“He stopped believing in the things you have to believe in, to capture magic,” she says.
“Oh.”
I think about the things my father says and how I don’t always believe in them the way I’m supposed to. And the way he ran on the deserted beach like he’d done it before, like he’d done it many times before, like the rules weren’t really for him. I think about Ginger’s pink hair and Evan Dell’s fingers intertwined with hers.
And I think, for one half second, about my family and all the times Lyle and I have gone to the roof together to get away from things.
I think about the jar of UnTired magic Dad opened on us all. That it didn’t help anything and we didn’t want it and my mom was actually a little scared of it, and if magic goes where it’s supposed to go, why did that jar go to him?
Why do any of the jars?
Zelda puts another crown on her head. I put another bracelet around my wrist. My fingers are tired from twisting and braiding and knotting. My head is tired from thinking. If I had magic, I would have made real crowns with rhinestones; I would have hoped for magic that could make roses and violets grow where dandelions were.
But maybe that would have been wrong.
“Do you ever want to go into town?” I ask. I didn’t know this place was here, and I wonder how little Zelda knows about us, where we live, what our Belling Bright is like.
“I’m in town right now,” Zelda says.
“Oh. Right. But like, in town. Where everyone else is. There’s a big birthday party this weekend and I thought maybe you’d want to come,” I say. It’s a bad idea. Zelda thinks magic is fake, and if she says yes to my big idea, she’ll be surrounded by all the fake beautiful magic that she hates. But I love the way she sees the world and the quiet and maybe-true things she tells me about it. I like being near her and who I am when I’m talking to her.
“Oh! More people!” Zelda says. Her eyes light up. She doesn’t care about all the magic that will probably be there, like magical sunsets or magical bouncy houses or magical cakes that Ginger’s family magicked up one year that had flavors like Summer Breeze or Christmas Morning or You’ve Finished Everything You Had to Do That You Didn’t Want to Do. What Zelda wants to see is other people. I can tell from the way her eyes look suddenly dreamy, her mouth bright with wondering. “Will there be lots of other people there? Like, how many do you think?”
“Oh, tons. Maybe a hundred? Or more? Anyone in town who feels like it, I guess.”
“A hundred people,” Zelda says. Her smile doesn’t fade. Her eyes don’t dim. “I’ve always wanted to meet a hundred people.”
“Really?”
“Are they your friends?” she asks. “Do you watch movies and play Monopoly and tell secrets?”
“I guess we do those things,” I say. And as we talk, I see something new about Zelda. Maybe no one really comes by this rest stop. Maybe they know the people who run it are Not Meant for Magic. “Do you have friends?” I ask, even though it seems sort of rude. Zelda seems like a person who doesn’t really mind rudeness.
“Just my family,” Zelda says. “No one wants to be friends with us.”
“Maybe if you went to a less magical town?” I ask, thinking there must be friends for Zelda somewhere.
“Oh,” she says. “We’d never do that.”
“Why not?”
She gives me a look like it’s obvious. “Family,” she says. “We have to stay close, to keep an eye on our family.”
It seems like they could keep an eye on each other anywhere they went, but I don’t say that because I think it would sound rude. Plus, I don’t want Zelda and her family to leave Belling Bright. I love having them here.
“Well, you have me to be friends with now,” I say. I say it because I want it to be true, and because maybe Zelda will want it to be true, and if two people want it to be true, doesn’t that make it true?
“Yes,” Zelda says. “And this weekend maybe I’ll have even more friends!”
“Oh,” I say, my heart sinking at the thought of everyone liking Zelda more than me. “Maybe.”
“But it wouldn’t be the same as it is with you,” she says.
“It wouldn’t?”
“Of course not,” Zelda says. And she gives me another smile, one that looks like we are in on a secret, which maybe we are, because Zelda is the only secret I’ve ever kept from my father.
I don’t know exactly what fake beautiful is. But I know this moment is a certain kind of beautiful, the way that perfect summer day at Maddy’s house was beautiful.
