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Mystic Hollow Community Page
New post from Rita Baumann: Witches Brew appreciation post!
I’m so thankful I live in a town that would never allow a chain coffee shop.
Witches Brew makes the best lattes in New England, and these new theme drinks that come in gourds are genius!
Especially since they buy the pumpkins from our very own Mystic Hollow patch!
The call connects on my sister, Harriet Samantha Hadley, curled up on her dorm room bed. Even dressed in gym clothes, she looks like a model. Her long, blond hair practically glows, it’s so shiny. Her green eyes blink twice as she adjusts her phone to get an even better angle of her face.
As she tilts the camera, we get a snippet of her background: sage-green bedding, an artful smattering of pillows in pinks and creams. It looks like someone’s Pinterest come to life.
Could she at least forget to make her bed once?
Fall prints are framed on the wall beside her bed along with a few family and friend photos tacked carefully to a corkboard.
“Harry!” Dad says happily. “I was just telling the mailman the story of your acceptance. He couldn’t believe that you got advanced standing. My BC girl!”
Harry smiles, her voice quiet. “Dad, you shouldn’t keep him from his route.” Her soft voice grates on me from hundreds of miles away.
“He’s just run out of people to brag to,” Mom gushes.
“You look wonderful. By the way, do you have a copy of that essay you wrote in eighth grade on the politics of witch trials? I want to use it as an example for my college seminar . . .” My two parents crush into frame, squeezing me out so they can get their eldest daughter’s attention.
It’s like I don’t even exist. Somehow, they find new achievements to congratulate my sister on.
This week, they’re praising her for sending them a few news articles and primary sources that were “absolutely perfect” for their curricula.
“My genius girl finding the time to text her silly dad,” my dad is saying.
I hid a scoff with another candy pumpkin. Who cares that you never call or text me? Who cares that we haven’t spoken since the last video chat? Why should it bother me that you act like I don’t exist?
“You aren’t silly, Dad.” Harry winds just one perfect strand of blond hair around her finger and then abruptly sneezes.
“Harry? Is your magic manifesting?” my mom asks excitedly. She taps her temple. “I don’t feel anything—”
Harry’s eyes shift along her phone screen, and with a jolt I realize she must be looking at me. “You look different.”
“Me?” I squeak out. Is that supposed to be a compliment or a knock? “Um, thanks? I think?”
“Yeah,” Harry continues, squinting. “How was your day? Anything special happen?”
Oh, you know, I conjured a fireball, almost burned down the chemistry lab, stalked my principal, and hacked into his phone. “Nope. I did get a paper cut.” I hold up my finger as evidence.
“I’ve been meaning to ask—do you have your chemistry study guides at home?” Mom interrupts. “They were so thorough and I was thinking they could be helpful to Kat.”
“Mom,” I gripe.
Harry rubs her nose and then frowns. “Something tells me that Kat has been totally on fire in chemistry.”
My parents whip to stare at me as I fight the urge to glare at Harry. She looks back innocently, perfect brows raised.
Don’t you dare, I think at her as hard as I can.
And then Harry twitches her nose.
Suddenly there is a video beeping in from a number I don’t recognize.
My stomach drops. Principal Aceste! Did Harry just make him call?
She’s literally the worst. Thankfully, Mom ignores the request. Nothing to interrupt her perfect Harry time.
That is, until the call lights up the screen again.
Mom tries to dismiss it, but before her finger brushes the screen, I hear her gasp.
“Oh, it’s your aunts! I’ve been trying to get them all day,” Mom says, accepting the request. “Viv? Diane? Is that you?”
All we see is one giant blinking eyeball, rimmed with kohl liner and gold eye shadow and layers of mascara.
“Is it on?” Aunt Vivianne’s voice blares out, with a rush of music and laughter from the background. “I don’t see anyone.”
“How should I know?” comes Aunt Diane’s voice. “Didn’t you ask Hugh how this works?”
“I don’t even know if he remembers handing me the phone, dear. I just said, Jackman, you wolverine! Hand it over! And he did.”
“Aunt Viv,” I say, jumping in now. “Hold the phone away from you and look at the screen. You’ll be able to see us.”
“Oh, Kat!” Half of Aunt Viv appears. Her blond hair is cut into a short, stylish bob, and I can see one long, dangling gold earring.
Aunt Diane—with her shoulder-length sandy-brown hair, deep-set brown eyes, and youthful face—crams in next to her so that we can see half of her face too. “There you all are!”
“I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” my mom says with a sigh. The youngest of three charmed ones, my mom was born years after Viv and Diane, but sometimes it feels as if my mom is their parent. “Why aren’t you answering your phones?”
“Phones?” Aunt Diane says. She turns to Aunt Viv. “Do we have those?”
My mom massages the bridge of her nose. This is definitely a non-magical headache. “I wanted to ask if your husbands are in town. We might need them for Samhain.”
“Husbands?” Aunt Diane asks.
Aunt Viv snorts. “We definitely don’t have those.”
“Except—” Aunt Diane interrupts.
“Oh, right. We may have left them in Triora—”
“Glastonbury—”
“I distinctly recall seeing at least one of them in Hólmavík—”
Both aunts nod. “We can acquire husbands before Samhain, dear,” Aunt Viv says. “If ours are still . . . um . . .”
“Lost,” Aunt Diane corrects.
