But her dad’s still gone and our friendship got ruined and I have a broken wrist and nothing really got fixed or better or even all that magical.
So maybe it’s not even such a big deal, to release it all into a lake. Because maybe it was never really what we wanted it to be.
Ginger doesn’t wait for me to wade in with her. She swims out far into the lake and bobs up and down in the water, opening jar after jar after jar.
When she swims back to me, she’s shivering but smiling.
“Who else should we get to come here?” she asks with the world’s biggest grin.
And maybe there’s no one else who wants to give up their magic. But maybe, maybe, if Ginger and I both see how it was never really what it promised to be, maybe there are more of us.
There’s a gust of wind and a tiny rain shower from Ginger’s unloading of magic into the lake. And we stand in the drizzle for a while, because we can. Because it feels good to be here. Because we don’t have anywhere else we have to be.
Fifty-Two
It doesn’t happen all at once. It doesn’t happen with the whole town, or even with busloads of kids. It happens as slowly and lightly as that drizzle from the day Ginger let go of her magic. It happens when people ask us why we did it, and when we introduce them to Zelda and Bennett and Lucy and Elizabeth. It happens when we don’t expect it, from people we don’t expect.
It happens when we’re there and also when we are not.
It happens. People let go of their magic. Some people. Not many. But enough so that when we gather on Zelda’s front lawn to make flower crowns and talk about what we’ll do on New Year’s Day, when everyone else is at the lake, the lawn is crowded and I have to squeeze to sit in between Zelda and Ginger. I wave at Lyle across the lawn with some of his friends and I can’t believe this was a place I never knew existed until just a few months ago.
I try to understand what we look like, the Not Meant for Magic. I try to see something we all have in common, a way we hold our hands or how our flower crowns look. But I can’t see anything in particular. Just, I guess, that we mostly look happy, or at least we look like we’re here, like we’re not thinking of other things we could be doing, other people we could turn out to be.
Zelda’s flower crown is the most complicated. It’s braided and has different sizes of dandelions and wraps around her head not once or even twice but five whole times, something I had said was impossible without magic. But she said she could do cool things without magic, and she was right.
My dandelion crown isn’t very good. I haven’t learned the art of it, even though I have been living here with Zelda and her family—which is my family—for a month. I don’t like all the sitting still and all the not-talking and all the very careful work of making small knots and lining things up. So I make sloppy dandelion crowns where you can see all the knots. You can see the work of it, how hard I had to try, how it didn’t come easily to me, how it wasn’t simple and pretty and nice.
I am not simple and pretty and nice.
And I am not lucky.
A woman in brown shoes with a tight smile taps me on the shoulder. “You’re an inspiration,” she says. I recognize her. The shoes and the smile and also the voice, which is smaller now than when I first heard it, less sure of where it’s going, too. But sweeter.
The reporter. I look for her notebook, her leather bag, her tape recorder. But she’s in jeans and her hair is a little messy and her hands are tucked into her back pockets.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t want to talk to reporters.”
“Oh, I’m not here for that,” she says. “I’m here because I—I did it too. Went to the lake. Opened the jars. Said goodbye to all that.”
I take her in again. It’s not just that she’s wearing jeans and smiling. It’s that she looks comfortable in those jeans and the smile is new, is not trying to be something else.
“Oh,” I say. “Well. Welcome, then, I guess.”
“You’re a hero,” she says. “I just want you to know that. You’re Little Luck after all, you know?”
“Oh,” I say again. “No. I’m not. I don’t want to be. I’m just Rose. I just did what I needed to do. And other people did what they needed to do. And here we are.”
“It’s not that simple,” she says. “You shouldn’t be so humble. You’re the reason we’re all here.”
I shake my head. Hard. I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be Little Luck or a hero or the reason for anything. I don’t want to be known. Not like that, not anymore. She might not be writing an article about me, but she’s writing my story anyway, trying to make it something other than what it is to me.
