The Magic List- Girl Invictus Read online

  The Magic List

  Girl Invictus

  Mark Tiro

  THE MAGIC LIST: Girl Invictus

  By Mark Tiro

  First Edition

  Published by Second Dharma Books

  Copyright © 2019 Mark Tiro.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-948037-04-4

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express, written permission of the author or the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  1

  One

  It was a perfectly normal day in every respect.

  Until it wasn’t.

  When I got back that day, I didn’t know it, but my life was about to change forever.

  “Maya!”

  It was Tom. My oldest brother. Sean—my other older brother—would call Tom all kinds of bad names when he couldn’t hear us. I would just laugh when he’d say them, but I don’t think Tom was really that bad of a brother. At least—I didn’t then.

  Sure, Tom could be a pain because he was always asking me to go downstairs and get him food or something to drink or whatever. But he wasn’t, you know—bad.

  Tom was older than Sean and me both, and he was going to graduate and go off to college soon. I guess that’s just how boys are to their little sisters when they’re really old like Tom.

  I got up off my bed and went over to his room.

  “Yeah? What do you want, Tom?” I said when I got there. “Can’t you just, for once, go down and get your own food or whatever it is you want?”

  But Tom didn’t answer. That wasn’t so unusual. He could be kind of moody. A lot. I mean—older brothers are like that, right?

  Tom didn’t answer.

  He just stood there, and so I went into his room to see what he wanted. He shared the bedroom with Sean, who was just two years older than me. Their room was almost twice as big as mine, but it was a boys’ room, and so it wasn’t nice like mine.

  “What, Tom? What do you want? I have homework to do.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, this weird look on his face I had never seen before.

  Everybody knows that high school boys are weird, though, so I figured that’s probably normal. Anyways, who really looks too closely at their big brother when he’s asking you to do things he should be doing for himself? That’s the definition of a big brother, as far as I could tell.

  And so I went over to where he was sitting.

  Once I got over, though, he got up, went to the door, and closed it.

  Then he started walking back.

  Towards me.

  Did he want to talk about mom and dad? Because mom, like, never gets up off the couch, and she’s zoned out anyway, most of the time. And dad hardly ever gets out of bed since his heart attack.

  “What?” I asked.

  No answer.

  “What is it? What do you want, Tom?”

  Still no answer.

  Then I saw it. That look in his eye. Just… that look.

  It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. My heart went into my throat.

  “Tom,” I started, then hesitated, trying to find the words. “Are you… is everything… okay?”

  No answer. Same look. I started to worry he might be having some kind of medical problem or something. Is it possible to have a seizure while standing up?

  This was my big brother. Tom. He was my biggest brother, and I loved him so much, even though he could be really weird sometimes.

  Maybe not a seizure. Maybe he was having some sort of break. We’d learned a little about those in sociology class. But he’s supposed to snap out of it, no?

  That look, though. I was starting to get nervous now.

  ‘Mom,’ I tried to call out, trying to catch her attention downstairs where she was sitting on the couch. She was always sitting—or lying—downstairs on the couch.

  I don’t think any sound came out, though. At least, I’m not sure. I tried again to get her attention, but she didn’t come up or even shout up to ask what I wanted. Who knows if she heard me or not.

  Or if I’d even made a sound.

  But I was frozen in place now. And Tom was standing over me, blocking out the light.

  I remember that clear as day.

  It got very dark just then. Like I said, Tom was completely blocking out the light.

  I can remember everything now, every little detail. The important part, at least—the important details, anyway. What I mean by ‘the important part’ is the part that came next. You know—the important part.

  Because that’s what changed my life forever. That’s when I saw it. Or them actually.

  Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but they were laying right there, on the ground in front of me: a pad of paper and a slightly used, off-white pen.

  So you can see that these weren’t just any pad of paper. Or any pen.

  “Better than having to pay good money,” my mom would say, teaching us always to ask for this promotional crap whenever we were at a business that offered anything.

  This particular pad of paper and pen came from Shimoda Bros. Auto Repair, which was just down the street from us. Both the pen and the pad of paper had these fake smudges of oil on them that were supposed to make you think the stuff was really authentic. Like the mechanics there weren’t just good at changing your oil, but were also closet literary-genius types after they got off work. That’s the place mom got her oil changed.

  They were magic. The pen and paper. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, or I would have been a lot more careful with them. But at least I didn’t just leave them there. I grabbed them both—the pen and the pad of paper—before I turned away.

  I turned away and saw that the entire side of the room had fallen away. Now it was brilliant… radiating. Where a wall used to be, now there was a pulsating, warm, dynamic light. It was like, light, and love, and beautiful music, all fused into one inaudible symphony. And it was so beautiful that it made me want to cry. It seemed to pull like a magnet at my heart, and I stood up and looked straight into it.

