Chapter Seven Daisy #2
“Who could?” Daisy agreed as she started to fill her plate. “Also”—she licked some teriyaki off her thumb—“he offered to build sets. Or at least facilitate it. He’s on the board for the theater.”
“That’s amazing!” Nora said.
Soraya sat on the floor in front of her full plate, frowning. She started to fiddle with her bun, pushing it higher, then tightening it.
“What?” Daisy asked.
“I got more orders for bread today through my Instagram than I’ve ever had before.
They’re not all from one place. It’s like a bunch of people spontaneously woke up and ordered loaves of bread from me.
I’ve been working on it all day. I’ll have to spend days getting through all of them.
I . . . It’s going to help so much. He’s still paying the bills right now, but there’s just nothing coming in for me to live on. And now there is.”
“Because of your spell.” Nora grinned, obviously picking up a conversation they’d started earlier.
“It wasn’t a spell,” Soraya said. “I added it to my vision board.”
Nora made a loud grunting sound. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Soraya. It’s the same thing! How do you not see that? When you do that, you’re trying to manifest something. That’s what a spell is. It’s not communing with the devil, it’s just wishful thinking.”
“I just . . . There’s no way it . . .”
“Maybe it’s a coincidence.” Nora was never one to try and assuage someone else’s feelings, so Daisy didn’t think she was hesitating on the magic now for Soraya’s benefit. Something about it clearly bothered her.
Daisy wouldn’t normally jump on the magic-is-real train so immediately, but how could it happen like this? This quickly, this decisively, for all of them, without any mystical influence?
“Do you really think it could be?” Daisy countered. “We all got what we asked for today.”
“I don’t know,” Nora said, then she laughed. “It’s silly. Right?”
“Is it?” Daisy asked. “We sat at lunch together, and you said everything was going to be okay. That we would get what we needed. Then it was like the apothecary was just there. And we walked in and . . .”
“It’s a blessing.” Soraya looked a little pious as she said that, but Daisy chose not to be offended.
Daisy chose to agree, because why let word choice be a barrier? “It is. I don’t care what we call it. I think . . . I think we were meant to find each other. I think that us being together, being friends, is doing something.”
“Divine intervention,” Soraya added.
“Exactly,” said Daisy.
“Real talk.” Nora turned toward Soraya. “How is an enneagram not Christian Girl astrology?”
“What?” Soraya asked.
“I’m serious. Vision boards, enneagrams. It’s like the same thing with different branding. Spells and manifestation, prayers and your enneagram number.”
“Oh, now you know enneagrams?” Soraya asked.
“I don’t know them. I’m aware they’re a personality test and you get a number type, but I don’t know what they’re supposed to mean.
But you and so many other girlies I went to school with talk about them like they’re something we should all know and like they’re some intrinsic part of you.
Most especially you church girls. So I ask, how is that different from your astrology sign?
The idea that you have these immutable characteristics and can glean whatever you need to from categorizing it. ”
“Well . . .” Soraya blinked. “You take a test. You don’t just enter your birth date and act like the stars are deciding everything for you.”
“If God made the stars, couldn’t he assign meaning to them and the time that you were born?”
Soraya made an exasperated sound. “He could do whatever he wanted. So, sure.”
“Listening to you two really is like being back in high school,” Daisy said.
“No, it isn’t,” Nora said. “I would’ve made her cry by now. She’s a lot hardier these days.”
“Oh, I’m untouchable. Nothing will ever match the crashing horror of finding out my husband . . . well, you know, and there’s only so many times I can say it.”
Nora made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “That’s awful. Genuinely awful. What is he even doing right now?”
“Pretending to be father of the year and acting like he’s the victim. He’s coaching the kids’ baseball games, and because they’re so into sports, and he’s all involved in that, they’re living with him and . . .”
“When is the first game?”
“In a few days.”
“Are you going?” Nora asked.
“Of course I’m going. I’m going to end up sitting by myself and hoping the kids talk to me.” Soraya looked so glum, and Daisy had to be thankful that whatever other nonsense Jonathan had done, he hadn’t turned the kids against her.
He wouldn’t want to take care of them all the time.
“No, you’re not going by yourself,” Nora said. “We’re going with you. I love sports.”
“You really love sports?” Daisy asked.
“No. I don’t at all. But you know what I do love? Unsettling men. I would like it if we sat there and stared at him and made him feel like just maybe we might put a hex on him.”
Soraya winced. “Oh, I don’t really want to generate hex rumors.”
“Why not? They probably already exist. In fact, if he knows you work at the apothecary, he’s probably told everybody at the church by now that you’re a witch.”
Soraya examined her noodles. “Well, yeah, he did. I left him. There is no greater sin than leaving a man who has been labeled good, even when he’s done nothing to demonstrate his goodness.
I guess it doesn’t matter if they think I’m a witch, in practice, since they already do because I stood up for myself. ”
“What are you supposed to do? Lay down and let him wipe his feet on you?” Nora asked.
Soraya blinked. “Yeah.”
“Absolutely not.” Nora wrapped her arm around Soraya and jostled her. “You’re going to keep manifesting, bitch!”
“Hell yes!” Daisy stood up, the euphoria from earlier gripping her again. “You know what? Yes. We are . . . we are going to keep growing and getting stronger.” She lifted her soda from the coffee table. “Here’s to getting what we want.”
“To getting what we need.” Soraya lifted her water cup.
“To getting everything.” Nora held her drink up.
As they all brought them together in a toast, Daisy thought that if today was any indication, that might actually happen. If nothing else, she almost felt like things would be okay.
It was the first time in a while she’d felt like that.