The Backward Season

by Lauren Myracle

  Klara looked at her. “You know what I mean.”

  Emily envisioned a room in a funhouse, filled with mirrors. Emily after Emily after Emily, girl after girl after girl. Choice after choice after choice. And now Klara—the most alive person she knew—dying?

  The conversation, already absurd, had only grown more so. She giggled.

  “Omigosh,” Klara huffed. “I tell you I could die, and you laugh.”

  “Klara, you’re not going to die.”

  “I might. A shark could eat me.”

  “A land shark? A lake shark?”

  Klara pulled a face. “Fine. A tree could fall on my head.”

  “Ah. But if a tree falls on your head, and no one is there to hear it . . .”

  Klara shoved her. Emily toppled, but caught herself.

  “Please don’t die, Klara,” she said. “There’s only one of you. You need to stay safe.”

  “The same goes for you,” said Klara. “And don’t go away, either.” She shoved Emily harder, and this time Emily stayed where she landed, sprawled on the grass. She stretched out her arms, forming a T with her body. She gazed at the puffy, white clouds.

  “Fine, I won’t wish to be older,” she said. The world beneath her was spinning, and she, on top of it, was spinning, too. But it felt as if she were lying still. “I wouldn’t have anyway. Probably.”

  Klara arranged herself beside her. She formed a matching T, the tips of her fingers grazing Emily’s. “Okay, try this. Instead of wishing to get away from your mom, what if you wished for her to change?”

  “To make her like me better, you mean?”

  “She already likes you, dum-dum. She loves you. But . . . yeah.”

  Emily thought about it. Klara’s suggestion made sense, but it seemed, somehow, like the wrong sort of wish. It wasn’t up to Emily to change who her mother was.

  “I don’t know. Wouldn’t that be an abuse of power?”

  “So?”

  “I could wish to have a better relationship with her,” Emily mused. “That might work.”

  “Yes!” Klara said. She slapped the ground. “If things get better with your mom now, you wouldn’t need to abandon me!”

  “Oh, Klara. I’m not going to abandon you.” She tilted her head and looked at the line of the forest. Trees stood tall and proud. Leaves rustled. The afternoon sun cast a buttery light over the infinite palette of browns and greens, and Emily’s heart felt full.

  Being alive was a gift.

  Klara was a gift.

  There were no such things as forbidden colors.

  “If things were better between me and my mom, I could talk to her about visiting my dad,” Emily reflected. “Maybe, eventually, I could even bring up the idea of going to live with him. Possibly.”

  “Live with him? But then I’d still miss you!” Klara wailed.

  “And I’d miss you,” Emily said. “And, odds are it won’t happen. But I wouldn’t be gone gone. I’d come back to Willow Hill to see my mom, obviously. And you could visit me in California! We could have freshly squeezed orange juice whenever we wanted!”

  Klara pouted.

  “It’s unlikely it’ll happen,” Emily repeated.

  For a moment, Klara didn’t speak. Then she sighed and said, “Oh, just ignore me. I’m being a baby.”

  She patted around and found Emily’s hand again. “Of course I would visit you in California. Of course I’d see you when you came to see your mom in Willow Hill. You and me forever, right?”

  Emily saw herself little again, driving away in the backseat of the car. “Forever and always.”

  “Good girl,” Klara said. She squeezed Emily’s hand so hard it hurt.

  I wish I had a sister, or even a brother.

  —TALLY STRIKER, AGE FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ava

  “Cousins?” Tally said to Ava incredulously. “You dragged me out here to announce, out of the blue, that we’re cousins.” She blew air out of her mouth. “Ava, you’re adorable.”

  Her tone was sarcastic. Like Natasha and Darya, she was treating Ava as if she were a dumb little kid.

  Ava was younger than Tally, and since Tally subscribed to the same logic her sisters did, Ava was more likely to be wrong. But in this case, she wasn’t. She and Tally were cousins. She was almost absolutely sure.

  The picture Tally had drawn was of her mother.

  Tally’s mother was named Emily.

