Finding your niche as a new kid in high school is a balancing act. Like standing tiptoe on the top rung of a stepladder while stretching toward a shelf almost out of reach. This may sound oddly specific, but it was exactly what Geoff Smith was doing on the sales floor of his dad’s store, Curio City.
Geoff had rolled his eyes when his dad told him the idea for the name. His dad loved puns, which was a very dad thing to love, but he was also obsessed with the arcane and mystical, which was not, traditionally, a very dad thing to love at all.
The store was a converted Victorian house nestled in the trendy Belmont District in Southeast Portland. The exterior was similar to those of the other old houses on the street, but instead of a multicolored painted-lady style, Curio City stood in various shades of grey and black.
Towering bookshelves contained histories of elves and fairies, biographies of magicians and wizards, recipe books for spells, and blah blah blah, you get it. Geoff didn’t really care. All he knew was that the business made his dad happy and, surprisingly, enough money to uproot them both to a new city.
The rooms on the second floor, accessible by a hand-carved staircase, were full of vintage taxidermy, suits of armor here and there, and plants you wouldn’t normally find in a nursery (think mandrake and other nightshades instead of roses and ferns).
But back to Geoff and his precarious position.
He’d been stuck with one hand against the wall and one leg in the air, trying to maintain his balance. He figured that if he pushed off just right, he could grab the miniature skeleton’s case off the top shelf with one hand, push himself backward with the other, and then land where he started, with both feet firmly on the top rung of the stepladder.
Of course, there was a taller ladder in the basement that would eliminate the need for this type of acrobatics, but then he’d have to put the stepladder away upstairs and haul the other one up, so no.
He just needed to use his leverage to inch himself a little bit higher . . .
“Ow!”
He’d inadvertently found the business end of another loose staple by jamming his finger into it right as he was about to push off for his very well-thought-out stunt. The old house was full of quirks and poorly patched fixes, and Geoff had shown a unique aptitude for uncovering them.
“You OK?” his dad called from another room.
Geoff stepped down the ladder and sucked at the blood that was sure to come from the nick. “I almost had it.”
“Are you bleeding?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
His dad appeared at his side and winced in sympathetic pain. He pulled a silk paisley handkerchief from his jacket and offered it up like an old-timey professor. Which he was. He’d just taken a professorship at Reese University. Partly to maintain his credibility as an expert in the occult and paranormal, but the health insurance was pretty good too.
“Dad, thank you, but what do you want me to do with that handkerchief? I’ll be fine.” Geoff slid the stepladder over a few inches and surveyed the distance between it and the glass half-dome display that held a tiny skeleton with gnarly clawed hands that dwarfed the rest of its body. It was probably just old monkey bones that someone tinkered with to make a quick buck. Whatever; his dad had crazy things like that all over the store, and someone had just bought this one online.
Geoff stepped back up on the ladder and stretched out his hand.
“Wait! Do not give it blood,” his dad said with a note of panic, in stark contrast to his normal professorial voice, rich and worn with use.
Geoff laughed. “I can just wipe off the glass if I get blood on it. It’s no big deal.”
His dad ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “Hey, why don’t you come down and wash your finger in the sink in the back? I think I can reach the piece a little easier.”
“I almost have it, it’s right here.”
“Geoff, please just come down.”
His dad was a weird guy. Mostly good-weird, but sometimes just weird-weird. Like when he was all “Don’t touch that with your eyes open!” or “Hold your breath when you look at that!” And now, “Don’t give it blood!”
OK, Mr. Unwritten-rules-the-rest-of-the-world-should-already-know. Guess I’ll just go back to wondering why we moved here and left everyone we’ve ever known back in Texas.
His dad sighed. “I shouldn’t bring pieces like this to the store. They’re too dangerous and only meant for certain clients, anyway. I’ll take it back to the house for safekeeping.”
“Safekeeping? I thought we were shipping it.”
“That’s right. Still, there are some things that shouldn’t be here.” His dad rubbed his eyes. “So, how are things at school?”
Classic redirect.
“Tremendous. Couldn’t be better. I wish we didn’t have weekends so I could be there right now.”
“Hey, what did I tell you about wishes?”
Oh my god. So many rules.
“Always wish for something great,” they said in unison.
“Good, remember that. So, I take it you haven’t found your groove yet?”
But Geoff just stared at the floor. He wasn’t interested in responding to a question his dad already knew the answer to.
A sympathetic dimple quirked his dad’s cheek. “Don’t worry, son. Just be yourself. Do you remember how you made friends back in Houston?”
“Yeah, Dad. I was five. It’s easy to make friends when you’re five. You’re just like, Hey, can you believe we’re five? And then the other kids are like, Yeah, being five is great! Now let’s run feral around the classroom and be best friends for the next ten years or so.”
“Well, have you tried running around a room and making a bunch of noise with your classmates?”
“Not yet, Dad. Maybe I’ll try that tomorrow.”
A throat was cleared a few feet away and mercifully brought an end to the conversation.
“How much is this?” asked a kid about Geoff’s age. He was dressed all in black, which included his dyed hair underneath a top hat. And a cape. Yes, the kid was wearing a top hat and cape. Geoff’s dad wasn’t a goth per se, but he wasn’t exactly not a goth either. The goths loved his store, and he had quickly become their new king.
“Oh, hi, Kyle,” Geoff’s dad said. “That taxidermied bat is rumored to have belonged to Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin.”
Kyle stared for a moment. “Led Zeppelin. Is that like an old TV show?”
“My boy,” Geoff’s dad said. He said things like that when he was slightly annoyed with someone but still wanted to be nice. “They’re a band. A wonderful band. You are going to love discovering them. Now, this is your basic guardian ward.” Geoff’s dad started gesticulating like an actor on a Broadway stage. “Its mere presence is a signal to the mid and lesser malevolent spirits to find somewhere else to spend their time.”
