The Golden Thread (2 page)

“I think you should tell your teacher, or your parents, or someone about this before they find out on their own,” I said.

“Oh, sure!” He threw his head back and looked me angrily in the eye. “And be sent to some hospital for a lot of stupid tests and miss weeks of class and practice? Who knows what kind of damage they might do, anyhow, x-raying and messing around? Hands are delicate, complicated structures, you know? Nothing doing. And I have told someone. You.”

“Oh,” I said, flattered but worried. “Listen, Joel, I'm really sorry, but what good does it do to tell me about this—your—”

“Spells?” Joel said bitterly. “Seizures? It better do some good, because I can't live like this!”

Then the explanation hit me: a brain tumor! God. Poor Joel. I couldn't see any lumps on his head, but with that haircut, who could tell? I swallowed the last bite of my sandwich, trying to think of something useful to say, but my mind was paralyzed.

“I keep thinking my only hope is to go talk about it with somebody who, well, someone who
knows
things. Like your Gran, Val.”

My chin wobbled and I started to cry.

“Hey, Val, don't—I'm sorry, what did I say?” he stammered. “I didn't mean to—Val, what's the matter?”

After some frantic shifting around, he stuffed a wad of cloth into my hand.

“That part's clean,” he said.

“Yagh.” I gulped. “What about the other part?”

But I was impressed. How many boys do you know who even own a handkerchief, let alone carry one around to offer to a crying girl?

“What did I say?” he begged.

I told him that my Granny Gran was in the hospital. She'd had a stroke, and she'd been unconscious for almost two weeks. The doctors kept telling my mom and me that there wasn't much hope that she would recover. Mom was a walking basket case over it. So was I. Two weepy baskets together.

“Oh, God,” Joel said. “I'm sorry. I didn't know.”

“How would you know?” I said. “We haven't been exactly close since you went to Boston. You never even answered my letter.”

“I meant to,” he said. “Honestly. I kept it. Look, I have it here.”

He dug an envelope out of an inside pocket and handed it to me. Inside were the pages of notebook paper that I had used to write down some things about our shared adventure that he hadn't known about at the time, things that had happened to me when Joel had been held prisoner by the enemy.

Sorcery had swept me up again since then, in an adventure that Joel didn't know about at all. I felt a lot older than I'd been when we had first met less than a year ago. In magic, anyway, I was a lot more experienced than Joel was even if he was older.

I shook my head. “I never should have written any of that stuff down. People don't know anything about magic. Anybody reading that would just think I was insane.”

“Nobody's seen it but me,” he said. “Nobody ever will.”

There it was, on three-hole paper in blue ballpoint: how my little, slightly flaky grandmother was really a great enchantress who had been trained in an otherdimensional academy of magic called Sorcery Hall. Paavo Latvela, her old friend and wizard colleague, had come from there to fight a monster here in New York. I got involved in the struggle, dragging Joel in with me, because of my family talent for magic, descended to me through my Gran.

“You believed this when you read it?” I said. “About my Gran being an enchantress?”

Joel clutched his hands together on the table in front of him and stared at them. “I don't know,” he said somberly. “Meeting Paavo, working with him—that pretty well wiped out my natural skepticism. He was a musician, and I've always felt that music is magic anyway, you know? But I've never even met your Gran. Maybe I couldn't believe she was special that way until I needed to. And I need to now.

“Except you're telling me it won't do me any good one way or the other, aren't you?” He blinked as if he was close to tears, out of sheer frustration and disappointment, I guess. “You're saying it's too late. Are you sure, Val?”

“I think so,” I said. “I think she's dying.” I felt sick, saying those words out loud. I handed back the letter.

Joel tucked it away carefully. “I guess I thought—I never expected—” He shook his head in bewilderment.

“She's old,” I said.

“But she's—well, you know.” He added furtively, “
Special
.”

“Sssh,” I said, looking around to see if anyone was near enough to overhear us. My Gran's magic powers were secret. “I think the stroke finished everything. She's out of it, Joel. She just lies there.” Why had he brought this up and made me feel so terrible? “Anyway, she's not a doctor any more than I am. What did you want her to do for you?”

