by Sarina Dorie
Beyond the window, the black silhouettes of birds cast ominous shadows over the interior of the room. Their wings slapped against the glass as if trying to break their way in. I squeezed my eyes closed, my apprehension growing. Those were just birds. They were not evil Fae, I told myself. No one was about to abduct me as they had with my sister.
“Magic is not real.”
I said it, but I was wrong.
CHAPTER ONE
If You Believe in Fairies, Clap Your Hands
“You’re a liar, ginger,” Karen Walker said as we walked home from school with her older brother and his friend.
“No, I’m not!” I said. No one managed to make my blood boil the way the neighbor kids did. Had it been anyone else, I could have ignored them. “And don’t call me that, squib.” I hoped I wasn’t going to get in trouble for saying that word. My older sister said it wasn’t a real swear word, but it felt like one.
“If you’re a witch, prove it.” A little smirk tugged Peter Walker’s mouth into a sneer. “Do something magical for us.” He nudged his buddy, Jordan Burke, like it was a joke. They were fifth graders, two years older than Karen and me.
“Maybe I will.” I held my head up high, imagining myself impervious to the sting of insults in my witch hat, black cape, and Gryffindor scarf. Even so, a prickle of hurt wormed its way under my armor of striped socks.
If I was going to prove myself, I would have to hurry before my parents came home from work and stopped me.
Our two-story brick house was a lush oasis surrounded by green gardens and shady trees in a desert of boring cookie-cutter homes with dead grass. Once we’d made it through the gate of the white picket fence, the four of us kids dragged the large trampoline over to the side of the house, under the lower part of the roof where it was only one story. I tried to direct them so they didn’t stomp through Mom’s artful arrangement of flowers planted along the perimeter of the patio, but they didn’t listen. Karen chewed on the end of her brown braid, listening as Jordan whispered to her. He usually didn’t deign to speak to third graders, but today he had walked home with Karen’s older brother, Peter.
They wouldn’t be sorry they’d come. I was going to show them magic.
Awkwardly, I held the broom while I climbed up the ladder my dad had left leaning against the roof to fix the satellite dish. My heart hammered in my chest as I shuffled along the angled edge of the roof. I placed the broom between my legs. This would be like all those times I’d successfully practiced flying onto the trampoline before. Only, those times had been from the top of the three-foot brick wall that separated the patio and fire pit from my mom’s garden.
I gazed down at my audience below. My witch cape billowed around my shoulders, and my red hair danced into my eyes. This was the moment I would prove I was a witch. I would fly. Tomorrow they’d be nice to me, and Karen would invite me to sit with her and the cool kids during lunch.
“Hurry up, Clarissa,” Karen said.
A niggling doubt worked its way into my mind. What if I wasn’t a witch? No, that was impossible. But if I wasn’t, the trampoline would surely break my fall.
“Chicken,” Peter taunted.
It occurred to me I might be wrong. I might be a fairy, not a witch. If that was the case, the broom wouldn’t work. I needed to ensure I would fly. I poured the bottle of pixie dust from the amulet around my neck. I just had to have light, happy thoughts like in Peter Pan. Or was that Mary Poppins?
I closed my eyes and edged closer to the gutter. I had to concentrate. Magic only worked in stories when a witch focused—and when she needed it most. A door slammed somewhere behind me. I tried to ignore the sound. It probably was my sister getting home from her after-school club. She would go straight up to her room to do homework like she usually did.
Another door opened and thudded closed.
“What are you doing over here, Karen?” my older sister, Missy, asked. “Where’s Clarissa?”
My accomplices chuckled.
“She’s going to fly.” Karen tee-heed.
“What are you talking about?” Missy came into view.
Her blonde hair was pulled up into a ponytail, and she wore a blue-and-green dress that reminded me of water. She joined them out on the lawn, trampling through Mom’s petunias.
Great. My sister was about to ruin everything.
