Page 38 of Everything She Does Is Magic

It’s so gentle, the same way my heart feels, soft and exploring, like cracking the spine of a book and reading the first page.

Where will this take me? Where can we go?

My hand reaches for the dampness of her back, holding her water-soaked sweater, letting my fist swirl the fabric into a tiny tornado. We’re so close that the water’s started to soak me too, seeping into my overalls.

“Darcy,” she whispers.

I almost open my eyes to look up, but then she kisses me deeper, all the gentle exploration shifting to something bolder. There’s a fire in her hands, on her mouth, lighting me up inside. I move my lips to her neck, inhaling the scent of her.

“Anya,” I say back, like that’s the answer.

Because it is. It feels like this entire month has been a test, a pop quiz about me, and now, with my mouth on Anya’s neck and my hands wrapped in her hair, I’m finding the correct answers.

This is who I am.

This is what I want.

And all of it is exactly right.

18

Anya

I’ve never snuck out of any house. Not when it’s been only Aunt Cal and me, not with any other family member I’ve stayed with, and certainly not during summer visits with my parents. There has never been a reason for me to leave. Until Darcy. I need to see her again. And I need it, for once, not to be in some setting with every single resident of Fableview around us.

It’s easier than I expect, with everyone in their respective bedrooms on the second floor and me above them in the attic, pattering down the back spiral staircase that skips their floor altogether. Even if they did hear me, they’d never suspect this is what I’d be doing.

I drive Aunt Cal’s Volkswagen over to Darcy’s, pulling into the alley behind Pam’s Paints like she instructed. It’s a land of dumpsters and unlabeled metal back doors—a nice reminder that even though this town is sometimes unbelievably wholesome, it’s also real.

Darcy’s bedroom has its own balcony that overlooks thealley. She swings her leg over the side to find her footing on a pipe. She has a hood pulled over her hair, but her legs are bare, moisturized with something shimmery that catches a glint of moonlight. It’s nerve-racking to watch her find a way to the ground, but she has that confidence I know now to be a piece of her. Maybe she’s snuck out a dozen times before, and this delicate dance she’s doing among pipes and windows and siding is nothing new. Or she knows what we’re doing is dangerous but necessary, precious but risky, and one wrong move will mean we can’t see each other at all.

“You were right. I do find this car very funny,” she tells me as she climbs into Aunt Cal’s yellow Beetle. Darcy pulls the hood off her head, revealing the same pigtail braids she had on earlier, now sleep-tousled. She takes in the car’s interior. Aunt Cal’s drying herbs. All the crystals and talismans Cal’s fixed to the dashboard and roped around the rearview mirror.

“It smells like you in here.” Darcy presses her nose to my neck.

My foot loses its place on the brake. We wheel forward, and we both shriek.

“I thought you had it in park,” Darcy says, sitting very straight now in the passenger seat.

“I wish I did.” What a shame that one small decision has resulted in Darcy’s distance. The feeling of her nose on my neck still lingers, tickling my skin.

She directs me to Fableview Creek, taking care to keep her hands tucked under her legs for the rest of the drive. I grip the steering wheel tighter, all determination. “Oh,” I say. “I won the apple bobbing final.”

“I knew you would,” she tells me, and my face burns withpride. “I wish I’d been able to see it, but I was too busy announcing the pie contest winners with my parents.”

“A worthy cause.”

“Tell me, whatever will you do with your five-hundred-dollar prize?”

“Start a new life.”

She laughs like I’m kidding, which is fine. It’s better not to complicate this with the specifics anyway.

At the creek, the night is so dark, it blankets everything but the stars, which are countless out here in the stillness. The rush of the river in the near distance roars on with the same intensity as my beating heart—loud and steady. Assured.

“It’s really just us out here,” I say, parking the car.

“Us and the moon and the animals,” Darcy tells me.