The Wisherman (9 page)

Oliver's bod
y felt like it was made from the heaviest of metals. After several hours, he managed to find his way back to the dorm. Every inch of his body was soaked in sweat, and he hadn't even had the energy to open the door. He leaned on it, and it opened of its own volition, and slowly and painfully had he made his way to his bed. The few hours of nighttime remaining were spent with Oliver's body falling into the familiar paralyzing effects of sleep, while his mind wandered on far beyond his corporeal presence. His dreams were disjointed, like a game of mental peek-a-boo, with images flashing by quickly and then fading into darkness. One image—-that of the pine tree carved with the words ‘help’ floated into his mind’s eye for far too long before flitting away.

When sunrise came, Oliver lay in his bed, eyes wide open.
Some shuffling from the bed on the other side of the room announced Robert's presence. "How'd last night go for you?" His voice was groggy with sleep, and Oliver wondered what happened to him on his initiation. Oliver blew out a wheezy cough. He heard the bed squeak in response, and looked over to find Robert laying on his side facing him.

"It went alright." Robert
gave a casual shrug, although his eyes remained as intense as ever.               “You?"

Oliver bit his lip.
Oliver wondered if Robert had seen the carving. There was no way. He hadn’t seen Robert all night. In a sudden moment of dark clarity, Oliver wondered if there were more, if every pine was decorated with the last words of somebody.

"Fine. It was pretty cold
out there." He said, at last.

Robert studied him for a moment before apparently deciding that this was an appropriate answer. He rolled bac
k on his side, away from Oliver, and Oliver did the same, all the while wondering if he and Robert were thinking about the same things. Sleep overcame him once more, but at last his dreams were peaceful. He dreamed of the rolling quads of Delafontaine, and of his mother emerging from them, with wide open arms. She said nothing, but her face said it all. She walked towards him, her eyes shining and her skin glowing like a backlit photograph. She had nearly reached Oliver, her tiny eyes crinkled up from the most genuine smile he had ever seen on her face.

Sun had nearly engulfed
the room before Oliver woke for the second time. As he did, he felt pressure on the end of his bed. His eyes snapped open and immediately found himself looking into Paul's eyes.

“You’re lucky we don’t have
a schedule on Sunday.” Oliver wiped the sleep from his eyes, sat up, and shot Paul what he hoped was a deeply irritated look.

“You weren’t sleeping anyway, I bet.”
Paul said.

Oliver rolled his eyes. “No, I really was. I promise you.”

“How could you sleep after that? I’ll have nightmares forever about the dragon masks alone.” Oliver looked at Paul, contemplating whether or not he should tell him what he’d seen. But as he looked at Paul, face open and inviting, he found that he couldn’t do it. It was probably just a joke, anyway.

“I can’t believe you actually did it.” He said, instead.

“Me neither.” Paul smiled.

Oliver had seen the older boys’ smirks, deep and practiced. The Dragon Run must have been an initiation rite as old as time, meant to scare every new student, Oliver reasoned. He would ask them about it later, and they would tell him that they carved the tree for extra effect.

"We should go into town
. Malachi said he’d go, but I couldn’t wake him up.” Paul complained.

As soon as he could pull on his clothes
, Oliver was on the path towards the tiny, tiny town of Wynton, Massachusetts. The red and gold leaves fell in a flurry from each tree he passed, creating a natural gingerbread trail from Delafontaine to the town. The air was crisp, and Oliver had wrapped himself up with the blue and white Delafontaine scarf. Paul had instructed them to take the narrow trail behind the school, which was obviously not meant for walking. As Oliver tripped over the occasional tree branch, he looked around to see if he could spot any of the locations he'd been at the night before. But, the forest in the daytime looked completely different, friendly even. There was no trace of the dark pressure Oliver had felt the night before and he began to wonder if what he’d seen was a simply a figment of his imagination.

The path widened, and Oliver found himself
stepping into the town. The town of Wynton surrounded The Delafontaine School. There was one four lane road that ran down the center of the town, with wide sidewalks on either side. A large green area, the town commons, sat further off the road. Oliver followed Paul to the left sidewalk, while the rare car idled past him in the opposite direction. There was no one else on the street as far as the eye could see.

The first store on the left was a quaint tea shop
named Ava's. Oliver stopped to stare in the window at a small electronic teapot that was scooting around the window display, but Paul pulled him away. The next shop was an old bookstore---Wynton Books, the sign said in fading blue and white letters. He felt a tug at his arm, and he reluctantly followed Paul further down the street. They passed an empty café, and the smells of bread and pastries wafted through the open front door, causing Oliver's stomach to growl.

"Ah,
look at this!" Paul exclaimed from a bit up the road. Oliver rushed over, his stomach aching with hunger. He pressed his face to the glass storefront, hoping to see pizza, a display of cakes, anything edible at all. To his dismay, however, the glass display only held one poster that had a single almond shaped eye on it.

"We have to go inside." Oliver looked over at Paul, who seemed like he was nearly salivating.
"A fortune teller. A real live fortune teller. I haven't seen one of these since I was a kid, at this traveling carnival. It had fortune tellers, and the world’s smallest man. Real live carnies."

"She's not a real fortune teller." Oliver looked back over at the sign, his eyes now catching the tiny
print at the bottom that read:
Fortunes are not guaranteed true. One's destiny can always be manipulated.

“Man, it’s real if you believe it. That’s all that counts.” Paul stood in front of the door, his feet jittering with excitement, and he beckoned Oliver over. Oliver sighed, and reluctantly, his feet were carrying him through the front door.

