Why did I suddenly get a knot in my stomach every time I thought of going back home and starting a real life for myself?
I sat down on the wide stone railing that ran along the edge of the porch, straddling it, with one foot almost touching the stone floor of the porch, while the other was dangling over ten feet off the ground. I noticed a piece of branch from a bush, laying on the railing just in front of me, and started absent-mindedly picking the tiny leaves off of it and piling them up on top of each other. When the twig was bare, I tossed it over the rail and stared at the tower of leaves, admiring the fact that I’d gotten it so high. But then, all of a sudden, the top leaf began to slowly lift off the tower, and float in the air. The second leaf followed, then the third, and the fourth, until all the leaves were hovering in the air, only inches from my face. I blinked a few times, sure I was seeing things, but when I looked again there they were, bobbling gently in the air, like Christmas ornaments on a swaying branch. They hung there for a moment longer, then began to move again, arranging themselves into letters, and then words: May I join you?
I whipped around to find Alex standing a few feet behind me, smiling.
“Did you…?” I turned back to the floating leaf-message only to find it gone. Of course it was gone – it had never really been there.
“Sorry,” Alex chuckled, as he came around to sit next to me on the rail, “didn’t mean to scare you.”
I gave him a wry grin as I brushed the leaves away. “All right… that was pretty cool.”
“Thanks,” he said, crossing his legs up under him and shifting to face me, “I try. I’m not bothering you, am I? You seemed pretty deep in thought.”
“No, just thinking about school,” I told him, happy to have something else to put my mind to.
“What do you mean?” There was a sudden seriousness in his tone that confused me.
“I’m going to send in my enrolment paperwork soon, that’s all.”
“Oh,” he said, reaching down and pulling some long palms off of the tree growing just under his spot on the rail. He began twisting and tying them together in his hands. “Where are you going to go?” he asked, not looking up from his work.
“Well, that’s part of the problem, I’m not sure yet. Probably Princeton. It’s in a suburb which I like, and it’s really pretty. Lame reasons to choose a school, I know, but it’s Princeton after all. Hard to go wrong.”
“Hmm.” He nodded, still watching his hands. He hadn’t even glanced up while I’d been talking, and I started to worry I was boring him. “Everything OK?” I asked.
He looked up at me, but didn’t quite smile. “Yeah, sure.”
Looking for a new subject I saw a few of the scattered leaves from the twig on the rail between us, and got to thinking.
“What do you see?” I asked, curious. “When you cast something, I mean. Do you see what you make other people see, or do you see what’s really there?”
“Well,” he said, looking thoughtful, “both, really. Mostly I see what I cast, but I can still see reality.”
“You see both at once? Doesn’t that give you a headache?” I was getting dizzy just thinking about it.
“No, not at all, but then I’m used to it. Here, I’ll show you.”
Everything around me went blurry and when it cleared, Alex and I were unmoved – me straddling, while he was cross-legged – only now we were on a long white-sand beach, seated on a smooth driftwood log. The sun was setting on the horizon, while the waves rolled back and forth, licking the shore only a few feet from where my toes dangled.
“Wow,” I said under my breath in amazement. “Where’s this?”
“A beach in the South of France. Taron and I were scouting near here last year.”
“I guess scouting does have its perks,” I laughed, looking around. “So, you see all this?” I waved at the scenery.
He nodded. “I see everything that you see, but for me there is also reality. I can still see the school, and the grounds over the top of everything else, but… I don’t know, it’s hard to describe… it’s almost as though I can see through them to the alternate reality that I cast.”