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New post from Anonymous: Just saw a kid howling at the moon. What is happening?
The silence in the kitchen is deafening.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Harry whispers as Eleanor watches us.
But I’m too stunned. My magic is tingling softly, and I can’t decide if I’m more angry or hurt.
“Apologize to you?” I rear back at her. “You cursed me! Literally! All these years, every time a guy ignored me or dated someone else or laughed at me when I asked him to dance—it was all your fault! Did you think it was funny, parading around here with all your perfect boyfriends while I was heartbroken and alone?”
“I wasn’t parading,” Harry says back, breaking off to sneeze three times in a row.
Around us, the house shakes. “And every single Halloween, every single other day of my life, I’ve dropped everything to try to help you.
I even gave up the love of my life! I’ve always just been trying to protect you.
What else was I supposed to do? I’m your big sister.
It’s my job. And you think it was easy, setting a good example for you?
Getting good grades. Never breaking any rules.
Getting all of Mom and Dad’s attention and obsession—all the rules they gave me that you managed to shrug off.
You have no idea how hard it was. I’ve had to do everything first, by myself. ”
“You weren’t by yourself!” I roar back. “I was by myself, because you cursed me to be!” I toss aside my spoon—it hits a gnome in the head and it grumbles something, but I don’t care. “You want to know what it’s like to be by yourself? Fine.”
Then I turn and run.
“Kat! Wait!” Harry calls, but I only run faster.
The leaves crunch under my feet, and I’m unsure where I’m going. All I know is that I don’t want to be anywhere near my sister. So I keep running, headed toward the green, my lungs and legs burning.
It all comes rushing back, every Halloween being brokenhearted.
Ryan ditching me at the Gravitron in seventh grade. Hunter turning me down at the dance in eighth grade. Justin never getting my note at Haunted House of Hamburgers. And worst of all, Reese moving away.
Wait a minute. If she cast the spell last year, when she and Jack broke up, the only one affected would have been Reese, right?
And if that’s true, what happened with Ryan, Hunter, and Justin?
Is Laney still at Colton’s house? Did she go home?
I reach into my pocket to try to call her and realize too late I left my phone at the house.
I ran off in such a hurry, I don’t even have a coat, and now that I’ve stopped moving, I’m shivering.
And then I remember what she said, that I always make things about boys.
She’s right, and maybe Harry’s right too.
Every Halloween, I’ve made it about my crush. I can’t think of a Halloween in years that I just spent with Harry or with Laney or even with my aunts or parents.
I wrap my arms around myself and try to crunch into a ball. I can smell the fried dough from the Halloween carnival and wish I’d brought my wallet. Drowning my sorrows in powdered sugar feels right. “Great. Just great!” I yell at the clouds keeping the moon from showing itself.
“Hadley?” Zach walks toward me, his tuxedo jacket slung over his shoulder.
The white shirt shows off the broadness of his shoulders and chest I’ve never noticed before.
He flicks his eye patch up to look at me with both eyes.
“What are you doing out here? Colton said the party was over but said it was because you wanted them to save their energy for your party, which he told everyone they had to go to, by the way.” I fight the urge to swear aloud.
“But that can’t be true, because I know you, and that’s not the Kat Hadley that I know. ”
He removes the eye patch, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out his glasses. It feels like something settles when he slips them onto his face, like I had missed him looking like himself. Zach looks good in glasses, I think, and feel the strangest sensation of butterflies in my stomach.
But it’s just Harry’s spell. Zach doesn’t “know” me.
He doesn’t “see” me. This is just some big cosmic joke.
“You don’t know me at all,” I tell him, rubbing my arms to keep warm.
“I did want him to end his party so that everyone would come to mine. And now I don’t even want to throw the party.
I’m selfish and obsessed with boys liking me, but no one likes me, not even my sister, and I’m pretty sure I deserve it. ”
“I like you,” Zach says, his eyes all big and puppy dog.
I shove at his absurdly broad chest. Seriously, he’s supposed to be a nerd. Is this just part of the spell too? “No, you don’t. That’s just the spell talking.”
He clears his throat. “Um, you do look like you left home in a hurry. Where is your coat?” He doesn’t give me time to answer. “Take mine,” he says, handing me the tuxedo jacket.
I’m too tired to protest. I slide my arms into the jacket, which is still warm.
The sleeves are too long, but I like it, curling my fingers inside as my magic seems to hum in Zach’s presence.
A small, mean part of my mind tells me that the real Zach would never give me his coat.
The real Zach would get all competitive, tease me for forgetting mine, talk about how his brothers love him so much more than my sister loves me.
But maybe I need this Zach, right now.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Zach asks, putting his hands in his pockets. “I’m a good listener. I never get time to talk at my house with my brothers always trying to dominate the conversation.”
“I know a little about that myself,” I admit, thinking of my competitive streak with Harry.