“Missing,” Aunt Viv agrees. “Is that all? We’d like to get back to the party, and while we always love a little tête-à-tête, we’re still planning to return, oh . . . tomorrow evening?”
“Not tomorrow,” Aunt Diane whispers. “Sutton Foster mentioned brunch.”
“Oh yes! That’s right,” Aunt Viv said. “Can’t we discuss all this in two days’ time?”
My mom kneads her scalp. “Halloween is this Saturday! With Mommy being unable to travel this year, I want to make sure our Samhain plan is set in stone.”
Every year, Hadleys around the world cast protection spells in their neighborhoods, since we’ve all settled places where magic is strongest. Mystic Hollow has always been supercharged, so Mom and Dad take it as a priority, but this year, Grampa had hip replacement surgery and he’s still not up and running, and it was agreed Mom and Dad would go there, so Grampa and Grams’s community wouldn’t be in danger.
I volunteered to stay here to perform the rituals with .
. . Peter. And my mom agreed, only because she is demanding my aunts come into town with their husbands as a backup.
Or at least, that was my mom’s plan. I just have . . . another plan.
“I still feel uncomfortable leaving town on the most important day of the year,” Mom is saying to the group. “I haven’t missed a Samhain in Mystic Hollow in over thirty years.”
“Oh, Nic, relax!” Aunt Diane says tartly. “Mystic Hollow has survived for hundreds of years. It’s not about to fall now because another Hadley has to perform the spells. We’re blood.”
“Should you be talking about this at a party?” Mom asks my aunt.
“Oh please,” says Aunt Diane, waving her hand and showing off a diamond tennis bracelet. “No one can hear us. Hugh’s penthouse is packed with people and—oh look!—there’s Jenna Bush Hager. I love her. Hi, Jenna!” she shouts at the top of her lungs. “Viv! We have to go say hi—”
“Diane!” Mom pinches the bridge of her nose. “Focus. Me first. Then Jenna.”
“Fine,” Diane says like a child, and I can’t help myself. I glance over at Harry on the screen to see if she’s smiling like I am. Whenever the aunts were being, well, the aunts, we’d always make eye contact and fight the giggles.
I’m not sure if I imagine it, but I feel like Harry’s eyes flicker across her screen like she’s looking at me too.
But Harry looks down at her perfect manicure so fast, and it feels a bit like the sun disappearing behind the clouds again. What did I do wrong?
“I love you all, but I have some studying to do,” Harry says briskly. “I’m gonna go, okay?”
Dad puts his arm around my mom. “It’s all right, my love. All will be well.” He looks at me. “Kat and Peter will take care of everything, and your sisters are here if she needs help.”
“Peter? Who is Peter?” Harry asks, and my stomach drops.
“My boyfriend,” I say, keeping my tone light. I grab an apple from the fruit bowl in front of me and squeeze it like a stress ball.
“You have a boyfriend? Since when?” Harry demands. She’s squinching her nose up and down like a bunny rabbit.
“Since . . . all fall. Since you left,” I insist, feeling my brow prickle with sweat.
Harry’s eyes narrow. “Peter who? I don’t know any Peters.”
“You wouldn’t. He just moved here,” I say.
“I mean, he moved over the summer, but we met when school started and . . .” I take a deep breath and try to get it together.
“The point is Peter is my boyfriend, and Mom and Dad said we could do the protection spells. We’ve got this covered, Harry. You go enjoy BC.”
“But—” Harry goes to interrupt.
Suddenly the broom leaning against the wall slams to the floor, startling everyone. The screen door outside the kitchen starts to flap back and forth, slamming, as if the wind picked up.
Mom looks at the door curiously. “I should lock the greenhouse. Dear? Can you set the table for me?” Mom asks Dad.
“Of course, my love,” Dad says, grabbing plates and moving to the dining room.
“Any other Broadway stars there?” I ask the aunts, to try to keep them talking so it’s not just me and Harry alone on a call. But the aunts trade a look.
“Hugh’s getting a call,” Aunt Viv says.
“We definitely shouldn’t answer it,” Aunt Diane adds.
The two look at each other, cackle, and then their video chat abruptly disappears, which leaves me alone with Harry on the call that no one seemed to officially end. Despite claiming to have urgent studying to do, Harry doesn’t hang up.
“Kat, who is Peter?” she asks calmly.
“Harry? Why do you even care?” I sidestep. “Just go enjoy yourself in Boston.” I can feel my stomach tighten, my emotions getting the better of me.
Harry glares at me. “You’re lying to Mom and Dad. I know you don’t have a boyfriend. You can’t.”
“Why, because who would want to date me?” I ask sarcastically, but my voice catches so it comes out strangled, whiny.
“I know you don’t have a boyfriend,” she says again, and her voice is so even I want to throw my mom’s phone into the wall. “I know you want one every Halloween, but this time there’s more on the line. You can’t risk all of Mystic Hollow because, what, you have a crush?”
I feel a scream building my throat.
“Have you even asked him to do the rituals?” Harry presses, twitching her button nose. “Have you spoken to him . . . at all?”
I reach forward to end the call before she magically stumbles into any other truths when she says, “Does this one even know your name?”
This one. The screen goes black and I see my own face reflected back to me. I look like a gargoyle. This one. Because I have no shortage of boys who broke my heart.