Free Firestone by Claudia Hall Christian Page A

next to Keenan. Jacob gave her a glass of milk.
    “ What is that?” Keenan
asked.
    “ Milk,” Jacob said. “From
a cow.”
    “ May I?” Keenan
asked.
    “ You’re allergic,” Delphie
said.
    “ I am?” Keenan looked
surprised.
    For a moment, Keenan looked like a wisp of
an old man. Jacob blinked, and Keenan was a boy again. It was as if
Keenan’s struggle to be a child was playing out before them. Having
seen the old man inside the boy, Katy gave Keenan a sly look. Jill
came out of the loft carrying Bladen.
    “ They want to talk to you
about using magic,” Katy said.
    “ Magic?” Keenan looked
confused.
    “ You know, you’re a fairy
and all,” Katy said.
    “ I am?” Keenan asked. He
looked at Delphie and blinked.
    “ You know that,” Delphie
said.
    Jill leaned over and kissed his cheek.
Keenan looked at her.
    “ Thanks,” he said.
“I . . . I am trying.”
    “ We know,” Katy
said.
    “ You can talk to us,”
Jacob said. “We’re not exactly like you, but we
understand.”
    “ The air here
is . . . thick,” Keenan said. “The slightest thing
is . . . exhausting.”
    “ I’ve been blocking you,”
Jacob said. “Fin too.”
    “ Why?” Keenan
asked.
    “ We don’t do magic here,”
Jacob said.
    “ I don’t even get to,”
Katy said. Keenan looked at her with large eyes.
    “ It can lead to a lot of
trouble,” Jacob said. “For you. For Delphie. For us.”
    “ Oh.” Keenan looked very
sad. “It’s who I am, and . . .”
    “ No it’s not.” Katy shook
her head.
    Keenan looked at her and then at Jacob.
    “ You are you , first,” Delphie
said. “And you can do a few things, secondly. You’ve spent so much
time doing magic that you haven’t had any time to just be
you.”
    For a short second, Keenan’s physical being
shifted to the old man again. In a blink of an eye, he switched
back.
    “ I don’t know what that
means,” Keenan said.
    “ Why would you?” Jill
asked. “You’re a child. You have a chance to learn and grow. It’s
what you wanted.”
    “ I want to grow up like
Fin did.” Keenan nodded. “But I can’t imagine growing up and not
having magic in my life.”
    “ It’s not bad,” Katy said.
“Sometimes, it’s easier.”
    “ We only use our skills —
that’s what we call them, ‘skills’ — when we are around people we
trust,” Jacob said.
    “ Like each other,” Delphie
said. “I’d never go up to a stranger and start telling them their
future. That would be rude.”
    “ Rude?” Keenan
asked.
    “ Invasive,” Jacob
said.
    “ Weird,” Katy
said.
    “ I think I know what you
mean.” Keenan scowled.
    “ We’ve asked Jill’s mother
to help you get ready for school,” Delphie said. “She helped
Charlie. You remember Charlie?”
    Keenan smiled at the mention of Charlie’s
name.
    “ He showed me basketball
last night,” Keenan said. “We are doing basketball this afternoon
with Nash and Teddy and . . . me. The boys . I’m a boy .”
    Keenan smiled and seemed to solidify as a
boy. He looked up at Delphie.
    “ I understand what you
mean,” Keenan said. “I could easily use magic to move the ball, but
that would not be fair to Charlie and Nash and Teddy.”
    “ Or any fun,” Jacob said.
“The fun is in learning how to do it with your body. So I’ll keep
blocking you until you get in the habit doing things without magic.
Your brother will too.”
    “ Plus, the boys know about
magic,” Jill said. “They’ll know if you use it.”
    “ Oh, that makes sense.”
Keenan smiled. He glanced at Delphie and then at Jill.
“Thanks.”
    “ For?” Delphie
asked.
    “ For giving me this
chance,” Keenan said. “It’s hard,
but . . .”
    Katy laughed and they all turned to look at
her. She pointed to the vase on the counter. The flowers were
twirling in the water.
    “ They are babies,” Jacob said. “They can’t help it.”
    “ Right,” Keenan said. “I
need to learn to control my . . . what do you