Page 46 of Everything She Does Is Magic

My dad appears in Anya’s room, the concern on his face a strange contrast to his silly pumpkin tie. “We have to go,” he says to Anya. “Thank you for having us.”

I make a move to protest. There is still so much we need to sort out. We can’t leave ithere.

But my dad says three words he’s never spoken to me before, and they’re so foreign, so strange, I have to ask him to repeat himself, just to make sure I’ve understood him right.

“Darcy, you’re grounded.”

22

Anya

Mom leans her head against the doorway in her sad-puppy way. “Honey, are you sure you don’t want to come downstairs with us? We’d love to spend some time with you.”

“I don’t feel well,” I tell her, which is true, but it’s more of an existential ache than it is a real one.

She comes to my bed and puts her hand on my forehead.

Sometimes I forget my mom is my mom. All this time away from her, living with different relatives, I’ve spent it existing to be trained, soaking up knowledge and taking in the culture of all these safe-haven towns, looking for what will one day be my home. I’ve lost the sense that someone should care for me. That I don’t have to do anything to earn this attention. Show off my best tricks to make sure she knows I’m worth her time.

“Youdofeel warm,” Mom says.

Now I don’t know who is lying to who. Except maybe I am sick. Lovesick, I guess.

She sits herself on the edge of my bed. “Would you like to talk about it?”

What a question. Kryptonite really. I expect to conjure up my most disapproving face—channeling the proud legacy of every sullen Doyle witch who has come before me. I find myself leaning into Mom instead. Placing my head on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Mom says, rubbing my shoulders. “I’m here.”

I start to cry. It’s a fountain, long suppressed, now overflowing. Or water breaking through a dam. Poetry has never been my strength. If it was, these are the kinds of feelings I would write about.

“I can’t join our coven,” I say through heaving sniffles. “I don’t have anyone to be my protector. I have no friends. Darcy was never my friend in the first place. And Aunt Cal is right. Even if she wanted to be my protector, I wouldn’t want her to be. It’s not what we are to each other. But without her, I have no one.”

“Honey, I know,” Mom says.

“What?” I ask, wiping my face.

“Your father and I came out here a little early in the hopes of figuring something out for you.” Through my confusion, my mom keeps talking, cupping her hand under my chin. “I’ve known all along, dear. You may be secretive, but that doesn’t mean you’re good at lying.”

I’m so used to going unnoticed.Feelingunnoticed. I think again of Cal at dinner. How I’d caught her trying to hide but found myself capable of knowing exactly what it was she hid from. Still, it didn’t occur to me that my mom could see through it all too. That she could seeme.

“As you can tell, we know a good amount of people in town from seeing Cal over the years and my time spent here with your grandma when she’d come to visit,” Mom says. “We thought maybe we could come out and find someone for you. Make a few calls. I’m sure the Holtzenbergs would be interested.”

This is enough to get my tears to stop.

“Kyle Holtzenberg,” I say, like my mom will know how ridiculous this suggestion is just by the sound of his name.

Judging by the look she gives me, she seems to know. Still, gently, she says, “We have to come up with someone, honey. And if he’s willing, we’re not in the position to turn him down, are we? And at least he’s not someone you’re romantically involved with, right?”

“Mom,”I say, horrified.

On my dresser, tucked into the corner of my mirror, is the calendar of events Darcy gave me. Mom gets up to grab it, looking at the check marks I’ve placed next to everything I’ve gone to. “You went to all of these?”

“Yeah,” I say, my sadness reignited at the sight of it. “I’ve been to all that stuff, and Istilldon’t have a friend.”

She probably means to use this as proof of my life, to remind me how I’ve been putting myself out there and trying, but it’s just another reminder of my failure.

I haven’t made a friend. Haven’t made a plan for a life outside of being a witch. The thought of her calling in a favor to someone in town is so embarrassing to me, I want my tears to make an ocean where I can live in a boat of my own despair. Kyle Holtzenberg getting dragged to my coven initiation to pledge his lifelong allegiance to me.