Zach waits for me to say more. At first, I want to stay silent, but then I realize: This is a spell.
I can say anything and Zach won’t leave.
After that, it’s much easier to open up.
“My sister thought she was helping me with something, but really, what she did hurt me. And I’m not sure how to forgive her, even though we’re sort of up against a deadline with Samhain—I mean Halloween—tomorrow. ”
“Halloween.” Zach nods. If he thought Samhain was a weird word, he isn’t letting on. “And this Halloween deadline . . . you have something important to do . . . with your sister, right? And maybe it has to do with all these weirdos we’ve had in town?”
I’m pretty sure Zach knows I’m a witch. I hold my breath, not daring to speak. Instead, I just nod.
“And you don’t want to work together with her because you’re mad?”
“I can’t,” I say, unsure of how much I can share. “It . . . it won’t work if I’m mad at her.”
Instead, he just nods, running a hand through his hair, and I watch the action as if it’s happening in slow motion.
Zach really does have good hair. Ugh! What is with me?
This has to be Harry’s spell! “I know I don’t know what you’re mad about, but this sort of fight happens with my brothers and me sometimes.
” He looks at me intently. “I get mad. They get mad. That’s normal.
But the important thing is to realize that relationships are all about sacrifice.
It’s not even. It’s not always intentional.
But being someone’s family, loving them, you have to give up that selfish part of yourself.
You have to learn that it’s bigger than just you.
Love, connection, sacrifice—it’s the foundation.
And you can’t build yourself up on your own, just like you can’t build a house without a strong foundation. ”
This time when my magic tingles, I know what it’s telling me. Zach is right. (As much as it pains me to admit, he’s actually really smart.) This is what Eleanor meant.
I have to find a way to forgive Harry, and she has to find a way to forgive me. And then we’ll call the aunts or Mom and Dad, and someone will cast the rituals, and we’ll save the town and maybe also the world.
“Sorry, does that make sense?” Zach asks with a cute little laugh.
“Weirdly, it sort of does.” I can’t forgive Harry for what she did, but a part of me does understand she was trying to help me, and maybe that’s a kind of forgiveness.
And it explains why she’s been so distant.
“Listen closely, Powell, because I’m not going to repeat this, but you’re pretty good at this advice thing. ”
Zach’s face brightens like a sunrise. “I know I am. That is also why I’ll be valedictorian next year.”
“I think you’re pronouncing salutatorian wrong,” I tell him and feel some strange need to reach out and touch him.
A poke, an arm squeeze. Something. I don’t let myself.
Instead, we both just stand there awkwardly staring at one another again, the sounds of kids on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the carnival carrying on the wind.
“Want me to walk you home?” Zach says suddenly, and again my stomach feels like it’s on fire. “Or are you planning on fleeing into the night and howling at the moon?” He cocks his head to the side. “I hear there’s a werewolf on the loose.”
He doesn’t know the half of it.
Even if I don’t want to hash things out with Harry, I don’t have a choice. Samhain is tomorrow. We have to fix magic now. “Sure,” I say, feeling slightly nervous and unsure why. Harry’s spell, I tell myself.
We turn in the direction of my house and walk quietly side by side for a few minutes, the only sound the dead leaves beneath our feet. The wind sweeps through my hair, blowing it in front of my eyes, and I bump into Zach as I try to get my bearings. He reaches out a hand to steady me.
“So when Colton shut down the party tonight, he told the entire school they had to come or his dad would banish everyone from town, although I don’t remember those mayoral rights in the town charter,” Zach says, giving me a lopsided grin.
“So I guess you can’t be mad that your mortal enemy is there, since it was mandated. ”
Crap. This is bad. I cannot have the entire school over to my house right now!
There’s an ice realm in the kitchen and gnomes on the piano, not to mention the fact that the house might be crumbling away to reveal the grave of the Headless Horseman, just in time for him to end his centuries-long nap.
“I’m not having a party. It’s . . . not a good idea right now.
” Is it me or does Zach look disappointed?
“But if I was having one,” I say quickly, “I’d want you to come.
If you promised to not do Mr. Ruth’s extra-credit assignment so I could get a few points higher than you. ”
“You wish!” he says. “Okay, well, if anything changes, just know the Powell boys would come. I can even take my Bond villain costume out for another spin. My dad won’t need his tux back till his company black-tie event in December, and I think it would be cool celebrating Halloween—I mean, Samhain—with you. ”
He used the holiday’s correct name! His cheeks go all ruddy and it makes my stomach flip-flop. And then a wolf howls, far too close for comfort.
“We should both get home,” I say hastily, pulling my arms out of his tuxedo jacket and reluctantly handing it back to him. I’m a few houses from home. Hopefully Harry will be waiting.
He rocks back on his heels. “Telling me what to do, Hadley?”
“Yes,” I say. Now I know what I need to say to Harry. “Yes, I am.”