by Fuller, Tara
“Excuse me miss? But have you seen my little granddaughter anywhere. She goes by the name sugar-bear.” It was the same joke Grandpa told every time he’d seen me for the past four years. But this time it might have been closer to the truth than ever. I was a stranger compared to the little girl he called sugar-bear, light years away from the person I used to be.
“Hey Grandpa,” I finally muttered and made my way into his awaiting arms. I lingered there for a moment inhaling the familiar aroma of old spice and tobacco from his blue button-down shirt. It wasn’t the most pleasant smell in the world, but I loved it. It made me feel safe. My Mom always smelled like lavender. It was a beautiful smell that I could never replicate even when I borrowed her perfume or shampoo. It was just her smell. Grandpa kissed my cheek tickling me with his fluffy white mustache, distracting me from the painful memory.
“Hi sweetheart.” He squeezed me hard enough to lift me from the ground then set me back on my feet.
Grams stepped back. Her grey eyes swept over my face, the light in them dimming as she drank me in. No doubt replaying a thousand memories of my mother. A sharp sting of pain seeped out of her and into me. She shook it off quickly and smiled.
“Well no need to stand around outside chit-chatting all day. Let’s go inside and have some dinner,” Grams said as she ushered us up the rickety porch steps that seemed like they were a hundred years old. The warm garlic smell of my grandmother’s famous lasagna wafted through the doorway and into the crisp evening air, replacing the cool scent of cedar and salt water. My empty stomach growled in response but the ache in my heart quickly protested and sent my abdomen twisting into knots. It didn’t feel like home here. But then again, home didn’t really exist anymore, did it?
Chapter 3
I dreamt of her again last night. God help me, what would my father say about me now? His only son lazing about dreaming about a girl that doesn’t exist. But Goddess, how torturous to love a girl so much that only lives in my dreams. To have the curve of her hip, the texture of her hair, and shape of her lips all but engraved in my mind yet never be allowed to touch her. Sometimes I wonder if this is punishment from God or my mother’s Goddess for some boyhood mischief I caused years ago. It doesn’t matter. I have to focus on the task at hand. Aunt Marion has fallen ill. What can I do? She has chosen darkness. Black magic consumes her. But she is all that I have. How can I let her die? Like my mother and father before her, shall I just watch as the others allow her to parish and say it is God’s will? No. I won’t let it happen. I haven’t practiced a spell in months. Part of me is terrified, yet I cannot ignore the excitement building within me. My fingers ache to work magic. I’ve gathered most of the supplies I need. My mother’s necklace has been removed from its hiding place and now hangs around my neck. I have the salt and sage for the purification circle, and I have been studying my mother’s spell diligently. The one that has taken us on so many journeys. The one that failed my father. I wish I had spent more time studying with mother. I wish I knew more of healing spells so that I didn’t have to fool with a spell as complex as this. Once I watched as mother healed a woman on the brink of death. She had just given birth and her blood loss was too much for her tiny body. But mother worked magic, worked miracles. She saved her. And they hanged her for it. I’m sorry mother. I’m sorry that I must break my promise now. I don’t have a choice.
~ Alexander 1692
***
I stared up at the big brick building wishing I could be anywhere else but here. Tahiti, Rome, Denver, hell even Antarctica would have been better. Anywhere but my new school. I looked down at my jeans and plain white tee, hoping I’d pulled off my attempt to remain invisible. To stay off of the radar. The only thing that gave color to my bland exterior was the gold-laced leather bands strapped around each of my wrists. I’d braided my hair and fastened it with a gold barrette so that they wouldn’t look too out of place. A group of kids walked past me whispering, their necks swiveling around and their eyes wide as they passed me. I guess they didn’t see many new students around here.
So much for invisible.