  And I smiled.

  Then I turned around, took a deep breath, and… walked off into it.

  That’s right. I walked straight into this beautiful, pulsating symphony of love and light. I walked out of that room, and into this tunnel, this path—into the light that lay wide open, stretching out before me as far as my eyes could see.

  I could see a figure curled up in the corner, but not much more. I think maybe a boy walked in, or out of the room, but I didn’t pay any attention. And that was it. Anyway, the whole thing was really distant and muted now—and not terribly important as I scurried forward to figure out what this wonderful light was that I had discovered.

  The whole scene, the room and everyone in it, all flickered softly in and out. Like a scene in an old movie playing on a forgotten TV in the corner on any random Sunday afternoon. Like something beyond boring that I’d seen a million times before, I turned away now, and the whole thing fluttered away to black.

  Then I turned back to this wonderful light again, or love, or whatever this beautiful, harmonious symphony was. I wanted nothing more than to plunge straight into it with all my being. I was dying now to disappear straight into its warm embrace. Outside, above, below, permeating inside of me—I could now feel it everywhere.

  I close
d my eyes and let go of everything. I closed my eyes and discovered now I could see. The light was a soothing balm. I lay back in its embrace, but before I had time to have even one more thought, I found myself floating away, drifting down, or up—off and into the light. Deep into the light.

  And then… I was gone.

  2

  Two

  “Come on, Maya, or we’re gonna be late and miss the bus again,” Sean called up to me. This was the Friday before. Before school… before the room… before the brunch… before—everything.

  “Okay, I’m ready. I’m ready now.”

  “Where’s your backpack?”

  “Huh?” I asked. “What?”

  “What do you mean ‘what’, Maya? Your backpack? For school? This is the second time this week. Come on,” Sean said.

  “Oh, yeah, you’re right. Where is it?” I kind of mumbled, to myself and to no one in particular.

  “Maya—you’ve got to focus. Really, please, can you try? Since dad’s heart attack… I mean—I know it’s tough, but you know it’s not like dad’s going to magically get up and be running around again like before.”

  I thought about saying, ‘What about mom? She could get off the couch every now and then and maybe do something.’

  But I didn’t say it.

  I’d hardly ever say anything like that, and most of the time—I wouldn’t even let myself think anything like that either.

  And so I started kind of poking around the room, looking for my backpack. I didn’t see it anywhere.

  “Maybe you should just go ahead to the bus, and I’ll just get a ride to school.”

  “From who? Maya, what are you thinking? Come on—hurry up and find it. You know dad can’t drive you to school anymore. Maya—he’s not allowed to drive anymore at all.”

  “Well, maybe mom could.”

  He laughed at that. Or at least snickered because that was obviously less likely to happen than dad making a miraculous recovery and jumping out of bed and into his car to give us a ride to school.

  “I’ll be waiting here for you, Maya. Go find it… and hurry!”

  I bounded back upstairs then past the room Tom and Sean shared. I went into my room and started rummaging around, looking for it. I finally found it by the side of my bed and grabbed it. On my way back downstairs, I think I saw Tom’s door open, and he said something. I think we might’ve even talked, but I’m not sure, and I was in a hurry anyway.

  Back downstairs, I walked to over by the door, slid into my shoes, and pulled my backpack on.

  “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  Then Sean and I headed out the door. He prodded me to move faster so we’d make it to the school bus.

  School was normal that day too. But I did get to sit between Angel and Steve, which never would’ve happened on a normal day.

  “What’s with the new seats?” I asked Angel when I came in. Angel was my best friend.

  I had talked to Steve before, too. I mean, it’s not like I was a total nerd or something. We were kind of friends, Steve and I—but not in school. My family went to the same church as his family, and we had both been dragged to a lot of stuff over the years. We’d talk to each other whenever we were there, I think mostly because we were both bored out of our minds.

  But in school, Steve was really popular, and he played sports, too. And by sports, I mean regular sports—not like ice skating or something… which most Chinese parents wouldn’t even let their kids do. At least not my Chinese parents. And so I always got too nervous talking to him in school.

  But here he was, probably because there was a sub teaching the class today. And so Steve was sitting in the seat on one side of me, just like on the bus, and Angel was sitting on the other.

  And I was right in the middle.

  I was nervous that if I started talking to Angel, I would look dumb in front of Steve. And so I looked down at the ground most of the time or straight ahead at the teacher. I was trying—hoping—not to blush. I figured if I started to get nervous and said something stupid to either Steve or Angel, that might just be the end of me.

  At last, I decided the safest thing to do would be for me to look over in Angel’s direction and to pretend that Steve wasn’t even sitting there.

