by Ali Standish
The Thursday before school starts, Mom creeps into Gram’s room and wakes me up. Boomer grumbles at her. He still thinks Mom, Dad, and Lily are intruders in his house.
I don’t blame him. I hate the way Lily complains about the shower going cold and the noises the house makes at night, and how Mom walks around with a measuring tape, eyeing pieces of Gram’s furniture like they’re naughty children. Sometimes I wish they would all just pack up and head back to our old house. Though I guess it would be okay if Dad came to visit on the weekends.
I pull the covers up and shimmy down beneath them.
“Come on, Emma,” Mom says. “We’re going into town today. Just you and me. Special treat.”
I peek out at her. As usual, she’s already dressed nice with her hair done and lipstick on.
Sometimes I’m sure Mom and I are from different planets, but there’s no denying I’m her daughter. Where Lily has Dad’s buttercream skin and Gram’s green eyes, I’ve got Mom’s much darker complexion and curtains of inky hair. But while Mom’s hair falls in silky plumes around her face, mine is more like a knotted nest. I usually pull it back into a ponytail so I don’t have to deal with it.
“What’s the treat?”
“You’ll see,” she answers helpfully. “Get up and get dressed.”
Mom has felt bad about yelling at me after Gram’s funeral, so I think maybe she’s taking me to the movies or something.
But no. Once I’m in the car, I find out she has kidnapped me to go back-to-school clothes shopping.
In other words, I’ve been had.
“But I’ve already got clothes,” I plead.
“I think we’ve established that you need new tights. And a backpack. Your winter jacket will definitely be too small now, so we’ll need to get a new coat, too.”
I cross my arms over my chest.
Mom sighs. “And we’ll go to the bookstore when we’re finished.”
“Bookstore first,” I say hopefully.
“Fine, fine,” Mom says, shooting me a little you win smile.
We park a few blocks from the bookstore. The streets are jammed with people running errands or licking ice cream cones and soaking up the last days of summer.
We pass a man making dollar bills disappear and re-appear again in strange places. I want to stop and watch—see if I can figure out his trick—but Mom pulls me right past the big church, past the gallery where Gram used to sell some of her paintings, down to the quiet part of the street, where we duck into the bookshop.
I take a deep breath through my nose. I love the smell of bookshops—all those pages waiting to be turned. I speed past Mom, heading toward the kids’ section.
As usual, I go straight to the place where I know The World at the End of the Tunnel will be. I always look there, just in case R. M. Wildsmith has suddenly decided, after fifty years, to write a sequel.
As always, he hasn’t.
I know it’s silly to hope that he would write a sequel after all this time, but I can’t help it. I don’t want the story to be over.
I pull out one of the copies on the shelf and turn to a random page.
Jack galloped into the trees, thinking only of bumpy toads and buried treasure and other things that hide in forests, waiting for children to find them. Sarah paused at the forest’s edge. She felt as you do when you have just left home for a long journey and you’re sure you have forgotten something very precious behind. But she only paused for a moment, and then she shook the feeling away and set off to find her brother.
I shut the book and browse the rest of the shelves slowly, pulling out the interesting-looking books and reading the back covers and jacket flaps. Which is fun but also strategic. The more time I spend here, the less time we’ll have for clothes shopping later.
Any moment now, I know Mom will walk over, look at her watch, sigh impatiently, and tell me it’s time to go.
Except she doesn’t.
Finally, when I have a tower of books so high I can’t add even one more, and I’m actually a little worried Mom might have had a heart attack, I pick up my teetering stack and waddle toward the front of the shop.
I see her standing there, laughing at something the man she’s talking to has just said. The man is tall and has a baseball cap tugged low over his face. He wears a leather jacket, even though it’s way too hot for that today. As I draw nearer, Mom waves at him and he kind of glides from the store.
“Who was that?” I ask.
Mom takes half the books from me, and I see her eyes are glinting with excitement. “That was Arnold O’Shea.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“He’s a big-time journalist,” Mom says. “You see him on the news all the time. Anyway, he’s just bought a new piece of property—right on the river—and he’s looking for an architect, so I gave him my card. Of course, he may already have someone in mind, but we’ll see.”
I’ve never seen her so starstruck before. I don’t care in the slightest about Arnold O’Whatever. But maybe I can use Mom’s good mood to my advantage.
“That’s awesome, Mom,” I say. “Oh, and I’m ready. This is all I want.”
“This is all?” Mom says, floating back to earth. Apparently, my reverse psychology trick has not worked as well as I’d hoped. “You must have fifteen books here.”
“But there’s a really good sale. Buy one, get one half off. So it’s really like I have only . . . not as many.”
You should know that math is not my best subject. It is, in fact, my worst.
“Oh, all right, then.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I say sweetly, holding tighter to the stack of books—my books now—almost not believing my good luck.
After we leave the shop, both of us in a good mood now, we go for burgers, another thing Mom doesn’t usually like to do. She and Lily are “salad people.” When I’m done with my fries, she slides half of hers onto my plate and studies me as I eat.