And if I had magic, it never would have happened at all.
Twenty-Eight
“This isn’t a conversation,” Mom says.
“This is definitely a conversation,” I say. “We’re talking right now, back and forth.”
“She means it isn’t a negotiation,” Lyle says. He’s at the kitchen counter helping Mom make pasta salad by chopping up celery and whisking vinegar with oil, and I should be helping too, except I can’t seem to put down Ginger’s birthday party invitation.
“I’m bringing Zelda,” I say. Every year, Ginger’s family throws a birthday party for her. Or, not just for her. For all of them. Ginger and all of her siblings and also her mom. And when her dad was here, for him too. They all have birthdays in the winter months, and instead of trying to throw nine different birthday parties, they throw one big one. They save up their magic for it. They choose which jars seem the most likely to be able to make perfect weather and a delicious meal, and every year there’s something unexpected and thrilling, a bit of magic no one knew about.
Last year it was a lemonade fountain. The year before that there were pony rides on pink and purple ponies. And before that there was the biggest bouncy house I’ve ever seen. Bigger than any house in town. It played musical notes on every bounce, making the whole thing extra loud and extra fun and extra magical.
Ginger and I used to like to make lists of things that might happen, trying to imagine which jars might have the strangest magic, which jars might hold something we’d never seen or heard of before. Ginger and I had so many traditions it’s hard to escape them. They pop up like weeds everywhere I look.
Even what we’re cooking right now is a tradition. On top of whatever the magic makes, the rest of us bring food to the party. We always bring non-magical pasta salad. Mom says it tastes better without magic. Dad never helps us make it. I’m not sure he ever eats it.
“I told you to forget about that girl,” Mom says. “And now you want to bring her to your best friend’s birthday party? What’s gotten into you?”
“She’s not my best friend anymore.”
“Well, bringing Zelda wouldn’t help that at all.”
“She has a new best friend that isn’t me. So I need a best friend, too. And no one wants to be best friends with one-jar girl. Especially not Ginger. She even has a boyfriend to go along with her new life.” I hadn’t meant to tell Mom about Evan Bell, and even thinking about him makes my insides all cloudy and pinchy.
“Ginger has a boyfriend?” Lyle says. He starts to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” I say.
“It’s a little funny,” Lyle says.
“It’s not about whether or not Ginger needs you,” Mom says. “Although I’m sure she does. It’s about living our lives. It’s about you still being you, no matter what happened. We can’t go changing everything around just because you had a hard start to the year.”
Mom hands me the bowl of ingredients to stir, and I do. Lyle keeps shaking his head and laughing about Ginger and her boyfriend. Outside, the sky is turning bluer and bluer and bluer. It had been a gray day when we woke up, but not anymore. The magic has begun.
“Life without magic is—well. It’s nice, but it’s not for us. And it’s too confusing to invite Zelda.” When Mom says the word nice she looks like she really means it. She actually looks like she means more than nice. Like she means special or beautiful or better.
; But she doesn’t want to talk about it.
It shouldn’t surprise me, that Mom wants to pretend nothing is happening, that everything’s fine.
“That’s one blue sky,” Dad says. He’s coming in from outside, where he’s been practicing his capturing moves, I guess. His feet are bare and he’s got a line of sweat over his lip and on his forehead. “Warm too,” he says. “They got some strong magic this year, that’s for sure.”
I wonder if he sees how the words puncture me. It’s impossible not to talk about magic when it’s still January and we live in Belling Bright and the sky is turning blue and the air is turning warm and delicious, the way only magic can make it feel. But still, I wish we could talk about anything else.
“Beautiful day,” Mom says. All the words are normal, but I’m not normal, which makes the words sound weird.
“Fake beautiful,” I say. I don’t know what makes me say it exactly. Especially in front of Dad. But once the words are out they can’t exactly go anywhere else, so we’re all stuck with them. We shift around. Mom swallows so loudly I can hear it. Lyle stares at his feet. Dad just stares at me.
