I realize it has been a while since I've updated this chronicle. I've been hesitant to go on – while the other chronicle appears on television, I can swear that the producers have been dropping subtle hints to my own tale, the one filled with more truth than theirs. Not that the romanticized version is terrible. Their artistic interpretation of HJ Darling's books that are essentially, about us, is rather good. Of course, even they leave out an important aspect of the relationship between my sister and me.
But on that day, the one where Alex asked for help with wizard homework, I had no idea what was to come. I didn't know what was about to transpire, and in effort to show you just how oblivious I was to it, I'll tell you what I did before wizard lessons at 2 o'clock, and then again until 7, when Alex was going to come back from her day of shopping and girlish fun (Although, not too much girlish, those of you familiar with either Ms. Darling's books or the televised adaptations know how Alex can be a bit of a tomboy.)
After breakfast, I went up into my room and organized it a bit. Contrary to popular belief, I am not always completely tidy. I honestly don't know how a room gets messy, but papers will build up, and occasionally clothes. I did have the responsibility to clean it up though, even without the pressing influence of my mother. Of course, my action figures are always completely organized, as are my English Monarchs and Statespeople trading cards. (The latter of which has never, as far as my knowledge is concerned thus far, made it into either chronicle.) I had been attempting to design a storage system for them such that I could easily sort them either lexicographically or by card rarity, and there were a few binders full of them attesting to this. After tidying the room, this is what I worked on.
Without building some sort of sorting contraption, getting the cards into any kind of order wouldn't be extremely easy and I regretfully turned back to the idea of keeping them lexicographically with indices, and then keeping a master index. After that I could enter all of the relevant information into a spreadsheet program, sort however I wished and then used the given index as a key to find the card in question. This would also let me sort by any other arbitrary statistics I wished, such as birth date, election/succession date, or anything else of which I could think. It would take some time to enter all the data of course, but once the system was in place, hopefully adding new entries wouldn't be too difficult as long as I kept open index locations for cards I didn't have yet (since a master list could be retrieved from the company.)
The other issue was to address duplicates, however. I had been keeping them in a separate binder in no particular order, but from here I began to sort them again such that each card was in lexicographic order and included an entry for copies in the spreadsheet.
I do hope you'll forgive me for going on about this extremely mundane operation, but you must understand that it was a pet project of mine, and my current state of mind makes it much easier for me to focus on such trivialities.
This took to about noon, and though I had eaten breakfast about two hours prior, I now descended for lunch. Alex had the 10 to 2 shift in the sub shop, while I had the 3 to 7 shift. Between 2 and 3 was of course our wizard lesson, as this was traditionally a slow time, given that only people eating late lunches tended to come in. Mom could handle all the customer traffic for that time period. 10 to 2 included lunch, however, and 3 to 7 had dinner, so typically we had at least three people working then.
Noon is our busiest hour, although it wasn't too awfully busy today. Light enough, anyway, that I decided on a sandwich from the shop for lunch.
"Hey Alex," I said, not detecting the slight blush and far-off look she tended to get when I spoke to her, at least these days. Perhaps it didn't occur before. I don't know, I wasn't looking for it. I was, as I have said, not very aware of anything strange.
"What do you want?" she said in that callous way of her, recovering quickly and not revealing herself any longer.
"Turkey club on rye," I said, intoning a polite manner of speaking indicating that I would be much obliged if she would perform this one little favor for me.
"Get it yourself," she replied with a slight scoff at the end, which I am told many guys find quite endearing in a sort of off-hand, far-off way. It is true that my sister has had a few boyfriends, though she is not considered one of the most "date-able" girls. It is a shame because she is really rather attractive. At this moment in history though, she was single.
"All right," I said, putting on an apron for cleanliness and going to wash and sanitize my hands thoroughly. Alex rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. I expertly made the sandwich in record time, turkey and bacon, provolone cheese and just a little bit of ranch dressing. After producing the delicatessen delight I stood back to admire it because it was clearly the greatest work of culinary arts ever produced in a sandwich shop.
"Weirdo," Alex said, seeing this, tossing her light head back slightly. (Have I mentioned how strange it is that nothing had happened between us earlier? Moments like this, reflecting on it, seem to have come up a lot. Even in the chronicles, you can find such hints at something more than familial going on.)
The rest of the day passed rather uneventfully. I shall skip directly to wizard lessons at 2 o'clock.
The lesson was on the conservation of magical energy. I recall it because the subject matter was fascinating, since magic always seemed to me to be less scientific than that. But I knew that a lot of the magic power was produced much like a power plant, which is largely because it is difficult to get from natural sources these days. Although this wasn't impossible, and part of the lesson touched on gleaning magic from such sources in an emergency. We also learned how to store magical energy in gemstones.
"Emeralds make excellent storage devices for magic," Dad said while Alex laid her head down on the table.
"Ugh," she groaned, a little too loudly.
"Alex, are you paying attention? There's going to be a test on this, you know."
"Yeah...emeralds, magic, right," she said vaguely.
Dad then continued teaching. I took copious amounts of notes.
The period of time after that was also uneventful. After my shift, I went upstairs and knocked on Alex's door. She opened it.
"Hey Justin," she said.
"I'm here to help you with your wizard homework, as you asked," I said, my notebook and pen in hand. Alex closed the door behind me, and then, to my surprise, locked it.
"Justin," she said, more evenly than I would have given her credit for had I at the time known what she was about to say. "I don't actually want to do wizard homework."
Of course, when it comes to common sense the intellectual are surprisingly lacking. On the other hand, you really can't blame me for jumping to the conclusion I did. "So you want me to do it for you, eh?"
"No, it's not that. I just... I need to talk. You'd better sit down for this." I sat on her bed.
"Justin, I think I'm in love with you."
