Magic Treehouse
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“The Magic Treehouse,” he says. “It’s a series of books with stories about the adventures Jack and Annie get into in their treehouse.”
“Oh my God, that is so cool!” I exclaim. My mother has been reading these books to me for years because they are supposed to be good at teaching science concepts without being boring, but now it looks like there might really be something magical happening on these pages.
A little bit of magic can make you feel more comfortable around someone, even if it is not real magic. Like when we first met Jack and Annie, they seemed kind of weird, since they had a whole house up in the tree.
Now that I know about the book, though, maybe they’re going to seem more normal, which will make this trip easier. And I don’t want to go anywhere near anything weird or strange while Mom’s gone.
So what do you say, Sam? You have magic too, right? Maybe if we both read these books together and try to think about how the characters solve their problems, we’ll find some common ground and learn to work through our feelings. Then maybe Mom won’t freak out so much about us hanging out. At least then we’d probably be okay until she got back home. What do you think?
Sam sighs heavily. If we’re gonna do this, we should get started before nightfall. The sun’s almost down, so I guess we’d better start reading right away.
I pull two copies of the first book off the shelf and hand one to him. It is titled The Magician’s Nephew —that’s because the main character’s name is Lucy, like Lucy Pirelli.
He takes the book from me and smiles, but it seems like his smile is forced. Or maybe I’m imagining it because of something else he said earlier. His eyes seem very sad somehow. But maybe I’ve just misunderstood everything I’m seeing, and maybe I need to relax and let myself enjoy this moment of unbelievability because it feels as good as the hot chocolate tasted after that walk along the lake.
We sit on the bed and take turns reading chapters. When it gets late, we turn off all the lights except for the lamp, and then Sam sits beside me. He pulls his arm over my shoulder and puts his head against mine as he snuggles close enough that I can smell his hair and body shampoo.
This makes me feel warm inside, and I realize that we could stay like this forever and not feel any less safe than we already do, even if nothing magical is happening between us.
As we sit there, reading, our shoulders touching, I feel my fears begin to ease. The last hour passes quickly; soon we are finished. We laugh when we find out that the villain of the story is an evil giant who steals the secret of making fire.
The only way to defeat the giant is to build a fire, light it with a stick, and throw it at the giant, which makes him catch himself on fire. Once we finish laughing, Sam reaches over and kisses me on the forehead.
It feels soft and sweet, but also a little uncomfortable, especially since he has to bend down low to kiss me. It seems like his tongue presses against my skin. As we pull apart, we look into each other’s eyes and laugh again. I think it must mean something romantic, but neither of us says anything about it afterward.
Instead, we put all four books back in the case and return them to the shelf where they belong.
After we hang up our coats, Sam opens the closet door and grabs a couple of boxes that were under the bed. He holds out a box to me, saying, “These are mine.”
Inside the small wooden box are several objects: two gold bracelets, a necklace with blue beads, and a ring set with rubies.
Sam’s fingers are long and slender and graceful, like the rest of his body, and his skin is smooth and pale. When I hold out my hand to take them, they fit perfectly. The bracelets are thin and stretchy, so I slip them over my wrists and then slide them on either side of my pinkie fingers. They’re beautiful, shiny, and sparkly, and I love wearing them.
But when I put on the necklace and earrings, the rubies catch a reflection of the light coming from the windows and make my face look like someone else’s. For a minute, I forget that Sam and I have ever been separated by distance. I’m not sure whether that bothers me or not, but I decide to ask him about it later.
“Why does everyone wear these?” I ask.
“They’re charms,” Sam replies, and then he tells me the stories behind them. “The rings come from King Arthur’s court,” he continues, “and the bracelets are from Atlantis, but the necklace is made from the bones of the dead god Pan.”
This makes me shiver. I’ve heard about this god before and how people thought he was immortal, that he died a thousand years ago. But when I see the necklace, it seems different to me now. It’s more like it was created by someone who loved Pan, and I wonder if this would make anyone feel closer to him, too.
I’m suddenly afraid of losing my new charm bracelet, but Sam explains that it can’t be destroyed because of the power of the stone in it.
When he shows me the box where he keeps his other treasures, I don’t recognize the things he’s chosen for himself, mostly because they don’t seem important to him. There’s a piece of amber with tiny white flowers etched into it, a silver-backed comb, a pendant carved from wood, and a small black velvet pouch filled with sand from Stonehenge.
The pouch doesn’t seem to have much meaning to him, but he still holds it reverently in his hands and says that it is very special. After he closes the box, he gives me a gift, too.
At first, I think he’s going to give me another necklace like I just received, but instead, he takes out some sort of dark blue stone.
“What is this?” I ask.
“A lapis lazuli,” Sam answers, and then he explains what it is. “I found it on the beach during a walk.”
