Airports + Vacations

Hey Everyone out there patiently awaiting my Wednesday update and the Tuesday edition of Read it For You. I probably should have warned you all ahead of time, but I’ll be on vacation for the next three weeks. I’m writing this from the Delta terminal waiting for a flight delayed by 2 and a half hours, which means we’ll miss our connection (I’m traveling with my wife and two other friends) in Atlanta.

Normally it might be annoying but thankfully it’s happening at the beginning of our trip, and not on the way home, and I’ve always wanted someone to put me up in a hotel. As in, “Of course your flight and hotel will be covered, we’re just honored that you’re coming all the way here to speak about Reality Fan Fiction.”

… Of course I’m imagining they put us in a nice hotel, but I suppose it’s possible they put us up is some pay-by-the-hour hotel by the freeway, in the Chain-smoking suite, by the elevator, the ice machine, and the “crying babies only room”, otherwise known as room 251.

I just made that up, that’s not a thing. Babies don’t get their own room. Anyway I’ll let you know all about the accommodations and whether the breakfast they offer is continental or incontinental.

In the meantime, I invite you my dear readers to create your own RFF story in the comments. The first person gets to start the scene, as folks arrive they will add to the story! Adding dialog or a new characters, or whatever. Just remember the cardinal rule of improvisation: “Yes, and…” What this means is that you’re not negating what has already been added to the story, you’re agreeing with what has already been established and adding to it.

Your story is about: Where was Tyler invited to talk about RFF, and Why?

Guillotine + Playgrounds (part 2)

4

“A wizard knows these things,” I said, handing the wand back to him, but he was unwilling to take it.

Using his bangs like an invisibility cloak to hide behind he said, “They were calling me a muggle because I didn’t have a wand, and I didn’t know how to make one, so after this boy Cain was cursed, I took his.”

“Cursed? I thought he was dead?”

“He is. It was the killing curse, Avvv....” His mouth clamped shut.

“That’s unforgivable!” I heard myself say, outraged. I had stopped pretending. “Who cast it on him?”

He shrugged, “It happened before I started. I asked about it, but no one saw it happen.”

“How…” I was about to ask if we could bring him back to life, but I quickly remember that my son didn’t even know how to make a wand. I looked out the window at the sun on the horizon. We had about 40 minutes until it would be too dark.

“How about you and I take a trip to Ollivander’s and get you a wand of your own?”

He looked confused, “Ollivander’s is back at school. The hole in the fence by the backstop is Diagon Alley, only the 7th graders are allowed to go outside the playground.”

I look at him astounded, “You think such a well-to-do Wizarding family like us wouldn’t have a floo?” I winked at him.

In the back yard we began to walk the borders of our small property. To the east, our land abutted an abandoned farm lot, and the line between the tall grass of our yard, and the edges of the untamed wild was blurry. Somewhere in the mass of weeds was a stone wall that I was afraid of hitting with the lawnmower, and was therefore bullied by the weeds into mowing less and less of the yard. Maybe if I kept up with the mowing it wouldn’t get such a running start. The south border was our sleepy avenue lined with young lindens. To the west was a row of overgrown shrubs nine or twelve feet high, which had been planted alongside a fence, but had long ago incorporated the chainlink into their branches. To the north was a white cedar fence, greyed by time and put up long before we moved in. Pulling on a particularly straight branch of the evergreen shrub, he asked, “Mom, what kind of bush is this?”

“It’s a yew,” I said, remembering the day my father had taken me to another tree, identical to this one, and pointed at the bright red berries saying, “Never, ever eat these.”

His little nose crinkled up in revulsion. The branch sprung back up as he released it. He walked the opposite direction. “I think I want a goldenrod wand like Cain’s.”

“Any of those with the yellow flowers." I pointed toward the weeds.

His eyes quickly found the straightest one and his hand beelined toward it. “Aah!” He called out pulling back his hand and clutching it in the other. The cry felt like an icy bullet.

“What happened?” My maternal danger sense flared and I immediately saw the perpetrator. It was the only weed bobbing from disturbance.

“Something bit me,” he looked toward the overgrowth with a tinge of fear.

“No. You just got chosen.” I handed him the small paring knife and pointed to the rose briar, growing straight up, battling the goldenrod for sunlight.

“That?” He pointed at the thin, green stalk.

I shook my head 'no'. “In there.” Around its base were straight dead stalks no more than 20 inches in length. “Rose,” He crinkled his nose again. “Rozsa, rho-don, draa-gon.” The spark of imagination caught and lit. “You must reach into the maw of the dragon and cut a wand without getting your arm bitten off.” Who am I? I thought. I’m actively encouraging my son to get scratched to hell in a bramble bush.
“It hurts.” He showed me where the other pricker had ‘bit’ him.”

