A Wicked Magic

by Sasha Laurens

  “Yeah, I know,” Dan said. “It makes you want to escape your whole life.”

  Johnny shook his head. “Not even close. This music’s angry, but I guess it makes me feel happy to be alive enough to be angry or happy or bummed or whatever. That sounds so dumb.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I totally get that,” she said, although she definitely didn’t.

  Johnny cleared the browser search history. “We should get out of here. Get home safe, okay, Daniela?” He called her by her full name with a Spanish flourish to tease her around Achieve! Dan was never sure if he knew that was actually how it was pronounced. He never said it like that in Spanish class, where he never said her name at all.

  “You too, Juan.”

  Dan didn’t know what to think. She was sure she was one dumb comment away from making him realize how annoying she was. It didn’t help that at school he basically ignored her, sometimes throwing her a nod in the hall when he was with his friends. Once he overheard her complaining to Liss about her period cramps, and she was so embarrassed she’d nearly skipped work that afternoon.

  Then other times, she could barely bring herself to care about him. It was a crush, that was all, and of course, he didn’t like her back. Why would he? Lately she felt heavy nearly all the time, and no one wanted a girlfriend who couldn’t get it together enough to smile. Dan was looking forward to summer, so she could stop pretending she wanted to do anything other than sleep all day.

  But then they let magic into their lives, and things felt brighter, here and there. Liss was always looking for spells that would fix something: a goal at her soccer game, a nasty zit to clear. Liss approached each with the same serious excitement, like every spell was bringing her life that much closer to perfection. It felt like magic every time they cast, and magic felt like something, at least, but Dan struggled to think of what to ask the Black Book. She rarely knew what needed changing, and when she did, she didn’t want to say it out loud to Liss.

  Then summer started and Achieve! moved to eight-hour shifts. It was exhausting work, not interesting enough to fight off boredom, but there was too much going on to completely zone out. Watching the summer days go from socked in with fog to sun-blistered blue and back to foggy again in the evening made Dan feel she was watching her life slide by. Liss still asked her about Johnny, but the more she did, the more he felt like an impossible problem: something she was supposed to want, although she hadn’t figured out exactly how wanting worked.

  When Rickey IronWeaks died in July of that summer, Dan felt something in her come unmoored and sink, stone-heavy. It hadn’t changed by the time school started at the end of August. When she wasn’t slogging through junior year, she spent more and more time curled up in bed, although most of the time she wasn’t sleeping, not really—just existing. She felt the same way when she was at her classes, at work, or sneaking out onto the roof of her house with Liss to do a spell. Like she was always half asleep, part of mind floating in some melancholy place, far away from the strange and useless anchor of her body.

  “Same as Darby Crash from the Germs,” Johnny said, shaking his head in disappointment. It was the end of their first shift together since Rickey’s death. “They gave too much to the music.”

  Dan glared at him, a blister of anger bursting in her throat. “Darby Crash died of a drug overdose, so it’s totally different. And anyway music is supposed to make things better.”

  After work, Dan crawled into bed and listened to the saddest music in the world.

  * * *

  —

  The kiss happened two weeks into school. Dan’s car broke down. She managed to get the car to an auto shop, cursing the whole way there that all her savings would be gone. She showed up late to Achieve!, flushed with frustration as she explained to Johnny what happened.

  He put his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, relax. Don’t worry about being late. You need a ride home?”

  It took her a second to reply. It was the first time he’d ever touched her on purpose. “Dogtown’s forty-five minutes away.”

  “So it’s too far to walk.”

  But they didn’t go home after changing out of their red Achieve! polos. The sun was setting, and they went to watch it at the overlook south of Gratton, where the Pacific had carved jagged monoliths out of the cliffs. They smoked a bowl, then went to 7-Eleven for snacks.

  They leaned against his Volvo watching the sky light itself on fire and eating Doritos. The weed made Dan feel warm and sweet and empty, and also anxious that her mouth was covered in powdered Cool Ranch.

  Then Johnny put his arm around her. Probably just in a friendly way, Dan told herself, even as she let herself sink into him. When he asked, “What do you want to do now?” she tilted her face to his. The moon was rising clearly over his shoulder, above the jagged edge of the distant trees, and he was looking at her shyly, as if they were a secret. She was caught on the ocean wind, drifting away. He could kiss her, he could not; what did any of it matter? She answered, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?”

  Johnny grinned. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” he parroted back to her, and all of a sudden they were laughing, and Dan was curled against him now, both their bodies trembling and taut, her face buried against his neck.

  He kissed her.

  Dan was out of breath, her heart already racing, and she forgot entirely that she was supposed to close her eyes. His lips were soft against hers, moving in an unfamiliar way, yet somehow her own lips knew how to move against them. He tasted like Doritos, and she could smell the conditioner in his hair and the wet sucking sound their mouths made was more strange than sexy. Johnny’s eyes were shut tight, and she didn’t know if she wanted him to open them or not, to see her there kissing him or not.

  So that’s how kissing is, Dan thought as Johnny broke away from her, and then, I can’t wait to tell Liss.

