I shrugged, my heart racing. "Had bad dreams and was thinking about him."
Dad nodded. "I come in here too sometimes when I'm missing him more than usual. He was a great kid."
"A great brother too." My throat tightened to the point of pain.
"Too bad he had to act so stupid sometimes."
"You mean…the party?" I'd lied to my parents about it too, never once even hinting that the real reason Damon had taken me to that secret gathering was so I could learn how to control the magic growing like a cancer inside me, waiting to lash out if I didn’t put a leash on it. The training sessons had been a secret Damon had tried to pass down to me. A secret he’d ultimately died for.
"He never should have been there. Never should have gotten involved with that crowd. I warned him about having friends like that. Damon died because of them." Dad's voice was harsh, grating with barely controlled fury. "He wouldn’t listen to me. He was always too good hearted, always looking to make friends with anyone at all. Always looking for the good in others, even when there wasn’t any good to find. I couldn’t make him see how important it was to fit in. He thought being nice made it okay to be different, that he didn't have to worry about trying to fit in. And he paid for it with his life."
So Dad had spent the last few months pounding the lesson into my head instead.
"But what happened to Damon won't happen to you because you understand, don't you?" Dad’s tone and the way he was staring at me made the words sound more like a warning than a reassurance.
I felt old, weighed down by something invisible on my shoulders and back as I shut the closet door. "Yeah, Dad, I understand. No matter what, fit in."
"That's right." He reached out and ruffled my hair as I passed him on my way out of the room, even though we were both six foot two and he had to reach up to do it. Then he shut the door behind us both.
I returned to my room. But going back to sleep was out of the question. Somehow, I had to learn how to control the magic inside me. Otherwise, my secret would be blown in no time. And then I’d wind up in an internment camp too.
Okay, so Damon's room and the public libraries were out. Probably the big bookstores had already gotten rid of all their magic books too by now. But what about small bookshops? The ones in the small towns might have reacted quickly to the government’s new anti-magic stance. But the ones in the big cities might not have.
I pulled up the Internet, did a quick search, and found four independent bookshops in the Dallas/Ft. Worth metro area, which was only a couple hours' drive away. Surely one of them still had something about magic.
I didn't risk looking up their book catalogs online, though. Dad had told me a long time ago how all Internet activity was rerouted through NSA servers housed in the AT&T building in San Francisco. By now, they would definitely be tagging all searches for magic-related keywords. And maybe even arresting people based on it.
I would just have to go to the bookshops in person and see what I could find.
“Hey, kiddo, where you headed to in such a rush?” Mom called out from the kitchen as I tried to jog past.
I grabbed onto the kitchen doorjamb to stop myself. My sneakers squeaked on the tile floor in protest. “Oh, just headed into town.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. I just wasn’t saying which town.
“Okay.” Mom glanced up from the blender she was filling with chopped greens, probably for yet another wedding she was catering for, and frowned. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Sure. Why?”
“Because you haven't gone out with any of your friends after school all week, and you look terrible this morning. Are you coming down with something? Maybe you should get some breakfast before heading out.”
“I'm fine. I'm not hungry. I’ll grab some coffee later.”
“Mochas aren’t breakfast. Come here.”
I groaned. “Mom—”
She snapped her fingers then pointed at the floor beside her as if I were a puppy in need of obedience training.
Grumbling, I gave in and walked around the granite and oak island that took up most of the room, feeling like a kindergartner again as I stopped before her for inspection.
She slid a hand under my hair to test my forehead. “Hmm. You feel okay. But maybe you ought to drink some orange juice to boost your immune system, just in case.”
“Mom, I feel fine.”
Her lips pursed. “Are you sleeping well? You've got such dark circles under your eyes.”
I tried not to wince. “I said I was fine.”
One perfectly waxed eyebrow arched in doubt. “At least have a glass of orange juice. Or I could make you a quick smoothie if you want.” She reached for the blender as if to dump out its contents into a nearby bowl. Or maybe use those green and orange contents to make me a liquid breakfast.
I darted around the island to the fridge, grabbed the orange juice from inside, and chugged down a few long gulps of acid straight from the carton, nearly wearing it when her gasp of disapproval tried to make me laugh.
I dragged my coat sleeve across my mouth and managed half a smile. “Good enough?”
“Ugh. Do you have any idea how disgusting that is? I swear, I must have raised you in a barn and didn't know it.”
I shoved the juice carton back into the fridge then gave her a quick kiss on her cheek. “Later.”
“Speaking of, don't be late! Remember, your curfew's midnight.”
“Aw, come on, Mom!” I yelled out from the foyer, my hand on the front door’s handle now. “I'm eighteen now. I'm going to college soon. You going to be there to tuck me in at midnight too? Two o'clock at the earliest.”
“Keep being such a pain in my butt and you’ll never live to see college. Midnight and not a minute later or I take the keys.”
“Fine,” I grumbled for the sake of getting out the door sometime this year.
I eased the heavy wrought iron, glass and oak front door shut behind me, then jogged across the front lawn to the circle drive where my pride and joy waited.
Even though I was in a hurry and worried about hiding the magic that now felt like a curse running through my veins, I still felt a flash of joy as I climbed into the cab of my new baby, which my parents had just given me in August for my eighteenth birthday. The gleaming white Ford F-150X Super Cab Hybrid was the single coolest personal truck I'd ever seen, complete with voice-activated heads-up display, twelve CD changer music system, a 4-wheel drive system that I had yet to manage to get stuck in the mud with, a super extended cab big enough to handle the entire Raiders basketball starting team, computerized back up and parallel parking assistance, and a towing package with a computer sensor to help overcome wind or bumpy roads while towing up to eight thousand pounds. So far, I'd only used the tow kit to help pull some of the Raiders basketball team's wimpier trucks out of the mud. But Dad had promised we'd get to try out this feature for real with the family boat next summer before I went off to Yale.