One Jar of Magic

by Corey Ann Haydu

  Ginger and I would smirk when she did it. We’d pass notes back and forth, commenting on different items of clothing. Her orange T-shirt. Her ankle-length brown skirt with big white buttons. Her beaded flip-flops.

  I wonder if Ginger remembers it as well as I do.

  I wonder if it makes her heart twist up, knowing how mean we were.

  Maddy never caught us making fun of her. She kept trying and trying to be our friend, and finally she invited us over to her pool at the end of the school year. It was at least a hundred degrees out, and we didn’t know anyone with a pool, because pool magic was usually pretty unstable, so pools never lasted long.

  When we got to Maddy’s that hot, hot day we threw on matching bathing suits—blue with red stars—and dove in at the same time. I think we wanted the water to splash Maddy’s face. I think we wanted her to feel left out even at her own house.

  Maddy didn’t dive in. She sat on the edge of the pool with her legs kicking the water’s surface. She watched me and Ginger do a dozen handstand contests. It took over an hour for us to say much to Maddy, and by that time she was biting her lip and staring at the sun like she was trying not to cry.

  I didn’t want to make someone cry. Not Maddy. Not anyone. Dad said that we couldn’t solve every sad feeling with magic, and to not let people pressure me to help them and to worry about myself first. But this didn’t have anything to do with magic, and this was a problem I could solve, and Dad’s advice sometimes sounded weird when he wasn’t right in front of me, when I was out in the world just trying to be a person.

  “You don’t like to swim?” I asked.

  “I love to swim,” Maddy said.

  “You just don’t want to do it today?” I asked.

  Maddy’s legs kicked the water faster. She dipped her fingertips in too. Swirled the water around. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to,” she said.

  “It’s your pool,” Ginger said. She swam to the edge, where Maddy’s feet were. I did too.

  “I know, but it didn’t— I wanted you guys to feel— I wasn’t sure if I was really supposed to even be here.”

  “At your own house?” I asked.

  Maddy scrunched up her face. All her features smushed together like they were on some sort of life raft and needed to stay as close as possible so as not to drown.

  “Tell me what to do,” Maddy said through that funny look on her face.

  “What to do about what?” I asked.

  “What to do to make you like me,” Maddy said.

  “We like you,” I said, but even I heard how false it sounded. “But we don’t know you that well. And also, like, we aren’t really trying to find more friends.”

  “Rose!” Ginger said, like it wasn’t the truest thing I’d ever said.

  “What? We aren’t!”

  “Rose is rude sometimes,” Ginger said, but she didn’t correct me.

  “I’ve never heard Rose be rude to anyone else,” Maddy said. “Just me.”

  None of us said anything for a minute.

  “I guess what she said is true,” Ginger said at last. She was shivering. It’s weird, how you’re totally fine when you’re in the water but then you stick your shoulders out for a minute and you’re suddenly freezing. I could tell she wanted to dive back in but also wanted to be nice but also wondered why I wasn’t fixing what I’d said. “It doesn’t have to do with you, though. It’s just been me and Rose for so long. For our whole lives. We don’t think about making friends. Because we have each other.”

  “If we had a third best friend,” I said, in one last attempt to fix things, “I’m sure it would be you.”

  Mom used to tell me to quit while I was ahead, but when Dad overheard her saying that to me he got mad. That kind of advice is for other types of people, Dad had said. Not Little Luck here. She doesn’t ever have to quit. You hear me, Luck? Don’t ever quit. Not when you’re ahead. Not when you’re behind. Not ever.

  I guess that’s why I said what I said. Maybe what Ginger had said would have been enough. Maybe it would have fixed everything. I don’t know. But I felt like there was more to say, and that I was the person to say it, so I did. Dad had so many rules, and I tried my best to follow them all, and I didn’t worry too much about anything but following those rules so he’d be happy with me.

  And this time, as soon as the words left my mouth, Ginger started bobbing in the water again and Maddy jumped in, her face all flushed and smiley like I’d given her the best news ever, even though I didn’t really think I’d given her any news at all.

