Two Imaginary Boys (1/5)

Leo's dresser would have made one hell of a fairy trap. The top of it was more of a vanity table, actually, with the mirror over it. There was another full-length one next to the door, framed in wood carved to look like honeysuckle tendrils. I wonder who gave it to him. Family inheritance, maybe? Or maybe he bought it. Not from my cousin's store, at any rate, unless it was before I started working there. Anyway, the dresser top was like a vanity, but with jewelry instead of makeup. I guess that was where he drew the line. He didn't exactly need makeup, anyway.

I remember two brass jewelry stands shaped like trees in winter, one on either side, for necklaces and bracelets. Some of them, I recognized. One, I remembered selling him a month before. He also had a collection of trinket boxes and bowls with cuff links and rings in them, all sorted by color or theme. There was a pair of rose-gold shell cuff links I'd not only sold him, but saved for him as soon as I saw them, because they reminded me of him.

He was like a male version of Aphrodite Urania, you see. Not that I ever told him.

When he died, I got them back. Seventy-two years later, I still have them. I'm not sure I'll have them much longer.

I was there that night because it had been raining, and Leo's house was closer to the main street. He'd walked over to the antique shop to meet me after work for pizza, and then just after we finished paying, it started raining buckets. We ran all the way to his house (which was still half as far away as mine), then he snuck me in to wait the weather out. Once we got to his room, he grabbed a change of pants for himself and left. Then he came back with a pair of his little brother's jeans and a towel for me and left again so I could change. When he came back, he had two mugs of cocoa even though I hadn't asked him for one.

We hadn't gone to the same school since elementary, but even then, he'd caught my attention. He caught everyone's attention. Everyone loved Leo. He went out of his way to make friends with just about everyone he crossed paths with, after all, and he looked like a blonde, curly-haired Cupid, or maybe John the Baptist as a child. We knew each other's names, but that was about it. After that, he attended the private school his father had founded several decades ago: Marcus Academy.

I still saw him around town, but the students and teachers from that school lived in a different world from the rest of us. The racial divide—they were almost universally white, most of us were black—was a big part of it, but even without it there still would have been a class divide. Those of us who didn't work in the local shops mostly worked in the steel mill, which was also owned by Glauco Marchetti.

The main street was the only place they overlapped much, and even then, different businesses tended to attract different clientele. There was a store almost within sight of the school that carried uniform garments and all kinds of school supplies with the school's crest and colors. The two pricier restaurants and the tailor were on that side, too. Go a little further and you'd find the pizza place I mentioned, popular among students and townspeople alike but not as much with the teachers. Tammy's Antiques was a few doors down from there. We were popular among everyone with good taste because we stocked items at a wide range of price points, whether you wanted to spend hundreds of dollars on a nineteenth century diamond necklace or one dollar on a depression-era hardback (Leo had a weakness for anything art nouveau). Toward the other end of the road you had a pharmacy, a fabric shop, the post office and the library, the town hall.

We started crossing paths a little before I graduated high school. I was already working for Tammy part time, and the first time Leo came in, he was looking for a birthday present for Elodie, his sister. I helped him pick out a bracelet with an elaborate butterfly design. The next time I saw him was at a carnival in June. Which was also where I unwittingly found Elodie, trapped inside a porcelain doll.

Leo was stumbling around with this horrible, almost aggressively blank and wide-eyed look on his face. When I asked him how Elodie liked the bracelet, he stared like he was looking right through me. Then his gazed landed on Elodie.

"That's a creepy doll," he said. He didn't recognize his own sister.

Not that I could blame him. I didn't realize she was a person, either. "I won it from the ring toss stall," I told him shakily.

"It's creepy," he repeated before wandering away.

I thought for sure he hated me after that incident, but he turned up at the antique store a week or two later.

"It's Jamie, right?" he asked after I greeted him, which Tammy insisted I do to everyone who walked through the door. Usually when she wasn't around I just kept reading, but I wanted Leo to keep coming back because he was cute, and I could watch him without him noticing in the mirror Tammy put up in one of the upper corners so we could see if anyone was shoplifting. Also, he had money to spend, being the son of the wealthiest man in town.