I’d managed to get my schedule and make it through the first half of the day without speaking to anyone, but when I entered the cafeteria for lunch my chest tightened with panic. I wanted to dissolve into the obnoxious blue paint on the walls or fade away into the scuffed off-white tile. Every table was filled with students and, as expected, sectioned off into various clicks. They weren’t hard to spot. The band geeks–sweet and smart, the Emo kids–very cool but uninviting to newcomers, and last but not least, the popular kids–cheerleaders and jocks. Bevin always called them, the pretty people. I used to be one of them. I didn’t feel like one now though, as I stood awkwardly waiting in line for a tray of food that I knew I wouldn’t eat. I inched out of the line and breathed a sigh of relief when a short redhead girl bounced to my side.
“Hi, I’m Paige.” She flashed me a smile that would have left the boys back home panting. “Cool bracelets.” She tapped a leather band around my wrist with her freshly manicured nail and I silently thanked Bevin for being a genius. I smiled back as I looked her over. Definitely one of the pretty people.
“I-I’m Rowan,” I said. Why was I so nervous? She laughed like she could read my thoughts and grabbed my tray.
“Come on you’re eating with us.” Her shimmery red curls bounced as she skipped away. I followed, letting my senses stretch out, opening myself to her emotions, something I usually tried to avoid.
Joy. Curiosity. Genuine interest.
It was nothing like my real first day of school. The day I realized that the things I had in common with the other girls ended at our matching pig tails and neatly packed pb&j sandwiches. By the end of that day I was a mess. Crying when I got near the kids with separation anxiety, laughing hysterically when I got near a teacher who’d heard a joke I couldn’t have possibly heard or gotten at the innocent age of five. By the end of that first day they said I was crazy and I believed them. I soaked mom’s pink button down shirt with tears.
“I’m never going back,” I cried. She smoothed my hair, her palm molding to the back of my head as if it were made specifically for that purpose. “They said I’m weird Mama.”
“Oh baby,” she said, soft, sweet. “You’re not weird. You’re special. You have no idea how special. They just don’t understand it. People are afraid of things they don’t understand. That’s all.”
“I don’t want to be special. I want to be the same as the other kids.”
She pulled away to wipe my tears with the pads of her thumbs. “Then be the same baby. The things that you feel… just push them away.”
I sniffled. “I can do that?”
“You can do anything you want to sweetheart. Anything.”
“You still with us Rowan?” Paige nudged my shoulder. I blinked away the memory and stared at a large table full of kids. Some of them looked like seniors, but mostly my grade, I thought. I recognized a few from my earlier classes. One boy in particular I remembered from Bio. He had short spiky sun-kissed hair and a light spattering of freckles along his cheeks and nose. He looked up at me through curious celery-green eyes. In another life I might have tried to talk to him, maybe even flirted a little. But this wasn’t another life, so I looked away.
“Hey guys. This is Rowan.” She sat my tray down and took the seat beside me, leaning back to put me on display for the entire table.
“Rowan? I’ve never heard that name before.” The cute blonde boy sitting across from me said. “I’m Tyler.”
“Most people haven’t,” I said.
“I like it.” He grinned at me before taking a sip of his coke.
“So why did you move here so late in the semester?” Paige said. Suddenly all eyes were on me waiting for an answer. It was the exact situation I’d been trying to avoid.
I floundered for an excuse that didn’t involve mentioning my dead mother or recent suicide attempt and found myself rubbing the bands around my wris
ts to make sure they were in place.
“My family went on a cross country road trip. I didn’t want to go so I came to stay with my grandparents,” I said, hoping my answer would suffice. I wanted to kick myself for not coming up with something better.
“The last month of school?” Another girl down the table asked. I didn’t know her name. “Why didn’t they just wait until school got out?”
“Ummm…they…Dad’s work schedule is pretty crazy,” I said.
“And they didn’t make you go?” Tyler asked.
I shook my head and sipped my drink. No way was I saying anymore. The lies were already getting all knotted up in my head.
Paige laughed. “Oh my God you’re lucky. My parents made me drive all the way to Yellow Stone with them last summer. It was terrible. You are so lucky you didn’t have to go. You’ll have a much better summer here.”
“Hopefully.” I smiled, feeling a little warmer inside. This wasn’t so hard. If I was being honest with myself this was a lot easier than being back home. At least no one knew me here. Here I wasn’t the crazy girl whose Mom had just died. Here I was just the new girl.