“I thought you wanted a wand.” I shrugged, and turned back to the house. “Let’s go inside and get ready for bed.”

Behind me there was a sharp hiss of pain, but when I turned around he was already running toward me. The bramble wand was clutched is his barely scratched hand.

In the house, we cut off the cruel-looking thorns, and burned out the pithy core using a six-volt battery, and a carefully split pencil.

“We never did anything this cool in science class!”

“That’s because this is dangerous.” I meant to say it as a warning, but ‘dangerous’ came out sounding like a synonym for ‘awesome’.

5 

It had been raining all morning. The school activities director called me up and told me I wouldn’t be needed to help supervise at afternoon recess. It would probably get cancelled because of rain. A few hours later the sun came out, and I again received a call from the activities director, who apologized for the last minute notice, but would I be able to help out after all.

Puddles still lingered on the plastic seats of the see-saws and the swings, pooled at the bottom of the slide, and the rain had washed away all the chalk hop-scotch boards. All of the wet seemed to push the children off the structures, and into the center of the playground. The sandbox’s green hard plastic cover had yet to be opened, and Cain had sprawled himself across it dramatically. I watched, proudly as my son approached Cain, announced to everyone than he had found the resurrection stone in Gaunt’s shack. He pointed across the school grounds to the sports equipment shed.

“That’s Hagrid’s hut,” one of the children pointed out.

“Not that,” he answered, “There.” He adjusted his aim toward the pitcher’s mound. “It took me a while to figure out that the baseball diamond, was actually a clue to the stone’s location.”

Nice touch.

“Wait, don’t!” Called one of the girls, who I later discovered was Cain’s twin sister. But it was too late. He touched the stone to Cain’s chest, and the boy rose, taking in a very convincing gasp for air.

Cain looked around as if getting his bearings. One of the children asked, “Do you remember who did it?”

“Give him a minute,” my son said, handing the goldenrod wand back to Cain.

“But if someone here cast an unforgivable curse, we need to have a Wizengamit, and send them to Azcaban!”

There was a long silence as Cain looked at each of the onlookers faces, scrutinizing each one. Finally Cain’s mouth opened and there was a loud SKREE! The inhuman sound frightened me for a moment before I realized that it was just the see-saw, which a couple of younger children had decided to use at the cost of a wet bum.

Cain locked eyes with his twin sister and seemed to remember something. “How could you?” He bellowed at her.

She raised her wand defensively and backed away, but she was already surrounded by a gamut of sticks. “I didn’t mean to say it! It just came out! I was— I was—”

“Un…For…givable.” Cain reminded her.

“Expelliarmus!” One of the older boys commanded, and Cain’s sister’s wand went flying through the air toward him.

“HEY!” One of the mothers yelled at the congregation of wiz—I mean children, “No stick fighting!”

“They’re not…” I started to explain, but she was already marching across the playground toward them.

I heard one of the children say, “Dementors!” under his breath and all of the children scattered. All except Cain’s sister, who just stood there, locked in this woman’s angry glare.

“If I see you throwing sticks again you’re going straight to the principal young lady!”

As the girl stared up into the face of this older woman, I watched as the energy, the wildness, the innocence was sucked from her. She nodded despondently, walked over to the half-sphere climbing structure all made up of triangles, and sat down inside it. She didn’t look scared, and she wasn’t crying. Somehow I could tell she was coldly plotting her escape.

The older woman stomped back over to where I was standing. “Didn’t you see them stick fighting?”

“I... I didn’t,” I said and shrugged.

“Well. Pay more attention, we need to keep them safe!”

I nodded, but inside all I could think was, Muggle.

Guillotine + Playgrounds

Sometimes, in the moments where I’m totally lacking inspiration I’ll search for a random word generator, get it to spit out five words, and mash them together until I feel that spark of inspiration. These are the two. Don’t worry about the content, there aren’t any underage beheadings.

1

     There was a boy lying face down in the dirt. Immediately my heart leapt into my chest and my mind started racing through possibilities: that he’d fallen off the bars and broken his neck. No, his posture was not akimbo; he hadn’t fallen. The alternating scream of metal on metal from the children on the swings made me think he must have been running in-between swingers and gotten kicked. Children have been killed by concussive blows to the heart before. Something about the timing interrupting the ventricle rhythm, but that wasn’t for me to diagnose. I’m just here to watch over them, make sure they’re not bullying each other or doing anything unsafe. Then, as I carefully wove in between the see-saw and the sand box, I wondered the why the boy lying alone. Usually when someone gets hurt you see the telltale ring of kids standing around the scene, looking either scared, or ashamed, or concerned. Seventy percent of the time the first kid to talk did it. I hurried in closer and, to my great relief, saw puffs of dirt and the wood chips by his neck moving with his breath.