  Ava’s mother, when she saw the picture, had known right away that it was Emily—the Emily, though older, who’d been her best friend when they were girls.

  That meant the two Emilys were one and the same. Since Emily was Papa’s little sister, that meant that Emily was Ava’s aunt. It also meant that Ava’s mother, Klara, was Tally’s aunt.

  Which meant.

  They.

  Were cousins. Ava and Tally.

  Tally wasn’t just Ava’s cousin, either. She was Darya’s and Natasha’s as well.

  Tally looked angrily at the sketch of her mom. She folded it up and shoved it into her jeans, her jaw tight.

  “You’re upset,” said Ava. “You know why? Because you know everything I told you might be true.”

  “No, I’m upset because everything you’re saying is ridiculous,” Tally countered. Her voice was terse, which strengthened Ava’s conviction. If Ava had told Tally that she was secretly an alien from another planet, Tally would have laughed. Maybe she’d have felt sorry for her. She wouldn’t have gone all stony, building a fortress around herself for protection.

  Ava knew in her bones that Tally’s mother was Papa’s sister and Mama’s long-ago best friend. She could understand Tally’s reluctance to believe it, however. After all, it sounded too good to be true.

  Not just the part about being Ava’s cousin. All of it.

  Pauper to princess.

  Orphan to heiress.

  Girl shuttled from foster family to foster family only to discover—gasp!—that she had a big warm family of her own waiting just around the corner.

  It was a huge, beautiful bubble, yes. It would be awful to reach out for such a bubble only to have someone pop it. But Ava wasn’t going to pop it!

  What piece of the puzzle had Ava left out? What would it take to get Tally to view the situation from a fresh perspective?

  Of the three Blok sisters, Tally was closest to Darya. Could Darya be the way in?

  “My sisters think I don’t see them,” she said, earning her another annoyed glance from Tally. “Especially Darya. Darya thinks I’m like, ‘La la la, nothing’s wrong with Darya,’ but there is something wrong with her.”

  “Oh yeah? What?”

  “Not wrong,” Ava clarified. “Different. Darya changed after her Wishing Day, and you noticed it too. I know you did. You two had a fight right before her Wishing Day, and then afterward, you didn’t talk to each other for like a week.”

  “More like two weeks,” Tally muttered.

  “Yes! Good!” Ava said. “I mean, not good, but . . .” She linked her arms behind her back, grasping her wrists and pulling hard. “Listen, sometimes the truth is hard to see. I get that.”

  “The truth?” Tally said. “There’s no such thing as the truth.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe there are just different versions, and if you look at them the right way . . .”

  “The pieces will magically fall into place?”

  Ava reddened. “Maybe.”

  “See, that’s the thing, Ava. You can’t account for things using magic. Want to know why?”

  “No, and I’m not—”

  “You said magic is ‘weird.’ Your word. And by weird, you meant that magic doesn’t have rules.” Tally pushed her hand through her hair. “If magic doesn’t have rules, you’re basically saying it’s a free-for-all. Can’t explain something that doesn’t fit your worldview? Blame it on magic! Problem solved!”

  “I never said there weren’t rules,” Ava protested.

  “You clai
m we’re cousins. You claim there’s magic involved. But you’re conveniently skipping over something.”

  “What?”

  Tally searched Ava’s expression, and for a microsecond, Ava saw how vulnerable Tally was. Tally did want to be part of Ava’s family, but there was more to her longing than that. Like everyone in the whole wide world, Tally wanted the gift of knowing who she was.

  Then Tally’s mask slipped back into place, flinty-eyed and stoic. “You can’t use magic to explain things because magic isn’t real.”

  Ava scowled. Magic was impossible to pin down, yes. That didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

  Tally started walking. They were still on the path that would take them to the lake, but Ava took care not to point that out. Instead, she matched Tally’s pace, or tried to. Tally was taller than Ava, and her stride was longer. Ava couldn’t keep up without adding a jog here and there between steps.

  “Last year, after Darya’s Wishing Day, did she tell you any of her wishes?” Ava asked.

  Tally didn’t answer.

  “Did she tell you her impossible wish?”