  We played a few rounds of Marco Polo and did a few more handstand contests, and then we all got chilly and tired and wrinkly, so we lifted ourselves out of the pool and into the pool chairs, and it was about time to leave when Maddy gave a big sigh.

  “I’m so glad you have room for me,” she said. “I’m so glad we can all be best friends now.”

  It wasn’t what we’d told her. Not at all. Not at all. But she sounded so sure and so happy that it wasn’t possible to correct her.

  Ginger and I sort of slumped ourselves home and we ate dinner outside on my front lawn like Mom always let us do when Dad wasn’t around. Mom hated cooking, so on her nights we got cheese and crackers and carrot sticks and as many peaches and pears as we wanted and we’d lay it all out on a blanket on the lawn and graze for hours, for as long as we were hungry and sometimes after.

  We stayed outside for so long that Mom fell asleep on the couch and forgot about us and Dad found us out there and joined us, picking at the fruit and the crackers.

  We tried to tell him what had happened and why we felt so uneasy.

  “You have to worry about who you surround yourself with, Rose,” he said. “And you have to help her, Ginger.”

  “Oh,” Ginger said. I didn’t say anything.

  “This Maddy sounds like a girl who won’t capture much magic at all. I’d stay away from her,” Dad said. “Girls like that aren’t anything like you. They aren’t worth the trouble.”

  We nodded. We always nodded at Dad and the things he said, which sounded like fact but maybe, maybe weren’t so true at all.

  Thirty-Eight

  Today, when I get to Zelda’s house, I hide behind a tree across the street, like I’m some spy.

  I’m flushed from all my truth telling and the way it feels to maybe just be Not Meant for Magic instead of trying so hard to be something else. But I’m still too scared to approach Zelda and her family.

  My family.

  I can’t stop looking at Zelda’s dad. I want to know if we have the same ears and if he pronounces words like bureau and mirror and garage the way I do. If there’s some unexpected thing we share, like Zelda and my father and their always-bare feet.

  But also. I want to know if he is ever meaner than you expect him to be, if he says and does things he has to apologize for later.

  Right now, though, he’s outside with Zelda and his other daughter, Lucy, and the three of them are doing what Zelda loves to do most of all. They’re making dandelion crowns. Zelda’s is enormous, more of a belt or a very long necklace than a crown. And her sister is making a bunch of super-small ones—maybe rings? But it’s her father I can’t take my eyes from. His fingers know their way around a flower crown the same way Zelda’s do. He squints at it, brings it close to his face, and smiles at his work. He adds grass to the dandelions, braiding strands in to make it thicker and sturdier. He puts it on his head to try it on, then takes it off to work on it some more. He leans over to Zelda and asks her to look at some part of it, and she fixes a knot for him. When she turns back to her own work, he smiles at her like she’s done something truly spectacular.

  They’re all smiling and easy together. They have all the time in the world to braid dandelion and grass into jewelry, all the time in the world to be right here, in this exact moment.

  I have never been so still with my father. I have never seen him make a flower crown or sit in the grass and just be. He has not smiled at me in t
hat slow, easy way. He has grinned at the way I catch a firefly in my palms or how I answer questions from reporters. He has beamed when people talk about me, call me Little Luck, tell him how special I am, how special I am going to be.

  But we haven’t sat in the grass and done not much at all.

  Zelda’s mother comes outside and kisses each of their heads. She looks at the crowns, sniffs the flowers, says something that sounds sweet and silly from here, and goes back inside.

  It is all so simple, the way they are together. Zelda leans her head on her dad’s shoulder, and I think my heart breaks, or at least some important part of it tears a little.

  I try to imagine my family sitting with them. It shouldn’t be hard to see. Our feet are the same shape, we have the same hair texture—almost curly but not quite, the same gaps in our teeth. I think our hands braid grass the same way, even.

  Still, they don’t belong to me.

  It feels like watching Ginger and Maddy and their magic. Zelda with her father is a thing I thought I had but don’t, a life someone sort of promised me but was never actually mine.

