Chapter IV

“I still can’t believe I got stuck with you,” Liz whined as she and Vinny made their way down the stairs, past groups of students going up, before reaching the first floor of West Wilham High School. “And that’s saying something considering the only other option was Eric.”

The blonde boy smirked, glancing over his shoulder at her with a wry look. “Whine all you like, Liz. It doesn’t change reality. And anyway, it’s not like I’m that bad! What’s with all this ‘make fun of Vinny crap’?!”

The girl sighed. “You’re just easy to make fun of since there’s so much about you worth teasing.”

“Hey! Like what?!” he narrowed his eyes in challenge, but Liz didn’t even hesitate before responding.

“Well how about the fact that you always look like you’ve got a bad case of bed head? Or that whenever you win at something, you gloat about it for weeks on end. Oh, or that one tooth of yours that sticks out sometimes.” She smiled with sweetness that was painfully fake. “Shall I continue?”

Vinny snorted, moving to the left to avoid a group of sophomore girls before sliding back up against the wall. He readjusted his grip on the rolled up posters in his left hand before replying.

“You act like I’m not grouchy about getting stuck with you,” he snapped. “I would’ve much preferred Damien or Eric. You’re not perfect either, you know?”

Liz grinned slyly, moving to walk beside him as they rounded a corner into a more packed area of the hallways.

“Oh really? Got something you want to say about me, do you, Vin’?”

He nodded. “Absolutely. You see—what are you doing?”

Just as he was about to begin his own list of problems, Liz raised her phone up, angled horizontally as if she were watching some video.

She shrugged. “Just recording this. I’m sure Damien would love to hear all about what you hate about me. So don’t mind me at all. Go right ahead.”

Vinny grimaced. “You truly are a witch, Elizabeth Tao!”

Her little giggle at his reply only further convinced him that she wasn’t one to face alone. If he wanted any hope of besting the bespectacled girl, he would at the very least need Eric at his side.

Not like that’s helped in the past though, he mused.

“Yeah, whatever,” Vinny replied. “In that case, let’s just get this done before lunch ends. I’m starving.”

The reason Vinny and Liz were wandering the halls in the middle of lunch had to do with the upcoming club rush the following week. Ever since the start of school, Lowe had been stopping by the club room to badger them about it so Damien convinced them to make posters that they could hang on the community boards around school.

Not like the MOAIT really needs any other club members though, he thought to himself. After all, very few can handle the power that resides within our club room!

Each of them knew that trying to do anything was pointless. Nobody was going to join the club and that wasn’t going to change. It had been the four of them since their freshmen year when Eric first put the club together. After two years, their club had a reputation for being full of weirdos and outcasts that would surely keep any curious freshmen away.

The only time any kids had even bothered talking to them had been the previous year. A few students had stopped by after hearing about them so he and Eric had excitedly told them all about their club activities. Predictably, the kids never returned and would avoid them in the halls whenever they happened to cross paths.

There was no doubt in Vinny’s mind that the same result would emerge in the upcoming year, so to him, making and putting up the posters was an utter waste of time. But Damien was set on not getting into trouble with Lowe again so he had demanded that they do at least the bare minimum of work. In addition, the boy had ensured that Vinny and Eric not be in a group together and so, had assigned Liz to watch the blonde boy while he helped Eric.

“How about here?” Liz asked, breaking him out of his thoughts.

The girl was indicating a rather empty community board that only had a few notices from the student government and a handful of less popular clubs. The reason was due to its location further away from the main hall where less students were likely to see it. However, if nobody saw their poster, Vinny was perfectly happy.

“Sure! This is perfect!” he replied cheerfully.

He took one of the three posters left under his arm and handed it to Liz, who silently took it. He then reached into the pocket of his dark blue uniform slacks and pulled out a small transparent case of different color tacks.

Since they had already gone through the second floor, they had established a routine for putting the posters up. Liz didn’t say anything as she unfolded the poster and placed it against the bottom left corner of the board while Vinny opened the case to take out a few tacks. Once he had all four in and the poster was secure, the two stepped back to look at their work. It was slightly tilted to the left but neither cared enough to fix it.

However, Vinny couldn’t help but to smirk at the art. The poster had “MAGIC CLUB'' written in big bold letters across the top. Below it was a picture of a girl in West Wilham’s uniform with a witch’s hat and next to her was a guy dressed like a detective. Below them was the room number of the club and Eric’s school email address. The drawings were actually pretty impressive and he found himself once again baffled by how good of an artist Damien was.

