One Jar of Magic

by Corey Ann Haydu

  The sound of Dad coming in the door wakes us up. He slams it behind him, like he doesn’t care how late it is. Lyle’s hand reaches for mine in the dark, under a pillow.

  “It’s okay,” Lyle says, but I don’t believe him.

  “He’s still mad,” I whisper back.

  “Maybe it was an accident,” he says. “The door’s kind of heavy.” But it isn’t, of course. The door isn’t heavy and the day isn’t okay and Lyle can’t protect me from what it is to be a girl with only one jar of magic.

  “Family meeting!” Dad’s voice is louder than the door slam.

  We know this voice. I feel Lyle shrink away from it. I feel myself start to wilt.

  I peek out at Dad. His face is red. His fists are clenched. He is so stiff he could be made of metal.

  Mom scurries into the room. “It’s late, honey,” she says. “We’ve all had a long day.”

  “I’ve had a long day,” Dad says. “What have you been doing that’s so tough?”

  “I think you need rest,” Mom says.

  “Lyle! Rose! Come down here!” Dad’s voice is even louder now. I don’t know how to make myself any smaller, but I try.

  “We’re here,” Lyle says. He stands up, letting go of my hand. I’ve never thought of my big brother as brave, but he is in this moment. I’d keep hiding forever, if it were up to me.

  “Rose?” Dad says. “Are you there?”

  “Mm-hm.” I stay in the pillow fort. I don’t get up. I’m not brave like Lyle. I’m not magical like my dad or smart like my mom. I’m not much of anything, it turns out. The pillows are comfortable, the floor feels nice and sturdy underneath me, and I think I could live here, at least until next New Year’s Day, when I could try again to be the person I’m supposed to be.

  “Is this what you do now? Hide when things are hard?” Dad asks. I am filled with the missing of the father who was here two nights ago, wrapping me in his sweater, telling me how special I was.

  “I’m sorry,” I squeak.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Dad asks.

  “That’s it,” I say. “‘I’m sorry’ means I’m sorry.”

  “Stand up, Rose,” Dad says.

  “You don’t have to, honey,” Mom says. “It’s late. You’re resting. That’s okay.”

  “Stand up, Rose,” Dad says again, as if Mom’s not there at all, as if it’s just me and him and no one else in the whole wide world. I have my dad’s nose and freckled arms and tough feet and big eyes. If I tried, I bet I’d have his loud voice. I have never so badly wished to take after my mother. If I looked like her and Lyle, maybe no one would have expected much from me. If I hadn’t been born the day I was born, maybe one jar of magic would be okay. I wish myself into a hundred other bodies and lives and moments in time, but I’m still right here.

  So I stand up. And as I stand something happens to Dad’s body. It goes from metal to skin, from tense and upright to something soft and drooping. I watch it happen, and I have to know that I did it.

  I thought angry was the worst thing my dad could be. But this is worse.

  “What happened?” he asks.

  I thought he was here to lecture me about what happened, not ask me for my opinion on it.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Did you put on shoes?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Did you go to the top of the hill?”

  “Not at first.”

  “Were you relaxed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Were you distracted?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you try?”

  My throat catches. I can’t believe he would even ask. “So hard,” I say. “I tried so hard.”

  Dad nods. I think he believes me. Or at least he wants to.

  “Something happened,” he says.

  “I messed up,” I say.

  Dad nods. Then shakes his head. Then nods again. “Let me see the jar,” he says.

  I scurry over to my backpack in the front hall and bring him my jar. It’s cloudier than I remember, and the jar barely hums. The magic is weak. I know enough about magic to be sure of that. I know everything about magic, except, I guess, how to actually capture any.

  “It’s not nothing,” Dad says. “There’s magic in there.”

  “Yes,” I whisper. I almost tell him that Lyle had to help me get it. I almost tell him about Zelda and the people who are Not Meant for Magic and how when I heard those words they buzzed through me like they belonged to me. But I don’t say that because I don’t want Dad to yell and I definitely don’t want Dad to cry and maybe we can all somehow believe together that one jar of magic is enough.