“I’m sorry that things have been hard on you lately, Emma,” she says. “I know you miss your gram a lot.”
I meet Mom’s gaze, her eyes that are mirror images of my own, and feel a swell of love for her. Even though I’ve never said it, I’m actually really glad that I take after Mom in the looks department. I’m glad we have that in common, at least. Something she and Lily don’t.
In fairy tales, kids almost always have terrible moms. Like Hansel and Gretel’s mom, who leaves them in the woods so she won’t have to feed them anymore. Or else their moms have died and left them with a wicked stepmother, like in Cinderella. Mom and I might not always get along, but I know she loves me. I can see it in her eyes right now. So I guess things could be worse.
“Yeah,” I say. “I miss her all the time.”
“Things will get easier,” Mom replies, leaning back in her chair and blinking, “once you start school and make some friends. To be honest, I was always a little worried that spending so much time with your gram, wonderful as she was, wasn’t the best thing for you. It’ll be good for you to have friends your own age.”
Leave it to Mom to ruin the moment.
She makes it sound like I didn’t have friends at my old school. Like Gram kept me from having them. But Lucy and Isla and Delia were my friends since kindergarten. We sat together at lunch, went to one another’s birthday parties, hung out after school most days.
It’s just that when I started coming to Lanternwood more on the weekends, I missed a lot of stuff. And I couldn’t tell them about the Spinney or anything, because (a) it’s secret and (b) they probably would have thought it was stupid.
Anyway, they all started to change last year. Like, instead of going to play board games at Delia’s house, everyone else wanted to stay at school and watch the boys’ basketball game. I still don’t understand how watching someone else play something could be more fun than actually playing yourself.
Then I moved here at the end of sixth grade, and after a few weeks, we stopped texting each other so much. We had already kind o
f drifted apart, I guess.
After Mom pays the bill and we start toward the mall, I am still thinking about what she said about making friends.
I haven’t actually given my new school much thought, but now I’m wondering if Mom is right. Will I make friends? Because kindergarten was a long time ago. Making friends now is probably much harder. Especially when you don’t know anyone. I wonder if there will be any other new kids.
I follow Mom around the department store, lugging my two bags of books as she leads me to the accessories section. We pick out tights first (“I expect you to take better care of these, Emma”) and a hat with matching gloves that I like because they’re purple—Gram’s and my favorite color. I find a fleece jacket that’s really soft and warm. Then, just when I think we’re done, Mom finds a rack of jeans that are on sale and forces me to take two pairs to the dressing room.
The lights are bright as I wiggle out of my shoes. It’s when I’m pulling the jeans off that I glance at my foot and I see it.
The white spot.
It’s not that I’ve forgotten about it since Gram’s funeral. It’s just that I’ve been hoping if I ignored it, it would go away. I’ve been wearing my socks around the house so Mom won’t see and I don’t have to look at it.
It hasn’t gone away, though. It’s still there and bigger now, but less round. It’s kind of . . . shapeless. Like a snowball that’s started to melt.
There’s something else, too. A new spot in the same place as the first one, just on the other foot. It can’t be a coincidence.
I scrunch back out of the jeans and gaze at myself in the mirror, checking my body for more spots. I don’t find any more on my legs, but as I gaze at my arms, I see a little cluster of them by my elbow, like white freckles. And when I peer very closely at my face under the bright lights, I’m sure that I can see pale pinpricks above my eyebrows. Were these little spots already there? Or are they new?
My palms are sweating, and my mouth goes suddenly dry. What’s happening to me?
“Emma?” Mom calls. “Do the jeans fit? I was thinking we should look at shoes before we leave.”
“No,” I say. “No, they don’t fit. I don’t want to look at shoes, Mom. I’m tired.”
She must hear something off in my voice, because she walks closer to the dressing room. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” I say again, because the last thing I need is her freaking out right now. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
Except I think I might be lying.
5
I let Mom buy me a terrible pink backpack so that she’ll let us leave the store. When we get home, I run upstairs with my bags of books and clothes and throw them all in a heap onto my bed. Boomer has followed me, hoping that I’ll take him for a walk.
“Just a minute, boy,” I say, patting him hastily on the head.
Then I open up my laptop, search for “white spots on skin,” and click on the first result. I skim through the text, which seems to be describing exactly what’s happening to me. Then I come to the pictures.
I scroll down, only letting my eyes rest on each image for a second before I close my laptop.
I don’t have what the people in those pictures have. I can’t. I just have a couple of white spots that are probably there because Mom switched detergents or something. They’ll be gone in a day or two.
Trying to shake the images from my mind, I scurry down the hall to the bathroom. I lock the door behind me and turn on the bath tap.
When the water finally gets hot, I slip in and I stare at the blobs of white on my feet.
Then I grab Lily’s loofah, pour soap over it until it’s good and foamy, and begin to scrub at my toes. I scrub the spot on my right foot for at least a minute, but when I splash water over it, the spot is still there, so pale it almost glows. I scrub the left one next.
After a few minutes, the doorknob begins to rattle.
“Emma!” Lily calls, rapping on the door. “Emma, let me in. I need to get my straightener.”