“I guess—aren’t you the reason you’re here?” I try to see what brought her here, what it was that made her stop believing in magic.
She smiles. It’s a big smile, a real one. And it doesn’t matter why she’s here, it just matters that she is, and that all these people are. We’re all here. I give the reporter a handful of dandelions. “It’s fun,” I say with a shrug. Sometimes in Belling Bright we wanted things to be more than what they were. Dandelions that turned glittery or grew three sizes, crowns that made you invisible, made you beautiful, made you able to run faster than anyone else in town.
We don’t need things to be more than what they are anymore. The reporter sits down and starts knotting the stems. I wonder what hers will look like, when she’s done.
“How’s my crown?” Ginger asks. She braids her crown lying on her back, which looks impossible but I guess isn’t. She braids it with one eye open and one eye closed, to get the best view of it, and her fingers are quick with it, like Zelda’s, not slow like mine.
We are settling back into friendship. Except it isn’t the same friendship as before. It’s new and different and sometimes it feels sort of awkward, like we are a messy, badly knotted dandelion crown, and I guess we really sort of are. We are people who can’t quite find the right way to tie ourselves to each other but are trying anyway.
Which is good, because I need Ginger now, more than ever. My father is getting help somewhere far away from Belling Bright and my mother is trying to understand why she stayed when things were so bad, and my world feels disjointed and strange. Ginger is someone safe in all of that newness.
But her crown makes me feel jealous, a quick familiar feeling of all the things she has and all the things I don’t, but instead of getting lost in it, I start another flower crown and decide to make the messy knots bigger, the sloppiness sloppier, the design of it floppier and less lined up and less perfect.
And it starts to look beautiful too. Not beautiful like Zelda’s or Ginger’s. But the work of it is right there on the surface, and when I put it on it falls over one eye a little and I like that mistake, too.
“Yours is great,” I say to Ginger.
“So is yours,” she says.
We pass the afternoon like this, Zelda, Ginger, and I and a few dozen other people who want things to be different, who let go of jars of magic for another kind of magic, the kind that’s just the magic of the sun on the top of your head and a free day stretching out ahead.
Eventually I get my sketch pad and I draw people on Zelda’s lawn. An old man in flannel, a group of teenage girls covered in dandelions, laughing about something. Two men leaning against each other and their two kids climbing all over them. Then I draw myself and my dandelion crown and the sunset that isn’t magical at all—just gray streaks against a blueish sky, nothing particularly beautiful, but I like trying to capture the exact shape of the clouds, the exact shadows of the disappearing sun on all of our faces.
Somewhere, Evan Dell is opening a jar of magic to make himself better at baseball. Somewhere Maddy and Layla are magicking their legs longer, their hair shinier, their houses bigger. Somewhere, my father is unwinding his past and his present and maybe, maybe, deciding on a different kind of future.
And if he does, maybe we’ll find a way to be in it with him. Without ma
gic. Without a lot of things that never should have been.
Somewhere my mother is looking at houses in the center of town, where parents move when they split up. She promised me we’d keep coats in the coat closets and not on the couches, and that we could each keep our one jar of magic wherever we wanted.
I wonder, now, where I’ll keep it. What kind of house we’ll be in. When we’ll see my father next, and what it will feel like if we do.
My one jar of magic will probably go in my closet at my new house. Somewhere behind my fancy holidays outfits and the bin with old report cards and school photos. It will be a thing that I have, not a thing that I am.
I don’t know who I am yet. I am Rose Alice Anders. I have a crooked dandelion crown on my head and two best friends and a brother who is maybe a third best friend and an uncle who speaks slowly and quietly and makes a much prettier dandelion crown than I can make.
I am not the most magical person in all of Belling Bright. Not even close.
I’m not the best at dandelion crowns either. Or sitting still. Or telling stories. Or finding a boyfriend or girlfriend. Or playing soccer. Or being not-jealous of things that no one really needs to be jealous of.