He places the stone in my palm, and when I try to touch it with my fingertips, my skin tingles, sending a cool sensation through me. My fingers go numb, and the stone starts glowing, casting its color across my fingers and into my palm. It is almost as beautiful as Sam himself, and I am instantly drawn to it.
“Do you want it?” Sam asks.
Of course, I say yes without thinking.
But then he adds, “But if you lose it or break it, I will not buy you a replacement. Understand?”
For some reason, the idea of giving up my beautiful stone makes me angry. I don’t understand why, but I can’t help myself.
So I shake my head at Sam and tell him no. Then I shove the stone deep into my pocket, and he lets me keep it. But now when we kiss, the stones rub together with each touch of our lips. It’s distracting, and sometimes when we part I think I’ll feel a prickling burn inside my hand. Sometimes I do feel the tingling, even though my palms aren’t really warm to the touch anymore.
Then one night I woke up with my arms wrapped around Sam. We’re pressed tightly against each other, our faces close. Our lips are only inches from each other so that I can feel the heat of his breath when he exhales.
And I realize suddenly that my hands are holding his face so tightly, his cheeks are starting to bruise.
As soon as we’re able to separate, I apologize. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but he doesn’t respond. His eyes are closed, and after a few seconds I pull away from him completely and sit up to stare down at him. He stares back, and neither of us moves until he finally speaks.
“You broke my nose,” Sam says quietly.
It isn’t something he says, not in accusation or anger, but simply because he notices. Because he knows me well enough to know what happens to my body when I get upset.
I touch my own cheek, feeling my jaw. I’m not sure whether he’s right or not, but I don’t remember hitting him so hard. So I look over at him and ask, “Are you okay?”
Sam blinks and then nods. He reaches up to touch his nose, but it’s no longer crooked. When he touches his lips, they seem normal again, too. But when I reach for his face, I see that he has a small cut on the corner of his mouth.
“Did you hit yourself?” I ask him.
But Sam shakes his head. Then he smiles and says that this time we both got lucky. That we were meant to meet, even if we had to hurt each other to do so. And he’s right: I wouldn’t change this for anything.
***
In the end, all the trouble we find ourselves in comes from one thing: jealousy. For Sam, it is the jealousy that he feels for me and his desire to be mine forever. I feel jealous of the attention I receive from everyone else in town while Sam is busy trying to save the world.
No matter how many times I remind him, there is no way around it—he can never truly love two people equally. Even if the feelings he has for me are deeper than any other relationship he’s ever experienced before.
There is always someone new who catches his eye, and although we talk about everything, it’s inevitable that I will eventually grow distant in comparison. The more Sam spends his time with someone else, the farther apart we drift.
The first person I think of as a threat is the woman who lives next door, the one whose name I don’t remember because Sam has already told me she’s not worth remembering. She was an old college friend of Sam’s, so he must have spent years talking endlessly about her.
She’s young and pretty, like most of the women who come and go here, and she seems very friendly at first, but I start to wonder whether I should worry.
Because if Sam falls in love with her, I may have to choose between them both.
One night when we’ve been out together drinking late at the bar, Sam introduces me to his friends from work. They’re all guys, and none of them are particularly attractive or unattractive, but one of them catches my attention.
I watch him carefully when I’m supposed to be chatting with Sam, and it’s not long before I notice how attentive he’s being to me, too. Every time he glances away from me, he turns his head in his companion’s direction.
After a while, I begin to think that maybe Sam thinks I’m too boring.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asks when I catch him looking at me. “You seem distracted.”
He reaches out to put his arm around my waist and draws me closer to him. I let myself rest against him briefly, but it doesn’t take long for me to pull away from his embrace and turn my eyes toward the front of the bar where the other man stands.
I smile at him and tell Sam that I’d rather talk to him instead of spending another minute listening to Sam chatter about some woman from his past.
That night I dream of walking into a house and finding it empty except for an enormous mirror. There are hundreds of reflections surrounding me, but when I look at their faces, I see that they are all of me—each reflection is slightly different so I am always surrounded by a dozen versions of my own face, all of them staring right back at me.
My dreams grow steadily worse until they become nightmares. My teeth start to rot; my hair turns brown, wiry strands breaking off whenever I brush my fingers through it. I feel as though I can see every tiny detail of my own skin: the pores, the wrinkles, the freckles, all of it showing up perfectly in the mirrors I pass.
It’s as though everyone else in the world has turned invisible. And yet I continue walking around the city, searching desperately for Sam, but everywhere I go, the more mirrors there are, the harder it gets to spot him in the crowd.
Finally, I woke up screaming.
At least, that’s what happened last time. Tonight, nothing changes, only my nightmares.
The End