by Amy Garvey
“SERIOUSLY, MRS. LATTIMER, I’M PANCAKED out.”
Jess’s mom lifts one perfectly manicured brow. “No such thing. Your metabolism doesn’t hate you yet.” She piles two more fluffy pancakes on my plate and turns to Darcia.
“My metabolism doesn’t hate me, either?” Darcia says, and holds up her plate for more.
Perched on a stool at the end of the breakfast bar, Jess shudders. “She’s like a food pusher.”
“You did go a little crazy, hon,” Mr. Lattimer says, snagging a pancake off the plate in the middle of the counter and eating it with his fingers. He’s not wrong; there’s fruit salad, scrambled eggs, bacon, and banana pancakes with strawberry butter.
“So sue me.” She shrugs and scrapes her own plate into the garbage. “I had a sudden urge to be domestic.”
“You mean you were possessed by Betty Crocker,” Jess corrects her, and her dad laughs as he wanders away.
It’s a good way to spend a Sunday morning, especially after the unrelenting suckitude that was yesterday. I almost wish I had to work at the café later, just to avoid sitting home brooding, but Bliss has been slow in the post-holiday lull. I roll up a pancake and swipe it through a lump of strawberry butter before taking a bite, and find Jess staring at me.
“What?”
She shudders again, and her mother pulls her hair smartly with a “tsk” before she takes a giant mug of coffee and wanders out to the family room.
Dar lets her fork clatter to her plate as soon as Mrs. Lattimer is gone, and sits up straight. “Guess what?”
“Uh-oh,” Jess says, but she smiles and leans over the counter. “What?”
She’s bouncing, biting her bottom lip to keep her grin from splitting open her face. “There’s a showcase at the Book Barn in a week, and I got invited to play!”
“No way! For real?”
“Absolutely real,” Dar says right before her shoulders slump. “I’m terrified.”
“You’re going to be awesome,” Jess says, and slides down to come around the counter and hug her. “And you’re going to have so many fans there, everyone’s going to be like, who’s that girl, she must be famous, she must have a record deal.” She simply nods when Dar groans and pushes her away.
“What night is it?” I ask her, wiping my fingers on my jeans when I can’t find my napkin. I open my mouth again, about to say something about making sure Gabriel has off from work, too, and just as quickly shut it again. Maybe that’s not my problem anymore.
“A week from . . . wow, last Friday night.” Dar slumps a little farther, and her curls hang over her face. “This is such a bad idea.”
“It is not!” Jess thumps her on the back. “You play guitar like . . . someone really awesome. Are you singing original songs?”
Dar nods, all pink embarrassment and chocolate-brown eyes, wide with terror.
It’s sort of amazing—the Book Barn is mostly a bookstore, but it’s café competition now, too, since they expanded to open a coffee section and a place for live music. They’re pretty picky about who plays there, unlike the coffeehouse way out by Summerhill. Over there it seems like the management is always dragging out some basement-dwelling relative with a ukulele.
I’m so proud of her, but I can’t help the bite of jealousy. Darcia can show the world what she can do, and if the world has any sense, they’ll love her. I can’t show anyone what I can do.
Jess claps her hands, startling me out of my thoughts. “Oooh! Is your friend coming?”
Dar nods, but manages to frown at Jess, too. “His name is Thierry.”
“You and Gabriel will be there, of course,” Jess says, and I can tell she’s already mentally planning the evening, using the giant clipboard in her head. She probably knows what she’s going to wear.
“I’ll definitely be there,” I say, and gaze down into my coffee. It’s almost empty, a milky film clinging to the sides of the mug.
“Shouldn’t that be a ‘we’?” Dar asks carefully.
“Might be.” I shrug. “Might not.”
“What happened now?” Jess demands, and spins my stool around without warning. My mug slides out of my hand, sloshing the remains of the coffee. “I thought you guys were all made up.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Spill,” Dar says gently, and pats my thigh. I glare at her, and she pulls her hand back quickly.
I’m not sure what to say. I can’t say that I’m the one who overreacted last night without explaining what I was overreacting about. But there is something else that bothers me. “I don’t like to compare him to Danny, you know? I mean, they’re totally different, and that’s a good thing.”