"Yeah, how'd you know?" I definitely hadn't told him the last time I saw him.

"Mrs. Johnston's class, remember?"

I remembered the name, but not the grade level. We had indeed both been in her class, though. "Barely. Nice to see you back, Leo." I didn't dare ask him about the bracelet for Elodie again. He pored over everything but bought nothing that time.

The next time I ran into him was almost as weird as the carnival. He was re-stocking shelves at the supermarket, which his dad owned. I think he was meant to be working his way through all the different positions of his local businesses. By September he'd be working at a hotel down the highway. "Be careful, Jamie," he muttered as I passed by him.

"Why?" I asked, turning back around and speaking at full volume.

He chuckled and looked at the floor. "There are people in this town who don't take kindly to witches."

"And why should I worry about that?"

I was the most superstitious person I knew. And the only one to really take much interest in witches specifically, one way or another. My family didn't believe in them. They always giggled at the books I read and remarked on what an imagination I had (though they rarely elaborated on what kind, exactly, they thought it was).

"That book you were reading wasn't exactly subtle," Leo said, still speaking softly. "And you smell like incense. I see the candles and massive can of salt in your basket, too." And we were in the baking aisle. I'd been heading for the herbs and spices.

"My interest was academic, it's my sister's birthday this weekend, and we were out of salt. Also, I like my room to smell nice." All lies. Even if the last one was technically true, the incense I'd been using wasn't yet my idea of a nice smell (it's grown on me over the years).

Leo smiled knowingly. "Okay, Jamie. Take care of yourself."

That was exactly what I was trying to do. Night after night, I'd been having incredibly strange dreams, usually involving a grey-eyed woman I hadn't yet met, and a sense of not being able to move or think. I kept getting the Eight of Swords in my tarot readings.

The doll kept turning up in weird places, too, and it wasn't just because of the times I tried putting her somewhere else in the house and my mom would find her and put her back in my room. In fact, I believe it was that very same day I'd found the doll sitting in my desk chair—after having closed her in the closet the night before. That was what made me decide to exorcise her.

Over the rest of the summer, I tried every exorcism and protection ritual I could find in every book on magic I'd managed to hoard, though I often had to improvise on the items called for. None of it did a thing. If anything, some of them made the dreams worse (and by worse, I mean clearer, which makes sense in hindsight).

Eventually, I tried communicating with the doll directly, drawing a card or two a day. Most days, I got the Eight of Swords, then the Queen of Wands or the Chariot. But one day, I got the Empress instead. I wasn't sure what to make of that, so I kept my eyes peeled for signs. And what did Leo come into the antique store wearing that day, but a pink shirt and a heart-shaped signet ring with a Venus glyph on it?

I didn't comment on it, of course, especially not after what he'd said in the supermarket, but by then he was coming in often enough that we'd gotten into the habit of chatting while he browsed. In fact, I was starting to wonder if he had some other reason for coming besides the antiques. He was showing up more often than the stock changed.

Before he left, I decided it was time to ask him about the bracelet he'd bought for Elodie again. It had been a couple months. "So, uh, how did your sister end up liking that bracelet? If you don't mind my asking." I had my fingers crossed under the counter in hopes that he'd forgotten about the other time I asked.

Leo's entire demeanor sagged as the question registered. He sighed and glanced around the store. There wasn't anyone there besides us. "Look, uh, don't go repeating this, all right?" he murmured. "Dad doesn't want people to know, but it's been months, and people are starting to wonder. None of us have seen Elodie since my—since June. Before her birthday. So I never got a chance to give it to her. But I bet she would have really liked it."

That last bit seemed obvious enough, since he'd been the one to pick it out for her. I was stuck somewhere between regret and intrigue. "I'm so sorry. I hope you guys find her soon," I told him.

He thanked me, pretended to look through the necklaces on the rack near the register even though I'd just watched him go through all of them a couple minutes ago, and left. I was a little worried he might not come back as often as he used to, so when Tammy came back from an estate sale with the shell cufflinks I mentioned earlier, I made sure they didn't go into the display counter until he was there, looking at stuff in the back of the store. I didn't want to overtly direct his attention to him, though, because they were so expensive he'd probably think I was only suggesting them because of his family's wealth (or at least, that's what I might have thought in his place).