  “You and your dad are so close!” Ginger would always say with starry eyes and a sort of sigh once her dad died. And I thought that was true, but the closeness had something else attached to it—the promise of being like him, of succeeding, of being someone great.

  He only ever told me one way to be great.

  But maybe this is something great too. Maybe there is something else that matters, something that isn’t magic but is special all the same.

  Maybe if you aren’t meant for magic, that only means you are meant for something else. And maybe that something else might be nice, too.

  Thirty-Nine

  A Story About the Weather and Also Magic and Also My Father and Also How They Don’t All Fit Together So Well After All

  We watched Dad make a storm once.

  It was the middle of the summer and it had been so dry that the grass was brown and trees looked thirsty and the flowers were drying out and we were all taking three-minute showers every other day to conserve water.

  “Weather is a powerful kind of magic,” Dad said, bringing out three jars—one a cloudy gray, one a small pool of water, one that looked totally empty but felt cool when you touched it. “Don’t play with it, okay? Don’t play with any magic, but especially not weather.”

  I remember rolling my eyes and Ginger rolling hers back because we would never use our magic for something like weather. Not when we could use it to make a great Halloween costume or permanently hot-pink fingernails or a tree house in the woods behind the school.

  “We have stuff to do, Dad,” I said.

  “Really important stuff,” Ginger said.

  “Well, you can do your really important stuff later,” Dad said. “Watch this. You won’t regret it.”

  Dad liked to do magic in the backyard under the three maple trees that clustered in the middle of the lawn. Those maple trees never looked quite right. They were too close together to look like they were meant to be there. They were definitely made from magic. Not Dad’s—someone from long ago, someone with powerful, long-lasting magic. But someday it would run out, and those trees wouldn’t be there anymore.

  We were used to huddling under them, Ginger and I, with Dad holding his jars up to the sunlight to check how much magic was left in each one, and what kind of magic each might be. Dad knows how to mix his magic up like potions, to make sure they do what he wants them to do. Most other people use each jar all at once, and all on its own. Dad has his own way with magic, sprinkling a dab of this one with a sprinkle of that.

  That day was no different. He opened the smoky gray jar, the jar with the pool of water, the cold empty jar.

  “We need a lot of rain,” he said. “Use a watery magic for rain. Logical.” He was talking to us but also to himself. “This magic looks foggy. If you use it for the wrong thing, you’ll end up very unhappy, I’ll tell you that much,” he said to the gray jar. “I’ve seen people use foggy magic like this to help make food, and it tastes burnt. Magic is particular, girls. That’s why you need to capture all different kinds. Okay? You’re hearing me, right?”

  We nodded. Somewhere in my bedroom and in Ginger’s we kept notebooks of advice from my dad. Tonight we’d write down never to use foggy gray magic for food, that magic is particular, that we have to be careful.

  Dad held the jar of foggy magic up to the jar with the little puddle inside. They stirred themselves up in the air, and he grabbed an empty jar to capture the new mixed-up magic. If anyone else were watching, they’d be amazed. I’d never seen anyone else do magic that way. I hoped and hoped I’d be able to do it someday.

  “And cold magic—cold magic is very strong. Not everyone knows that. We don’t need much.” He held the cold jar to the jar with the new magical mix. A storm was brewing.

  When the cold hit the rest of the mix, the whole thing got twirlier and swirlier and stranger. Inside the jar, it looked like a hurricane.

  “That looks strong,” I said.

  “That looks scary,” Ginger said.

  “That’s why we’re careful,” Dad said. “More than careful—patient. This isn’t ready yet. This magic needs time to calm down.”

  We waited by baking cookies and watching a movie that Dad loved on the couch. We waited by playing Monopoly and making paper dolls with the scraps of fabric samples from Mom’s newest decorating project.

  Before dinner, Dad said the waiting was over. We went outside with him and his jar. What was inside was whirling and powerful.

  “Don’t release it,” I said.

  “Rose. It’s to help the drought.” Dad had a smile that sometimes made me nervous. A smile that looked like it had a secret.

