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No, sir, don’t mean maybe…
“No, no,” Tamburlaine laughed, petting Scratch’s bell. She took the record from him and changed out the lime-green lady for the sky-blue man.
Scratch lowered his needle gingerly.
Tell me, tell me, what did you do to me
I just got a thrill that was new to me…
Scratch bounced his bell joyfully. He liked the record. It would let him say new things, exciting things. Tamburlaine gave him such a tender, happy smile—a new smile Thomas had never seen her make before, and he wished it had been made for him.
“It’s a glamour,” she said. “So that we can walk down the street together without people staring. A glamour is like…if there’s a hole in your wall because somebody opened a door too fast or wasn’t careful enough moving a bookshelf, you could hang a picture over it, so nobody sees. The hole’s still there, it’s just hidden.” She seemed to grow suddenly shy. “I could show you…if you want.”
Thomas did want, more than anything. “Tam…can I call you Tam now? I know you said not to but I understand now why you didn’t like it. It can be just our secret, I’ll only say it when we’re alone. Tam…I know you think we’re the same, but you must see we’re not. I can’t make a Scratch. Believe me. I’ve been trying to since I was little. Nothing comes alive just because I want it to be alive. I don’t have any flowers on the inside. You…you are marvelous, and your gramophone is, and your painting…but I can’t do any of that. I wish I could. You have no idea. I know what I said the other day but…but I’m still just Thomas. Just a boy.” Tell me I’m wrong, his heart begged. I want to be wrong.
Tamburlaine nodded. She put down her plate and wiped her mouth. “I can prove you’re not. I guess…I guess I thought it would be nice if you believed me. Because I’m technically your oldest friend and all. I guess I thought it would feel nice if you just looked at me and knew, down deep in your gut. The way you knew the word Changeling. But that’s okay. This will be fun, too. It’ll be like when we made those clay mugs in Mrs. Miller’s class.”
Thomas licked his dry lips. He’d made a beautiful mug—shaped like an elephant, with a little clay palanquin and a little clay prince for a lid. His father had dropped it a week after he brought it home and shattered the poor prince all over the floor.
“First: materials. Do you have anything you can use like a wand? Something that’s yours, not like a rolled-up sheet of math problems. Something you like.”
Thomas shook his head, trying to shake it into sense again. A wand? He was having a conversation with a girl in which wands had a starring role.
“Um…yeah. Sure.”
He knew what it had to be. Without even thinking about it, it popped into his head like the answer to a riddle. Thomas darted down the hall to his room and yanked open his desk drawer. He pulled out a long, yellow No. 2 pencil. The Magic Pencil. When he turned around, Tamburlaine was standing in the doorway to his room. Scratch peered curiously over her shoulder. She knew Vampire Law, too: You have to wait to be invited. Thomas held out his pencil toward her.
“I’ve had it since forever. My mom gave it to me. When I was a baby. She pulled it out of her hair and gave it to me and I’ve been really careful, I haven’t used it up yet, because…” He was aware he was babbling, and clammed up before the rest could come hurrying out. Because I’m on a quest. She gave me a quest. She pulled this pencil out of her head like a sword out of a scabbard and I knew it was a sacred quest, the kind Galahad got. She charged me to go to the Kingdom of University and meet a Girl Called Lovely and Practice Psychology like my Father before me. And I want to, I want to, but it’s taking so long. “…Well, I guess for no good reason. It’s…it’s okay, you can come in.”
Tamburlaine stepped in lightly and sat on his bed. He wished his quilt weren’t so plain, that he had something extraordinary to show her besides cheese sandwiches and a pencil. She squinted and eyeballed his pencil, turned it over in her hands, poked her fingernail into the eraser.
“Okay,” she said, nodding satisfaction. “Now, pick something you like.” Tamburlaine grinned up at him, eager, enjoying being mysterious, stretching out the game like a stage magician.
“What do you mean?”
“In the house. Pick something you like. Anything you think is pretty or interesting or nice?”
“Why does that matter?”
“Just pick something, silly. We don’t have all night. It has to be something you like or it won’t work. Don’t ask me why. I don’t have any whys. I only know a couple of things and they’re only the things I know. An
d the only reason I know things you don’t is that I couldn’t help knowing. It’s hard to go along thinking everything is fine and someday you’ll go to nursing school when you have plums growing out of your palms.”
Thomas looked around. He didn’t have much in his room—he’d broken most of his toys ages back. His baseball sat quietly on his desk, his books in their shelf, his alarm clock, his bedside lamp…and his wombat. Thomas’s eyes fell on the scrap-yarn wombat his mother had made him so long ago, her patchwork colors mismatched, her stuffing showing near her tail, her lopsided button eyes dull and scratched. Tamburlaine followed his gaze.
“Perfect,” she said. She picked the scrap-yarn wombat up off his pillow with both hands—she was really rather enormous for a toy—and handed her to him. “I like wombats. What’s its name?”
Thomas hesitated, scratching the back of his neck. He had never told anyone the names of his belongings before. “Her. Her name’s Blunderbuss. I like to name things; I know it’s dumb.”
“Of course you like to name things,” Tamburlaine said with a little smile. “We all do.”
“Tam, what if I can’t do…whatever it is you think I can do? You keep saying we’re the same but I’m not…I’m not a tree.”
The troll inside Thomas clapped its hands. Not a tree, it giggled, a rock.
Tamburlaine looked startled for a moment. Then she laughed, and under all her strangeness was a twelve-year-old girl again.
“Well, I’m not either!”