“I don't know,” he said unhappily. “Tell me what to do, I guess. Or maybe fix it, somehow.” He looked at me intently. “Val, if she dies, what happens then? I mean, what about your family talent? Will you still have magic of your own?”

I shrugged helplessly. “I don't know, I can't even ask Gran. I mean, I could ask, but she can't answer! And what if I did still have the family gift? I wouldn't dare use it, not without somebody to teach me more about it first. And if Gran dies, who'll do that?”

“I don't understand,” he said. “If she's got all this power, how can this happen to her? She can't just—just die, like any ordinary old lady!”

Which was something I had been asking myself a lot. Now that Joel had asked, the answer—or some kind of answer—jumped right into my unwilling mind.

“Magic doesn't make you immortal,” I said. “We both know that.”

We sat thinking about Paavo Latvela, our wizard friend. He had died grandly and bravely, as Gran had gently pointed out to me afterward. But he had sure died. I'd seen it happen.

And now Gran herself was teetering on the same edge.

I said, “Oh, I don't understand anything, and anyway, it's not
fair
!”

Joel patted my hand awkwardly. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I shouldn't have come around asking for that kind of help. Forget it, okay? It's nice to see you, anyway.”

My goodness, Joel was being charming.

He was also getting up to leave.

“What are you doing for New Year's?” I asked.

“My parents are having a big party, lots of musicians. What about you?”

“Going to a party,” I said dismally, thinking about how, for the first time in years, Gran wasn't going to be part of a New Year's celebration at our house.

“Who with?” Joel said.

“Oh, friends.”

He signaled for the check. “Listen, I'll call you, okay? Don't make any definite plans until I call you.”

But he didn't.

 

2
The Comet Committee

 

 

M
Y MOM SYMPATHIZED.
“It's just as well, Valli,” she said. “He's a high-strung boy, isn't he? These temperamental, artistic types are fascinating, but I know they can also be a lot of grief.”

Mom, a divorced person who was turning herself into a literary agent, had dated several literary men who certainly qualified as high-strung and temperamental if anyone did.

“Don't worry, Mom,” I said, “I know, too.”

Not taking my hint to leave well enough alone, she pushed on with more of the same in the time-honored motherish manner: “I wish he'd come by and said hello, at least, before taking you to lunch. He's almost eighteen, isn't he? And living away from home. I'd rather you didn't see too much of him until you're a little older, Val. He might be, well, more advanced than you're ready for.”

As we were both making lots of allowances for each other these days on account of the stresses and strains of Gran being sick, this didn't turn into a fight, which was a good thing since it would have been for nothing. Joel didn't call.

So the day before New Year's Eve, like a jerk I called him, at his parents' place on the East Side.

“Seasons Greetings,” I said.

“Hi, Val,” he said. “How was your Christmas?”

“Fine,” I said. “How's your telephone line? Have a nice New Year's Eve, okay? I'd invite you to join me, but my plans are already made.” I hung up.

I put Joel out of my mind and got ready for New Year's Eve without him.

I was late heading out to a party at my friend Lennie's because of some chores that I was supposed to do, and Mom had gone all Iron Mother about them at the last minute. So I was not in a super mood to start with. And then I ran into this tall, thin person sitting in my lobby with his chin sunk in his striped woolen muffler.

I immediately wished I had put on my other good sweater, the one with a pretty yoke of embroidered flowers. But I sure was not going back upstairs to change. Not for Joel, who hadn't bothered to call me.

“Hullo,” he said, getting up.

“Hello, yourself,” I said. “Waiting for someone? What happened to your parents' party with all those musicians?”

“I'm sick of musicians,” he muttered into his scarf.

He fell into step beside me without another word. In fact that was all the conversation we had until we got to Lennie's. Lennie wasn't there at the moment, though a lot of other people, guests of his parents, were. Lennie was, his father told us, out having pizza with some other kids from our school.

“This is Joel Wechsler,” I said. From the look Mr. Anderson gave Joel, I foresaw some comment about Joel's famous cellist father or opera-singing mother or even his conducting-prodigy kid brother. I could feel Joel, who was sensitive about all this, turning to stone next to me.