“Agreed,” Jess says. “Both hotties, though. It’s a little infuriating, actually.”
I glare at her, too, and she grins. “I’m just saying.”
“Yeah, well, relative hotness aside, it’s just . . . Gabriel’s harder to figure out than Danny was.”
“What do you mean?” Dar props her chin on her hands, frowning.
“I knew so much about Danny just because we both grew up here, you know?” I spin back toward the counter before I remember my coffee is nearly gone. “Same frame of reference or whatever. And even if we hadn’t, Danny just, like, spilled stuff all over you. His favorite song—that day—why he liked his pizza with extra cheese, why cavemen would beat astronauts, anything.”
“He thought cavemen would beat astronauts?” Jess says.
This time I thwap her shoulder. “The point is, Danny was like . . . an exclamation point. He was right there, telling you everything. Gabriel is a question mark. A really smart, good-looking question mark, but he doesn’t give anything away.”
“You know how much he likes you,” Dar offers softly.
I look at my lap, the faint pen mark on one thigh where I was doodling during history. “Sometimes that’s not really enough.”
In my pocket, my phone trills, and I pull it out to glance at the screen. I don’t feel like talking to Gabriel yet. But it’s not him; it’s Bay.
I slide off my stool and walk out of the room, flipping it open. “Hey. A little late, aren’t you?”
“Late?” It sounds like he’s outside—I can hear the rushing hum of traffic in the background.
“I called you yesterday. I texted, too, more than once. And it’s not yesterday anymore.” I go into the downstairs half bath and shut the door.
“I was hungover.” He laughs. “I can make it up to you, though.”
I’m not particularly interested in him apologizing to me. But I want to prove to myself that I can handle whatever he throws at me, even if it’s just to put him in his place before telling him we’re done “playing” with magic together. “Okay,” I sigh, pretending to be bored. “How?”
He laughs again, a low, slightly dirty noise over the phone. “One word. Bowling.”
Memory Lanes is firmly stuck in 1954, all atomic-age chic and pistachio-green Formica, and way on the other side of town. Bay picks me up at the 7-Eleven around the corner from the movie theater, and I decide not to focus on how slimy and backdoor it seems as we pull up later in the afternoon.
“Hope you brought your bowling shoes,” he says, grinning as I get in.
“Whose car is this?” He’s driving a sugary silver Audi that looks brand-new.
“Fiona’s stepmom’s,” he says as he pulls away from the curb. His coat is open, and a soft gray scarf is looped loosely around his neck. “She’s in Hawaii or somewhere else tropical and decadent.”
I blink. “With Fiona’s dad? And where is Fiona anyway?”
“Unclear. On the first part.” He takes a corner at a speed that definitely seems unsafe if not illegal, and I grab the dashboard. “Fiona is sleeping off a little too much frivolity.”
“But she doesn’t mind you taking her stepmom’s car?”
“So many questions!” He smiles broadly and pats my knee. “Relax, little bird. We’re not running away to Mexico, we’re just going bowling.”<
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I hate the heat in my cheeks. “I hope you’re not expecting me to be good.”
“You can be as good as you want to be, you know,” he says, and turns to look at me, brow furrowed in amusement. “No stopping you.”
It hadn’t even occurred to me, actually. But I’m so used to hiding what I can do, sometimes at home I forget I can use a little boost here and there. I painted my nails the other night, and ruined one ten minutes later. Instead of closing my eyes and focusing, I took it all off with nail polish remover, and it wasn’t until I was in bed that I realized how dumb that was.
But that’s my problem, and it doesn’t have anything to do with him, or why I’m here.
Bay throws an arm over my shoulder when we walk in, steering me toward the far left-hand lane. It’s a strange weight, and for a minute all I can smell beyond the stale sweat of old shoes and industrial carpet is his coat, warm wool that’s somehow spicy, like a far-off land. My nose tickles, and I duck out from under it by pretending to sneeze.
Suddenly I’m really glad we’re heading toward a group of people, since Fiona isn’t around.
“Afternoon, bowlers,” Bay says, shrugging off his coat and tossing it casually over the back of the booth at the head of the lane. “This is Wren.”