     “Hey kid, you okay?” I had to resist the urge to lay a hand on his back, only the nurse is allowed to touch the children. The boy very subtly shook his head, working his face deeper into the dirt and woodchips. 

     “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

     “No. I’m dead.”

     I tried to feign despair but my personal relief got mixed in, “Oh, no. How did that happen?”

     “Avada Kedavra. Go away or they won’t let me play anymore.” I didn’t understand the first thing he said, it sounded like he was speaking another language, but “Go away” was loud and clear... except that he said it as quietly as he could. 

     “It doesn’t look like anyone is playing with you now.”

     “That’s because I’m dead. Do you play with dead people?” 

     “Well, how do we get you back alive?”

     “You can’t, I’m dead forever. GO AWAY.”

2

Later, after the bell rang and the playground cleared. I related this story and found myself surrounded by a circle of laughing parents.

“I don’t see what’s so funny.”

One of the mothers who had strawberry blonde hair that didn’t match her dark eyebrows said, “I’m laughing because I did the same thing a few days ago. Only I tried to used logic to prove to him he wasn’t dead.”

“Oh, you're talking about Cain.” One of the father’s said. I couldn’t remember his name, but thought of him only as Yoga Dad. “Last spring his name was Thor. His real name is Armond, but he won’t answer to his real name. He’s more dedicated to that than the wizard game.” 

“What’s—” I stopped myself from saying: wrong with him?  “What's the wizard game?” 

“It’s impressive how many of them play it,” said Eyebrows, “Basically all the 6th and 7th graders are playing it.”

Yoga Dad noticed that Eyebrows hadn’t actually answered, and before I had a chance to ask again said, “It’s based on these books about wizards, I’m surprised you haven’t heard about them, basically they all run around pointing sticks at each other and calling adults muggles.”

“My son’s in sixth grade, why didn’t he mention this to me?” I tried to sound curious, but it came out sounding hurt.

“Because—” Yoga Dad began slowly, as if carefully choosing his words.

I cut him off gasping, “Oh no, I’m a muggle!” The parents laughed again, but stopped when they realized I wasn’t being facetious. I turned to Eyebrows. “You said you tried to logic him out of being dead a few days ago?” She nodded. “So he’s been just lying on the ground during recess for days in a row? Why doesn’t someone save him?”

“That’s a better question for your son, as far as we know it isn't possible.”

3

That night, as I watched him pushing the kale around his plate searching for any dressing-bloated raisins he might have missed, I decided I couldn’t ask him directly. I wouldn’t be able to handle him pushing me away, even if was just with his eyes, and even if they were partially veiled behind the hairs the hung in his face. God, he needs a haircut. The silence, periodically shredded by the scratching of the fork across his plate, stretched on until I asked, “Hey buddy, how are you liking this new school?”

“It’s good.”

“You meeting some nice friends?”

“Yeah,” he said, unsure. I recognized it as the doubt that he could trust anyone to like him. “Mom?” He looked up at me with his big eyes and I knew what he was going to ask. “Why did we have to move?”

We’d had this conversation a hundred times, but sometimes it takes a hundred-and-one for something to sink in. I was about to tell him, but something came over me. I say ‘something’ like I didn’t know. I knew. I had been reading chapter summaries all afternoon, I’d made it through four of the seven books and had enough crazy ideas swimming through my head that I was probably going to have wizarding dreams tonight.

I sighed, “Hey buddy, we’ve been over this before haven’t we?” He nodded. “There’s a rumor that You-Know-Who is back, and mommy wants you to be safe.”

He looked confused for a moment, then his eyes grew wide. “It’s okay, I’ve been practicing.” He started to get up.

“Finish your dinner before you leave the table.” Without pause he finally stuffed the kale into his mouth, and quickly walked to his school backpack, hanging from a low coat hook on the kitchen island. He pulled out a stick, and brought it to me. It was a dried shaft about a foot long, with a strange bulb the size of a lollipop at the top of where the handle would be.

Laying it in my hands gingerly he said, “This is my goldenrod wand.”

I turned it over. I pretended to appreciate the weight of it. I gave it a few practice flicks. I sighted down the length of it, and stopped. “What’s the core made out of?”

His eyes dropped to the floor. He didn’t know, and knew it would be useless to lie to me.

“This wand didn’t choose you, did it?” Pushing the game so far felt a little dirty.

“How did you know?” he asked.

The letters C-Ʌ-I-N were scratched into the topside of the bulb. They barely looked like letters, more like runes. “A wizard knows these things,” I said.



...To be continued