  Angel was like me. I mean, not exactly like me. Actually, we didn’t have all that much in common. Come to think about it, we didn’t even really talk much outside of school. I mean, we weren’t like best friends like I’d been with my friend Brooke in elementary school. I’d lived across from Brooke since as long as I could remember. Brooke and I had always been best friends, before, after and even during elementary school.

  But then my family had moved away to this place, and just like that—I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t talk to too many people in school, and neither did Angel. Also—neither of us did sports or any of that sort of stuff either. So we were best friends during school. That counts, right?

  Anyway, it was better than being one of those kids who didn’t have any friends.

  “Sub’s cute today,” Angel whispered to me, quietly. Oh, here we go, I thought. I felt myself starting to blush because I was relatively sure that she hadn’t whispered it quietly enough so that either the sub or Steve—or the entire rest of the class, for that matter—hadn’t heard it. “He doesn’t know where we sit, so we’re all just sitting wherever,” Angel went on, grinning. I grinned, too, but then I got scared that someone would see me doing it, maybe the sub—or worse, Steve—and would call me on it. Or call on me. And so I quickly buried my glasses in my hand like I’d gotten something in my eye so no one would notice me.

  I shouldn’t have been mortified to look at Steve, but I was. In addition to things at church, Steve also went to the same after-school math and science prep classes I did. I kept to myself and tried to pay attention, not so much because I was a math genius or anything, but more because Angel didn’t go there. I was too nervous talking to other kids. Most of them went to different schools, and the after-school prep was the only time I ever saw them. Steve asked a lot of questions there, which was usually annoying in regular school. But in after-school prep class, it was completely unheard of. Everyone else there would just keep their head down—kind of like I did, too. I think, though, it may have been because they were actually smart, and not just because they were shy like I was.

  The only thing any of us in the prep class (except for Steve, of course) had in common at all, I think (or maybe I was just imagining this?) was that we were all deathly afraid that if we didn’t do well, our parents would kill us.

  Steve was different, though. His family must’ve talked a lot or something because he just asked lots of questions. One after another. He always talked like he understood things. And even when he obviously didn’t—it never seemed to faze him.

  The prep class teacher liked it. TA Steve. He was a graduate astronomy student. They had the same name, and because he was a TA at the university (which ran our after-school prep classes here), we all just called him TA Steve.

  The sub was still talking, but if anyone had asked me, I never would’ve been able to tell you what he’d been teaching. Angel passed me a note, but when I went to open it, she motioned that it was for Steve on the other side of me. I went to open it, but she flicked her wrist past me. She wanted me to pass it on to him.

  My head began throbbing, and all at once, everything seemed to start to close in. What? Why was my best friend asking me to pass a note to him? To Steve? He was my Steve. I mean, not in school, of course, but I knew him first. And I talked to him outside of school. Not her. Me. Why was she doing this to me?

  Angel knew that. She might’ve been the only one who did, but Angel knew I liked him. Or at least that I imagined someday I could like him. Why would she want to pass a note to him and not to me? Why? He was mine. Well, I mean, not mine, but she knew better. Angel knew.

  I looked at her, and with my eyes, pleaded with her. ‘Why?’ I implored. ‘What?’ I asked by giving her a long,
silent look. But she just beckoned over to where he was sitting. “Pass him the note.”

  He opened it as soon as I’d given it to him. As soon as he read it, a smile broke across his face.

  My heart sank.

  What was in that note? Why would Angel do that to me?

  I wanted to go home. I wanted to curl up in a ball. I wanted to die.

  Which is why I didn’t go straight home after school that day. Angel found me standing by my locker after class. I was just thinking about everything, and about nothing.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. I’m glad I caught you before you left,” Angel said.

  I couldn’t even answer. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to look down, to run away, to not talk to her. And I would have, but Angel was still really my best friend… my only friend in school. I think. I didn’t want to be all alone here, and so I fought the urge to run away and hide.

  I looked up at her, waiting for her to say something.

  “Sorry I wasn’t able to let you know before. Steve’s parents went back to Hong Kong to visit his grandparents. They’ll be gone for a month, and so while they’re gone, his aunt and uncle said he can have everyone from school over for Sunday brunch.”

  “Brunch?” I repeated, saying anything to try to get everything to slow down. My head was beginning to spin out of control again, and everything was getting dizzy. She was going over to Steve’s house? To his house? When his parents weren’t even going to be there?

  “Without me?”

  “That’s what the note was about. Can you come with me, Maya? Will your parents let you? His aunt and uncle will be there, so it’s fine. It’s not like…”

  I was spinning hopelessly out of control now. Of course I wanted to come!

  “Of course I can’t come!” I blurted back at her, cutting her off, mid-sentence. I never cut anyone off, but my world was closing in around me here. I just wanted to be alone.