4. Perfectly Fine
Perfectly Fine
Ilock my bedroom door and don’t emerge until the next morning. Every time I close my eyes, the overwhelming memory of the heat threatens to take me under again.
I don’t sleep much.
Bags under my eyes have never been a thing, not on this face. Not with my perfected skin care routine. But today they are real and I hate it. Is this how normal people feel all the time?
Normal people. Messing around with magic only reminds me how absolutely not normal I am, no matter how much I pretended to be.
I never let people too close, though. My ‘friends’ stopped asking about me after I skipped two outings, and any guys I may have been talking to fell off as well.
What are they doing right now? Probably sleeping off a wicked hangover from a night of bar hopping, flirting, and dancing as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
I don’t miss the people. But I miss pretending I didn’t have a care in the world.
I throw on a chunky, distressed cream sweater and thick fleece-lined leggings with knee-high winter boots, and so much concealer I will probably look like a creasy weirdo in a couple hours. Oh well. No one cares what I look like anymore, anyway.
“Hey.” Hazel stops me from leaving the house with a hand on my arm.
Noah leans on the banister behind her, shooting me a cautious smile.
Noah is all tall, lanky, lean lines. At somewhere over six foot, he makes Hazel look more like a pixie than a witch.
He and I still don’t really know each other, despite him apparently being my family now.
But from what I’ve gathered, he’s incredibly sweet and incredibly nerdy. “Are you okay?”
I sigh. “I didn’t put on enough concealer, did I?”
She smiles, the worry still poking through. “You look beautiful, as always. But I was there last night. I heard you screaming.”
All I could feel, see, or hear was heat. I had no idea I was screaming until Hazel said it last night.
And the dehydration. I drank about three bottles of water last night.
“I’m fine.” I plaster on an I’m-entirely-normal smile. “It was nothing.”
It was obviously not nothing, and the skeptical glance I’m getting in response proves that she’s aware of it, too. But until I know what happened, there’s nothing I can say to make her, or myself, feel better.
“We’ll talk about it in the car.” Grandma comes up to us with a sympathetic smile on her weathered face. “But we’ll be late if we don’t go now.”
I nod and follow Grandma, leaving Hazel’s worry behind in the creaking house. Leaving both of them behind.
It’s quiet as Grandma and I get in the car, both of us lost to our thoughts.
Hazel, as always, knows exactly how she feels about everything the second it happens. Me? I need a second to process shit. And whatever the fuck happened last night is a lot to figure out.
I think I’m scared. I think I’m no longer convinced I’m not crazy. Hearing voices is never a good sign, it can’t be.
“You are processing what happened last night and you don’t have the words to describe it yet. Am I correct?” Grandma asks from the driver’s side, after we’ve been driving for a few minutes.
“Uh . . . yeah, that’s pretty much it,” I reply. I’d rather she believe that than let her know I’m contemplating my sanity.
She nods. “I would assume so. You’ve probably never had something like that happen to you.”
“What was it?” I ask, knowing she probably won’t have the answer. It happened in my own head, after all.
She glances at me, tightening her hands on the wheel. “Could be any number of things. Spirits, connection to a memory, a message. But despite how you reacted, it may not have been bad. It’s hard to say.”
May not have been bad? It definitely sucked. I’m glad she’s not pressuring me, though. She’s just letting me do my own thing.
“That being said, it may happen again as we train. And I want you to be prepared for that possibility.”
I groan.
“How are you otherwise, dear?”
She’s trying to keep up a conversation today and part of me appreciates that she cares, but part of me misses the silence of yesterday. I used to hate the quiet. I would always be the one to fill it with nonsense. Now? I don’t really have that much to say.
At least, I don’t have much to say to Grandma and Hazel.
“I’m fine,” I reply after a beat. “Perfectly fine.”
She sighs. “As we all are.”
I can’t keep talking about this. I flip my hair over my shoulder, putting on the mask I’m so used to wearing. “How did you find out you were an Earth witch?”
“Mm.” She turns in to the market. “I was raised differently than you and Hazel. My parents were very invested in our bloodline and in our magic, so I was taught how to look out for manifestations from the very beginning. I learned how to test each element, to reach out to each of them and see if they speak to me.”
Like the way fire speaks to me?
A wistful smile blooms on her face, softening the lines etched on her skin and making the years fall away. “One day I was sitting in my mother’s garden and I wished her prized red rose bush had no thorns. Each one of them fell off in an instant.”
My mind twirls around her words as we park and walk toward the market.
I have so many questions but I don’t know how to ask any of them.
So am I the only one fire speaks to? Does magic work that way?
Is something wrong with me? How differently would our lives have gone if Mom nurtured our magic the way Grandma’s parents did?
“Are you going to stay today?” I ask as we approach our booth. Someone to play interference with Ash, even someone as meddling as Grandma, would be lovely.
She raises an eyebrow. “Do you need me to?”
She’s challenging me. And damn it, I’m not a little girl who needs to be coddled.
I shake my head, blonde ponytail moving with it. “Nope. It’s not like it’s hard. I just figured you’d want a break from Hazel.”
“It’s Wednesday. Though she doesn’t teach classes anymore, this is her day off. If you needed me, I’d have just kept the shop closed, but since you don’t . . .” Her eyes twinkle with mischief. The old schemer.
“Guess I’ll be just fine.” I fake a grin, my eyes already involuntarily moving toward where Ash’s booth usually sits. I don’t see any large, lumbering oafs, though. Which is odd.
“Looking for someone?” She asks, false innocence in her tone.
“Who would I be looking for, Grandma?” If she and Hazel are talking about Ash behind my back, too, I swear to God I will throw someone down a flight of stairs.
Even if it’s myself.
“I may have seen you speaking to a certain woodworker when I was with my friends yesterday. I don’t plan on mentioning him to anyone, though. I am also not going to mention that he usually doesn’t have his booth up on Wednesdays since he drives his father to his appointments.”
“Appointments?” The question is out of my mouth before I can stop it. I don’t want to know more things about him. Keeping him at arm’s length is hard enough as it is.
She nods sadly. “Ash’s father, Birch—”
“BIRCH?”
“Good to know your ears are working, dear. As I was saying—” She cuts me a glare full more of fondness than anger. “Ash’s father, Birch, used to own the woodworking business. Had done ever since his father passed it down to him—”
“What was his father’s name? Spruce? Oak? Douglas?”
“Up until about a year ago when he was diagnosed with cancer,” she continues as if I said nothing. “Ash was his apprentice at the time, but took over the majority of the business so Birch could focus on treatments.”
“That’s a lot to deal with,” I reply, my chest aching at the thought.
My father died quickly and unexpectedly. One day he was there and the next he wasn’t. What would it be like if I had been forced to watch him slowly wither away?
I’m not sure which I would prefer.
She nods once. “Birch is a good man. I met him when he was a teenager. He and your mom didn’t really run in the same circles, but they did hang out in big groups together once or twice.”
That’s a mindfuck if I’ve ever heard one. Mom as a teenager hanging out with my future soulmate’s dad.
My gaze lingers on the empty space where Ash usually stands. Would I have ever known any of this if Grandma hadn’t told me?
“Well.” She gives my shoulder a gentle pat full of affection. “I’m going to head out. Call me if you have any questions!”
And with that—and the clickity-clack of her millions of bangles—she leaves me by myself.
It’s lonelier than I expect.