“Prepare to be amazed by my skills, Wren,” a boy in a Dr. Who T-shirt tells me. His hair is nearly shoulder length, too brown to be blond and too blond to be brown, and his nose ring is a shiny silver loop with a ball balanced in the center. He ambles up to the lane and sort of jerks into motion; the ball lurches forward, spinning crazily, and knocks down six pins.
“Formidable,” I say politely, and a girl in a short red dress and a long white sweater laughs. She doesn’t look familiar, either, and I wonder if these are all Summerhill kids.
“I’m Leah,” she says, “and that’s Tommy, since Bay has forgotten his manners. And over there are Antonia and Clay.” She points at a boy and a girl coming back from the snack bar with one giant fountain soda and an order of cheese fries on wax paper in a pink plastic basket.
Jude isn’t here, but I can hear her voice in my head: “Just be careful.”
I shake it off and drop my coat on top of Bay’s before sitting down. “I need shoes.”
“No problem.” Leah leans over and drags my feet into her lap. “Nice Docs. Hold on.” She pulls a black velvet pouch out of her pocket and from it a small mirror. Its surface is cloudy, smeared with something, and she holds it in front of my feet as she says softly, “Magick mirror in my hand, see my need, heed my plan. Show the shoes Wren must wear, hide these boots from every stare. In this glass your power I see, my intent, my will, so mote it be.”
The air shimmers with an audible sigh, and the scuffed black leather on my feet melts away to reveal faded blue-and-white bowling shoes. Leah bows her head with a quick smile, and I pull my feet off her lap.
“Very nice,” I tell her, honest this time, and twist my feet in different directions. I can still feel the worn-in leather of my boots around my ankles, the familiar weight of them, but I can only see the shoes.
Bay golf-claps with a smirk that somehow doesn’t seem as pleased as it should be, and I get up to look for a ball.
“Who’s the new girl?” Antonia asks as she sits down at the next table, jerking her head in my direction. Leah has gotten up to bowl, and Tommy takes her place in the chair. I glance over my shoulder to see him looking at Bay, as if he needs permission before he speaks, so I call, “I’m Wren. Hi.”
Antonia just stares and takes a noisy slurp of the soda before Clay snatches it away. “Be nice, loser. Hey, Wren. Ignore the resident bitch.”
Antonia rolls her eyes, bright blue ones lined in an even more obnoxious blue, and ignores me as she reaches for a fry dripping with orange cheese.
“No fighting, boys and girls,” Bay says lightly, but he’s staring at the fries intently. When Antonia picks up another one, it’s dripping with what looks like toxic waste, and smells like it even from where I’m standing.
“Jesus, Bay.” She throws it down and grabs a napkin, wiping her hands furiously. “I fucking paid for those.”
He lifts his brows innocently and snaps his fingers, and the cheese is back. Antonia snorts. “Like I’d eat it now.”
“She’s on the rag,” Clay mock-whispers behind one hand, looking at me.
“Oh my God.” She practically pushes him out of the booth so she can stomp away to the bathroom. In her skinny jeans and prom-pink sweater, her blond hair swinging against her back, she looks like Barbie’s evil twin.
Bay gets up to join me, casually looping his arm over my shoulders again. “Antonia there isn’t like us. She’s a ghost chaser, likes to play séance every once in a while. I’m pretty sure she’s convinced she’s a reincarnated spirit, and Clay hasn’t tried to tell her otherwise. He’s psychic, so he’d know, I guess.”
I glance at Clay, by-the-book All-American in his rugby shirt and jeans, dark brush cut and freckles. “And he . . . likes her?”
Bay smirks. “There’s no explaining true love.”
Tommy is in love with Leah, he tells me, and since Tommy is generally extremely stoned, he doesn’t really notice the magic going on around him. He learned not to question it, either, apparently, which sounds sort of ominous to me. Leah isn’t a natural, but she uses spell craft really well—one of those determined straight-A students, I bet, who aces calculus and physics even when she’s really a lit geek who’s better at writing drippy poetry.