Missy followed their gazes. Her curiosity transformed into anger as she shouted at me. “Oh, no you don’t! You get down this instant.”
“Okay,” I said. I inched forward, my toes over the gutter. My heart pounded in my ears.
“No! You go over to that ladder and get down. Right now.” Missy punched Karen in the arm. “You should be ashamed of yourself, encouraging her like that.”
“Ow!” Karen squealed.
Missy shoved Peter and rounded on Jordan. “You’re all a bunch of jerks.”
“It’s okay, Missy,” I called down. “I can fly. I’m going to prove it. Just watch.”
It didn’t count if no one watched. She had to be looking at me.
“I told you to climb down. You get off the roof before you break your neck. Now!” Missy pointed to the ladder.
I tried to explain why I needed to do this, but she talked over me. “Whatever these losers told you, ignore them. You don’t have to prove anything.”
“Missy, listen,” I said. “You don’t have to worry. I know I can do magic, and I’m going to show you all. I just need you to be quiet so I can concentrate.”
“If you do this, I’ll tell Mom and Dad.” She started up the ladder.
“Good,” I said. They would see it was true and stop telling me I lived in a fantasy world.
“No!” Missy said. “Do not do it. Stay where you are. I’ll get you down.”
“I don’t need your help. You stay where you are. Don’t come any closer.” Why did she have to embarrass me in front of the neighbors?
This wasn’t going well. If she tried to stop me, I was going to have to leap off the roof before I was ready. My clammy hands gripped the wood of the broom.
She reached the top of the ladder. “If you don’t stop, I’ll make sure you get grounded. If you don’t stop, I’ll—”
I inched away from her, slowly, not wanting to trip over the uneven shingles of the roof. “I don’t care.”
Only, I did. I didn’t want to get in trouble. But this was going to be worth it. No one would punish me once they understood I had powers.
“Stop being like this.” Missy inched toward me, arms out to balance herself on the incline. “If you do this, I’ll be mean to you. I won’t give you the toys in my Happy Meal. I’ll take back that dress I gave you yesterday.”
I chewed on my lip. Missy was never mean to me. We were friends.
My audience snickered below. I heard the words “gullible” and “moron.”
Missy threw down her trump card. “If you jump, I won’t be your friend anymore.”
My feet rooted to the shingles. She couldn’t!
She went on. “If you’re going to be my best friend, you can’t do something stupid like this. If you jump off the roof and die—”
“I’m not going to die.”
“Fine, if you fly off the roof and survive, I won’t ever speak to you again. I’ll hate you, and you won’t be my friend anymore. Is that what you want?”
I looked to the trio below and then to Missy. I shook my head.
She offered me a smile, holding her hand out to me. I trudged back to her and took her hand. She grabbed the broom from me and threw it at Peter. He jumped back. She guided me to the ladder and held it as I climbed down. Each rung brought me closer to my impending doom. Once I stood at the bottom, the three other kids whispered to each other.
Karen looked me over, her expression unimpressed. “I knew you weren’t going to do it.”
I hung my head with shame. Tomorrow it would be all over the school. People would have one more reason t
o make fun of me. Couldn’t Missy understand how she had just ruined my life? I would never have friends now.
Missy climbed down after me. She picked up the broom from where it lay in the tangles of thyme and rosemary and swatted at Karen and then Jordan. They dodged back. Jordan kept laughing, even as she hit him. He stopped laughing when she smashed the wood of the broom against his nose.
He cried out and grabbed his face, blood spurting from between his fingers. I stared in wide-eyed shock.
“Get lost, all of you. If I ever hear about you egging her on like this again, I’ll make you regret it. Understand me?” Missy’s hair fell out of her ponytail and streamed around her shoulders in wild waves. She looked like she could have been a witch at that moment. She smacked Peter with the broom. “You’re a bunch of jerks and bullies. Someone could have gotten hurt today. I won’t let you pick on my sister.” Her voice turned hoarse as she shouted and chased them.
