The Three Rules of Everyday Magic

by Amanda Rawson Hill

  I try to check my reflection in the microwave. It’s too dark. My hair is wet, so I probably look bad. But I don’t care, because Parker is in my house. I take a deep breath and walk into the entrance hall. “Hey, Parker.”

  He’s holding a notebook and two textbooks stacked on top of each other. “Hi, Kate. I brought your assignments for what you missed after you left.”

  “Well, that was thoughtful,” says Mom.

  I rush over and take the books out of his arms. “Thanks.”

  Mom puts her hand on Parker’s shoulder and looks out the front door. “Did your Mom bring you over here, honey?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hmmmm.” Mom takes a step toward the door. “I think I have an idea. I need to talk to her, though. Do you mind hanging out here with Kate for a little bit?”

  Parker shrugs. “That’s cool.”

  Mom goes outside, leaving me and Parker staring at the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Anything but each other. I set the books on the hall table, but don’t put them far enough back, and they fall off, slamming to the floor. Parker and I both hurry to pick them up. But the first thing I spot is a bookmark that says, Books Are Magic.

  I pick it up and think about Grammy and her Everyday Magic.

  “Oh, that’s mine,” says Parker, as he puts the books on the table. “I used it to mark our spot in the science book. You can keep it.”

  “Thanks.” I place the bookmark on the stack of books.

  “You got the gum out,” Parker says, pointing at my wet hair.

  “Oh. Yeah. Peanut butter.”

  Parker nods. It’s quiet. He’s still holding The Hobbit, and he brings it in front of him, ready to start reading at any moment.

  “Do you want a snack?” I say. “There’s pretzels in the cabinet. Remember how we always used to make silly faces with pretzels?”

  “Yeah, I remember.” Parker chuckles. “That was fun. But my Mom has this new rule about only having fruits and vegetables for after-school snacks.”

  “Okay.” I look in the kitchen for something, anything to help me hang out with Parker and not seem so boring that he has to go back to reading his book. “How about an orange?” Oranges are kind of exciting and interesting, right?

  “Awesome.”

  We both sit down at the kitchen table, and I peel an orange.

  “So have you heard from your dad lately?” Parker asks.

  The question is a kick straight to my chest. I’ve never talked to Parker about my dad, but he probably heard from his Mom. “No.” I hand him the peeled orange and try to act like it doesn’t matter.

  Parker coughs. “Not at all?”

  “I’m sure we will soon.” I grab another orange and dig my fingernail into the skin. “He’ll come back. His guitar is still here.” I rip orange slices away from each other so hard that juice squirts out. “So … what did you think of school today?”

  “It was different than I imagined. But good.”

  “Did you even pay attention to any of it?” I point at The Hobbit sitting next to him on the table.

  Parker gives a sheepish smile. “It’s hard to put down a good book. I’ve never had to before because my mom let me read as long as I wanted.”

  “Well, maybe try to put it down tomorrow.” I laugh. “Or you’ll be the smartest person I know who fails fifth grade.”

  “Okay, fine.” Parker pops an orange slice into his mouth. “Thanks, Kate.”

  My cheeks feel hot and I turn away.

  Mom and Mrs. Harris walk in then. Mom is holding Parker’s little sister, Amelie, a chunky baby wrapped in a pink blanket. “I’m sorry she’s such a poor sleeper.”

  Mrs. Harris grimaces. “She’ll grow out of it someday. I hope.” She sits down at the table while Mom bounces Amelie up and down. Amelie starts crying, a high, strangled-sounding scream.

  “Oh. I’ll let you deal with that.” Mom hands the baby back to Mrs. Harris. “It’s been eleven years since I’ve had one of those. I won’t lie. I’ve forgotten what to do.”

  I turn back to Parker. “So do you think we’ll learn a new move at karate this Friday?”

  Parker’s got his book open, but he’s looking at his mom with Amelie, who’s still screaming and screaming.

  Although Mom tries to keep talking with Mrs. Harris, it’s no use. “You know what? I’ll call you later.”

