“You looked through his phone?”
“And they were horrible,” she goes on. “I don’t know exactly what happened at the party, but I do know he’s a dick.” She gives a furtive look in our mom’s direction. “I mean, a male reproductive organ.”
So she doesn’t know exactly what happened. I decide to wait before telling my little sister. I decide to let Rose tell her, if that’s what she wants to do.
“Anyway,” Emily says, “tell Rose I’m sorry, okay? That I couldn’t confront him about it.”
“That’s why you agreed to go with Chloe?” I ask, a certain amount of wonder in my voice. “That’s what you two fought about. The whole kill-the-messenger thing.”
“She came around eventually,” Emily says. “I mean, she agreed to come with me.”
“You wanted to go to Cathal’s party?”
“I wanted him to admit to it,” she answers. “To realize what he did. To say it with Chloe right there in front of him that if any guy did something like that to his little sister he’d want to kill him.”
Entirely unexpectedly, I feel myself tearing up. “Oh, Emily.” I hug my sister tightly. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
When Emily leaves with my parents, my mom stops at the kitchen door and gives me a funny look. I think she might say something about sisterly bonding and how she and her sisters were always so close and that she’s glad Emily and I are finally getting along, too, but what she says is, “I expect your friends are waiting for you.”
“I can go?” I ask.
Mom nods. “Don’t be home too late,” she says, then she steps outside as the sound of Dad starting the car revs up from the driveway.
“I won’t,” I tell her, and I give a little wave.
Mom looks back at me one last time and says, “Olive?”
“Yeah?”
“Burn the spellbook.”
Night is already falling slowly when I get to the development. Don’t be home too late is a very vague instruction anyway. What’s late, on a balmy evening, when your sister has been found and there’s a beautiful boy waiting for you on a low wall with his guitar?
The first few notes float toward me when I reach the edge of the development with the storm-drain tunnel. I stop suddenly, disorientated. The tunnel isn’t there. Instead, there’s an oak tree.
It takes me several minutes to realize what’s wrong with what I’m seeing. There is no oak tree usually. There was once, before the development was built. The tree Laurel, Ash, and Holly found the spellbook in. Where they found Jude. Where they cast the spell and made everything happen. That was here. The development is named for that very tree. A hint of weird wonder creeps over me.
But there it is. A big old oak at what used to be a fork in the road and is now an ugly old storm-drain tunnel on the border of an empty development. For a moment I think I see something—someone—up there between the leaves, but when I stop my bike to look there’s nothing there. No oak tree, no fork in the road. Just the empty development, the packed earth under my feet and the tunnel beneath it. I must be in some kind of shock still. I tell myself to get a grip and I move on.
I make my way toward the wall around the development on foot and nearly crash into Rose, who is staring at the storm-drain tunnel, just like I was a moment ago.
“Rose?”
She shakes herself. “I thought I saw . . .” she says, then trails off.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Me too.”
“I was just on my way to find you.” She gives me a quick hug hello, even though we saw each other only a couple of hours ago. It’s been a long day.
“Well, you found me,” I tell her, and she turns so we can walk on together. I stop her by touching her elbow.
“What is it?”
“I just . . .” I’m having a hard time figuring out what to say. It’s been a really, really long day. “I thought I lost you for a while back there. I guess I’m trying to say that I hope you’re okay.”
Rose takes my hand. “I thought I lost myself,” she says. “But I think . . . I think I’ll be okay. Eventually. How’s Emily?”
I tell Rose everything Emily told me. Rose’s smile is sweet and sad at the same time.
“I’m starting to like your sister more and more,” she says.
“Me too,” I tell her. I wonder how much of me now understanding Emily would have happened anyway, and how much is not having been around Rose so much over the last week or so. I’m a bit different without her. A bit more open to other people. Like Emily. Like Rowan. Maybe it’s the same for Rose. Maybe, if we hadn’t had that distance, she never would have met Hazel.
It’s as if she reads my thoughts. “Do you think we can trust them?” she asks, like this morning. But the question is softer this time, as if she’s already figured out the answer.
“Can we ever trust anyone really?” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “With our hearts?”
Rose looks a lot more serious than I’m used to her being, but I suppose that’s what change does. “I’ve always trusted you,” she says.
I wrap one arm around her waist and walk with her toward the development.
“I don’t count,” I tell her. “I’m your best friend. We’re each other’s only constants.” I think back to my mom in the kitchen, Emily by the back door. “Besides our families.”
Rose laughs. “Oh, my little breast wart,” she says, one perfect eyebrow raised. “You are my family. Now go talk to that boy who’s been eyeballing you for the last ten minutes.”
She pushes me toward Rowan and walks off toward the entrance of the Oak Road development.
“Forget what I said,” I call after her. “I think we can trust them. I think you can trust that lost heart of yours.” She waves a hand behind her back in reply.
I hop up on the wall beside Rowan, who doesn’t stop playing when he says, “I’ve decided to stay.”
“Oh, yeah?” I try to sound casual, but my heart jumps around at his words.
