There are two ways that I see magic, often at the same time.
The first one is that magic is the best thing that ever happened to me. I waited my whole life for something important and wonderful to happen. I was tired of being ignored at school and criticized at home. And I was through with looking at the world and often having a thin sheet of a daydream glaze over it.
Magic was my answer; it was the way that I knew I was special. Maybe I wasn’t the ideal child that every mother longed for, but that was okay. I’d had my own parents, and they were special too. My daydreams became more fantasy than just mere fiction, leaping further away from the boundaries of reality. Friendly giants and beautiful unicorns colored my mind. It was a way for me to escape.
Of course, that didn’t last long.
Magic is also the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen, for two reasons. First, I knew there was a flipside to the delightfully eccentric characters I’d met and the fantastic things I’d observed. People could take magic and do terrible things with it. Perfectly normal people, kids who just wanted power and ended up letting it run wild. They didn’t stop it, and grew hungry for it, pushing the edges of logic and reason away to get it. They created an army, and struck down obstacles. And everything they needed, all the things they wanted and so much more, was theirs.
No one ever stopped it, not ever, but they tried. No one ever stopped it, and it grew powerful enough to wreck my life, along with a couple thousand others.
How can I not blame magic for my parents’ deaths?
The other reason I hate magic is because it isn’t mine. That probably makes me sound just as horrible as all those power-hungry demonic maniacs, but the way I want magic is so different.
Imagine with me for a second, if you will. You are a ten-year-old girl. You have been told that your parents were worthless drunks, the reason you’re here is their fault, and you will amount to nothing, just like them.
Then, knock knock! Some giant guy you’ve never met before shows up and tells you everything. You are not a nobody. Neither is anyone in your family. You are special, and much more powerful than all the people who held you down.
And, bonus points, ‘cause this guy gives your cousin a tail like a pig. It’s a very good story, and I’ll tell you later.
Suddenly everything is different, and so many things are being revealed to you. You’re having so much fun.
And then they rip it all out from under you. Sorry, Kata, just kidding… it’s just Harry. You have to wait.
So, I want magic. You always want what you can’t have.
And that is what I think about magic.
I sat in the steamy kitchen of Flinker’s -- in my opinion, the town’s best restaurant. It was the middle of the six o’clock dinner rush hour, and the place was hopping. Pans clattered and boiling water bubbled… food sizzled as it hit the cold white plates. Aaron shouted for more rolls for table ten, and Delia yelped as hot pepper sauce sloshed onto her apron.
It’s Jeremy’s dad’s place, and I’ve been hanging out here since I could walk. The notebook Mr. Mendota had given to me was open on my lap, and I was doodling in it for something to do. It had been three days, and I had absolutely no idea how I was going to start my project. The first thing I tried was gathering twenty things I used every day, but most of them were completely boring, like a toothbrush or my bike.
The problem was that I didn’t have twenty things that made my world go ‘round. My life was so… normal. Besides the whole magic thing, which I don’t count. I woke up, got dressed, brushed my teeth, and combed my hair. Rode my bike to school, wasted eight or so hours. Avoided going home for as long as I can.
It was the same thing everyday -- I don’t need a list to tell me that. I don’t need a box full of things to tell me that. And I certainly don’t need Mr. Mendota to tell me that.
I sighed and pulled out the other green notebook. The only way I could tell the two notebooks apart was the Hello Kitty sticker in the corner of the older one, the one I said was valuable. Closing the Twenty Things notebook, I opened the other and put pencil to paper.
Dear Friend,
Mr. Mendota told me to find the twenty things that make my world go ‘round. How am I supposed to do that if I don’t even know which world I belong to? I’ve shut out this world, and my world shut me out.
-Kata
No, it’s not a diary! I don’t keep diaries. Girls with blonde curls, and bubblegum, and canopy beds keep diaries. It’s just a notebook.
“Kata!” I heard Mr. Flinker call. “Grab an apron! I need you to stir this!”
