“Hi,” Olivia greeted them warmly. “It’s really nice to meet you.”
They smiled and shook her hand before excusing themselves toward the tent to search for their table. Olivia looked around the entryway for a quiet place to talk, spotting a tall row of pink plum trees next to a curved brick wall.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” she asked, nodding her head toward the shaded patch of grass.
“What’s wrong?” Soren asked as they ducked beneath the canopy of pink-and-black speckled blossoms on the far side of the wall. “You’re shaking. Are you okay?”
Olivia held out her arms, circling her fingers around Soren’s wrists and squeezing them tight. “I have to ask you something,” she said. “It’s going to sound strange, and random, and maybe kind of annoying, but…I need to know.”
Soren’s sandy eyebrows were catching the last low rays of sunlight, glistening yellow as they locked together at the bridge of his nose. “What is it?” he asked, his emerald eyes searching hers.
“I just really need to know,” she said, taking a deep breath and pressing her eyes shut. “Why do you like me?”
With her eyes closed, she could hear Soren’s laugh, quiet and raspy. She opened one eye and saw that a toothy, lopsided grin had spread across his face.
“Why do I like you?” he repeated. “That’s the question? Why do I like you?”
Olivia stomped her feet in place, suddenly remembering the way she’d felt as a toddler, in those first few moments of a temper tantrum, just before sprawling out and kicking her gangly limbs against the tiled kitchen floor. She didn’t have time for this. She needed an answer, and she needed it to be good.
“Yes,” she said. “Why do you care about me so much? What is it that makes you want to be with me?”
That was it. That was exactly what she needed to know. Because if he could give her a reason, one reason, then she would know for certain that he didn’t just like her because of a wish.
Soren’s smile faded and turned into something quieter, something more aware. He freed one of his hands from the clutches of her trembling fingers and reached around behind her neck, burrowing his palm inside the tumble of her curls until the soft part of his hand was pressed flat against her skin. He leaned down, bringing his face even with hers, and looked her squarely in her eyes.
“Olivia,” he said, and Olivia felt her lungs expanding, the veins in her forehead starting to pulse. “I don’t know what happened, but from the very first moment I saw you…”
Olivia swallowed and held her breath.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said, shaking his head, bewildered, a sideways smile lighting up his face. “It was just…magic.”
Olivia’s stomach dropped, a high-pitched ringing suddenly buzzing in her ears.
Magic?
She had her answer.
Soren loosened his hold on Olivia’s neck, his arms hanging in quiet defeat by his side. He took a small step backward and glanced down at the grass. “What?” he asked, his voice wounded and afraid.
Olivia looked up at him, at his piercing green eyes, his strong jaw, the little row of scars beneath his chin. She’d never gotten to ask where those scars came from. There hadn’t been time to learn all of his stories, and now she might never get the chance.
But she wasn’t supposed to. He’d said it himself. They were only together because of the magic. His stories were supposed to be for someone else.
She had to say good-bye. She would use her last wish to free him from the spell, to take away the magic that had made him hers. It made her feel empty just thinking about it, but she knew it was what needed to be done.
Just one more kiss. All she needed was one more kiss, and then she’d wish the wish away.
Olivia stepped forward, reaching her hands around his face and drawing him in. She wanted to remember this feeling, the heavy weight of his chest against hers, the sweet-mint taste of his lips. She felt the blood rushing through her veins, filling her up like helium in a balloon.
I wish—she forced herself to say the words first in her head. I wish I’d never—
“Olivia?”
A sharp voice interrupted them from over Olivia’s shoulder, and she untangled her arms from around Soren’s neck.
Calla was standing at the foot of the path, her face drained of color, her eyes hard and cold. “It’s time for our speech,” she said, evenly and without emotion. “Everybody’s waiting.”
“Calla,” Olivia said, turning her back to Soren, her hands gripping the sides of her head as if she were afraid it might fall off. Calla’s eyes pooled with angry tears and she shook her head silently from side to side. “Calla, I’m sorry. I was going to—”
Calla gathered her skirt in her shaking hands and hurried back toward the stage.
“Calla, wait!” Olivia called, rushing after her.
But Calla had already taken off in a sprint, running down the stone path and away from the rotunda, away from the runway, away from the hundreds of people quietly sitting, waiting to be welcomed to the show.
36
“Get out of the road!”
Olivia looked up and realized she’d veered off of the sidewalk and into a bus lane, as a trio of angry mountain bikers zipped by, nearly tearing off one side of her wrinkled, dirty-hemmed dress.
She’d been walking for over an hour. The Palace was miles from her house, and she certainly wasn’t interested in breaking any records for speed. It was enough of a challenge to keep her feet moving at all, let alone think about where they were going or how fast.
After a bit of a delay and a chorus of curious murmurs as to Calla’s whereabouts, Lark had decided that the show must go on and had happily taken the reins. Olivia had passed off her thrift costume to Eve and scoured every corner of the Palace grounds, but Calla was nowhere to be found. Soren had hung around, trying to be helpful, comforting Olivia and telling her it would all be okay. But every second he was near her only made Olivia feel worse.