  * * *

  —

  Dan slept over at Liss’s exactly eight days after The Kiss, and Liss was treating it like the event of the century.

  “So you like him, right?” Liss pressed. They were lying on her bed scrolling through Johnny’s social media. “I can tell you really like him.”

  “Come on, Liss!” Dan protested.

  Dan had no idea how Liss could tell when Dan still couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. True, in the first days of the Post-Kiss Era, she had no appetite, and a smile crept across her face whenever she thought about the way he smelled (who knew Doritos could be romantic?) and how when he was deeply tanned from surfing, his skin was nearly the same color as hers, when it seemed like everyone else in North Coast was white. All that definitely pointed in the direction of liking Johnny. But she’d also checked her phone approximately every fifteen seconds and he still hadn’t texted her, which annoyed her intensely, as if all she wanted was for him to just text her to get it over with already. She’d reminded herself that if he didn’t text her and somehow he fell off the face of the earth and she never had to see him again, she could deal with that—ignoring how totally unromantic that sounded and how it definitely did not point to liking Johnny.

  Dan had imagined, before, that if “something happened” between them, afterward she wouldn’t be so hopelessly awkward, and he would—he would what? Johnny had always treated her perfectly fine. He’d told her a million bands to check out and offered a ride home without her even asking. But he had this careless way with her, ignoring her at school even now that they were Post-Kiss. Maybe that was because he liked her, because you didn’t just kiss people you didn’t like. But that kind of logic made it seem like everything he did was a part of some elaborate strategy to win her over, a strategy that looked the same as what he would do if he didn’t care about her at all. Maybe he didn’t know how he felt about her, just like she didn’t know how she felt about him. Then again didn’t that just mean they didn’t really like each other, and how cou
ld that be when they had kissed?

  “I can’t believe I have to see him on Monday,” Dan said. “We’re scheduled together at Achieve!, so there’s no way I can avoid talking to him.”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “I don’t know, I just . . .” Dan began. Thinking about it turned her stomach a little, but that was probably just part of having a crush. “He makes me nervous, I guess.”

  Liss tossed her phone aside. “I know what we have to do!” Her blue eyes narrowed. “A love spell. I’m not saying he doesn’t like you back, but what’s the point of being witches if we’re going to leave things to chance?”

  Dan pushed herself up against the pillows. “What would that even do?”

  “Make him fall in love with you, obviously!”

  “Like, forever?” Dan squeaked.

  “That would be super romantic!”

  “That would be kind of fucked up.”

  Liss swatted at Dan’s shoulder. “What if you guys get separated for like fifteen years, and then he sees you on TV interviewing a band or something and he’d be like, I’m still so in love with her, I have to find her! That would be so romantic.”

  “Oh my god, Liss!” Dan laughed. “We’re not trying to curse him. Plus I think that would be stalking.”

  “Fine, he can love you very respectfully,” Liss said. “We’ll ask for that to be part of the spell.”

  “Love in moderation only!” Dan said, mimicking Liss’s stern tone, and then they were both laughing again. It felt better to be curled up under a down comforter with Liss, talking about Johnny, than it was to actually be with him.

  That’s why Dan agreed to ask the Black Book for the spell.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, they sat on Dan’s bedroom floor in the only circle that was clear of stuff. The Black Book lay between them, holding the focus of all the energy in the room, like it was a slice of chocolate cake and Dan was starving but had to wait for her first bite.

  It wasn’t always easy to search the Black Book. For one, it was long: hundreds of pages, and they weren’t numbered. There was no index or table of contents. More importantly, the pages had no fixed order. It was almost impossible to find a page you’d seen before, even if you flipped back to its general whereabouts. You might remember seeing a spell near the middle, right after a memorable section on how to sacrifice a goat, but when you’d turn the page, you’d find something entirely different, like an even more unpleasant section on how to sacrifice a cat. Other times, the Book practically opened to the spell they were looking for, as if it just decided to let them have what it knew they wanted. At first, Liss had thought the book made your memory play tricks on you. Then Dan pointed out that whenever they tried to leave sticky notes to mark the pages, they fell out, or ended up directing them to something totally pointless.

  Eventually the two of them developed a way of asking the Book for what they wanted that was almost a spell in itself. Now, they placed their hands on the cover. Static electricity crackled over Dan’s skin: Liss, the Book, and herself completing some circuit, current running through them.

  “We need a love spell for Johnny Su,” Liss said in a low voice.

  “But nothing too extreme,” Dan added. “Like a moderate, respectful love spell.”

  Liss rolled her eyes. “We can’t actually ask for that. The Book won’t know what it means.”

  “It knew what you meant when you asked for a spell to mess up your mom’s Botox.”

  Liss relented, and they fell silent. Dan focused on what they needed from the Book, feeling that need channel into the depths of its dingy pages. It was like shuffling the cards in a tarot reading: you meditated on your question, so the cards would hear what you needed to know.

  A love spell for Johnny.

  Dan opened the Book to a random page and skimmed it, but it wasn’t their spell—it was something about banishing an incubus. Now it was Liss’s turn to flip to a new page.