I smiled and shoved both notebooks back in my bag, snatching my apron from its peg, along with my footstool. Because I need a footstool.
Four feet two inches is too short for a nine-year-old, let alone a ten-year-old. I was way to short, and way too thin.
“Clockwise,” Mr. Flinker instructed, handing me a long wooden spoon and pointing to a large vat of sauce.
“Does it matter?” I asked, but obediently stirred clockwise.
He laughed. “Of course it matters! It’s the details that make this world turn, Kata!”
Bam. It just hit me like a freaking lightning bolt.
I dropped the spoon out of shock, and turned around. “What did you say?”
“Stir!” he cried, noticing that I stopped. I picked up the spoon and asked again.
“About things that make the world go ‘round… what did you say?”
“Details,” he announced. “I believe you are a fan of the Six-Cheese Salad?”
I nodded.
“Did you know that every piece of lettuce I put in that salad is exactly seven and a half inches long? Did you know that it is Aaron’s job is to personally go through the bins of cheese and select the slices worthy of being grated into my salad?” He smiled. “Of course, I go through and check again afterwards, because Aaron just doesn’t have a nose for cheese.”
“It’s a serious personality flaw,” Aaron put in, sighing from behind a different oven.
“So you’re saying that it’s the details that matter?” I asked, still stirring.
“Yep,” Mr. Flinker nodded. “For instance, that sauce requires thirty-four more seconds of stirring. No more, no less.”
I set the timer above the stove. “How’d you figure that out?”
“Well, I look at the color of the sauce versus the amount of applied heat-”
I cut him off. “No, not that. How do you know that it’s the details that make the world go ‘round?”
“The fruits of my efforts, young grasshopper,” Mr. Flinker announced, and the timer beeped. I hopped down from the stool.
“Mind if I use that for a school project?” I asked, switching off the burner.
“You’re doing schoolwork?” Jeremy asked incredulously, coming into the kitchen carrying a bucket of dirty plates and dumping them into the dull brown dishwater.
“My thoughts exactly!” Mr. Flinker boomed. I scowled. “Tell you what… you can quote me if you stop stealing food from the storerooms and asking me to sign your report cards in place of your aunt.”
My scowl deepened. “You can’t prove that was me stealing food.”
“So it’s a deal.”
“Deal,” I muttered. He laughed again.
See why I love this place? It’s absolutely perfect. Mr. Flinker is so big and loud and exuberant, and he makes me feel loud and exuberant too. Jeremy is my best friend, and even though he’s a year older than me, and a boy, we still hang out here after school.
“Speaking of food, efforts, and smelling cheese… Isn’t it time you went home?” Mr. Flinker asked.
I avoided his eyes. “My shift isn’t up.”
“You don’t work here,” Mr. Flinker countered.
“I’m in the hall of fame. You can’t kick me out,” I objected.
“You’re in the background of a picture of a giant hot dog.”
“The customer might ask for the chef who stirred the delicious sauce,” I suggested.
“I’ll tell them that she is so amazingly elusive that she does not see customers.”
Jeremy laughed. “I’ll walk you out, Kat.”
We walked out the back door to the large alley behind the restaurant. A patch of grass grew under a slit of sunlight, and a rusted basketball hoop stood tall in the center. Jeremy picked up the half deflated basketball from the corner and tossed it to me. I caught it and threw it at the hoop. It fell to the ground halfway, without bouncing
Jeremy shook his hair out of his eyes and picked it up, setting it back in the corner.
“Bikes?” he asked, and I nodded.
I nudged the kickstand out from under my bike and swung my leg over the seat in the same motion. Jeremy did the same with his, and soon we were zooming down Main Street. Yes, Little Whinging actually has a Main Street. It’s where most of the businesses and shops are.
We rode silently all the way to Halfman Park. It was nice, in a weird sort of way. No questions. No requirements. No expectations. Just the wind pushing my hair behind me, coloring my cheeks a faint pink, making me want to ride faster and possibly never get off. We passed Quick Mart, the store where my friend Marc works as a bag girl. We passed Freeway, this bar that was made with the divine purpose being a hangout for truckers.