And so Olivia decided to walk home, back to the place where she couldn’t do any more harm. Or where, even if she did, nobody would be paying enough attention to notice.
She finally trudged around her corner, but standing in her gown at the foot of her stoop, Olivia knew she wasn’t ready to go inside. It wasn’t very late, and her parents would probably still be up. The last thing Olivia was prepared to do was to put on a good face.
She walked back out toward the street, turning at the corner and crossing over to Dolores Park. In the distance, on one of the low wooden benches lining the perimeter of the lawn, Violet was already waiting.
“How did it go?” Violet asked, blinking like she was afraid of the answer.
“How did it go?” Olivia repeated. She couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. They poured down her cheeks in endless sobs, her nose running and her cheeks red-hot. “How do you think it went? It was a disaster.”
She slumped on the bench next to her sister, expecting Violet to wrap an arm around her shaking shoulders. When she didn’t move, Olivia looked up to find her sister staring vacantly at the sidewalk.
“I told you so,” was all she said.
Olivia froze, a sob caught in her mouth. “You told me so? You’re the one who tricked me into wishing for Soren in the first place.”
“Of course I did,” Violet whispered. “Sometimes being alive means taking risks, and sometimes things can get messy, but—”
“Risks?” Olivia asked, screaming now, totally beyond caring what she might look like to random, late-night passersby. “You want me to take risks? Like the risks you took? Like the reason you’re dead?” Olivia didn’t know why she said it, or where it came from, but the minute the question escaped her lips, she knew the words had been building inside her for a long time.
Violet looked back toward the gravel walkway. Her eyes were cloudy and her cheeks flushed red. She shrugged sadly and looked back up at her sister. “At least I lived, first.”
Ol
ivia felt her body trembling with rage, her veins jumping, the blood rushing past her ears in hot, angry waves. “You’re impossible!” She held the hem of her dress in one hand and spun on her heels, walking quickly toward the curb. “I wish you’d just leave me alone.”
Olivia ran across the street, hurrying down the sidewalk.
It wasn’t until she reached her front door that she realized what she’d said.
37
The dress.
Olivia reached her stoop and looked down at her gown.
I wish you’d leave me alone.
What had she done?
She sprinted back up her street, cutting between a crowded row of parked cars and crossing toward the park.
The bench they’d been sitting on was lonely and deserted.
“Violet?” Olivia called out into the night. “Violet, come back!”
She whipped her head in one direction, then the other, scanning the dark, empty streets for her sister. “Violet!” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean any of it.”
Olivia collapsed on the bench, her head falling into her hands. “Please come back,” she whispered into her fingers, tears soaking her palms.
And that was when she saw it.
At first it was just a light, a blurry glow between clenched fingers.
She let her hands fall to her lap and turned to the other side of the bench, the side where Violet had been sitting.
There, fluttering its wings precariously at the edge of the armrest, was a fragile, shining butterfly.
Olivia gasped, her hands again finding her face.
“Violet?” she asked quietly. “Please. Don’t go. Don’t leave me again.”
The golden butterfly flapped its wings once more, before lifting and gliding off into the night.
38
“Honey, I think there’s somebody on our boat.”
Olivia’s eyes blinked open, a squeaky, high-pitched voice pulling her out of a deep and troubled sleep.
“What do you mean there’s somebody—”
Olivia, still in her gown from the night before, wrapped the itchy blue blanket around her shoulders and stumbled to her feet. Too upset to go home, too heartbroken to face her empty room, she’d decided to hail a cab to Sausalito and spend the night on her grandfather’s boat. She’d snuggled up under the shelter of the faded green awning and cried herself to sleep…completely forgetting that the boat now belonged to strangers. Strangers who were now standing across from her on the dock, seething in their tennis whites.
“This is private property,” the ambiguously British man scolded. Olivia swung one leg over the ledge at the stern, quickly reaching back for her discarded sandals and hopping up onto the swaying dock.
“Hey!” his wife called after her as Olivia took off running. “Get back here!”
Olivia ran harder than she’d known she could, her bare feet burning on the gritty pavement. She didn’t look back until she’d reached the main road, ducking inside a bait-and-tackle shop and peeking out from behind the door.
She flattened against the wall, a display of fishing lures flopping around her face, catching her breath until she was convinced she wasn’t being followed.
“Sorry,” she murmured to the befuddled shopkeeper, a salty old man in a black wool cap. “Do you think I could use your phone?”
Forty minutes and one silent cab ride later, Olivia was quietly letting herself in the front door of her house, hoping against all odds that her parents had chosen this morning as the first in their lives to sleep in.
“Where the hell have you been?”
No such luck.
The question came from Mac, who was rushing toward her with short, brusque steps, his face red and worn.
Over his shoulder, Bridget appeared in her bathrobe, her blond hair flattened to her face and her cheeks marked with drying tears.
“Sorry,” Olivia said, so softly she wondered if she’d even said anything at all.