  A love spell, Dan thought. A love spell for Johnny.

  Suddenly Dan imagined herself sitting shotgun in Johnny’s Volvo as it took the turns of Highway 1. He’d pull over in some remote spot and lean across the center console to kiss her. Did you take your seat belt off first? Or would that send a signal—kissing’s not enough for me, I’m ready for more? Would they get into the back seat? Would they talk first, or maybe it was better not to, in case she said something stupid? But how did you decide whether to get in the back seat if you weren’t going to talk first?

  Dan turned a page to a diagram of the constellation Aquarius.

  A love spell.

  The point of the spell was to simplify things, Liss had said. Dan understood that to mean that once Johnny fell for her, she wouldn’t need to worry about why or how much, or when to hold hands, or him seeing her with her top off, or him seeing her scars, or how humiliated Johnny would feel once he realized he’d been tricked into dating a sad gremlin of a person. But how could she ever stop worrying about those things, when she knew she didn’t deserve his love, and she wasn’t even sure if she wanted it?

  “Liss, I think we should—”

  “This is it,” Liss breathed. The page she had just turned to was titled “An Incantation for Love.”

  “That’s kind of vague, isn’t it?” Dan ventured.

  Liss was hunched over the Book. She’d already read through the steps. “It’s so simple! Just a charm you say on the bank of a body of water—easy—and then you say his name three times and ring a bell.”

  “Wait a second—it doesn’t say what it exactly does. Like, just love in general? What does that mean?”

  Liss grabbed her backup Black Book notebook and was copying out the spell. “We could totally do it tonight—didn’t your mom bring back a bunch of bells from her trip to Tibet?”

  “Liss, stop!” Dan burst out. “I don’t want to do it, okay?”

  “Borrow one of the bells?”

  “The spell! I don’t want to do the spell.”

  Liss had already finished copying it. She sat back on her heels, her lips in an annoyed pout. “Why not?”

  “It’s not fair to him. Or me. If this isn’t meant to be then it just isn’t, I guess.”

  “I thought you liked him,” Liss said. Her tone was cagey, testing.

  Dan sighed and flipped the Book shut. “I want to give it more time, that’s all. We have the spell now, we can do it whenever, right?”

  “Right,” Liss agreed, and closed her notebook.

  FIVE

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, SENIOR YEAR

  Alexa

  It had taken nearly all of English class, but Alexa had drawn a pretty comprehensive map of Flintowerland that plotted the lairs of three different mythic beasts, which Alexa needed to know before she could write a story about the badass gang of girl-warriors dead set on defeating them. Or on doing something more cooperative, like befriending them, she wasn’t sure. She was wondering about the position of the River Gnoss relative to the Aeryl Mountains when she realized Mr. Aquino was saying her name.

  Mr. Aquino repeated, “An example of irony?”

  Alexa didn’t hesitate. “The whole situation with Lydia and Wickham is ironic because it’s supposed to be this disaster for Lizzie, but it actually brings her and Darcy even closer together.”

  Mr. Aquino’s nostrils flared, then he moved on to his next question, and Alexa went back to her map.

  English bored Alexa half to death, which was also ironic because she liked reading the most of almost anything. The problem was, when you’d been to three high schools in three different cities (the first two years in Tempe, junior in Los Angeles, and now senior in Fort Gratton), you read Pride and Prejudice three times, and you could practically fall asleep in class and still be able to answer any question the teacher lobbed at you. That was a super-effective way t
o get teachers to hate you.

  Her second reading of Pride and Prejudice happened not long after Alexa had gone to Los Angeles to live with Lorelei. Alexa got to wondering what she’d missed in her literary education in order to realize once again that Darcy was Lizzie Bennet’s dream man. (Actually Alexa thought Lizzie would be happier running off with Charlotte Lucas. Maybe she’d write a fic.) To make up for it, she’d made a syllabus of must-reads for her own education, with Lorelei suggesting contemporary classics she couldn’t skip.

  Reading was an escape to a different world, a different life. Plus, it was very cheap, and back in Arizona, Alexa could usually get to the library without her mother’s help. But like most things, with Lorelei it was different. Lorelei never made fun of her for reading too much, or warned her that she’d give herself wrinkles, or resented her as if having an intelligent daughter made a parent look stupid—although Lorelei was really her aunt and would only be her legal guardian until she turned eighteen in May. Kim, Alexa’s mother, told her that boys didn’t like a girl who read so much, and men didn’t like them either—which was messed up advice in the first place, and in the second place, drove Alexa crazy because Kim seemed to think Alexa’s queerness was a phase. If it was a phase, Alexa was pretty sure it began when she was born and would end when she died. So Alexa would spit back that Kim didn’t really seem to know what men liked, because she couldn’t keep one, and Kim would hit her with a wooden spoon. It hurt a lot more than it seemed like a spoon should, but then again Alexa had known that was coming and decided it was better than keeping her mouth shut.

  Mr. Aquino was saying something about marriage and romance, which felt about as remote from Alexa’s life as Mars.