But maybe I am the best at something. Maybe I am the best at drawing this sunset exactly as it is, the best at making a sloppy crown, the best at stitching myself back together after something that changed everything, the best at changing a little bit with it, the best at finding family where I didn’t know there would be any, the best at hiding one jar of magic in the closet and letting that tiny dot of wonder be enough.
Because I am Rose Alice Anders, and I am not Little Luck, but I am one tiny dot of wonder too. And it is enough.
Author’s Note
Our homes, our families, should always be safe places for everyone—adults and children alike. But this is not always the case. If you don’t feel safe at home, or if you are concerned about a friend’s safety, you deserve to be heard and protected and believed. It is important to understand that in most cases, authorities are required to get involved if children aren’t safe in their homes or with their families. If you are ready to take that step, you should reach out to a trusted adult for help. Trusted adults can be family, friends, teachers, counselors, doctors, or anyone who has shown you that they are good listeners and respect you and your feelings.
If you don’t feel safe at home, it isn’t your fault. You deserve to be safe, no matter what.
If you would like to know more about domestic violence, or need further resources, there are some organizations that can help you. Here are a few:
The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline
1-800-422-4453
childhelp.org
This organization can help with both prevention and intervention, and their hotline is a place to turn if you need support, information, or action.
Prevent Child Abuse America
preventchildabuse.org
This organization both promotes and develops programs and services that work to eradicate domestic violence. They are invested in evidence-based programs that address the needs of families in distress, including the home-visiting program Healthy Families America.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline
1-800-799-7233
thehotline.org
At this organization, trained professionals are on hand 24/7 to take calls related to domestic violence. They can offer tools and support for a person experiencing domestic violence, or a person concerned about a friend’s domestic situation.
You are always worthy of a safe home.
There are people who can help.
You are not alone.
Acknowledgments
There are always so many people to thank, because it takes so very many people to usher an idea into a story and a story into a book. It is magic, truly, every step of it.
Thank you to my agent, Victoria Marini, for being you, being in my corner, and for all the work you’ve done over the years. I would like to capture your energy and passion in a jar.
Thank you to my editor, Mabel Hsu, for bringing so much heart and humor and depth to our work together. You gave me confidence and excitement and such a stronger, greater understanding of what this story was meant to be. I would like to capture your magical mind in a jar.
Thank you to Katherine Tegen for giving me a publishing home and so much support. And I couldn’t be more grateful for everyone at Katherine Tegen Books and HarperCollins who bring their creativity, spirit, precision, and love to every book you work on—Tanu Srivastava, Sam Benson, Bethany Reis, Alexandra Rakaczki, Emma Meyer, Kimberly Stella—I am profoundly inspired by your work and dedication. Thank you to incredible cover designer, Laura Mock, and illustrator, Jane Newland, who made this book look so dreamy and special.
Thank you to the magical Vermont College of Fine Arts. Though I am a faculty member, I learn so much in my time there, and this book changed and grew and blossomed because of time spent in Vermont and the lessons learned from students and faculty alike.
And thank you as always to friends and family who support me in hundreds of big and small ways. Little sparks of the love you give me show up on every page.
And thank you to Frank and Fia, for all the magic, all the time.
About the Author
Photo credit Jessie Weinberg
COREY ANN HAYDU is the author of Eventown, The Someday Suitcase, Rules for Stealing Stars, the Hand-Me-Down Magic chapter book series, as well as five acclaimed books for teens. She grew up in the Boston area, earned her MFA at the New School, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family. Find out more at www.coreyannhaydu.com.
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Books by Corey Ann Haydu
Eventown
The Someday Suitcase
Rules for Stealing Stars
Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
ONE JAR OF MAGIC. Copyright © 2021 by Corey Ann Haydu. Jar illustrations © Shutterstock. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Cover art © 2021 by Jane Newland
Cover design by Laura Mock
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020948227
Digital Edition JANUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-268986-3
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-268985-6
* * *
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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