  “Please!” Mrs. Harris laughs and rolls her eyes. “I swear, every day from three to seven it’s the same thing.”

  “The witching hour,” Mom says.

  “I don’t remember Parker being quite so … consistent.”

  Mrs. Harris bounces Amelie back to the front door, and Parker stands up. “Well, see ya,” he says.

  “See ya.”

  Mom shuts the door as they pull out of the driveway. “That was productive.”

  “It was?”

  “Mrs. Harris is going to watch Grammy for the next few days until I can find something more permanent. Maybe a daycare.”

  “A daycare? And what about Amelie?”

  “It’s only a few days,” says Mom. “I need her to stay here and make sure Pat doesn’t leave. She said she can hold a crying baby here just as well as she can at home. I’ll look for a daycare in the meantime.”

  I’m about to argue more about daycare for Grammy, but Mom stops me before I even begin. “We knew this was coming, Katydid. Let me be the grown-up. I’m just trying to take care of everyone, okay?”

  That night after dinner, Grammy is sitting on the couch with her knitting. I sit next to her, finishing up my math homework. Mom closes her computer, takes a deep breath, and looks at me.

  “Katydid, do you want to play some music with me?”

  I don’t even look up from the problem I’m doing. “It’s just Kate. And no.”

  “I really wish you would. It’s been so long. Ever since …” her voice trails off and she doesn’t finish the sentence, but I do.

  “Ever since Dad left.”

  The truth thuds to the ground, a cement brick, echoing.

  But Grammy doesn’t seem to notice. “My Tony always made the best music. Voice of an angel. You know for my birthday one year, he wrote me a song. What I wouldn’t give to hear him sing again.”

  And even though what Grammy’s saying is true, it feels like lies. Hundreds of pretendings all adding up into a great big nothing. An empty space.

  “If you sing with me now, you might feel comfortable doing it for your presentation at school,” says Mom, “Maybe it will help if we sing together. Like we used to.”

  I drop my pencil, letting it roll into the space between the couch cushions. “Like we used to? Dad’s not here. I can’t sing without him. All it sounds like is … a big black hole. It hurts.”

  Mom blinks and whispers, “Excuse me.” She walks super fast to the music room, closes the door, and begins playing the piano. That’s what Mom does when she needs to cry about Dad. She plays that rumbling piece by Beethoven, Pathétique. It makes my insides feel all shaky. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why she plays it. So that by the end she doesn’t know if she’s feeling that way because of the missing or the music.

  I finish the last few math problems, pushing too hard on the end of the pencil when the piano gets louder and louder. Grammy keeps trying to make something with her knitting needles, but only ends up with more and more yarn snarls.

  I get up to put my homework in my backpack but accidentally knock over Grammy’s gold bag. The letter from earlier slides out and onto the floor.

  Mom’s music changes from light ups and downs back to the last slow, shaking bass notes. As I pick up the envelope, I notice the empty space under Dad’s name again. The whiteness that should be filled up with an address, a connection, a knowing. Then I think about the box of notes under my bed, each one waiting for the same thing. I have no idea how I’m going to keep my promise to Grammy to get her letter to Dad. But if I don’t try, we’re all going to be stuck here, empty and waiting between the notes of Pa
thétique.

  I open the door to the music room. “Mom?”

  “Yes, Katydid?” She’s done playing and is in the black recliner with a book on her lap. Her eyes are pink.

  “I was wondering if you had Dad’s address. I want to send him a letter. Well, really, it’s Grammy’s letter, but I promised—”

  “You know the answer to that, honey.” Mom looks back down at her book. “I don’t know where he is.” She turns pages way too fast to actually be reading.

  I nod. “Right. I know. Just making sure.”

  After closing the door, I go to my room and add Grammy’s letter to all of my own.

  Dear Dad,

  I’ve decided I hate promises. After all, you promised Mom you’d stay with her through happiness and sorrow. But when sorrow poured in like a mudslide, you just ran away. From Mom, from me, from everything. I don’t ever want to hear the words “I promise” again.