“Where’d you hear that?” he says at last.
“Hear what?”
“‘Fake beautiful.’ Who said that to you?”
“No one,” I say. “I just meant that like, the sky isn’t really blue. It’s magically blue. So it’s not . . . it’s not like a surprise or really special. It’s just magic.” I hadn’t thought out the words ahead of time, but when I say them they feel true, truer than that blue sky at least, and that’s something.
“Magic isn’t special now?” Dad says.
“I just mean it would be even cooler if the sky just did this on its own.”
“Why?” Dad asks. Mom and Lyle stir and chop and clear their throats. “What would make that better? Would it be prettier? Blue is blue, Rose.”
“It would be real,” I say.
“Not fake,” Dad says.
“Yes. Not fake beautiful.” He reacts again to those particular words in that particular order. He looks at Mom.
“Why is she saying that?” he asks. His voice is strained, like it’s pushing up against something.
“I don’t know, Wendell,” Mom says.
“She didn’t just come up with it on her own,” he says.
“Who knows where Rose comes up with these things,” Mom says, but her voice shakes and her eyes dart around and anyone could tell she’s hiding something. I know what she’s hiding. What I don’t know is how those two words made Dad figure it out.
“You went there,” he says. He says it to Mom. Then he turns to me. “She took you there.” The part of him that was tired is gone, and now only the anger is left. “That’s why I didn’t want you taking them there. They get confused. They get— I told you not to. Not ever.”
“It was an accident,” Mom says.
“An accident!” Dad says. He laughs, like it’s a joke, but it’s a bad laugh, a mean laugh, and clearly not a joke at all. “You’ve always wanted this. You’ve always hated what I do, what I care about.”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Mom says. “It was after Rose— It was when we left TooBlue Lake and we were all out of sorts and we needed coffee and food and it was open and I thought, I don’t know, that maybe Rose would feel better knowing that not everyone in Belling Bright uses magic to do everything, and I thought it would be good for the kids to meet—”
I watch Mom try to find the rest of the sentence, but she can’t. She keeps looking at the pasta, at the window, at Lyle. And by the time she looks at Dad, she seems nervous and sorry and ready to say whatever Dad wants her to say. Except she doesn’t say anything.
“They were nice,” I say, before Mom can say something or not say something and make Dad even madder. “It wasn’t a big deal. I liked them. And the girl—Zelda—she’s cool. That’s where I heard that phrase. I guess her dad says it. I didn’t mean— It’s just a thing she said, so I said it, but I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Dad turns to me. He’s red-faced. He shakes his head. I wait for his anger to turn to me, but he only lingers on my face for a second before turning back to Mom.
“We agreed,” he says. “We promised we’d live— Zelda. What a name. Zelda. Sounds like him.”
“Like who?” I ask.
“You will not go back there,” Dad says.
“Zelda sounds like who?” I ask again.
“Zelda’s father and I—we don’t get along. I knew him, a long time ago,” Dad says. “I don’t want you seeing that girl anymore. I don’t want you parroting the ridiculous garbage she’s telling you. We are the Anders family of Belling Bright and we are meant for magic and we live right here, in town, and we don’t go traipsing out to some rest stop where who knows what is happening. Do you hear me, Rose Alice Anders?”
“I hear you,” I say. And it’s not a lie, because I do. I hear him.
But I’m not going to listen.
Twenty-Nine
What I’m Thinking About While I Wait for Zelda in the Center of Town Even Though Dad Said No
Ginger came over for my eleventh birthday last year. It wasn’t how we usually did things. But I’d begged my mother and she’d begged my father and Lyle was fine with whatever, so we broke with tradition and had Ginger sitting there for cake and the remembering of the day I was born.
“You do this every year?” she asked. “Tell the same story? Eat the same foods?”
“It’s luck,” I said.