“What were you thinking?” Mac continued. “You can’t just disappear. We’ve been up all night, calling anybody we could think of, trying to find out where you were.”
Bridget joined them in the hall, silent for once, and Mac turned to her abruptly, as if he’d forgotten she was there. He put a sturdy arm around her shoulder and hugged her close.
It was the first time Olivia had seen her parents touch each other in months, and for reasons she couldn’t quite explain, it made her furious.
Who were these people? And who were they kidding? Her parents had hardly even said a word to her, let alone each other—unless it was four letters and screamed from behind a slamming door—in weeks, and now they were going to go through the whole worried-parent-tag-team routine?
Olivia rolled her eyes, exhaled a flop of tangled hair out of her face, and hugged the blanket closer to her shoulders, starting up the stairs.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mac called after her. “We’re not done here.”
Olivia turned on her heels, her heart pounding.
“Done?” she shouted back. “Done with what? What are you doing? All of a sudden you’re worried about me? You want to know where I’ve been? Where the hell have you been?”
Mac and Bridget looked at each other, appearing to shrink back into themselves.
“You can’t just decide to be parents when it suits you,” Olivia said, before scampering up the two flights to her room, slamming the door behind her, and collapsing onto her bed.
39
After changing out of her dress and shoes, Olivia stormed back downstairs, pulling the front door open and slamming it shut behind her.
She started down the street, not entirely sure where her feet were taking her, but too exhausted to second-guess. A few blocks of trance-walking later, she found herself under a familiar awning, peering in through cloudy windows at a small girl hunched over a sewing machine.
Olivia pushed through the doors, the metallic, ear-piercing chimes causing her to jump.
“Back so soon?” Posey greeted her without looking up.
Olivia walked slowly across the uneven floorboards, her eyes drifting from one expressionless mannequin to another. Suddenly, she recognized herself in their faces: blank, sullen, empty.
She sank into a heap on the ratty sofa without saying a word.
Posey switched off the machine, a thick silence hanging in the room. She spun around on her low swivel stool.
“What happened?” she asked. Olivia could tell by the hushed tone of her voice that she already knew it was bad.
“I need your help,” was all Olivia could manage, before falling apart into a now-comfortable rhythm of labored breathing and rocking sobs.
Posey sat beside her, not so close that their bodies were touching, but close enough so that Olivia could feel her gaze, wide with careful alarm.
Once Olivia had caught her breath, she started again. “I used my last wish for something terrible,” she said, “and I need you to help me take it back.”
Posey started to say something, but Olivia cut her off.
“I didn’t mean it,” Olivia said. “I said I wanted her gone, but I don’t. You have to believe me.”
“Your sister?” Posey asked quietly. “You wished your sister gone?”
Olivia looked at the floor and nodded.
“Why would you do that?” Posey asked, her eyes bright and concerned.
“I wasn’t thinking.” Olivia sighed. “But there has to be something you can do. I know I’m out of wishes, but—”
“Technically,” Posey interrupted, “you’re not.”
Olivia tugged on the sleeve of her faded cotton sweatshirt. “What does that mean, technically?”
Posey scratched the back of her head with one finger and turned her back to Olivia. “Well,” she said, “there’s good news and there’s bad news. Which do you want first?”
Olivia took a deep breath. “Good,” she said. “If I don’t hear some good news soon, I might not make it.�
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Posey nodded. “Remember the dress you wore to the charity event? When you made your second wish?”
Olivia thought back. The gala. The Accidental Soren Wish. “Yes.” She nodded. “I wished for a guy to like me, but I didn’t—”
Posey licked the corners of her mouth. “Okay,” she drawled, “and do you remember if anything…happened…right after you made the wish?”
Olivia sighed. “Yes,” she said sadly. “A lot of things happened. The wish came true.”
Posey spun around and looked at Olivia long and hard, as if considering the features on her face for the first time.
“What?” Olivia asked impatiently.
“Interesting,” Posey said.
“Why is that interesting?” Olivia asked. “I made a wish. The wish came true. Isn’t that kind of how this works?”
“Sure,” Posey allowed, “when you’re wearing a magic dress.”
A narrow smile snaked across Posey’s lips.
“Wasn’t I?” Olivia asked quietly.
“Did you see a glowing butterfly come out of it?” Posey countered.
Olivia’s eyes stretched wide. The butterfly. She might have forgotten making a wish, but she definitely would have remembered a fluorescent bug flying around her ankles. “No,” she said slowly. “There wasn’t a butterfly that time.”
Posey lifted her dark, thin eyebrows and stared into Olivia’s eyes.
“So the dress wasn’t magic?” Olivia asked, the words jumbling together and racing out of her mouth. “But why not? I mean, you made it, didn’t you?”
Posey’s smile vanished and she shrugged. “I made you a dress,” she said. “But it was only a dress. You broke a rule. You told your friend about the shop.”
Olivia sat sharply back. “But I didn’t tell her anything about you,” Olivia insisted.
“I know you didn’t,” Posey said, “which is why I only faked the dress that one time.”
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