“You know,” Vinny grumbled. “I really wish we could’ve used our actual club name on the poster. Otherwise, people are gonna be confused as to why there’s a detective.”

Liz shrugged. “Officially, Magic Club is our real name. That’s why I tried to convince you not to have Damien draw the detective. You and Eric just wouldn’t listen.”

“Of course we wouldn’t!” Vinny refused to back down. “We are the Magical and Other Anomalies Investigation Team! If we omit the investigation part then people won’t know what to expect from our club!”

“I don’t think having the full name would make what we do anymore clear,” she replied. “I mean, I’ve been in the club for two years and even I still don’t know what we’re actually supposed to be doing.”

Vinny smirked and was about to reply when somebody spoke from behind him.

“Magic club?”

When he turned around to look, he found two shorter boys—clearly freshmen—staring up at the poster with raised eyebrows. The one who had spoken had a crewcut and the other boy had a rather thin face that made him look kind of creepy, in Vinny’s opinion.

“Yup, that’s us!” Vinny declared. “Are you interested in joining?”

Crewcut cocked an eyebrow. “What do you guys do? Magic tricks?”

“You know how to pull a rabbit out of a hat?” Creepy guy added.

Vinny simply laughed. “Don’t let the name fool you, young men. Magic Club is merely our cover name. In reality, we are the Magical and Other Anomalies Investigation Team and our job is to look into various reports of mysterious happenings.”

“Oh.” Crewcut smirked. “So you’re a bunch of losers then?”

He heard Liz barely stifle a laugh behind him as the freshmen cackled at Crewcut’s reply.

“I wouldn’t call us losers,” Vinny replied, completely unbothered.

“Of course you wouldn’t!” Creepy guy sneered. “You believe in magic! I bet you still think Santa brings you presents on Christmas!”

Vinny chuckled. “Of course he does! Who else could possibly be the one eating the cookies?! In fact, I’ve tried catching the fat bastard multiple times but he always slips through my fingers.”

The two boys continued to laugh, looking at Vinny like they thought he was pathetic, but the blonde boy found it fun to act like he was. He knew much of the school thought he was a cringy moron, but he enjoyed playing that role. After all, it was more fun than just being an average joe.

“So? You want to join?” Vinny pressed.

“Ha! No thanks. How about you ask your mom instead?” Crewcut retorted.

“Oh I did. She wasn’t interested though.”

At Vinny’s reply, the two kept laughing, not even bothering to look at him anymore as they walked away. Vinny watched them go with a smirk, partially wishing he could’ve messed with them a little longer. He glanced back up at the poster and smiled.

Well, their loss, he thought. They don’t know what they’re missing.

As he looked at the poster, he suddenly recalled something Creepy Guy had said. He had accused Vinny of believing in magic and the odd thing was, the blonde boy wasn’t sure if he actually did. He enjoyed messing around in the club and he knew Eric believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that it did exist, but Vinny wasn’t sure where he stood on the matter. Realistically, there probably was no such thing as magic. However, magic not existing was such a boring concept. Vinny Mickelson lived his life trying to be as entertained as possible. So, even if he logically knew that it probably didn’t exist, he still chose to act like it did because that was more fun than being skeptical.

Smiling, he finally turned to look back at Liz, who was leaning up against the wall with an amused expression.

“You’re such an idiot, you know?” she muttered.

“I’m well aware, dear Liz!” he replied. “Now, let’s be off. I want to see if there’s any room on the front entrance’s board.”

“Doubtful,” she grunted.

However, the girl still followed after him as he shoved the tacks back in his pocket and continued on down the hall.

***

The first week of school passed by both quickly and slowly for Lilly and she wasn’t completely sure what to make of it. Her classes were fine since they hadn’t fully gotten rolling yet and cross country was still going well. Their first race was the following Saturday and for her, it couldn’t come fast enough. The rest of the team seemed pretty excited for the season to start as well so practice was rather lively.

Naturally, she hadn’t seen the last of Alice Mendez, who made it a point to wish her a good morning and to make small talk before first period, but it seemed like the girl had at least taken the hint that Lilly didn’t have any interest in interacting. Now, their conversations were quicker and Lilly was all for it. On the first day of school, she would have guessed that getting Alice to back off would have been the solution to avoiding having to talk to people.