  Tally snorted. “If a wish is impossible, then by definition . . .”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ava thought. “She didn’t tell me, either,” she said, panting. “Not at first. I had to bug her and bug her and bug her.”

  “Fascinating,” Tally said. Her arms swung at her sides, and her sneakers slapped the ground.

  Sweat pooled at the back of Ava’s neck as she took hop-skips to keep up. “Her wish was about your mom,” she said, forcing the words out.

  Pwoomf. Flesh smacked flesh as Tally came to a dead stop. Ava bounced backward, stumbled, and landed on her tailbone. “Ow!”

  Tally stared down at her. “Darya made a wish about my mom?”

  Ava extended her hand. “Are you going to help me up?”

  “What do you mean she made a wish about my mom? What did she wish for?”

  Ava sighed. She lowered her hand. “She wished to know the truth about Emily. All of it. Like, was there an actual Emily who lived in Willow Hill, even though no one remembers her? Did she grow up to be your mom? And, of course . . .”

  “Go on.”

  Ava hated the next part. She would always hate the next part. “Well, if my mom did make Emily disappear . . . where did she disappear to?”

  Tally jammed her hands in her pockets. She toed the ground of the footpath. “Not that I’m necessarily going to believe you, given that every word that comes out of your mouth is impossible,” she finally said. “But what did Darya find out?”

  This was the tricky part, as Darya’s wish hadn’t exactly been granted.

  Yet.

  “Ava? What’s wrong, no answer?”

  Ava slowly got to her feet, buying herself time. She could catch glimpses of the lake when the breeze blew certain tree branches certain ways, and the effect felt magical. Maybe it was magical, as if the world were giving her tiny windows—there and then gone—through which she could see her hoped-for future.

  She reached a decision and continued walking forward. “Just come with me. You can see for yourself.”

  Tally complied, though grumpily. “If this is some wild goose chase . . . if this is some dumb ‘Let’s Play Pretend’ game . . .”

  Ava didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, as they walked the last quarter of a mile to the lake, Ava doled out bits and pieces of her theory with Tally. She wanted to keep Tally engaged. She needed to keep Tally engaged. But if Ava said too much, or the wrong thing, Tally might throw her hands in the hair, spin on her heel, and stalk off.

  That would be bad. Ava would be left without a spotter.

  “My mom’s version of the story,” said Ava, “is that my mom and your mom—”

  “If it’s my mom.”

  “For the sake of argument, let’s just assume—”

  “Nothing. Let’s assume nothing.”

  Ava had no bargaining power, so fine. She started over. “According to my mom, she and her best friend, Emily”—she gave Tally a loaded look—“were going to make their wishes together, because their Wishing Days fell on the same day.”

  Tally snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  “‘Yeah, right,’ what?” Ava said. “You know that a girl’s Wishing Day is determined by when her birthday is, don’t you?”

  Tally looked wary.

  “Well, when’s your mom’s birthday?”

  “In March.”

  “March what?”

  Tally looked alarmed. Had she been hoping Ava’s face would fall? That Ava would admit that her mother’s birthday wasn’t in March?

  “Just March,” said Tally.

  “Okay, well, my mom’s birthday is March thirteenth,” Ava said. She kept an eye on Tally, but Tally had regained control. She kept her face blank.

  “Anyway, my mom and Emily were going to make their wishes together, at sunrise,” Ava said. “But my mom made hers early.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone gave her bad advice,” Ava said, oddly reluctant to throw the Bird Lady under the bus.

  Then again, the Bird Lady had thrown Emily under the bus, so to speak.

  “It was the Bird Lady,” Ava admitted. “The Bird Lady told my mom to wish that she’d won that contest instead of your mom. Hold on . . . do you know about the contest?”

  “Yes, I know about the contest,” Tally said dangerously. Now, instead of drumming her fingers against her leg, she was clenching and unclenching her fist.

  “And . . . so . . . she did,” Ava said. “My mom wished that she was the one who’d won the contest. She did it to impress my dad, and the Bird Lady said it was fine, and even your mom—I mean, Emily—well, my mom said Emily didn’t care all that much about the contest.”

