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The roadside assistance guy had turned up quickly and got me going again.
He said I’d make it home but I needed to get my blah blah blah replaced as soon as possible. Since I’d spent most of my savings on paying him, that wouldn’t be any time soon.
“You okay, love?” he asked. “You look a bit shaky.”
I nodded. “I’m fine.” I wasn’t about to pour out my feelings to him. I just wanted to get my car going and get out of this godforsaken place.
Finally, I got to the outskirts of my hometown and I could breathe easily again. If anything happened, I could walk from here. Even so, my stomach sank at being back.
I hated this place. I hated the stupid welcome sign and I hated the smoke billowing from the local factory, giving the place a weird smell. I hated the wide, tree-lined streets.
I’d get out of here as soon as I could. I’d left thinking it’d be three full months until I came back, maybe longer if I could swing it. Even forever didn’t seem long enough. As much as I loved my parents, I hated this town. I’d never fit in to this place.
I pulled up in the driveway of our house and dragged my case inside.
“I’m home,” I called and Mum ran to greet me.
She fussed around like she hadn’t seen me for ten years instead of a few days. I brushed off her fussing. I wasn’t going to forgive her deferring my course that easily.
The smell of soup cooking reminded me I’d only eaten junk for the past... well since I’d left here. It’d been microwaved pizza and sugar.
“So, what’s the big issue I had to race home for?” I asked her.
“We’ll talk about it when your father gets home. He’s at the store finishing off the internet orders.”
I sighed. I’d rushed home and now I had to wait for Dad. This had better be good. Like we’d inherited a zillion dollars good. That’d be sweet. No need for higher education then. I’d become a jetsetting playgirl.
I looked around for signs that we’d come into money but Mum still wore the same tie-dyed wrap skirt she’d had for years. The same macramé plant holders hung at the window. The worn kitchen table still had the same mismatched chairs. Not one thing had changed.
And, if we’d inherited a big pile of money, would Dad still be working at the store?
Actually, he probably would. Wealth would be wasted on my family.
My parents owned one of those new age shops in the middle of town but this wasn’t a town where people bought sandalwood candles or mung beans. Sometimes days would go by without a single customer coming into the store. I’d asked them once how they made money. Dad had said they got a lot of online orders which didn’t make sense to me. The pair of them could barely use a computer so I didn’t know how they’d handled a web store. I’d never even seen the URL for their home page or anything. But Dad always brushed me off. Since we had a roof over our heads and food on the table, I figured he must be doing something right.
I did wonder sometimes what they actually sold. Surely you can buy that kind of stuff anywhere. I knew that Mum grew plants in the garden that she used in lotions and stuff. She’d give me all these weird concoctions to take when I felt sick as a kid, never shop medicine, but surely, they couldn’t sell stuff Mum brewed up in the kitchen. That’d be against all kinds of health regulations.
“Maybe we should go down to the shop and we can all chat there,” I said.
“No!”
All my life when I suggested going to my parents’ store, they’d been like that. They said they didn’t want me working there because I had to focus on my school work and I’d been happy to take that on face value. A few kids at school had parents who owned shops and they’d spent most of their weekends as unpaid labor. Of course, I’d been in the actual front of the store a heap of times. I’d just never seen anything that the public hadn’t. Whenever I’d been curious about the back rooms and decided to investigate, I’d get near the door and suddenly lose interest.
Mum handed me a bowl of soup she’d heated up.
“Have we come into a fortune?” I asked, not being able to hold it in. I needed to plan my trust fund lifestyle ASAP.
Mum laughed. “Nope.”
Even though she laughed, she had that wrinkle between her eyes that only appeared when she was worried.
There was one other logical explanation. They were growing pot. In our backyard, there amongst the corn. If it wasn’t dark, I’d have rushed out to confirm my suspicions. It added up. Of course they hadn’t wanted me in the back room where they had all these supplies. And of course, they didn’t want me working in the store.
Did people buy pot online though? Internet shopping seemed way out of the league of stoners. Maybe the online thing had been a lie. Maybe they’d just said that to put me off the track.
Was that the reason they wanted me home? Dad had been busted? But then he wouldn’t be running around freely, would he? Unless he was on parole or something. I had no idea how arrests worked.
Surely Mum could’ve said that over the phone, though. Just a simple, “Hey, Molly, your dad’s been busted for selling pot,” how difficult would that have been? It didn’t need all this drama and secrecy. If he’d been arrested, everyone in town would know by now. And there was no need to defer my course.
Since Mum wasn’t going to tell me anything useful without Dad, I checked my phone. The likes on my photos today were down from the usual. I had to make my life more exciting, and not exciting like it’d been today with those rednecks because I sure wasn’t going to post about that online. I didn’t want to share my entire life with the world.
“Is it normal for crows to attack people?” I asked Mum. “Like a huge swarm of them?”
I expected Mum to answer me in her usual vague, half-listening way but she spun around, almost dropping the jar in her hands.
“When did that happen?” she asked.
I hadn’t told her about breaking down or any of the rest of it.
“I just wondered.”
She peered at me, like she was trying to read my thoughts.
“Let me know if that ever happens. Crows are... well, they’re weird. Unless you know what you’re doing, don’t mess with them.”
I rolled my eyes. Like I’d go messing with crows. I had much better things to do with my time. It’d been bizarre how they’d attacked like that but I wasn’t planning to break down in the middle of nowhere ever again.