The sky was beginning to turn pink and orange, just starting to set behind the clouds. Everything looked a little brighter, which is strange, because sunset brings darkness. Not light.
Jeremy skidded to a stop by an old bench in the park, and I did the same.
“So, schoolwork?” he asked skeptically.
“Yep,” I answered, knowing he would press for details anyway.
“Why now?” he asked.
I shrugged. This was mostly because I didn’t have an answer.
“Aren’t you, like, failing everything?” he asked.
I bit my lip. “Not everything,” I said. “I’m doing okay in art. And Mr. Mendota is weirdly obsessed with me, always watching whatever I do. He’s not gonna hold me back.”
This was true. The day Mr. Mendota had assigned the list wasn’t the first day he’d kept me after class to talk. Sometimes he said he just wanted to talk to me, and he’d bring up the weather, or a book he knew I’d read before. Sometimes he asked why I never did the work. He asked for details about my life outside school. What was the name of the school my brother had gone to? What had I done this weekend? Why did I feel the compulsive need to rip out the pages of the book we were reading in English? Was it because the girl in the book didn’t have a mom?
It was tippity-tappity tap-dancing on my last nerve. Because it wasn’t because the girl in the book didn’t have a mom. It was just a stupid book.
“Why this?” Jeremy continued. “What is it?”
“Twenty things that make the world go ‘round,” I announced. “I have to find them.”
“So, details. Like my dad said,” Jeremy guessed.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Hey. What makes your world go ‘round?”
He thought for a second. “Hair gel.”
That comment deserved nothing but a raised eyebrow, and that’s what it got.
“In the upper school,” he explained. “Everybody has hair gel. Even the nerds. They just slick it down instead of spiking it up. I would be in serious trouble if I didn’t use hair gel.”
That comment didn’t get anything at all, not even an eyebrow. I was not going to put hair gel in my twenty things. For one, I’d never used it. I don’t need hair gel. My hair lays the same way everyday.
“But you didn’t answer my question. Why this? You could read a book, or study for a math test, or do something that wouldn’t take as much time, if you wanted to start working at school. Why choose the big project that you know you’re gonna get sucked into?” Jeremy flicked his hair out of his eyes again and waited for an answer.
I didn’t have one. Again. No answers here. Answerless Kata.
“Kata?” he prodded. I sighed.
“I guess… I almost want to prove something to Mr. Mendota. That I can do this. That I even know what my twenty things are.”
I assumed Jeremy was raising his eyebrows, but I couldn’t see underneath his shaggy hair. “But you don’t,” he objected. “You wouldn’t be asking me about hair gel if you did.”
I shrugged again. “Then I guess it’ll be a challenge.”
“Where are you going to start?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“Where are you going to start looking?” he explained. “For your twenty things?”
“I don’t think many of them are going to be tangible,” I muttered. “Kind of the point of the assignment, isn’t it? We shall look deep inside ourselves...” I trailed off holding my arms aloft like some sort of guru and closing my eyes, turning in the direction of the wind. My hair blew behind me, and Jeremy laughed.
“Can I see what you’ve got done so far?” he asked, motioning to my bag, which was stuffed inside my bike basket.
“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “Hand me that pencil too.”
Jeremy grabbed the pencil and the notebook, passing the pencil to me and opening the notebook on his lap. I leaned over and wrote in “Details” over the small sketch I’d done of the kitchen.
“What do you think?” I asked, indicating the drawing.
He turned the notebook sideways. “It kind of looks like my dad’s place,” he said slowly. “I can definitely tell it’s a kitchen.” He flipped through a couple more pages (Nothing was there) and then passed the book back to me. “You should stick to drawing those faces. Those are incredible.”
I went stiff. “What faces?” I asked slowly.