They ran around the side of the house and out the gate of our white picket fence. Missy stared after them, waiting until they’d run across the street. The wooden gate swung on its hinges.
“Wow, that was great,” I said. My sister could be simultaneously terrifying and wonderful.
Missy stalked back toward me, dragging the broom in the dirt of the flower beds. Her cheeks were flushed. I smiled at her, grateful she’d told off those kids. Maybe they wouldn’t tease me tomorrow.
As I reached out to hug Missy, she slapped me across the face, hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.
I stumbled back. “What was that for?”
Missy burst into tears. “Don’t ever do anything stupid like that again. Promise me. I don’t want to lose you.” She grabbed me and clutched me to her.
I hugged her back and patted her shoulder.
“Do you know what Mom would have done to me if you had broken an arm when I was supposed to be watching you? Do you know what she would have done to you? She’s one step away from taking away your Narnia books as it is.”
“No! Not my books!” I said. “You won’t tell Mom and Dad, will you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Please?” I asked.
If she did, they would command me never to do it again. And then I wouldn’t be able to because it would be bad if I didn’t listen to them. I had to find a new way to prove I was a witch.
Missy sniffled and pulled away, wiping her face against her sleeve. “I won’t tell … if you can tell me why you aren’t going to do that again.”
I tried to figure out what she wanted to hear. “You don’t want me to get hurt. You think I can’t really fly.”
“I don’t think. I know, dorkbreath.”
“But I can! I did it before. I flew from the wall to the trampoline.”
She grimaced. “No, you jumped onto the trampoline. Anyone can do that. Repeat after me, ‘I cannot fly.’”
In my most petulant monotone I said, “Fine. I can’t fly. Will you promise not to tell?”
She gave me a playful shove. “You’re impossible.” Her smile told me everything would be all right.
I thought that was the end of it. I went back inside to do my homework. Mom came home an hour later and Dad shortly after that. I didn’t hear Missy tattle, so I thought I’d gotten off easy. It was after dinner as I was playing with my toys that I suspected something was wrong.
I was aware of the silence downstairs. The television wasn’t on. I lay across my Tinker Bell bedspread, listening. Missy was on the phone in her room. That meant she wasn’t squealing on me. I continued to play.
A procession of my Barbie dolls dressed in the gowns of a fairy court loomed over the My Little Pony pegasi and unicorns, dwarfing them. Footsteps creaked up the stairs. I lined up three storm troopers beside Darth Vader next to the model U.S.S. Enterprise I’d made with Dad. The two opposing forces faced off.
Dad leaned against the entry, the bulk of his frame taking up the majority of the doorway. His eyes raked over my tableau. “Honey, come downstairs for a minute. Your mom and I want to talk to you.” He rubbed at his golden beard and mustache, not meeting my eyes.
Cold dread settled like ice in my gut as I clutched Midnight Rainbow, my favorite unicorn. I followed Dad down. He moved slowly, lumbering toward the living room like a pack animal burdened by the weight of too many bags.
Missy had told. I was going to get in trouble. They were going to take my books away. I would have to lie. I didn’t want to, but I would say Missy was fibbing. I didn’t know what else to do.
They sat on the couch side by side. They never sat on the couch with backs straight and rigid, looking like someone had died. Unless someone had died. Mom smiled or looked like she was trying to. Maybe my books were safe.
“There’s something we need to tell you.” Dad leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed at his face.
“We’ve been talking… .” Mom said.
My nerves jittered with anticipation. Missy had told them. I was certain of it, now more than ever.
“I didn’t do it.” I hugged Midnight Rainbow. “Missy made it up.”
My parents looked at each other, confusion painting their faces.
“What?” Dad asked.
Mom’s eyes narrowed with shrewdness. “What didn’t you do?”
Immediately I could see my error. They hadn’t been about to ground me from reading fantasy novels for the rest of my life. Missy hadn’t told them. Only, I had blown it, and they were about to dig the truth out of me. That meant they were going to tell me some other terrible news.