He stepped inside the shop, and he immediately inhaled a lungful of dusty air. The shop air seemed almost hazy, as dust particles danced around like
windblown dandelions, and the shop seemed stuck in a lost time. Several bookshelves framed the walls, and they were heavy with leather-bound books. Paul stepped besides him in the foyer, and Oliver immediately felt crowded. The shop was no bigger than the room he shared with Robert, and it felt as though the very walls told stories. The walls, he imagined, whispered their stories like they were secrets, but only because they had been long forgotten. A door chime sounded as soon as their feet hit the welcome mat, but several minutes went by before a distinct, steady shuffling sounded from the back of the shop. The shuffling was slow and deliberate, a tap drag, tap drag. The sound continued until a hunched figure appeared from behind the bookcases. She--and it took Oliver a moment to determine this--wore a shawl that covered much of her face. The shadow from the shawl hid her eyes. Then, she spoke.

"Are you boy
s here for a fortune?" Her voice was but a wisp of air, like a breeze so quick one couldn’t be sure if the wind had blown at all.

Paul stepped forward eagerly. "Yes, how much?"

The woman waved a wrinkled hand, laden with an assortment of peculiar rings. "Free for Delafontaine students. It’s the least I can do." She sat down in a squashed chair, and a puff of dust rose, sending both Paul and Oliver into coughing fits. The old woman waved her hand, unperturbed, and gestured at the seats in front of her.

When he had caught his breath,
Oliver sank down into the chair. His eyes wandered around the store, unable to shake his blatant curiosity. How, he wondered, had Paul found this place. This was a place that he would never have found unless he was looking for it. Paul stuck out his hand, eagerly. The woman's head moved down, as if she were surveying it.

"This is not a palm reading, son." Her voice was soothing in sound, but her tone was unsettling. "I don’t need to see your hand---I need to see you. Sit up boy and let me look at you." Paul suddenly sat at attention. When his back was straighter than a pin, the woman leaned forward and folded back her shawl.
Her eyes were brown but milky white too. Try as he might, Oliver couldn't help but stare. Paul opened his mouth to speak again, but was quickly silenced by a sharp tap to the leg. The woman shook her head furiously.

"No, I tell you." She said, slowly.
"Delafontaine students. I haven't seen one of you in a while."

Paul chuckled. "Well, this place is pretty hard to find." He rolled his eyes, having evidently caught on to the fact that the old
woman couldn’t see well.

"How is it now that the school has
changed its ways?" She asked.

"
Changed? I think it’s the same it’s always been." Paul said, slowly.

The woman sucked her teeth. "I imagine they wouldn't tell students that."

Oliver sat at attention, the flame of curiosity burning inside of him.
"Why wouldn't they?" He asked.

The woman turned, settling her
uneven gaze somewhere on Oliver's forehead, and she laughed a raspy laugh. "I suppose it would be bad for business."

"I want to hear my fortune." Paul interrupted, and Oliver twisted his face into a frown in response.

"Ah, I can see you clearer now. Impulsive. Quick with your fingers I've heard." The old woman responded.

"It's not my fault!" Paul protested.

"You should accept responsibility for your actions, young man." The woman responded, simply. "You're holding on to a lot of misconceptions about the world around you. You should ask your friend here."

Paul's eyes shifted over to Oliver, and they narrowed. "I don't think he would understand."

"Oh, I think he understands more than you think."

"What else?" Paul pressed. The old woman set her gaze back on Oliver
, and despite the fact that it was Paul who had asked the question, Oliver felt she was speaking to him only.

"You will never graduate from Delafontaine."

"Are you saying I'm going to die?
He’s going to die?" Paul's voice was high pitched and laced with fear.

The old woman shifted her
gaze back to Paul. "All death is not dying." Oliver stared at the woman.

“What do you mean?”
Oliver asked.

The old woman coughed and repeated herself, though her voice had taken on a slight edge. “You will never graduate from Delafontaine
.”

“Just me?”
Oliver pressed.

The old woman shuddered in response. “Of course not. You are not special.”

The words sent Oliver’s nerves into a frenzy, and when Paul stood up with a quickness that said, undoubtedly, that they would not be staying any longer, Oliver gratefully followed.  He gave the old woman a halfhearted wave on the way out, before reminding himself that she probably couldn’t see it anyway. Paul and Oliver walked along the sidewalk in hesitant silence, before Paul spoke up, his voice trembling slightly.

“You don’t believe any of that, do you?” Oliver paused. It was a difficult question. “Oliver?”

“I think she probably says the same thing to everybody.” Oliver said, finally, hoping that he sounded convincing enough. Paul studied him for a long while, as if searching for evidence of the lie on his face.

“
She said we’d never graduate from here.” Paul said, his voice so low that Oliver had to strain to hear it. “My mom will never…” Paul’s mumbling was suddenly cut off by a loud chorus of whoops and laughter. A group of boys flooded the sidewalk before them, blocking Oliver and Paul from passing. Oliver felt his stomach drop, and for a moment, in front of him stood Clarence, with his pimple scarred face, sweat-stained polo, and cold, expectant expression that said:
You know the drill
.

“Delafontaine, huh?”
“DelafonSTRANGE!” The sight of Clarence faded from Oliver’s mind, replaced by five greasy boys wearing t-shirts, backpacks, and bad attitudes. The tallest one, a boy with a baby face that would be handsome in time stood in the center, flanked by the four other boys of varying heights.

Oliver met his eyes
for a long second before the boy the spoke. “It looks like the freaks arrived back in town already.” His voice stood just on the precipice of puberty, as if it were insecure about the drop ahead. The boys laughed a monotone group laugh, like that of a retired laugh track, sound quality gone dull. The tall boy in the middle smiled smugly, and continued. “What is it this time? You freaks are always getting carted here by the bus load. Blow up a whole school again, did you?” Oliver felt Paul tense besides him.

“We’re here to get an education.” Paul spat. 

The tall boy laughed. “I didn’t know they could teach your kind. What’s the word?”