  “Then why make a whole storm?” I asked. “We just need a little rain.”

  “We don’t have small magic in this family,” Dad said. “We do things big or not at all. You remember that. That’s how we got here. That’s how we became us. We make big storms when a little one would do. You hear me, Rose?”

  I said okay. But I was pretending. Maybe Ginger was just pretending, too. I said okay and she said okay and Dad released the magic, the whole swirling, dangerous mess of it.

  It made trees fall. It flooded the streets. The town lost power.

  But Dad didn’t apologize. Not even when Mom asked him to.

  Especially not when Mom asked him to.

  The storm raged for a week. He didn’t say he messed up. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t ask if maybe magic was sometimes all wrong. He didn’t wonder if maybe he should have let things happen as they were supposed to, instead of as he wanted them to.

  He let the storm rage.

  Whenever it rains now, I get uneasy, trying to forget the way that magic is not actually always in our control. Trying to forget how Dad isn’t always under control either.

  Forty

  When I get home, they are waiting for me. Lyle on the stairs. Mom and Dad in the living room. All of them cloudy-faced in spite of Lyle’s rainbow, still pinned to the sky.

  “Where were you?” Dad booms.

  “Wendell,” Mom says in a hushed tone. “Breathe, please.”

  “Trust me, I’m breathing! I need to know where my daughter was. You left school and should have come right home, and someone said they saw you walking out there, out to that house—”

  “I wanted to see—” I start, but he doesn’t let me finish.

  “It’s enough, Rose. You stay here. You practice for next year. You stop trying to make a show out of your failure.”

  “Rose. Lyle. We need a moment; can you two head upstairs to play?” Mom says.

  I am twelve and Lyle is fifteen and we don’t really play anymore, but we know how to leave a room. And we sort of know why we have to leave a room, too.

  Lyle goes up the stairs and I follow and we sit right at the top, at the place where we can hear a little but not too much. Dad says something about how Mom loves places witho
ut magic and Mom says something about how Dad needs to accept me for who I am, and then Lyle covers up by starting a game of A is for Alice who uses Aromatic magic on her Apples, and I love him for it.

  And I guess I was wrong. We do play, when we have to.

  “B is for Benny, and she uses Bringing Together magic on Bears,” I say.

  “C is for Claude, and he uses Calculus Learning magic on . . . Cactuses,” Lyle says. He can always make me smile.

  “She needs to be working harder.” Dad’s voice gets a little louder when we are at “J is for Julia who uses Juggling magic on jaguars.” “She needs to try. She’s—with that girl! She’s giving up. You can see it in her eyes. Tell me you can’t see it in her eyes. That she’s changed. That she isn’t ours anymore.”

  “Wendell.” Mom’s voice is loud and final. “Rose choosing not to— Rose liking her cousin— That doesn’t mean Rose isn’t our girl. She’ll always be ours. But she’s herself, too. And it’s high time you and your brother started mending fences. Maybe he has a point. There are places where magic isn’t so—”

  “When we got married I told you what mattered to me, what I wanted for our family, who we are meant to be—”

  “Maybe she’s Not Meant for Magic,” Mom says. It’s quiet. Maybe I misheard her. But I feel Lyle stiffen next to me, and I know what she said.

  And I know that it is a true thing that she said.

  I start to stand, to tell her thank you, to say yes, that is it, that is the thing; I am Not Meant for Magic and I am happy to be Not Meant for Magic and I wonder if anyone is meant for magic or if magic really knows what’s best at all.

  It’s going to be okay. The truth was there, it was said, it’s out of her mouth, and I can just exist in it.

  “Mom, Dad, I think—” I start.

  But then there’s a sound I don’t recognize except I sort of do in a very faraway part of my brain or heart or, I don’t know, my limbs. The sound is hot and hard and quick and then it’s over except there’s all the sounds after, which are mostly Mom’s crying and the dropping of a dish she was maybe washing or putting away, and then Dad’s voice saying I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t mean to I’m sorry I just hated what you said and I can’t hear that kind of thing and you know I’m sorry and would never—