Free The Golden Thread by Suzy McKee Charnas Page A

Joel’s parents here in New York? Or his brother, the conducting prodigy, except I had no idea where to find him.
    The phone rang again. I grabbed it.
    He said, “Val? I’m sorry. My hands are bad tonight. My fingers feel as if they’re going to turn around and grow back into my palms, like with leprosy.”
    â€œJoel,” I said desperately, “cut it out! Or I’ll call the Boston police and ask them to go make sure you don’t stick your head in a plastic bag.”
    â€œOkay, okay,” he said. “I shouldn’t have called in the first place. I was just feeling stupid about New Year’s. I didn’t exactly cover myself with glory, did I? God, why do I do this stuff?”
    Hugely relieved to hear him sounding human again, I said, “You mean like calling girls you know in New York and getting them all depressed with you?”
    â€œI do it all the time,” he said, with an evil chuckle. “I have hundreds of victims. There’s a regular subscription service: Tears by Joel, Moans and Lamentations. Next time I call I’ll read you some jokes and we’ll have laughs instead, okay?”
    I said, “Don’t you know any jokes by heart?”
    â€œI can’t remember them,” he said. “It’ll have to be strictly a literary exercise. Meantime, don’t let me take you down. Make friends with your foreign guest. Who knows, maybe someday she’ll be in charge of pressing the red button and she’ll remember how nice Valentine was to her in far-off America, and she’ll refrain. Voilà, the world will be safe—for another five minutes. Now, I really am going to be eating Fancy Feast for lunch if I don’t get off the phone.”
    â€œNo, Joel,” I said quickly, coming down with a thump. I needed to talk with somebody too, and there was no one better qualified to hear about Bosanka than Joel. “I have to tell you something, no kidding. It’s serious.”
    â€œNow who’s in love?” he said lightly.
    â€œNobody,” I said. “It’s magic, Joel. And it’s dangerous.”
    I began to tell Joel about Bosanka Lonatz.
    He didn’t say a word, but when I finished the part about the leaf-taker in the jeans store, I heard a click at the other end of the line.
    Joel had hung up on me again .

 
    7
N.U.T.
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    â€œ T HIS IS THE STUPIDEST, craziest load of baloney I’ve ever heard,” Peter Weiss said. “You’re telling us Bosanka Low-Nuts is some kind of magical royalty? That’s crap! She puts out some weird vibes and you’re dippy enough to fall for it, that’s all.”
    Mimi snorted. “Why should she need anybody’s help, if she can turn people into kangaroos?”
    Peter said, “Where do you get off thinking we’re going to fall for this fairy tale, Val? Are you going into partnership with this weirdo, Val and Bosanka, Bullshit Inc.?”
    I could tell he enjoyed giving me a hard time, Peter-style. He didn’t even bother to look up from fooling around with a little screwdriver in the innards of what might have been a TV remote control unit, but he was smiling his wise-ass smile.
    We were sitting together in the chem lab, Lennie and Mimi and Peter and me, waiting for Bosanka. It wasn’t the whole Comet Committee, since Tamsin didn’t go to Jefferson, and Lennie said the other girl couldn’t make it. Four out of six would have to do.
    Four out of six, and two of them were jeering at me openly for the story I’d told them. Only Lennie was quiet, watching me with a brooding, slightly spacey expression—remembering, I was sure, what I’d told him about my last magical adventure while I was still recuperating from the aftereffects. I had been a little loose-mouthed about it all with him, as well as with Barb.
    If only he would keep his own mouth shut now about my family talent. I tried to signal him with my