But Mr. Anderson said, “Not related to Abraham Wechsler at Harvard, are you?”

“He's my uncle,” Joel said with surprise.

“Well, next time you see him tell him Hugh Anderson thought of him and Matty on New Year's Eve.”

“Yes, sir, I will,” Joel said. All of a sudden he looked young and shy.

“Go on back to Lennie's room, you two,” Mr. Anderson said. “You don't want to spend the turn of the year standing on the doorstep!”

The Andersons' apartment was a favorite place of mine: floors lined with faded carpets, lots of tightly packed bookshelves, walls hung with rubbings of stone carvings from Thailand and Balinese shadow-puppets that look like exotic bugs in transparent nightgowns. Plunked down everywhere were futuristic white plastic chairs, glass tables, aluminum seats bolted to rods hanging from the ceiling—it was like a science-fiction sculpture garden crossed with a high-class Far East import emporium. You had to get used to it.

Joel did not have a getting-used-to-it expression on his face. I led him quickly through to Lennie's bedroom, which was small and cozy, its atmosphere of comfy clutter not much changed from when Lennie and I had played together here as little kids.

The tape deck was playing New Age music, Lennie's latest passion. The only light came from a brass incense burner on the floor, which made all his posters and photos of skin divers, coral reefs, and coasting sharks look very spooky. The scent of incense was mixed with smells of food. I spotted some miniature egg rolls on a greasy paper plate, plus two bowls of nuts and pretzels.

Joel looked over the tapes on Lennie's shelf. “Weird taste, this guy has. Schumann, Reich, Hovannes, and Scarlatti? Plus all this New Age crud?”

“Joel,” I said, “I don't think you should be going over Lennie's things.”

“Music is
my
thing, remember?” he said. “At least they left some food behind. Want some?”

He held out one of the snack bowls.

I really was hungry. So there we were, standing very close together over a bowl of pretzels in the flickering light and the whispering music. I could hear every crinkle of Joel's clothing as he moved, and I caught a whiff of minty cologne.

“We don't need mistletoe, do we?” He grinned this wild grin and reached toward me. I remember thinking, Jeez, he is
irresistible
, and also, Is this what a heart attack feels like?

Then Mr. Anderson stuck his head in the doorway and said, “Valentine? I'm sorry, I forgot about you! Lennie's back, he and his friends went up on the roof. Why don't you go join them? But you kids be careful up there, all right?

I gulped. “Sure. Thanks, Mr. Anderson.”

Up there? What about down here?

Joel followed me to the roof. You could say that I fled up the stairs just to keep some distance between us. I felt him moving like a shock wave of warm air rolling after me.

A group of people stood on the cool, damp rooftop around a hibachi. By the glow of the charcoal briquettes I recognized a girl from school named Mimi, and Lennie's sister Tamsin, who I couldn't stand, and Peter Weiss from Lennie's science class. There was another girl in the shadows who looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her offhand.

It was an odd group, but in a way that was the idea. This was supposed to be a sort of Better-Luck-Next-Year party. It was Lennie's idea: a party for people who had been having a rough time and who didn't really feel like whooping it up, because they just wanted things to get better.

Lennie, wide as a bear in an old tweed coat, turned with a smile from tending the fire in the hibachi. He was my oldest friend in the world and the first boy I had ever kissed. (That was in sixth grade, and it had been a real shock—people actually did that voluntarily?)

I had told Lennie a little about my magical adventures, but not much. He'd listened, he hadn't made fun of me or anything, but his caution had shut me up. I didn't want him to think I was becoming some kind of weirdo flake that he had nothing in common with anymore. I like Lennie a lot.

All of the Anderson kids were adopted from different places. Lennie had come from Colombia, but he didn't look at all like the sad, skinny kids in
Time
magazine photo stories about Latin America. He'd always been a chunky boy, solid and dark. He was shortish (which means not quite as tall as me, but I am a tall girl) with a heart-shaped face, brown eyes, and black hair that he kept cut short (it stuck up in cowlicks anyway). He spoke slowly, in this warm, husky voice, and often he stopped to think about things before he spoke. English was his second language.