“So who are your grandparents?” Tyler asked.
“Um, Elinore and Walter Bliss.” I grabbed my water and took a sip. The tension in my stomach was slowly unraveling, letting the liquid take its course.
“Bliss? Ooh! Don’t they live in the old Foster place?” Paige scooted to the edge of her seat like she was ready to tell a story around the campfire.
I shrugged. I didn’t know anything about my grandparent’s house, besides the fact that it was huge, old, and hella creepy.
“Yeah, yeah,” she went on. “That place is supposed to be haunted. Is it totally creepy inside?”
“Not really,” I lied. “It’s actually kind of nice since they remodeled it.”
“Have you heard anything? You know, strange whispers in the night, unexplained footsteps in the hall? Ghosts?” Paige pushed aside her mountain dew can and grinned.
“I heard that somebody died in there. Didn’t find the body for weeks.” A kid said from the other side of Paige.
“No, no, no. A bunch of witches used to live there.” A blonde girl said. “My Uncle said they used to do séances in the backyard.”
“I’ve only been there one night. But nope. No ghosts yet,” I said quickly. Anything to make them stop.
“Don’t let them get to you Rowan. I heard they wanted to turn that place into a museum, but your grandpa wouldn’t take no for an answer. He paid a crap load to get that place,” Tyler said. “I think it’s kinda cool.”
“Well still, it’s creepy that you have to sleep there.” Paige didn’t seem deterred. “If you ever get freaked out you can stay at my place anytime.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Not that I planned to take her up on it. For all I knew she’d be worse than Casper. I looked over her freshly manicured nails and her gloss coated lips. Yeah this chick would want to braid each other’s hair for sure. “Anyway, sounds like it should be an interesting summer.”
“Well, I’m glad you decided to skip the road trip.” Tyler smiled again, his affection swirling around me like smoke. I waited for the awkward butterfly feeling in my gut that would normally follow after a boy this cute would flirt with me, but it never came. I still felt empty. Just the faint echo of a fluttery feeling rattling somewhere in the distance, but never breaking free from whatever prison that was harboring my once normal emotions.
“Down boy.” Paige rolled her eyes and giggled. “Sorry Rowan. We haven’t had any fresh meat around here in a while. So I apologize in advance for the guys’ behavior. Most of them mean well. Well, this one probably does anyhow.” She motioned to Tyler with her salad fork. Then her eyes darted down the table, focusing on another boy. “As for Max.” She hissed his name and rolled her eyes but the burly boy didn’t flinch. It was the first time I’d noticed him staring at me and my skin crawled the longer he held my gaze. The emotions coming off of him were like steam. White hot and enough to make me blush and cringe all at the same time.
“Hey Max! Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last longer,” she said. “Seriously Max. Chill out.”
This seemed to register with him. He returned his attention to his tray of food, picking it apart angrily with his fork.
The rest of the day went as seamlessly as lunch had. I didn’t like my math teacher, but then again I hated math, so she didn’t have much of a chance. The school was small, but not bad. Not as gossipy as my high school in Denver. Back home they were sharks. Here I was dealing with a school of curious fish.
By the time the sixth period bell had rung, Tyler had found me in the hall. “Hey.” His smile widened when he saw me. “Can I walk you out?”
I wanted to run. To jam myself inside a dark locker and escape the way he was looking at me, but instead I just smiled back and said, “Sure.” Tyler liked me. It was coming off of him in waves in an almost intoxicating, tingling heat. It’s not that he wasn’t nice. He was, and ridiculously cute with hazel green eyes, dimples, and a set of lips that Bevin would have called delectable. It was all me. I was irreversibly screwed up, virtually undateable. I wanted to tell him that he was wasting his time, but I couldn’t. He would want to know why and I couldn’t go into that. So instead I did my best to do what a normal seventeen-year-old girl would do. I let him carry my bag. I smiled, laughed, and nodded in all the appropriate places as he told me about a few of the cool spots to visit in pint sized town of Ipswich.. In truth I was starting to feel like a robot by the time I found my way out of the brick school building and into the sunlight.
