been chatting with
this guy back and forth for two weeks now, and felt excited to finally meet
him. He needed something to take his mind off what was going on in the world.
He needed an intimate connection with another person, even if just for tonight.
He hoped he could hit it off with this guy. He knew his desire to be with older
men was a turn-off for many, but Aaron was bound and determined to meet someone
who he could make a life with. And with each day quickly passing, Aaron was
starting to wonder just how much more of a life he had left to look forward to,
considering he now looked much older than nineteen.

The guy’s name was Stacy—an odd
name for a man, but again, this was someone of another generation—and
Aaron had met him on one of the dozen gay personal web sites he perused on a
daily basis. Right from their first conversation online, this one had seemed
different: he didn’t just want a younger guy over for thrills and giggles. He
seemed to really want to get to know Aaron, on a level that existed outside of
his skin. Stacy had been kind and witty and surprising, and their conversations
became fascinating as the days progressed. Best of all, Stacy had been somebody
Aaron could turn to for comfort.

Aaron made a left turn,
then
another left turn, then three right turns. He didn’t
recognize the narrow street he was on, but he knew he was close. He took a deep
breath, smacked his lips together, and ran up a long staircase to Stacy’s
four-story apartment complex. The place was narrow but cute. Aaron hoped Stacy
was on the top floor. He always loved being able to look out over a city.

He texted Stacy and waited for the main
door to be buzzed open. But nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing.
Aaron finally decided to call the man’s cell. Even though he rarely called
anyone anymore—he preferred to hide behind words by texting or
communicating online—he decided he’d rather call the man than stand
outside in the cold for the rest of the night. The call went to voice-mail.

Now Aaron was frightened. Something was
wrong. He just stood there, dumbfounded, knowing that two days ago they had
agreed that Aaron would meet Stacy at this spot, on this night, at this exact
time.

“Stacy?” Aaron shouted, his hands
covering the sides of his mouth so the yell could travel upward as far as
possible.
 
“St—”

And just then, a figure stepped out the
front of the apartment.

Aaron stopped when he saw that the figure
was an older woman, holding her dog, which was barking incessantly. Aaron
didn’t stay put. He raced up and grabbed the door, just before it locked shut.

He caught his breath,
then
turned to his right, where a large staircase met his gaze. He didn’t know the
apartment number, but, thankfully, there seemed to only be eight units in the
four-story building. He knocked on the first two doors and was met with nothing
but silence. He found silence on most of the doors, and the ones who answered
them were both younger people, both with looks of terror on their quickly aging
faces. When Aaron found the top floor, he felt hopeless. He started to wonder
if this Stacy was even a real person.

Aaron knocked on the door on the right,
and found himself face to face with an older man wearing pink pajamas and a
light green scarf around his neck. He was also wearing lipstick.

“Uhh…” Aaron hoped this wasn’t him. But
he figured it had to be. “Uhh, Stacy?”

The man laughed. “Across the way, honey.”

He slammed the door in his face. “Oh,
thank God,” Aaron said.