It’s a weird soup, but Bay connects some more of the dots—Leah is a Saint Francis grad, which is how she knows Fiona and therefore Bay; Tommy is a tagalong. Antonia is a Summerhill student who had a crush on Bay, and one he milked for a while before he realized she was made of equal parts boobs and poison. Clay met Antonia at a party a few months ago, and either knows she’s a decent person deep down, or enjoys the naked parts of her too much to care.
“More than I needed to know,” I tell him, making a face.
Leah jumps up when a tiny Asian girl walks in, and waves her toward our lanes. “Alison’s here!”
“Now she’s a natural,” Bay says under his breath. “But she’s not sure what to do with it. Big-time repression.”
His running commentary is getting on my nerves, as well as his hovering. He’s always a little too close, a little too friendly, and trying to convince myself that he wasn’t jealous when I brought Gabriel to the party the other night isn’t working too well anymore.
Sometimes I hate boys.
Antonia reappears just after Leah introduces me to Alison, who’s so shy, she barely looks at me. It doesn’t matter. I’m determined to get through this.
And for a little while, I manage to at least ignore Antonia. Tommy is pretty amusing, even if he is herbally enhanced, and Leah is great. It isn’t until Clay gets up to help Alison improve her aim that Antonia lets her snark off the leash again.
“Aren’t you supposed to be able to do that on your own?” she calls, casually waving a chewed-on straw in Alison’s direction. “Put on some grown-up panties, sweetie.”
Alison blanches, hair hanging in her face, and Clay straightens up with a frown.
“Tonia, seriously. Turn it down a notch or seventeen.”
She snorts, rolling her eyes again. “Oh, come on. If she could turn me into a toad, or do anything halfway impressive, I’d like to see it. The girl can barely tie her own shoes.”
That’s it. A single tear is rolling down Alison’s cheek, and I don’t bother to think twice. I turn to Antonia and focus hard, power funneling up out of me in a single, precise blast.
Antonia chokes, coughs, grabs at her throat, and a moment later spits a tiny, gnarled toad off her tongue.
Even Clay snickers.
Antonia is snarling, and Tommy is busy chasing the toad when Bay drags me away, and I let him. He marches me past the snack bar and the rental desk, and down a short hall that leads to the bathroom.
“I think you just ma
de a mortal enemy, sweetheart,” he laughs, and hugs me before I can protest.
“Don’t call me that.” I’m shaking with rage and the last trembling vibration of energy, and I’m not proud of myself.
Even if Antonia totally deserves worse.
“God, that was awesome.” He’s not even looking at me, but he’s grinning like a satisfied cat. “Quick thinking, thematically appropriate. Very hot.”
I blink and realize he’s turned to face me again, one hand reaching out to stroke my cheek. Gently, fondly, and I’m so busy panicking, it takes me a minute to get my hands between us and shove at his chest.
Not before he kisses me, though, and I want to spit. It’s cool, too wet, and so wrong, I’m stunned.
“Oh my God, what is your deal?” I shove harder when he doesn’t step right back. “I thought you were with Fiona!”
He shrugs, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand casually. “I am, more or less.”
“More or less? What does that mean?” I splutter.
“It means she amuses me, and she likes to get her freak on, and she spends her daddy’s money on me like it’s water,” he explains, and every trace of the friendly, slightly smarmy guy I know is gone.
His eyes are as cold and dead as Danny’s ever were.
“Oh my God, you are such scum.” I shake my head, and push him, hard. “I had no idea.”
“Oh, come on, Wren,” he says, grabbing my arm. For a moment, he tries on something that I think is supposed to look like pleading innocence, but it slips when I make a retching noise. “She can’t even do spell work. I do everything for her, just to make her happy and shut her up. She mumbles something in pigeon Latin, and I make it happen for her. But you. You’re the real deal, Wren. You have power like I’ve never seen, and unless I’m way off the mark, you haven’t even tried to spread your little magical wings. You have no idea what we could do together.”
“And you have no idea how very wrong you are,” I hiss, and this time I push with the power inside me. He staggers back against the wall, and I hold him there as I back away. “Whatever this was, it’s over.”
I run back to the lanes and grab my coat. Antonia and Clay are over by the jukebox, and Leah has one arm around Alison. Tommy pops up from beneath one of the tables with the toad in his hand, and chuckles. “Adam would have loved that. Dude, it’s so frigging tiny.”