Just as I'd hoped, he noticed them, but he waited until he'd looked over the rest of the case to ask me how much they were.

"They're supposed to be sixty dollars," I told him. "But you can talk me down." Specifically, he could talk me down up to twenty percent without me having to run it past Tammy first, but I wasn't about to betray her completely by telling him that outright.

He chuckled. "Oh, can I?"

"They reminded me of you."

"How can I resist? Is fifty-five okay?"

"Absolutely." I took them out of the case and put them in a box for him.

"You know," he said, after paying, "you'd make a cute boy."

That, of course, left a big stupid grin on my face. I already thought of myself as a cute boy most of the time, but no one else did. I was too slight, my facial features a little too soft. Still, I wore vests to disguise my chest whenever I could, even when it left me sweating through my shirts (bought from the boy's section) by the middle of the day. On top of that, rumor had it Leo liked men, so that made it extra flattering coming from him. "Thanks," I managed.

Leo grinned back. "You have no idea how relieved I am you took that as a compliment."

And from that day on, without fail, I drew the Empress every time I tried to communicate with that doll. Clearly, it wanted something involving Leo, though I couldn't figure out what. But he came back once or twice a week after that, so I had plenty of opportunities to connect with him.

By September, I still hadn't worked up the nerve to ask him about the doll, so I decided to just take her to work with me and sit her up next to the register. There was also a risk someone else might see her and think she was for sale, but that was a risk I was more than willing to take (I half-expected her to show up at my house after being sold anyway, which would have been pretty exciting). No one commented on her, though. No one except Leo, who looked almost as shocked to see her as he had back in June.

"Can I ask where you got—uh—her?" he asked, pointing at the doll hesitantly. "I don't want to buy it, I'm just curious. I feel like I've seen it before somewhere and it's kind of weirding me out."

"Actually, I won her at the carnival last June," I said.

"Oh. Huh. Don't they normally just have stuffed animals?"

"Yeah, it was the weirdest thing. There was only one of her, and she was sitting with a bunch of giant stuffed dogs, like they were guarding her or something."

"Oh." Leo didn't sound at all satisfied at that answer.

"We ran into each other that day, remember?"

He frowned in confusion and blinked at me several times. "No. When did you say it was?"

"Late June. The last weekend, I think."

"Huh." That seemed to get some gears turning in his mind. "So right around Elodie's birthday."

"You mean right after—"

He nodded before I could finish my sentence. I'd've trailed off vaguely anyway. There were a couple other people in the back.

Leo squatted in front of the counter so his eyes and the doll's were at the same level. "God. I still don't know what it is about this doll. Can you—uh, weird request, I know, bear with me—can you hang onto her until next Wednesday? I wanna see if I can drag my brother out here and find out what he makes of it."

"He collect dolls or something?"

Leo shook his head. "No, but he's a poet. You show him anything, and he'll have something to say about it you never would have thought of. Well, maybe you would, but I wouldn't. Anyway. Could you make that work?"

"Certainly. She's not actually for sale. Just felt like coming to work with me to today," I told him.

He chuckled nervously. "Great. Uh, see you then."

And he did. But he came alone. And he didn't say anything to me until the other customers were gone, only smiled sheepishly and nodded on his way in.

"I'm so sorry about this, but—uh—some stuff happened at school."

By "stuff," I would later learn he meant Jonathan confessed his love to the wrong person, who not only rejected him but outed him to everyone else on top of it.

"And now Jon won't come out of his room. Is there any time you could come back to the house with me?" Leo kept his voice low even though he'd already been there long enough to make three slow rounds of the store while he waited for the others to leave. "Not today. I think he might need more time to cool down. Oh, and I work late now. But I have Tuesday nights off. And you guys are closed Tuesday and Monday, right?"

His house. He was inviting me to his family's house. In the neighborhood where most of the academy teachers' houses sat, huddled together, a moneyed white island on the edge of our majority-black town, itself an island in a sea of towns full of people who saw us as a contagion threatening their not-so-pristinely homogenous neighborhoods any time we so much as strayed from the highways.