Although I wasn’t sure how I’d get my car fixed. All my money had gone on that roadside assistance membership but the mechanic had said I needed my blah blah blah replaced or I’d break down again. I didn’t want to ask Mum and Dad for a loan but I couldn’t see any way out of it. I guess if things were too bad, I could always get the bus back to the city but that would be a last resort.
The front door rattled. Dad.
Mum made him a cup of tea before they began talking. I huffed. Surely, I’d waited long enough.
Then they both sat down.
“We should’ve told you this earlier,” Dad said. “But there was never the right time.”
They were going to tell me I was adopted? Again, not an emergency. Also, it only took one glance at Dad’s curly red hair to know that wasn’t true. Everyone always laughed at how much we looked alike.
“There’s no easy way to say it,” Mum said.
That wrinkle between her eyes got deeper.
“Well, maybe just spitting it out would be the best way,” I told her. “I’ve had a long day and once we get this over with, I can hit the sack. I love you guys and nothing you say can change that.”
I smiled and Mum smiled back. I knew that love stuff would get her.
Dad cleared his throat. “We’re not like other people,” he said.
“I know that—”
“No, you don’t,” he said. “See we have an important job. There’s this stone, a very important stone, and we are supposed to guard that stone with our lives. In order to do that, we have powers other people don’t have.”
I squinted. Maybe I was overtired but that made no sense at all.
“It’s like a magic stone?” I asked.
Dad nodded. Then he glanced at Mum and the two of them exchanged a look.
“A magic stone?” I repeated.
“It’s complicated,” Mum said.
I jumped up from my seat. “A magic stone? That you have to protect?”
They both nodded again.
“I always knew this day would come. It’s not pot, right? It’s something much stronger. Meth? Is it meth? Acid?” I began rummaging through the cupboards. Nothing abnormal there, just kitchen utensils and receipts and other junk.
“Where do you keep it? You’ve got a stash around here somewhere, right? Or is it at the store? You’ve got a whole meth lab going on there?”
I turned back to my parents, looking for signs. Dilated pupils, anything. What were the signs of meth? I picked up my phone and Googled it.
Increased physical activity — well Mum had been fussing around since I got home but she always did so there was no increase. But then how long had this been going on? It could have been years.
Elevated body temperature — I put my hand to Mum’s forehead. She didn’t feel any warmer than usual.
Rapid eye movement, that wasn’t happening.
Hallucinations. Jackpot. You didn’t get much more hallucinating than a magical stone.
I opened the kitchen cupboard and pulled out the saucepans, checking inside each one. Nothing there. Of course the drugs wouldn’t be somewhere so obvious.
“We can get help,” I said. “Rehab or whatever.”
Mum grabbed my hands and pulled me back to my seat.
“I know it’s difficult to grasp. We’d hoped you’d pick up on this on your own, that you’d start showing powers of your own, but so far you’re as normal as they come.”
She sounded a little disappointed about that.
“Hell yeah, I’m normal. When did this start? How long have you been smoking the crack pipe?”
I ran my fingers through my hair. I had no idea how to deal with this situation. If only I had some relatives to call to help out. A grandmother or aunty would be really handy right now. Any kind of responsible adult. But I had no other family, just Mum and Dad.
“Molly. Calm down and listen to us,” Dad said.
He sounded reasonable, not like some crazed junkie, and the whole time I’d been home for vacation, I hadn’t noticed them acting any different.
“Okay, Dad, tell me about this stone.”
It might be easier to pretend to go along with the farce and humor them. It might be safer too.
“Like we said, our family are the guardians. When we’re gone, the responsibility will be passed on to you.”
Oh great. A magical stone to look after. That’s what I stood to inherit?
“And what does that entail?”
“Just making sure the stone is safe.”
I nodded. “So, show me this magic stone.”
Dad’s shoulders drooped and Mum sighed.
“See, that’s the problem,” Mum said. “The stone was stolen. We need you to get it back.”
I blinked and blinked again. Maybe I could go out in the garden and find some kind of rock and tell them that was the magic stone. Problem solved. Then they could fix this enrollment mess for me. I’d just be out of pocket for all my traveling expenses.
“So, that’s why you have to go to Tokyo and —”
“Wait, hold up. What are you saying? Tokyo? Have I missed something?”
How did we jump from magic stone to Tokyo?
“I knew you weren’t listening,” Mum said. “You have to go to Tokyo to meet with Mr. Yamaguchi and he’ll help us get the stone back.”
Sweet, a trip to Tokyo. I’d be all over that shit. There was only one problem.
“You can’t afford to send me to Tokyo,” I said.
As much as I’d love to travel, I couldn’t use my parent’s money to pay for some wild goose chase.
“We have some money saved,” Dad said. “And it’s imperative that we get that stone back.”
I took the bait. “What happens if we don’t?”
His face darkened. “No one knows. Our family’s been the guardians since Arthurian times. No one has ever lost the stone before. But there will be chaos and tragedy if we don’t get that stone back.”
Of course there would be.
“How about we all go to bed and sleep on this?” Hopefully by morning, this delusion would’ve passed. They’d forget about the stone, they’d forget about wasting money sending me to Tokyo and they’d forget about deferring my enrollment. I’d be able to borrow those savings to get my car fixed and life would be sweet.
I got them to bed and hovered on the edge of sleep, congratulating myself on the success of my plan. Maybe tomorrow, before I left, I’d have a word with the local doctor. If I could get treatment for my parents, even better.
Magic stone, indeed.
Then an almighty crash in the kitchen shattered everything.