“Yeah.” He nods toward the development. “Turns out we own this house. Or our mom does anyway.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. My grandparents bought it for her when we were babies.”
I stare into the development. “Really? How did you find out?”
“Ivy,” Rowan says shortly. There’s a small pause before he continues. “She never told us,” he says when he has explained everything to me. “She knew all along and she never said.”
I take a moment to consider my next words. “Is it wrong that I don’t blame her?” I ask him. “I mean, I get why she’d want to keep you.” I blush beet red. “The two of you, I mean. You’re like . . . family to her.” I trust in my expression not to give my thoughts away. Not to reveal what my mom just told me. “I just mean I understand why she’d want to stay here for as long as she could.”
“I suppose,” Rowan says.
“Love makes you do really stupid stuff sometimes,” I say gently. “And if it was only ever her and her mom for pretty much her whole life, maybe she doesn’t quite have the . . . social skills the rest of us have.”
“Hazel and I aren’t exactly the most sociable either,” Rowan agrees.
We stare out into the development for a while, Rowan’s fingers still strumming softly.
“So you think your mom’s back?” I ask. “That she’s in town?”
Rowan nods once. “It’s going to be really weird,” he says. “Seeing her again.” I put a hand on his shoulder and he leans backward slightly into my touch. “I’m not—me and Hazel, we’re not gonna let ourselves believe she’s changed until we see it. It’s not enough that she’s here. If she’s here. I mean, we’ll be okay either way. We’re almost eighteen, so we won’t have to hide out forever. I hope . . .” He trails off. “But we’ll get by either way.” I keep my hand on his shoulder. “I gue
ss this whole thing with Hazel and the spell has made it easier to let people go.”
“Yeah.” I think of Rose. “I know.”
Soon we are joined by Rose and Hazel, quickly followed by Ivy. We all sit in a line on the wall and Hazel and Rose both take out identical bottles of bubbles.
“What happened to your cigarettes?” Rowan asks his sister.
She gives an insouciant shrug. “I decided to quit.” She sends a flurry of bubbles matching Rose’s floating over the development and into the forest.
A little breeze rustles through the trees. Dry leaves and rubbish skitter along the wall at our feet. A small scrap of paper blows up and I catch it without thinking.
I recognize the paper. I recognize the handwriting. It’s the tail end of a diary entry, torn off, windswept, scuffed, and wrinkled.
It’s just one sentence. How old is Mags Maguire and how long has she had that pub?
Rowan puts his guitar down against the wall.
“It’s Laurel’s diary again,” he says. “Your mom’s, I mean.”
I pull the note Mom left me this morning out of the back pocket of my jeans. I hold it up and we all compare the handwriting.
“It’s changed since she was our age,” I say in my defense. “It’s similar but different enough that I didn’t recognize it.”
“What does it mean?” Ivy asks. “How old is Mags Maguire and how long has she had that pub?”
“Well,” I say, “how old is she? How long has she had that pub? My nana said yesterday that a woman named Mags owned it when she was a girl. That she made poteen the old-fashioned way.”
Ivy looks unsure.
“Did your mom ever say what kind of great-aunt-type relative she was?” Rowan asks Ivy.
“Or how many greats?” Rose mutters.
“I don’t know.” Ivy shrugs. “She’s never been sure herself.”
“Huh,” says Hazel.
“Huh indeed,” I say.
“What if she did leave the poteen out on purpose?” Rowan asks. “For us, for Laurel. What if she knew about the spellbook?”
How old is Mags Maguire and how long has she had that pub?
What was it my nana said? It’s happened before and it will happen again. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. A thought pops into my head and comes out of my mouth before I can stop and rationalize it.
“What if Mags wrote the spellbook?”
“Huh,” Rowan says. “The handwriting did look familiar. . . .”
Ivy hops off the wall and runs into the house. She returns with a yellow Post-it note. The writing on it is old-fashioned, slanted and scratched. It says, Eighteen across, seven down.
We all bend over the note.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe? Show us the spellbook and we’ll compare.”
“It’s gone,” says Hazel.
“What do you mean it’s gone?”
“I mean it’s gone. Disappeared. Lost.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Right,” says Rose. “’Cause so much of this made perfect sense already.”
We all laugh a little.
“It is weird, though,” Rowan says then. “How Mags showed up just when Emily and Chloe needed her.”
Or how she was coincidentally around for whatever happened to Cathal. The same way that my mom said Mags was coincidentally around after what happened to the boy who disappeared when she was my age. It almost sounded like Mom was wondering if Mags had something to do with it.
It’s only now that I’m linking what my mom said earlier to what she wrote as Laurel in her diary. I keep having to remind myself that they’re the same person. My mom and Laurel. For a while back there, when we all thought what was happening in the diary was happening right now, I thought that the missing boy was the one I woke up next to after the party. But it couldn’t be. That boy has been dead for twenty-five years. My skin prickles into gooseflesh. Lost lives, lost souls, howling in the storm.
I realize I’ve been staring into space when Rowan touches my knee softly. “Olive?” he says. I shake myself.
