Page 49 of Everything She Does Is Magic

“Knocking on the front door would’ve done it.”

“I tried that. Your aunt told me you were in mourning and not to disturb you. Which I would’ve taken as a no, except I met your mom, who told me you’d actually love some company. Neither of them could decide who was more right, so I was stuck there for a while.”

“But you’re dressed like a burglar. Or a linebacker.”

“Haven’t you learned the value of a costume in this town?” she asks. “I’m cultivating a sense of intentional whimsy, Doyle. Life’s a performance. It’s time you start tap-dancing on the stage a little bit.”

“Is breaking into my house a performance or an actual crime?”

“I’m not loving your tone,” Grace warns. “Besides, your mom gave me a ladder. She told me you always leave this window open and that it’s just big enough for me to fit through. Which reminds me!” Grace walks back to the window, sticking her head out. “Thanks, Rhonda! I got in just as easily as you said I would! Appreciate you!” She blows my mom a kiss.

This whole thing is absurd. But it’s also oddly moving. “No one has ever climbed a ladder to reach me,” I say.

“Yeah, well, I’m an exceptional person,” Grace responds. “It’s not really news if you’ve been paying attention.”

And she’s right. It isn’t news. I can imagine a hundred scenarios where Grace would climb a ladder for Darcy, or probably even for the famous Parker Holt. I just never would have imagined a scenario where she’d do it for me.

“Enough about my fantastic qualities,” Grace says. “We need to talk about how you’re a witch.”

She gives me that same look I’ve seen so many times before, like she’s always known this. And it seems as though she has. Like how Cal isn’t hiding whenever she tries to be silent and removed. But all these years of trying to hide has made me rusty at accepting this truth as something capable of being shared.

Grace runs her finger across my clothes rack. “The all-black thing is kind of obvious, isn’t it? I guess I can appreciate commitment to a theme, though.”

“Maybe I’m cultivating a sense of intentional whimsy,” I say.

She moves to my dresser, smirking as she examines my crystals and knickknacks, tokens I’ve collected from my years spread out across different towns and different members of my family.

“I’ve known all along,” she says.

Those words thrust me back through time, an echo of my past that I’ve never been able to escape. At once, I’m not seventeen. I’m twelve, living with my Uncle Edward and Aunt Paula. Grace isn’t Grace. She’s Julia Daniels. The girl I thought would be my protector.

“I know you’re a witch,” Julia had told me.“I’ve known all along.”

The memory has real determination. In all my years of attempting to dismiss it, it’s only ever gotten stronger. And now here is Grace, echoing Julia’s words, and I have to fight the urge to plug my ears and curl up into a ball, knowing Julia herself is poking around somewhere, still believing her own version of events.

“You can save my grandpa,” Julia had said. Her eyes went hard as she clenched her jaw, folding her arms across her chest.

“I really don’t know how,” I said. I was desperate for her to believe me. To make her understand. And even if I did, all I’d ever heard from my mentors was that Doyle witches don’t mess with the natural order of human life.

“Of course you do,” she pressed. “You’re amender. I already know. I heard you talking about it. So do something.”

She said “mender” like an insult. Like a curse.

“I can close a paper cut sometimes, but I’m not even very good at it. I can’t cure your grandpa’s cancer,” I told her.

“You really are a witch,” she said then, her angry determination softening for a single moment. She’d told me she already knew. She’d lied, and I’d walked into her trap of confirmation by accident. “You’re not even gonna do the right thing? You’re not gonna help the one person who’s bothered to put up with you here?”

“I’m really sorry,” I said, tears brimming against my will. “I wish I could. But I don’t even think it’s allowed. No. I’m sure it isn’t. My mom already told me that. I can’t mess with fate likethat.”

“Whatever.” Julia stomped across the room to pick up her coat. “If you can’t do that for me, I don’t even know why we’re friends.”

Her grandpa died a few weeks later. I tried to be the bigger person and express my condolences. And she blamed me. Told me that if I’d just been a good person, I could have helped her. But I was selfish. I didn’t think about other people at all. Only about myself. I lied about my powers. About what I could do. I used her.

Those were the last words she’d willingly said to my face. The rest of my time there was filled with insults muttered underher breath as I walked past her and judgmental laughs from everyone in my grade whenever the teachers made me speak in public. Until I couldn’t take it anymore and called my mom, begging her to let me leave.

“Darcy already knows,” I say now to Grace, squeezing my eyes shut to stop myself from having to see this again. To live this kind of moment twice. “But I messed everything up anyway. So don’t worry, you don’t have to embarrass me any more than I already have been.”

My own breathing, rapid and tight, is the only audible thing in the room. Grace is waiting, forcing me to open my eyes, to look at her and take this on the chin.