Unfortunately, she was sorely mistaken in that regard.

While Alice was nice enough to realize that Lilly preferred to be left alone, Jay Brooks was another matter. Ever since they met during practice, the curly-haired boy had been going out of his way to find her and chat. She considered herself lucky that they only shared one class—calculus in fifth period—but that didn’t stop Jay from hunting her down at lunch.

Not like I was hard to find though, she thought to herself.

Despite wanting to go down and eat lunch in the courtyard, she hadn’t bothered to go due to how crowded it looked when she looked out the window on the first day. Instead, she’d been opting to eat in her fourth period chemistry class where there was a significantly smaller number of students. However, since Alice had the same class, Jay had found her pretty quickly and had been stopping by to eat with her since. Naturally, most of the time was spent with him talking and her half listening as she gazed out the window.

After a week of enduring it, she finally caved and decided that she would rather brave the chaos of the courtyard than put up with Jay for another day. It was why she now found herself sitting alone at one of the tables, eating her school-bought lunch of moderately warm pepperoni pizza. She was surrounded by tables full of students, chatting and laughing. The noise was so loud it gave her a headache.

Though, not as bad of a headache as I get from Jay.

She still couldn’t figure out what he wanted with her. They had only talked—if that interaction could even count as both of them talking—the one time and all of a sudden, he seemed to decide that they were best friends.

I hope he doesn’t have a crush on me or something, she thought irritably. That would be a real pain in my ass. Although, if he does, I hope he gets up the courage to ask me out faster so I can turn him down and be done with this.

At least then, he probably wouldn’t be following her around all over the school. It was harsh and she didn’t particularly dislike him. She just preferred to be alone and he was getting in her way.

She took another bite of pizza and sighed, scanning the courtyard once again to make sure he hadn’t tracked her down.

Thank god. Maybe I’ll actually get through lunch without—

“There you are, Harper!”

Fuck my life!

Lilly begrudgingly looked over her shoulder at the nasally voice to find not only Jay, but Alice and Ellie, walking past a few tables and toward where she sat. She noticed the two girls looking a little embarrassed, as if neither truly wanted to bother her.

Oh great. He brought the whole gang with him this time. Wonderful.

“If you were going to eat outside, you should’ve let me know!” Jay admonished, plopping down on the other side of the circular table, a brown paper lunch bag in his hand.

Ellie sat to her left and Alice on her right, both with the same styrofoam trays with pizza on them that Lilly had bought from the cafeteria.

“Sorry. I decided last minute. Didn’t know where you were,” she replied in monotone.

Jay shook his head. “This is why I keep telling you we should exchange numbers. Then you could have texted.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Speaking of, did you bring your phone today?”

“Nope,” she lied, subconsciously pressing her foot against her backpack under the table, where her phone was concealed.

He sighed. “Of course not. But I gave you my number yesterday. Did you at least put me in your contacts?”

“I forgot.”

With as many hints to leave her alone as she was giving, he was either an oblivious idiot or he genuinely didn’t care that she had no interest in talking to him. She could see Ellie and Alice exchanging exhausted looks and knew that they were both well aware that she wanted to eat in peace.

“Man, what are we going to do with you?” Jay muttered. “But oh well. Good thing I saw you out the window. All’s well that ends well.”

She internally grimaced. “Yeah. Good thing.”

Now being unable to take out her phone and check the time, she had no way to know how much longer she was going to be subjected to the situation.

Not like it matters though. He’ll follow me to fifth period and then we’ll have cross country together.

“So, you have any plans after school?” Ellie asked, smiling awkwardly as she looked at Lilly. “Cause Alice and I were thinking about going to the pier.”

Jay opened his mouth to speak but Alice cut him off with a wave of her hand.

“Of course you’re invited, Jay,” she snapped before also turning her attention toward Lilly. “It’s really cool at night and the ferris wheel gives a really pretty view of the town. You don’t have to if you don’t want to though.”

Of course, Lilly didn’t want to go in the slightest. She wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep. While that wasn’t an option, she at least had an excuse without having to lie.

“I’m actually babysitting tonight so I can’t go,” she replied. “Thanks though.”

Jay frowned. “Babysitting? You got a younger sibling?”

“No. She’s just a younger girl in my apartment building,” Lilly muttered. “I watch her sometimes.”