“What about the magic?” Ginger asked.
“What magic?” Dad asked. He was grumpy. He didn’t like changes, especially before New Year’s Day. Mom said it made him nervous, the way baseball players wear the same socks for every game. But that didn’t make any sense. If magic knew what it was doing, he shouldn’t need superstitions.
“Don’t you do special magic for Rose’s birthday?” Ginger asked. She looked around the room like a rainbow might explode out of the wall or we all might suddenly grow wings or something.
“We don’t do things the way your family does them,” Dad said.
“Wendell,” Mom said, her voice a warning.
“Well, it’s true. You’re in our home, you should respect our ways of doing things,” Dad said. He’d never spoken to Ginger that way. Usually he treated me and Ginger like we were a package deal, his two girls.
“I just meant since you have so much magic, you could really do almost anything, so for birthdays—” Ginger stopped herself when she saw the look on my father’s face.
“Magic is serious,” he said. “Maybe your parents didn’t teach you that.”
Ginger’s face collapsed. Her body too. Her shoulders slumped. She’d always loved my father, and with her father sick she’d been coming around more and more. “I guess we don’t talk about magic much at home,” Ginger whispered.
“Of course not, sweetheart,” Mom said. “You have a lot going on. And magic is—”
“Magic is everything,” Dad interrupted. “I’m working right now on magic for your father. For other fathers. And mothers. For people all over this town. They come to me. They want my help. They need to learn how to use their magic or they beg to borrow some of ours. Except it’s not borrowing, is it, because they’re not giving it back. You think the magic just appears? That we should waste it on a bunch of silliness like everyone else? I watch the people of this town waste their magic on making themselves look good, making their puppies talk for an hour, growing pineapples crossed with broccoli in their magical gardens. And then at the end of the day, all that magic’s been used up, and they’re counting on me to fix everything. They think I’m—they don’t respect the way I do things until they need me. Does that seem fair to you?”
I didn’t know for sure who he was talking to then. He wasn’t looking at Ginger or even Mom. He wasn’t looking at me and Lyle.
“Thanks for helping,” Ginger muttered, but she didn’t mean it. I knew when Ginger meant something and when she di
dn’t.
“We all need some rest,” Mom said. “Right, Wendell?”
My father didn’t reply. He stormed upstairs and Mom followed and they didn’t come back downstairs. They didn’t finish their cake or the story of the day I was born.
Lyle cut himself an extra piece and offered some to each of us. I shook my head, so Ginger shook hers, but Lyle gave us some anyway. “It’s still your birthday,” he said. And he was right, even though it had never felt less like my birthday.
“That was scary,” Ginger said when we’d been in silence a few minutes longer.
“He’s got a big responsibility,” I said. “He doesn’t need any more pressure.”
“He’s never like that,” Lyle said.
“Tomorrow’s really important,” I said.
“I—” Ginger said.
“You should probably call your mom and go home,” I said. I didn’t intend it to come out meanly. But I needed her gone. I needed her out of the house and out of this moment and maybe to forget any of this ever happened.
“I—” Ginger said. She shook her head. She hung it. She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Okay.”
“It’s okay,” I said, “I’m not mad.”
Ginger looked at me extra hard, extra long. “Mad,” she said, and it wasn’t a question or a statement. I don’t know what it was. It was a break in the thing between us, a moment where we weren’t two peas in a pod anymore, the exact moment in time when things started to change, even though I didn’t know it and didn’t understand it and definitely couldn’t stop it.
When she was gone, I helped Lyle do the dishes.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
“I’m scared,” I said.
“There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“There’s not?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“It is?”
“Everyone has hard days,” Lyle said. He sounded so sure. Like he was really and truly the big brother that he’d always been. He said it like I could trust him and also like I needed to trust him, so I did.
I tried.
“Everything’s fine,” I said, to myself and to him, and to Ginger the next day and to everyone who asked ever again.
One Jar of Magic Page 13