  “Your mother wished that she had won the contest, even though someone else had already won,” Tally said.

  “Well, yes.”

  “And now you’re telling me that the Emily who rightfully won the contest was my mom, whose name is also Emily.”

  “Um. Yes.”

  “Which means, if the Emilys are one and the same, that your mother erased my mother. That’s what you’re saying? That’s what you believe?”

  It sounded awful. It was awful, and Ava tried to let Tally have her anger. She tried not to think about the fact that every second they spent on this now was a second lost for other things. Tick tock, tick tock.

  “When your mom left, when you were three or whatever, she walked away on her own two feet,” Tally said. “When my mom left—and this is what you’re telling me, right?—when she left, it was because of your mom’s wish? As in . . . poof? Here one moment, gone the next? My mom did nothing wrong, and yet she’s the one who disappeared?”

  “Yes, but I’m going to bring her back,” Ava declared. “And you’re going to help.”

  “Like heck I am!”

  They reached the lake. Tally stood beside her, radiating hostility. Gazing at the water, Ava explained what she was going to do.

  Tally laughed, not in a nice way. “Yeah, that’s a great plan. Sheesh, Ava.”

  “It might not be a great plan, but it’s the only plan I’ve got,” said Ava. “And you’re the only one who can help me.” She swiveled to regard Tally.

  “Um, no. You could find a random stranger on the street to help you.”

  “Yeah, sure, a random stranger. Because that’s how these things work.”

  “‘These things’?” Tally barked a laugh. “There’s no such thing as ‘these things.’”

  Ava leveled Tally with a stare. “Fine. You, Tally, are the only person with the incentive to help me.” She gave each word the weight it deserved. “Don’t you want your mom back?”

  Tally made a sour expression.

  Ava held her ground.

  Tally scanned the lake, the path that circled the lake, and the vacant bench swing several yards from the lake. Then she looked at Ava. Then she looked at the lake again.

  “Come on,” Ava
said. “It’s really not that big of a deal.” All Ava was asking was that Tally stick around while Ava was underwater, which would take two minutes, tops. If Ava didn’t surface before the two-minute mark—which she would, but just if—then Tally would pull her out. Two minutes was the longest most people could hold their breath before passing out, but even if Ava passed out—which she wouldn’t—it wasn’t as if she’d die.

  Ava took a step forward. She took another step forward. She made her feet move—step, step, step; again, again, again—until she reached the water’s edge, where she kicked off her sneakers and pulled off her socks.

  Which she tucked neatly into her shoes, the left sock into the left shoe and the right sock into the right shoe.

  “Ava,” Tally protested unconvincingly.

  Ava found herself more nervous than she’d anticipated. “I’m going!” she called to Tally over her shoulder. “I really am!”

  Tally made an antsy huff that meant do it or don’t. Ava didn’t check, but she imagined Tally crossing her arms, maybe even tapping her toes.

  Just relax, Ava almost called, but she stopped herself in time, not wanting to give Tally any reason to storm away.

  Her own thoughts looped through her brain, and she got the chills.

  I stopped myself in time, she silently repeated.

  I stopped.

  Myself.

  In time.

  She imagined a bug caught in amber, trapped in time forever. Except not trapped, and not forever. That was why Tally was here to babysit her.

  Ava stepped into the lake, and the shock of the cold water jolted her into a state of hyperawareness. The sky was infinite, with a feathering of dove-white clouds. Diamonds of sunlight danced over the lake. A breeze lifted her hair and swooshed through the leaves of the nearby wax myrtles, making them stir.

  Ava waded deeper in.

  “Wait!” Tally called.

  Ava turned around.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” Tally asked.

  Ava lifted her eyebrows. Tally had gone on and on about how dumb Ava’s plan was, but this was the first time she’d shown any anxiety for Ava’s well-being.

  “Yes,” Ava answered honestly. “But I’m still going to do it.”

  Tally slipped off her shoes and socks and rolled up her jeans. She splashed through the water until she stood beside Ava.