Grandpa was there waiting for me, the engine to his rusted 1985 Chevy truck rumbling like thunder as it idled by the curb. He gave me a suspicious smile when he saw Tyler carrying my bag.
“I’ll see you tomorrow Tyler.” I pulled my bag off of his arm and hopped into the truck before he could say anything else. “Thanks.” I called out of the open window as Grandpa pulled away. I watched Tyler shrink in the rearview mirror until he disappeared behind a pavement hill.
A few minutes later we coasted into the driveway next to my grandpa’s 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1. It was shiny black with red racing stripes and literally one of the coolest cars I’d ever laid eyes on. I wasn’t a car enthusiast or anything but this one was enough to make even me drool.
“Nice ride Grandpa.” I smiled as I hopped out of the truck wondering why the Mustang was out of the garage where it usually lived under the safety of a tarp.
“You mean your ride right?”
I stopped. No, froze is more like it. “What?”
“Well I was sort of hoping you’d help out at the Briar this summer, part time of course, and figured you might need a car for that.” He tossed me the keys and I almost forgot my name. This was the kind of thing that happened to Bevin, not me.
“That’s it?” I asked, incredulously checking the bushes for hidden cameras. This had to be a joke. Still not convinced, I opened myself to the love and sincerity coming off of him. It wrapped around me like a warm blanket on a cold winter night convincing me that I was indeed not being punked. I almost fainted.
“Well we were going to give it to you as a graduation present next year anyways. No harm in having it early I suppose.”
I threw my arms around his neck, still in shock. “Thank you. I love it!”
“Well are you going to try her out or what?” Grandpa asked, his smile widening to match mine. I jingled the keys in my hand.
I ran my hand over the hood, admiring the way the sun reflected off of the red paint, a thousand shimmery facets of light bouncing off the surface. It was beautiful. It did very little to numb the ache though. I was starting to lose hope for that ever happening. If this couldn’t give me an escape from the pain then I wasn’t sure anything could.
“She sure it pretty isn’t she?” Grandpa said, his voice full of pride.
“Amazing,” I said. Cam was going to be so ticked off. Well
, unless Grandpa had another classic car hiding in the garage. I hated to admit it but as much as I complained about being the oldest, at times like this, it rocked. “I love it Grandpa. Really.”
And that’s when it happened. The moment that would change my world forever. The hairs started to rise across the back of my neck and I felt it. Not just the unusual flash of recognition, but the pull. The kind you feel when someone is staring at you without your knowledge. I gave in and let it tear my eyes away from the car when a flash of white caught my eyes.
There was a boy standing across the street just outside the tree line, his eyes burning into me with the kind of intensity that made my heart pound. I had to catch my breath as I let my gaze drift over him. His faded jeans and crisp white t-shirt clung to his thin athletic build. His coal-black hair was just long enough to fall artfully across one of his startling blue eyes. And those eyes, two quizzical oceans of wonder that refused to let me look away. They looked so sad. Like they had seen so much sorrow that it was just a part of them now. I imagined that’s what my eyes looked like, hollow shells staring back at a world. He was so…familiar. But I couldn’t place from where. How long had he been watching me?
I stumbled back and caught myself on the hood of the car when an earth-shattering jolt of recognition and warmth flooded me, consumed me. But I didn’t know him. Had never seen him. Which meant he recognized…me. He quickly dropped his gaze to the ground and continued to trudge down the street. He didn’t look back. I stared after him, amazed at the warm fluttery feeling that bubbled through me and faded at the exact moment he disappeared over the hilltop.
“Boy from school?” Grandpa asked as he followed my gaze.
I ran through the list of faces I’d seen at school that day. None of them came close. I would’ve remembered someone that made me feel like that.
“Rowan?”
“Um, maybe. I’m not sure,” I said, still a little stunned. Boys like that didn’t exist back home. Up until this point, to my knowledge, boys like that didn’t exist period.