Ellie nodded, as if having expected that response. “Okay, that’s cool. Another time then.”

“Sure.”

Lilly then turned and glanced over at the school’s front entrance past a few other tables where a familiar blonde boy was walking with a girl she only vaguely recognized.

Hey, it’s that Magic Club boy again, she thought with mild interest. Vinny, I think.

As she had expected when she first saw Vinny and Eric, the two had definitely stood out from the rest of her classmates. Their argument with Brad had been the first of many and she genuinely found herself wondering how they had never gotten beat up. At her last school, she’d seen people far less weird get their asses kicked by people like Brad. It made her wonder if they had some dirt on him or something of the sort.

Jay seemed to notice she was looking past him since he glanced over his shoulder to where she was staring. He instantly smirked when he saw who she was staring at.

“You got a crush on Mickelson, Harper?” he teased. “Or maybe Tao? I don’t judge if you do.”

“Jay,” Alice snapped, but he ignored her.

Lilly merely shook her head, not bothered by his questions in the slightest. “No. I just think they’re weird.”

“Who doesn’t?” Jay asked wryly.

Fair point.

“Although,” he continued. “I can only imagine what those idiots must look like to an outsider. I’ve been going to school with them since seventh grade so I’m pretty used to them by now.”

Ellie chuckled. “Come on, Jay. They aren’t that bad. Sure, they’re weird, but it’s not like they’re hurting anybody.”

“Although, I’m waiting for the day Vinny snaps and decks Brad,” Alice mused. “Despite the size difference, he always looks ready to take him on.”

Jay scoffed. “I kinda hope he does. I’m not Mickelson’s biggest fan by any means, but he’s far better than that scumfuck Fischer. I wouldn’t mind seeing him get decked.”

“Still bitter, are we, Jay?” Alice asked slyly. “I actually believe him when he says it was an accident.”

“It was not!” Jay replied sharply. “They could totally see me! There’s no way the star quarterback missed so badly that he accidentally hit me! It was on purpose!”

Ellie nodded, clearly not agreeing with him. “Whatever you say, Jay.”

Despite wanting the conversation to end as fast as possible, Lilly realized that she had a prime opportunity to learn a little more about the strange “Magic Club” and so, she decided she might as well ask.

“So, has Brad ever kicked their asses?” she asked. “He looks like he wants to.”

Jay shook his head. “Not as far as I know. But I doubt he would risk that.”

Lilly frowned. “Risk? What do you mean?”

The boy suddenly grinned, as if he was excited to be given a chance to gossip. “You haven’t heard?”

The girl narrowed her eyes in irritation, glancing at both Ellie and Alice to see them both looking disinterested in the conversation. Deciding it probably wasn’t going to be anything special, she apathetically shook her head.

Jay smirked, clearly pleased with her response. “Alright then. Let me ask you something else, Harper. Have you heard of a kid named Damien Clark?”

“Damien…?” Lilly thought back on it and immediately realized who he was talking about. “Oh.”

She recalled a boy that was in a few of her classes that the teachers called, “Clark”. She wasn’t completely sure his first name was Damien, though she imagined he was probably the guy Jay was talking about. He had seemed relatively normal and not somebody who she expected would be hanging around weirdos like Vinny and Eric.

“So you do know him,” Jay pressed.

Lilly shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know him, but he’s in a few of my classes. Why? What about him?”

“Well, he happens to be in their club,” Jay explained. “He’s been friends with those three ever since middle school and he had a bit of a…let’s say violent reputation. Then, one time, a couple of guys started getting rough with Mickelson, so Clark took the biggest guy down. Made it pretty clear that he and his buddies weren’t ones to be messed with. Fischer went to our middle school so I’m sure he’s not wanting to press his luck.”

Lilly furrowed her brow. Damien hadn’t seemed like a dangerous person in class. On the contrary, he seemed like a rather chill guy.

But I guess what Jay’s saying makes sense. If Vinny and Eric have somebody deterring bullies then that explains why Brad hasn’t dragged Vinny around the back of the school yet.

She looked back over Jay’s shoulder but Vinny and his friend were already gone. She knew they were people she should avoid at all costs, but there was something about them that intrigued her. Perhaps it was how little they seemed to care about what everybody thought of them. Vinny and Eric didn’t seem ashamed in the slightest to be West Wilham’ biggest weirdos.

Maybe…I just respect that about them.