  “It’s not nothing,” Dad says again, but this time he’s saying it to Mom, and Mom is nodding and wiping away a tear.

  “It’s late,” Mom says when we’ve all nodded and nodded about the not-nothingness of my sad little jar. “We can figure everything out—”

  “Everything’s fine,” Dad says. “There’s magic. It’s not what we— But it’s not like it’s nothing—this is just an adjustment.” He’s mumbling to himself mostly, and while he mumbles he heads upstairs. He doesn’t say goodnight, but that’s okay because he doesn’t say anything awful either, so maybe I’ll be able to sleep okay after all.

  I’m going to sleep down here in my pillow fort and Lyle’s heading up to his room, but Mom stops us before we both go on our way.

  “Don’t tell him about today,” she says. She tries to sound causal, but there’s no casual way to ask us to lie to Dad. “About the rest stop. About that not-meant-for-magic family. He doesn’t need to know about all that.”

  I nod and Lyle nods, but underneath all that nodding is my heart beating and beating and beating because Mom has never asked us to keep a secret from our father. We don’t believe in secrets in the Anders family, that’s what Dad’s always said, so it’s what I’ve always thought is true, but maybe it’s not true. The same way maybe my specialness isn’t true.

  And that’s a lot of supposed-to-be-true things turning maybe-not-so-true.

  Twenty-One

  They bring their magic to school. A jar in a backpack, just in case it’s needed. The teachers keep a few jars on their desks, like a warning. They switch them out after the New Year, putting pretty new ones front and center.

  Ms. Flynn has a new tiny jar that is full to the brim with a watery, speckled magic. I wonder what it does. I’m sure we’re all wondering what it does.

  “Rose. Good morning. I’m glad you’re here,” she says when I walk in, alone, behind everyone else, as if she thought maybe I wouldn’t be showing up at all.

  “Oh,” I say, “yeah. I’m here. It’s school, right? So I’m here.”

  “It’s school, right?” Maddy, from her desk by the window, repeats my words in a super-high, super-breathy voice that isn’t anything like mine. I turn to face her. On her desk are two unnecessarily huge jars, one that looks empty aside from a single blade of grass, another that is filled with purple petals. She sees me seeing them and gives me a smug smile. She’s meaner than she was a few days ago.

  “Did you bring your jar?” she asks. I wait for Ms. Flynn to tell her to be quiet, but she doesn’t.

  “No,” I say.

  “Kept it at home?” Maddy asks. The corners of her mouth keep twitching, like she’s excited to be mean to me.

  “Yep. I kept it at home. For safekeeping. Since I only have one, you know?”

  “Oh, I know,” Maddy says. But her mouth corners have stilled. She can’t insult me if I’ve already insulted myself.

  “That’s a good idea,” Ginger says. I look to the corners of her mouth to see if they look like Maddy’s. Her lips aren’t twitching, though. Her face is quiet, waiting for me to do or say something, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or say.

  Ginger takes her seat. I’d like to move to a corner of the room. A hidden place, maybe tucked behind a curtain or underneath a chair or somethi
ng. But there’s nowhere to hide, so I sit next to Ginger and try not to look at her jars of magic—delicate little things lined up on the right side of her desk, away from me, like she’s scared I’m going to steal one or something.

  “There’s always next year,” Ginger says, leaning over to whisper into my ear while Ms. Flynn is turned toward the whiteboard.

  “I know that,” I snap. “I’m fine.”

  “I know you thought—” Ginger starts.

  “I didn’t want more,” I spit back. My body stands up even though I didn’t tell it to. “I got what I wanted. I don’t need— I’m fine. Magic chooses who—magic chose me to get the one most important jar in all of Belling Bright. You’ll see.” My voice is getting louder than I mean for it to be. So loud that everyone in class can hear me.

  Ginger’s eyes are wide. She doesn’t believe me. I don’t believe me either, so I don’t blame her.