“Go away!”
“Seriously, Emma. Open the door!”
She pounds harder.
“Just give me a few minutes!”
I scrub harder.
“I’m getting Mom!”
She stomps off down the hall, and I look at my feet.
The spots are still there.
I pull myself out of the bath, shivering, wrap a towel around me, and open the door just as Lily is marching back down the hall, Mom behind her.
“Girls,” Mom says, “we’ve talked about—”
But she stops short, glancing from my face down to my feet. “What’s wrong?” she asks. “You’re bleeding!”
I look down. I’ve scrubbed my toes so hard that little droplets of blood have started to bead between them.
“Nothing,” I mumble. “I just—”
But Mom has already leaned down to examine them. “What are these spots?” she asks. “These places where your skin is white?”
Lily scowls back and forth from me to Mom, like she’s disappointed that I’m not getting the scolding I deserve.
“I don’t know, Mom,” I say. I put my palms to my face and I begin to cry. Then Mom is there, wrapping me up in her arms and making calming noises.
And I know she’s trying to make me feel better, but all I can think is that I wish she were Gram.
6
The next morning, I wake up when the light is still thin and silver. It’s one of the last days of summer. I should go back to sleep.
But then yesterday comes rushing back to me, and I’m wide awake.
Right after she saw my spots, Mom called the doctor, who told her that she should make an appointment to see a dermatologist. Mom got one for next Friday.
“Dr. Crenshaw also told me that we shouldn’t worry in the meantime,” she said, squeezing my shoulders.
But I could feel Mom hovering over me all night. Worrying.
Half of me wants to pick up my computer and do more research. The other half is itching to go stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, examine every inch of my body for more spots.
“Come on, Boomer,” I say instead, nudging him awake. “We’re going for a walk.”
The air is cool outside. It’s still so early that we have the village and the meadows to ourselves.
The only other person I see is the Apple Lady, wearing her usual headphones and carrying a basket away from the orchard. I don’t know her real name. I only really ever see her going to church on Sundays and walking around the village in the morning. It seems like she usually comes out to pick apples from the orchard or wild blackberries from the brambles that grow along the edges of the meadow. It must have been apples the first time I saw her, though, because I’ve always thought of her as the Apple Lady.
As we pass her, she looks right through me without saying hello.
That’s normal for her. I asked Gram about her once, and she said some people just keep themselves to themselves. But I bet it gets lonely, keeping yourself to yourself.
Boomer races up to her, wagging his tail and nipping at her apple basket. She flinches, lifting her basket higher.
“Sorry,” I mutter, pulling him away. I push Boomer forward, and he keeps galloping right past the end of the meadow and into the trees. I run behind him, calling his name, but he’s probably already halfway to the glade.
I hesitate for a moment. The Spinney is my favorite place in the world, but the day of Gram’s funeral was the first time I’ve been in a while.
Today, though, I feel drawn there again. I need a distraction from my own skin. And besides, I have to find Boomer. So I slip under the barbed wire and into the woods.
From the meadow, the Spinney looks narrow—nothing more than a few rows of trees. But once you get inside, it feels vast. Like the Goldengrove, which is enchanted and grows bigger the farther in you go.
The trees are quieter than I remember, and my scuffed boots thunder as they hit the forest floor. The shadow
s are deep as wells. It’s a relief to reach the edge of the valley and see Boomer down below, lapping water from the stream.
I make my way into the glade, under the shelter of the sycamore tree, and then settle myself on Throne Rock.
It feels so strange to be here without Gram. Without anyone.
When I was here the other day, I was so sure that if I had looked up, I would see the charmed folk like I used to. But now the glade is empty, and I can’t remember the last time I saw them. Like really saw them. When did they slip away? How did it happen without me even noticing?
“Hello?” I call softly. “Is anyone there?”
But no matter how long I sit there, no matter how quiet I am (Gram always told me that the charmed folk are terrified of loud noises), no one comes. Not a single fairy flitting over my head or a gnome out collecting acorns. Not even a plain old robin. They are nowhere to be found.
On that very first day Gram took me here, she told me that the charmed folk used to be everywhere.
She sat down in a patch of jade grass by the edge of the stream, and the sun coming through the sycamore branches made it look like she was sitting in a tiny field of golden flowers. I sat opposite her, clasping the book I had just found inside the sycamore hollow.
“But that was a long time ago,” Gram explained, “back in Ireland and England and Germany, before the time when people decided they were afraid of magic.”
“Why were they afraid?” I asked.
“People are always afraid of things they don’t understand, darlin’,” said Gram. “Being afraid is easy. It’s understanding that takes work.”
“So what happened?” I asked, from my place beside her. “What did the people do?”
“They hunted the charmed folk,” Gram said, eyes narrowing to a knife’s edge. “They hunted them almost into extinction. They chopped down the trees of the old-growth forests so the charmed folk would have nowhere to hide. So the poor creatures came here as stowaways on passenger ships. They hid in steamer trunks and hat boxes. They came hoping for forests deep enough to hide them. Old forests, like this one, with enough tree magic to protect them.”