“But what if I want to be visited by darker spirits?” Kyle asked.
Geoff’s dad’s forehead scrunched. “We’ve talked about this, Kyle.”
“OK, so, how much?” Kyle asked.
“What does the price tag say?”
“Can you do like fifty less?”
“For you, that works. Right this way.” Geoff’s Dad led Kyle to the store’s bronze and copper antique cash register. He disappeared below the counter, only to return with an enormous ledger, which he plopped down with a satisfying thump.
His dad always made a big show of a sale. He unscrewed a fountain pen with a flourish. “Ah, the written word. No magnet can jumble it, and no internet outage can deny its existence,” he said as he scribbled down the item number he’d assigned to the bat and described what it looked like and its mystical properties, if any—the usual.
“But what if the paper gets wet?” Kyle asked.
His dad looked up from the ledger.
“Or if there’s a fire,” Geoff said. “Fire can pretty much destroy anything, right?”
He gave Geoff a side-eye and handed Kyle the pen. “I just need you to sign here.”
Kyle leaned down and scratched out his signature.
The professor nodded and shut the book with another satisfying thunk. “I already have your email, so we don’t need that. Geoff?”
Geoff produced the store’s iPad, and Kyle handed over his card. Paper and pen may have been indelible, but the rest of the world ran on electronic data transfer. After a quick swipe, Geoff returned the card. “Just sign here.”
Kyle made a few squiggles with his finger and tipped his top hat. “Pleasure doing business with you, sirs.”
“Hey, Kyle. You go to Alder High School, right?” Geoff’s dad asked.
“I do. Go ’Varks,” Kyle said, holding up two fingers in a V. “’Varks” was short for “Aardvarks,” the name of the school’s teams, and Geoff couldn’t tell if Kyle was being sarcastic or not.
“Yes, go ’Varks,” his dad said. “Geoff just started there a few weeks ago. This is my son, Geoff, by the way.”
Once again, Kyle tipped his hat.
“Hi,” Geoff replied.
“Maybe you two could be friends.”
“Maybe you two could be friends”? Really, Dad?
“I don’t believe in friendship,” Kyle replied. He said it in the same tone as the Go ’Varks bit, but this time, Geoff didn’t mistake the sentiment. It wasn’t uninclusive, necessarily, just uninviting.
“Of course, of course,” Geoff’s dad said. “Want me to box this up for you?”
By “box,” Geoff’s dad meant “crate.” The man would literally go into the back room and custom-build a wooden crate filled with straw.
“No, thank you,” Kyle said.
“But it’s raining.”
Kyle unfurled his cape and stowed the bat underneath. “See you on Wednesday, Professor Smith.”
An antique bell clanged against the door as Kyle exited the shop.
“What’s on Wednesday?” Geoff asked.
“I’m not sure, my boy, but I hope it’s not a dark omen of things to come.”
“Don’t ‘my boy’ me, Dad. I know what that means.”
His dad shook his head and grinned. “You want to go home?”
“To Houston? Yes.”
“Geoff,” his father said, and squeezed his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it here, you’ll see. You might even like it.”
“I doubt it.”
His dad sighed. “I know it’s a lot of change. Hey, you want takeout?”
His dad wasn’t a bad cook. In fact, he was a pretty good one. But he also had a knack for finding amazing restaurant takeout, and if there was one thing Geoff liked about Portland so far, it was the food. “Yeah, let’s get Thai.”
“OK.” His dad slung a satchel around his shoulder and trotted up the stepladder. “I’ll just grab this little gremlin and ship it from home.”
Geoff rolled his eyes. “A gremlin. Dad, please. A carny stitched alligator hands to a monkey skeleton or something a hundred years ago. That is not the remnant of a supernatural creature.”
“If you say so, son,” his dad said, and set the “gremlin” down on the counter with both hands.
“Also, if you’re so worried about that, why would you want it in the house with us?”
“I’m not worried,” his dad said. “I’m concerned, so I’m taking precautions. Why, are you worried?”
“I’m not,” Geoff said. “We just have a lot of weird stuff at home. Like that wooden gnome you keep in the office.”
“So, you want me to keep the gremlin here tonight?”
That was a big yes from Geoff. Fake or not, that thing gave him the heebie-jeebies. Those teeth were sharp like a monkey’s but were more like a bunch of jagged little Vs instead of primate teeth. Normally, the illusion of something like that would fall apart upon closer inspection—you could see the poorly matched joints or cheap glue in the bones—but this specimen looked like it came straight from a university archive or something. It was unsettling, but Geoff wasn’t about to let on to his father.
“Whatever gets me Thai food faster,” Geoff said instead.
“OK, we can leave it at the store. I’ll just need to put it in here overnight.” His dad held his hand over a glass display while whispering something under his breath. He unlocked the display and carefully deposited the gremlin inside.
“You’re going to keep it safe in a glass case?” Geoff asked.
“This isn’t just any glass case,” his dad replied. “The sigils inscribed around the edges are designed to hold much higher levels of naughty inside.”
“Dad, anyone with a rock or hammer could smack through that in no time. Ohh, you said ‘inside,’ that’s right. Gremlin, I forgot.”
As he moved to shut the case, his dad slipped a leather-bound book out and tucked it into his vintage satchel. The professor whispered a few more words under his breath, locked the case back up, and turned to leave.
“What’s that?” Geoff asked. To most people, his dad’s sleight of hand would have gone unnoticed, but Geoff had fifteen years’ experience observing his father’s quirks.
“Nothing.”
“Dad, I saw you put that book in your bag.”
“Like I said, Geoff. Some things are too dangerous to be left unattended at the store.”