“Mags was probably just out for a drive,” I tell him. “It was lucky.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Definitely lucky.” His hand is warm on my knee.
I know we’re all thinking that luck probably has very little to do with it. Just Mags, whoever she really is.
“Is Emily going to be okay?” Rowan asks.
I nod. “They went to Dr. Driscoll, but there’s nothing wrong. Rose’s mom—she’s our GP—has her convinced it was some kind of gas leak. She’s going to be fine.”
A gas leak, or visions of lost souls in a forest that wasn’t there. A flame, or a spark that went out before it caught fire. A spell, or things that get lost and found every day without us realizing it, until we start to notice.
Maybe a mix of both.
Rowan picks up his guitar and begins to sing. “Hey Jude . . . take a sad song and make it better.”
Out in the development, the houses stand silent. Over by the rubble there’s a scurrying of rats. A small dark shape comes darting out toward us and we jump, then relax when we see that it’s a kitten. It’s tiny, black and white, with a nick in each ear. Ivy approaches the cat with caution, and it lets itself be picked up and petted.
“So the spellbook is really gone,” I say. “That’s the end of the magic.”
“What?” says Ivy. “Don’t be silly. It’s not just the spellbook. We’re all magic. Magic’s all around us, all the time.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “You don’t come across an ancient spellbook every day.”
“You don’t need to,” Ivy replies. “There are spells everywhere. You cast a hundred a week without realizing.”
“I assure you,” I tell her, “I do no such thing.”
“Knock on wood,” says Ivy.
“Superstition,” I reply.
The others watch in bemusement, as if we were a spectator sport.
“It’s a spell,” Ivy insists. “You say Bless you when somebody sneezes. That’s a spell.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s a common courtesy.”
“You drink ginger tea with lemon and honey before you even have a cold. You take baths when you feel tense.”
I say, “Ivy—” but she’s not done yet.
“Your parents are married, right? Saying I do is a magic spell. They’re just words like every other word, but said in a ritual, with intent, it’s a spell. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. When they named you, it was a spell. When they let you pick flowers and keep dried leaves, it was a spell. Your dolls came to life because of your spells. Your invisible friend. Your dreams. The way you write your initials and somebody else’s in hearts all over your notebooks. What is that if not a love spell?”
I don’t even try to stop her now, but I can’t help picturing my mom’s Claddagh ring, the collection of things like talismans above my bed, the words written on our arms in marker.
“You cast spells every day. Your makeup is glamor magic. Hiding and highlighting. The clothes you pick out to make your legs look longer, your waist smaller. The red you wear for confidence; the black when you’re sad, the blue for clarity. Your favorite bra. Your lucky socks. The way you take an hour on your hair. It’s a ritual. It’s never just about clothes, or makeup, or perfectly messy buns. It’s about magic.”
I touch my hair self-consciously. All this biking has downgraded my bun from perfectly messy to bird’s nest. I reach into my bag to find some pins to try and tame it and I come out with my charm bracelet. I stare.
What is that if it’s not magic?
“Embrace the unexplained, Olive,” Rowan says to me with a grin.
Rose laughs low, her hand in Hazel’s. “Embrace the uncertain,” she adds. We share a secret smile.<
br />
“Embrace the magic,” Ivy breathes. Hazel produces a marker from who knows where and writes the words on our arms.
I click my charm bracelet into place on my other wrist, over the words that are faded now, almost illegible: never be found. Next to the little olive tree charm is one that wasn’t there when I lost it: a medal of Saint Anthony.
Not all losses are bad, Rowan said to me the other night. Maybe we need to lose some things to make room for others. The everyday things we let go of so we can move on with a lighter load. Rose was right: If you don’t get lost, you’ll never be found.
It’s like my mother said: Everybody’s lost something. They may not know it, but everyone’s got their defining loss: a parent, a pet, a trinket, a treasure, a memory, a belief. Some people have more than one. And if you’re not careful you can spend your whole life looking for what you’ve lost.
But the truth is we’re always losing something. Every day stray hairs fall from our bangs; we discard fingernail clippings; we shed skin. We’re all made up of all of it: of longing, of belonging, and of all the things we lose along the way.
What have I lost?
Beside me, Rowan flicks his lighter open, then clicks it shut again. When he catches me looking, he smiles.
What have I found?
Ivy perches on the wall like a little blue-haired bird, watching over us. Hazel threads her key onto a length of silver string. It hangs strange and pretty around her neck.
What have I kept?
Rose picks up her bottle of bubbles and blows a bunch up in the air.
They don’t pop or float away. They just stay there, still and shining, right above our heads.
Cryptic Crossword of the Lost and Found
ACROSS
8. His partner was old one, cold and brave (6)
9. May a sign lead you to the training ground (8)
10. Quick! You lose your case if this is shown up (4)
11. Strangely need credit to have been a go-between (10)
12. Sounds like a couple of sexist jokes (3,3)
14. A lost 24 across and one quiet ingenious type (8)
Spellbook of the Lost and Found Page 26