I tried to cover my mistake. “Nothing. I mean, we were just playing earlier, and she got mad at me and… .” I tried to think of something, but all the imaginative tales stored up in my brain failed me.
Dad plunged on, unfazed, his eyes glued on the avocado-green carpet. “We’ve talked to you about some things in the past. Grown-up things. We need to talk to you about something important.”
Neither spoke. Mom swallowed.
“Something important,” I repeated.
Wait a minute… . This was it! Finally, they were going to tell me I was special. I was a fairy or a witch or something magical.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Shouldn’t Missy be here for this?”
“Missy already knows about grown-up things,” Mom said. She took my hands in hers, staring into my eyes. “Do you remember when we told you some things are for the imagination? Not everything magic is real.”
“I remember,” I said quickly. The anticipation was killing me. Surely they were about to tell me what was real—that I was a witch.
Dad pulled at a loose thread on the seam of the brown couch. “Do you remember last Easter when you found those white powdery footprints leading from the living room out onto the lawn?”
“Yes. We looked it up in that book, and we identified it as the Leporidae eastarus—the Easter Bunny.” Looking it up in one of Dad’s books had been his idea. “Those footprints led to the best eggs ever!” I didn’t know what the Easter Bunny had to do with anything important, though.
“That was me,” Dad said.
“No, it wasn’t. Those weren’t your footprints.”
Mom shoved a paper bag at him. He removed the talcum powder and bunny slippers.
I shook my head, refusing to believe him.
Mom nudged him. “Tell her about Christmas.”
“That was also my idea,” Dad said. “I ate the carrots you left out for the reindeer. And the cookies and milk.”
“But you couldn’t have. You’re lactose intolerant.”
Dad’s eyes crinkled up with pity. “I poured the milk back into the carton.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the tooth fairy are stories,” Mom said. “They’re make-believe.”
The fragile world I had always loved shattered before my eyes. I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye and held my chin high. I was a big gir
l. I could handle the Easter Bunny and tooth fairy not being real. I’d already suspected as much from the gossip of third graders in my class. I was fine with that creepy guy at the mall who always waved at me and invited me to sit on his lap not being the “real” Saint Nick.
Everything would be fine if magic still existed in the world.
I drew in a shaky breath, afraid to ask. “But Hogwarts—that’s real, right?” It wasn’t like I was asking if Harry Potter was real. Even if he was fictional, it didn’t mean the place he went to school couldn’t be real. The place I would be going to school.
My parents’ nervous glances at each other said it all. Mom fidgeted with the frizzy tail of her long red braid. My heart plummeted to my stomach and settled like a pair of concrete shoes in a river.
“I’m sorry, Clarissa.” Dad sat me between the two of them. He kissed the top of my head. His beard tickled my face.
My mother muttered under her breath. “See, I told you those books were a bad idea.”
Those words were more powerful than Missy’s slap to my face earlier.
I covered my eyes and bawled. “What about Jesus? Is he a lie too?”
Mom said nothing.
“No, honey. God is real,” Dad said.
Yeah, right. See if I believed anything they said ever again.
I squirmed out from between them and threw my toy unicorn on the floor, about to run out of the room.
“Not so fast.” Mom grabbed the back of my shirt and tugged me onto the couch beside her. “It can be hard to tell the difference between what is real and what we want to be true. Sometimes there are strange things that happen in the world that we don’t understand. Don’t try to take care of these things by yourself. If you ever notice something isn’t right, come and tell Mommy.”
“Or if someone goads you into climbing onto the roof with a broom,” Dad said. “Maybe you should ask a second opinion from an unbiased source. Like one of us. Or another adult.”
“Missy told?” I shrieked.
“No. Mrs. Mesker called me when I got home from work,” Mom said. I hadn’t counted on the elderly neighbor being the one to tattle on me.