Page 40 of Everything She Does Is Magic
“Really?”
“Yeah. According to my mom. Your last name caught her interest.”
“Ah, so you mean my dad’s mom. I never got to meet either of my grandmas,” Darcy tells me. “They both died before I was born. But I feel them a lot. Hard not to, since I’m living in the town they both grew up in, working at the shop one of them owned.” She pauses. “Sorry. I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m annoyed by my family history. Obviously I’m not. Everyone always says my grandmas were wonderful. I’m not surprised your grandma was best friends with one of them. There’s just so much happening right now.”
The possibility of her defensiveness won’t scare me off. Not this time. Not when I know it’s just that—a shield, designed to keep me from seeing her. “How do you do it all?”
“You should be the last person to ask me that,” she says. “You must be on track to be our class valedictorian.”
Okay, perhaps I’mnotprepared, because this is not the argument I expected her to make. It derails my entire plan for this reveal. My silence isn’t intentional, but she reads it as modesty, and it gets her to slap my arm in that playful way of hers. Then she rests her head in the crook of my shoulder, and I’m happy to be confused if it means having her this close to me again.
“C’mon,” she says. “You have a 107percent in French.”
“Because French is the only class you and I have together,” I tell her.
She tilts her head, looking at the side of my face with her nose almost pressed into my cheek. I can see the mental math she’s doing to accommodate for this admission.
“You’re only good at French because you want to beat me at it?” she asks. “You really are competitive. No wonder Kyle fearsyou.”
“I’m good at French because paying attention in that class is the only thing that’s kept me from thinking about you the whole time.”
It’s another heavy thing. Maybe a mistake. But Darcy laughs her real laugh, the one that sounds like wind chimes in a summer breeze. “I’m glad to know I motivate you.”
“Oh yes. If you were in all my classes, I probablywouldbe valedictorian. But since you’re not, I’ve got B’s in everything else. Actually, I almost failed gym class last semester. You can ask Kyle about it. I’m sure he’d love to tell you.”
“I will never forget the look on his face when you won the apple bobbing contest,” she says.
“Me neither.”
We fall quiet. It’s on the tip of my tongue. But bringing up the truth will disrupt this perfect peace. I have to hold on to this as long as I can. Because soon I’ll have nothing to hold on to atall.
Darcy slides off the top of the car. She opens the passenger door and rummages around for something inside. When she comes back, she has her phone in her hand.
“I want to take a picture,” she whispers. I expect to see her align her phone with the water. It would be dark, but maybe she wants it for her art. Something to paint.
Instead she turns the phone toward us, resting her head in the crook of my neck again. “Smile.”
I do. How could I not? Because this perfect, fleeting night will exist long beyond my memory of it. No matter who we someday become—Darcy hopefully off to some college far away, me living off five hundred dollars of apple bobbing money somewhere else—there will always be proof of our night by the creek, when the only thing that mattered was that we were here together.
19
Darcy
When I lean in for a goodbye kiss, Anya puts up a hand.
“Hold on,” she says. “I need to tell you something about tomorrow’s dinner. I’ve been avoiding it all night, and I can’t let you show up without knowing. I already know you’ll say you don’t believe me, but I promise you, it’s true.”
“What is it? You’re not…” I try on a laugh that doesn’t fit, falling off me like oversized clothing, pooling at my feet, and leaving me exposed in my confusion. “You’re not a…witch.”
It comes out like a curse word. A sin. It’s not any of those things. Because it’s not real.
Except for the fact that she fixed Maddie’s wings.
And she fixed my gnome.
And she dresses like…
Well, she dresses like a witch.