  “Rose. Do you need a minute to compose yourself?” Ms. Flynn asks.

  “I’m composed.”

  “Rose.” There’s a warning in her voice now. I know the tone—I’ve heard it directed at kids in my class a bunch of times, but never at me.

  I sit back down. I can feel magic buzzing around me. Some of the jars tremble a little. Some hum. Some are still and sparkle quietly. Back home, my jar of magic sits in my closet. I planned to line up all my jars on my windowsill, so everyone walking by could see the best ones. But I can’t bear the thought of a single jar just sitting there, looking all lonely and sad and desperate.

  Ms. Flynn starts talking to us about the rules of bringing magic to school. I turn to my notebook and start doodling. For months and months I’ve been trying to draw a picture of myself. I’d been hoping I’d capture a sort of magic that could help me with that. I try to believe what I just told everyone. That the magic I caught is something special, that the magic that found me is bigger and better than anyone else’s, that I’m still Rose Alice Anders, and meant for something great.

  But I can’t believe it. It isn’t true.

  Ms. Flynn moves on to math, and Ginger passes me a note.

  Are we still friends? it says, in Ginger’s messy scrawl. I look at her, to see if she means it nicely or meanly or in some other way that I don’t yet understand. Usually we pass notes about what we’re doing on Saturday and who has more homework and what annoying thing Lyle said and whether Ginger’s littlest sister is being cute or impossible these days. Sometimes we pass notes that say I’m sad or I’m tired or just a face with a straight-mouthed expression that means something like I want more than to be sitting in this classroom smelling whatever new shampoo Anne is using and watching the clouds move across the sky. I want more than these people and this town and this squeaky, too-hard chair, and I’m going to get it someday, but not today, definitely not today; today I just have to be right here.

  We have never used our note passing to confirm the status of our friendship.

  I play with the edges of the paper and turn it around and around in my hands, as if maybe it will make more sense to me upside down. It doesn’t.

  I don’t know what happened, I write back. I mean in our friendship but also at the lake. I mean everything.

  I don’t even know what we’re fighting about, Ginger writes back. She looks the same, but I’ve never seen the shirt she’s wearing before, and I swear she’s taller, or maybe just sitting up straighter. I think of making a list of what we are maybe fighting about. You got the sneakers. You started liking Maddy more than we agreed to like Maddy. You said I don’t listen to you. You acted embarrassed by me when I needed a friend. You changed all the rules of our friendship and it made me fail on the most important day of the year and I blame you in all the moments in which I’m not blaming myself.

  But I don’t write any of that. It’s true, sort of, but it’s all sort of not true, too.

  I know what you think of a girl who only has one jar of magic, I write back. It’s a test. I want her to tell me I’m wrong and she doesn’t care and no one cares and no one will notice and nothing will change. If she can tell me all of that—or even some of that—maybe we can find our way back to our friendship. Maybe we can bake cookies together for the bake sale and wear matching outfits to the dance and roll our eyes at Maddy behind her back. Maybe she can sleep over and we can bike ride out to our favorite candy store and bring back bags of chocolates in our bike baskets. Maybe I can stop thinking about Zelda and her little cozy home and the way she looked at me like I might belong there, too.

  Ginger writes something down. She scribbles it out and writes something else down. And again and again until there’s no more room left on the paper we’ve been using and she has to switch to a new sheet of paper.

  The tearing of that new piece of paper makes Ms. Flynn’s head turn back to us, and when she does she catches sight of Ginger scribbling something that is obviously not notes about fractions, and she hovers over her shoulder and taps her foot until Ginger looks up, startled.

  “Would you like to share with the class?” Ms. Flynn says. It’s what she always says when she catches people—never us!—passing notes in class.

  “No, thank you,” Ginger says.

  “Should I share it with the class?” Ms. Flynn asks.

  “No, thank you,” Ginger says, a little more forcefully.