“I saw a couple in your bag once. A man, with really messy hair, and a lady with long brown hair. She was colored in, but he wasn’t. They were like photos, almost.”
I avoided his eyes. I hated the Drawings. “Yeah, well. Maybe I’m better at people.”
He probably had an answer to that, but just then, the big clock in the park, built to resemble Big Ben, but smaller, began to chime. One bell. Two bells. Three, four, five bells. Six bells, and then… seven.
In the fifteen or so seconds it took those bells to chime, I had gathered my stuff, shoved it all messily into my bag, and hopped on my bike.
“I’m late!” I called as an explanation to a confused Jeremy’s yells, and then I put the pedal to the metaphoric metal.
One more time, they’d said, and I would be lucky to get to leave the house for school.
I wasn’t afraid of Verno, or even Aunt P. Then again, the only things in this world that fear Aunt P are germs. Anyway, I wasn’t afraid. They wouldn’t even know I was late if I went through the window…
In the distance, I heard a different sort of bells ring. Church bells…
Crap. Is it Wednesday? I could’ve sworn it was Tuesday.
I stopped pedaling, and my bike slowed, stopping eventually. I put my foot down to keep from tipping over and looked wildly back and forth between to streets. One was Gulliver Street, which would take me to Magnolia Crescent, and then to Privet Drive. The other was Dashwood Place, which would take me back to Main Street, where I could turn onto Darwin Avenue… and to the church.
This may surprise you, but given the choice, I took Dashwood.
For a church that claims to accept all kinds of people, Darwin Street Church was really strict about the whole ‘on time’ thing. I was probably too late for that, and going would be useless; it would just delay me more. But I kept pedaling.
I can’t explain why I like the church. It isn’t even a church “ it’s an old day-care facility, remodeled and fitted with fuzz worn velvet pews. The sanctuary is actually in the basement, and the first floor is a seldom-used homeless shelter. Little Whinging doesn’t have many homeless. I think the ‘Welcome to Little Whinging’ sign used to say that…
I practically slammed into the bike rack, wedging my tire firmly between two metal rods. I jumped off the bike and hit the ground running.
The building itself is low, with faded yellow paint and dusty windows. There’s a long-dead evergreen planted by the door that Mr. Millerton refuses to cut down, because as the church leader, he’s supposed to support life of all kinds or something. A pretty good reason, but I can’t make myself look at that tree.
The doors were shut, but not locked. I opened them as little as I could and squeezed through, taking a seat in the back where no one would notice.
And by no one, I mean all of the seven people that showed up.
Mr. Millerton was at the front, talking about a special-looking flower he’d seen last week, and how that flower had affected him. He’s just Mr. Millerton. Technically, the church is for no specific religion, so we can’t call him ‘Pastor’, or ‘Reverend’, or ‘Rabbi’.
I don’t know what religion I’d be, if I had to pick. I read a book about a kid whose dad was Jewish and his mom was Christian, and he had to pick. I couldn’t do that.
I don’t even know much about what the different religions are about, but I like the ones that involve an afterlife. Reincarnation is just so weird to think about. What if you knew a person, and then they died, and came back as someone else? They wouldn’t remember knowing you, and if you ever met them, you wouldn’t realize. I don’t like that.
Mr. Millerton continued about the flower, “It had its petals reaching towards the sun. Even though it was nighttime, that flower was waiting for the sun to come back. And, in the meantime, in was enjoying the moon.”
There’s probably some deep meaning behind that. Somewhere.
Twenty Things That Make the World Go 'Round by eva_writes
Chapter Notes: Hello again. I am so, so, so sorry that the wait for this chapter was so long. I had a problem with my internet connection, and them there was an e-mail mix up, and then I had a grammar error... point is, I'm sorry, and I hope you enjoy chapter two. I don't own Harry Potter, Magic Markers, or duct tape. Thanks to my brilliant beta Azhure and everyone that reviewed.
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Chapter Endnotes: Thank you for reading, and I'll try to get the next chapter up much faster!
-Eva