  Love,

  Kate

  Chapter 13

  All night, I dream that I’m trying to sing but no sound comes out. It gets caught in my throat, blocked by something invisible and heavy. Guitar strings break under my fingers with a sharp twang. Then Dad walks in. He picks up his guitar and sits next to me, smiling, not saying anything. The heaviness disappears. He starts plucking arpeggios and singing … something.

  I wake up humming. For a moment I feel all filled up having the music back. Then I remember that it was just a dream and Dad’s still gone.

  I can’t fall back asleep, so I go to the window to see the fog settling in the orchard.

  Suddenly, Grammy walks into my room and turns on the light. “Oh, good. You’re up.”

  My clock says 5:30, so I sit down next to my pile of blankets. “No, I’m going back to bed. I just wanted to …” I point out the window.

  Grammy doesn’t look. She’s balancing her knitting needles and a big ball of yarn. With a huff, she plops down on my bed and puts her knitting to the side. “I’m losing it, aren’t I?”

  “Losing what?”

  “Oh, you know. Everything. These pieces of me that used to be organized up here just fine.” She points at her head. “They keep shuffling around. Sometimes I can’t find them at all.”

  “Oh. Yeah. A little.” I’ve never heard Grammy talk about her sickness before. I tap my fingers on the mattress.

  “I’m not going to be here much longer. At least, this part of me. The real me.”

  Usually when people say bad things about themselves, you’re supposed to tell them they’re wrong. But what Grammy is saying is true, and it doesn’t seem like denying it is what she really wants anyway. But maybe I can put it in a way that doesn’t sound quite so bad.

  “The doctor said it will happen slowly. Come and go. She said it will take time for you to … lose everything.”

  “When you’re my age, dear, time is a slippery thing. There’s never enough left.” Grammy sighs and picks her knitting back up. “Well, I’m here now, I guess.” She makes three stitches, shakes her head, and takes one out. “Oh, rats!” She puts the knitting in her lap. “Can you help me with something?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Grammy lifts a needle with an orange rectangle hanging from it. “Will you help me finish this? I’ve been trying to make you something. A little bit of magic to help you sing again. Even if your dad’s not here.”

  “More magic?”

  “Not just any magic. This is proven Everyday Magic. I’ve seen it work.”

  “When?”

  “When your father was a little boy. Just a bit younger than you.”

  “Really?” There’s a part of me that wants to believe in magic, especially if it has anything to do with Dad.

  “Oh, yes,” says Grammy. “When my Tony was a little boy he was scared of everything. Everything! Snails, flies, trains, germs, sandals, chalk, thunderstorms. Everything. So one night I made him a beautiful blue hat, and the next morning I gave it to him and said I’d filled it up with all my love and courage and it would protect him and keep him brave. And you know what?”

  “What?” I scoot closer to her.

  “It worked.”

  “No way.”

  Grammy nods and puts her needle through a loop of yarn. “He came home from school that day and said he hadn’t been scared once but was sure he’d used up all the magic. So that night I knitted a red hat for him. And the next night a yellow one. I made him a hat in every color imaginable.”

  “For how long?”

  “One year, two months, and eighteen days.”

  “That’s a long time.” I wrap my finger around the string of orange yarn.

  Grammy nods in rhythm to the knitting needles. “Then one day he told me he didn’t need a hat anymore. I was done.”

  “I bet that was nice.”

  “I was happy to have my evenings back, and my fingers sure needed the break.” She laughs and cracks a knuckle. “But I was a little sad, too. It’s nice to be needed.”

  We sit there thinking about that for a second. About being needed. Until Grammy says, “But now my brain seems to be working against me. I keep forgetting the pattern of stitches. No matter how many times I say it to myself, it slips away. So I need your help. Will you?”

  I look at the clock, and the sky outside, not even orange yet. I really want to go back to sleep. But I want the magic more. The magic I can’t quite believe in, but want to.

  “I don’t know how to knit.”