  But Ms. Flynn doesn’t care about Ginger’s polite no thank yous. Ms. Flynn only cares about fractions and whether we will pass our test on fractions. She opens the note that is only supposed to be for me. The note where maybe Ginger will say something that will make me feel like I belong with her again.

  Ms. Flynn clears her throat. “‘Not everyone’s meant for magic,’” she reads from the piece of paper.

  There’s a hush in the class. Even Ms. Flynn is quiet, realizing she probably shouldn’t have read the words out loud. I blush. I don’t know what color I turn. I can’t see myself. But it feels like I’m sitting on the sun.

  It’s only a second before Ms. Flynn clears her throat and starts writing on the whiteboard again, but no one cares about five-eighths anymore. No one cares about anything but the fact that my former best friend thinks I’m not as good as everyone else, not as meant for magic. No one cares about anything but poor Rose Alice Anders, who was supposed to be great, but is an enormous disappointment, even to the people who are supposed to love her the most.

  And I can’t tell them they’re wrong. Because I’m the one who’s always reminding them that the magic you get means something about the person you are. I’m the one who taught them all the things Dad taught me—that magic finds the people who deserve it, magic knows what’s best, magic is everything.

  I could stay and let them look at me like that, I guess, but I’ve had enough of everyone looking at me, wondering why I am the way I am and why I’m not the way I was supposed to be. I’ve had enough of wondering it about myself. I gather up my stuff, which is mostly just a pencil and a notebook and my dad’s scarf that I’m still wearing every day even though he probably wants it back so he can give it to a better kid. I rush out of the classroom and out of the school and onto the empty playground and then out, out, out, onto the sidewalks that lead to other towns and better places, and, if you walk fast and far enough, back to TooBlue Lake.

  Twenty-Two

  I walk through the woods, wondering at who magicked up a bush with sparkly green berries or a circle of tulips lined up beside a twinkle-light-growing patch of dirt. I especially wonder who made the largest trees, the ones that must be centuries old, made by people just discovering magic, perhaps, or people who had grown up deep in it, like me.

  Eventually, I get to the edge of town, which isn’t close to TooBlue Lake. It is sort of close to Zelda and her family, but it’s not like I would ever go there. Still, it’s the only place I know over here, so I walk in that direction and imagine a new idea will come before I actually arrive at the place I’m definitely not going to go.

  But before I get anywhere at all, I’m stoppe
d by the beeping of a horn and a voice I know well, calling my name.

  “Rose. Turn around, Rose. Where do you think you’re going, young lady? Rose, I’m talking to you.” I don’t want to turn around. Not to see his disappointed face again. Not to have to sit in The Way Things Are when only days ago we hung out together in The Way Things Will Soon Be. It hurts too much, to reckon with the distance between the two.

  “Rose,” he says. “I’m not giving up.”

  “We’re not giving up,” another voice says.

  And that voice makes me turn around. The first voice is my father, and I don’t want to see him. But the other voice is Lyle, and we promised each other a lot of things. And one of those things is that we’d never turn away from each other.

  And the other thing is that we’d never leave each other alone with Dad if he was mad.

  So for two reasons, I turn around.

  “You’re in school,” I say to Lyle, which isn’t true because he’s right here. “I mean, you’re supposed to be in school.”

  “They called me to the office when you left,” Lyle says. “You’re supposed to be in school, too.”

  “They didn’t exactly want me there.”

  “Lyle thought you might have come this way,” Dad says, and the words feel heavy, so I look at him and then at Lyle to see if Lyle told Dad about the rest stop and the Not Meant for Magic family and Mom making us promise to keep it a secret. Dad looks exhausted and frustrated, but not anything more than that, so I think we’re still keeping the secret.

  I know Lyle’s face well. He dips his chin when he’s nervous and he closes his eyes a little too long on every blink when he’s lying. He frowns when he’s scared and he blushes when he’s mad. I take a good long look at him. He is nervous and unsure and he just lied about why I might be out this way.

  “You’re my girl,” Dad says. “Headed out to the lake to try again. I should have guessed it myself.”