"I can pick you up from somewhere else. In my car. No one will see us. Uh, not that I'm worried for myself."

"You know, you could just borrow her now, if you want. Bring her back whenever Jon's seen her." It would have been easier. But in hindsight, I'm glad he refused.

Leo bit his lip and looked in the direction of one of the jewelry racks while he thought. I'd never seen him look so nervous. "Okay, no, actually, if there's anywhere it'd be safe to say this, it'd probably be here. I don't want to borrow the doll because I worry—uh—I might not be able to bring her back if I do."

I frowned at him. "Okay?" It seemed like a funny way of saying he might lose it. If I'd been a little less caught up in the oddness of it all, I probably would have said it was fine if he did.

"You remember what I said in the supermarket?"

Intriguing. I narrowed my eyes at him and nodded slowly, keeping an eye out for other customers coming in from the street.

"So, uh, that was because my aunt is in town. She came in June. You following?"

"I think?"

Leo sighed and scratched his scalp before glancing over his shoulder at the glass front door.

"I'm watching. Act normal," I told him.

He chuckled at that. His shoulders sagged a little, then he straightened up and followed my advice. "Everything's been weird since she got here. I don't know how to explain it. I guess all I can really say is she's herself, that doll is weird in the same way, and I don't want to find out what happens if she finds it in our house."

"And you'd like reinforcements in case she does?"

Leo laughed nervously. "Actually, I don't want to find out what happens if she finds you anywhere, period."

"So if she's so dangerous to me, then why would I want to be in the same house as her?"

"She spends hours a day in the reading room. As long as you come after dinner but before she goes to bed, and we stay away from the reading room, you shouldn't cross paths. And if you do, I'll be with you. But if you'd rather just send the doll with me, I'd understand."

But by then, I was invested. The strongest possibility was that Leo was seriously paranoid, but even that was new information, and I would have liked to have had confirmation of it one way or another. Besides, it was an opportunity to see inside the Marchetti house. "What's the worst she can do?"

Leo shook his head and made a quick slashing gesture at his throat. It only made me more curious.

"I'll come to your house. Next Tuesday, you said?"

"Yeah. Where do you want me to pick you up from?"

We made arrangements, and on Tuesday evening, he picked me up from the park near my house. I wore my corduroy poncho with the hood, but I doubt it made much difference. It was only about a five minute drive. He had this little gold cupid hanging off the rearview mirror that I kept finding my gaze drawn to. Probably because it jiggled at every turn. The piece of pink ribbon he'd used to tie it there wasn't very long.

There was an old iron fence around the Marchetti house, but the gates were open. The driveway was two or three times as long as the other driveways in the neighborhood. Leo parked close to the end of it.

We went in through the back door, which lead to a small entryway full of coat hooks, then a hallway with a hardwood floor, wood siding halfway up the walls, and beige paint on the upper half. On one side was the kitchen. On the other side, not much farther, a staircase.

At the top of the staircase there was a window with a view of what I suppose was technically a back yard, but it looked way too big for that. You couldn't see any houses behind them. I think if you'd walked far enough you would have reached a road. Maybe even the highway. But you couldn't see that either because of the trees.

Down the hall were several heavy wood doors with a shiny finish. Leo knocked on one of them and reached into his inner jacket pocket. "Hey, Jon? I got you a book." He gestured at me to tell me to stand next to him. I held the doll in front of me where it would be right in Jonathan's line of sight when he opened the door. "It's your favorite."

"Who is it?" asked a skeptical-sounding voice from behind the door.

"It's Oscar," Leo said, a little smugly.

The door opened. "My favorite's Rimbaud, not Wilde, you—"

Jonathan was about as tall as I was, maybe an inch or two taller. He had the same blonde hair and rosy skin as Leo, but his hair was straight and about half as long (which was still a little longer than jaw-length). When he saw me, he froze and stared in shock. I might have even seen him shiver a little.

Then he opened his mouth, but before he got around to saying anything his gaze landed on the doll. And his nose wrinkled. "Elodie?"