  “Oh, it’s not hard,” says Grammy. “I’ll teach you, and you can do these last couple rows in a jiffy.”

  She hands me the knitting needles as if she’s giving me a fragile little bird. “Now careful with these. They’re very old. I knitted all my Tony’s baby booties on those needles. Countless winter scarves for when we visited the mountains. And all those hats.” She stares off somewhere, probably thinking of Dad.

  They’re old-fashioned and wooden, with small red balls on the ends of them. I hold the knitting needles as gently as if they were almond blossoms, running my fingers over the slightly pocked and dented wood surfaces. “You still have these? They never broke?”

  “Things last a long time when you take good care of them.” Grammy leans over. “Now listen carefully. In through the front door, around the back. Peep through the window, off jumps Jack!”

  We get to work learning to knit after that. The rhyme makes it sound easy. It’s not. Knitting needles are like chopsticks, and yarn is slippery like noodles, but instead of just getting noodles to my mouth I’m trying to twist them around each other and make knots.

  Grammy hands me a piece of paper that says K2, skip 1. Repeat to end.

  “Here’s the dang pattern I keep forgetting.” She shows me how to do it once and then hands the needles back.

  It takes me a couple tries to remember, too. But eventually, knitting starts to take on a rhythm, like doing the kata in karate. Each move flows smoothly into the next, leaving my brain a place to just be.

  I don’t have very much more to do before the magic hat is finished. The karate feeling is gone all too soon.

  Grammy teaches me how to cinch the top and stitch up the side. All of a sudden, that rectangle is a real live orange hat.

  “See?” she says. “It’s like magic.”

  I rub the bumpy edge between my thumb and pointer finger. “Almost.”

  “Almost,” says Grammy. “You sure are hard to please. Now just wear that the next time you need to sing, and see if it doesn’t help.”

  “Like for my presentation?”

  “Or when your mom asks.”

  A frown pulls at my mouth when I think about last night. How angry I was. “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve got to believe in the magic.”

  I stretch the brim across my fingers.

  “Your dad did,” Grammy whispers.

  I pull the hat over my tangled hair. “How do I look?”

  Grammy’s eyes get all crinkly. “Like a memory.”

  M
om walks in then. “Oh, Katydid. You’re up. And Pat. What are you two girls doing?”

  Grammy makes her way to the door and pats Mom on the shoulder. “Just making some magic.” She winks at me and leaves the room.

  “Nice hat,” says Mom.

  “Thanks.”

  She leans against the door frame. “I’m sorry about last night,” she says. “I shouldn’t have pushed you. I just miss singing with … you.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry, too.”

  “So what do you think you’ll do for your presentation if you aren’t going to sing?”

  “I don’t know.” I tuck an itchy piece of hair underneath the hat and remember how Grammy said it made Dad brave. “Maybe I could still sing. I’m thinking about it.”

  “Really?” Mom whispers, straightening up.

  I tug at the edges of my hat and nod.

  “Oh, Katydid,” Mom leaves the doorway, crosses the room in three strides, and hugs me. “I would love that so much. It would feel—”

  “I haven’t decided for sure yet.”

  “Yes, I know.” She nods and backs away. Just before she leaves the room, she says, “I’ll be interested to hear your decision.”

  As I walk out the door that morning, Grammy grabs my shoulder and hands me the knitted hat. I’d left it at the breakfast table. “Remember, Kate,” she whispers. “Remember my Tony. Believe.”

  And I want to. I really do.

  Part II

  Give

  Chapter 14

  “So you didn’t have to cut all your hair off,” Jane says as we walk into school. Everyone’s bodies are pushing past us, and my elbow gets knocked by someone when I reach up to touch the place in my sandy-blond hair that used to be sticky.

  “Yeah. My mom says peanut butter always works.”

  Jane gives a single, short nod. “Good. Even though …” She squints at me and cocks her head. “You would make a very handsome boy.”

  “Hey!”

  “Want me to draw you as one?”

  “No way!” I laugh as we reach our lockers and open them.