12 Quinn
Quinn
Two months before the fall
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
Joey sits at the corner of the bed hugging a pillow. Her long legs make neat triangles beneath her. My window is open, and a breeze snakes inside. The last tendrils of winter. I know Joey can tell I’m distracted. She’s right.
Joey’s not looking at me and instead seems focused on the closet door in the corner of the room. I turn to see if there’s a spider or something there, but there’s nothing.
“It was…good,” I say.
She laughs. “Well, River’s crazy about you, so of course it was.”
It’s freshly dark outside, just after eight.
Last night, I dreamed that I was on a hill and Joey was on the other side, reaching her hand out and calling my name.
Sophie and Elena too. Between us was this tumultuous, uncrossable whitewater.
Waking up to that made the day seem bleak before it had even begun, and that mood has stuck with me all day.
I have the sadistic urge to pass on my bad mood to someone else.
I lean on the side of the bed, and it squashes down beneath my forearms. My rings press into the flesh on my fingers. “Do you ever wonder if there’s more we should know about the magic?”
Joey’s lying on her side with her foot tucked behind her as she stretches her quad. There’s a shift in her demeanor now that I’ve changed the subject. “What do you mean?”
The wind picks up. I can hear it whistling through the trees behind my house, traveling down the slope of the mountain toward us. I watch Joey with her running shorts and bare toes. “Aren’t you freezing?”
She rubs at her knees in response, which seems insufficient to me because the cold is so present, it’s like a third person in the room. I close the window.
When we were all fourteen, less than a year after our initiation, we found a small alpine lake.
I was the first to lower my body into it and swim out to the center.
Minutes later, Joey came paddling behind me, dragging an inflatable inner tube.
She didn’t say anything, just treaded water until I finally hooked an arm over the top.
She didn’t make a big deal of it, just quietly rescued me.
And the thing is, I was starting to ache from the cold.
My breathing was speeding up, and my lungs were constricting; I was shivering uncontrollably.
But part of me wanted to feel cold and alone out there.
I didn’t want her to rescue me. And I don’t want to be rescued now.
I want to know what it feels like to swim on my own, body numb and goose bumps like needles, all the way to the other shore.
“Do you ever think there’s more to it?” I ask. “Like, don’t you think it’s weird that the book we use for spells is completely blank?”
“I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Well, think about it now.” I’m needling her, gauging her reaction. I’m not sure of my aim—maybe I want her to guess what’s going on so I don’t have to lie.
She folds her arms. “I don’t understand.”
“Like, what if there is magic we don’t know about? Hidden in those pages. What if we’re purposefully being shielded from its true potential? Our true potential.”
“Quinn, what are you talking about?”
Suddenly, my question feels urgent. I know I’m not explaining it correctly because Joey is smart. Born to work out puzzles.
“Okay, so we are the stewards of the magic, right?” I point, generally, to the woods beyond my backyard.
She nods slowly, as if to say, “I am aware, yes.”
“What if we are actually capping its potential by only using it for benign shit, like little summoning spells and illusion spells and healing our zits? What if we could do more with it? Like, more good.” I emphasize the last word to make my point.
She’s nodding quicker now, clearly thinking, and I’m starting to feel warm, loose. Possibility is taking root. If Joey understands, if she gets it, then my conflicting feelings might dissipate.
“But we can only do the spells that the trees write for us in the book,” she says, ever practical. “And there are only a few of those. That’s how it works.” She leans over to stretch the other leg.
“Okay, but hypothetically.” My hope is starting to ebb away.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I’ve just been thinking about it. Like, don’t you think we have a responsibility to do more? We have access to magic, Joey.” I know I sound imploring now, maybe even desperate.
She looks like I just told her I wanted to take a trip to the moon. “I think we have a responsibility to follow the rules,” she says. “To keep the magic safe.”
We fall silent then, the rapids widening between us, almost uncrossable already.
A noise comes from the front of the house. Voices. They’re hushed. Distantly, the front door opens and closes. Joey and I hold each other in a suspended look.
And then, Elena and Sophie burst into the room. “Hey, hey,” says Elena. “I brought a movie and a bottle of Smirnoff.”
Joey and I break our eye contact, and the moment snaps.
“Shh,” I say as I hurry behind Elena to close the door. “My mom is home.”
“We know,” says Sophie, who holds out a plate of homemade whoopie pies. “She gave us these.”
Elena plops a DVD on the bed. Shutter Island. “Love me some Leo.”
“Isn’t that one supposed to be scary?” asks Sophie. She places the cookies in the middle of the bed.
“You’re a witch, Soph. And you’re afraid of a movie?” Elena takes a cookie and licks the marshmallow fluff from the center, then puts the cookie bits back on the plate. Her smile is devilish.
“The Witches of Whisper Ridge. I’d watch that,” says Joey, clearly unfazed by our earlier conversation. She pops an entire whoopie pie into her mouth.
“We could watch Planet Earth?” I say.
I can see on Sophie’s face that she likes this suggestion.
“Boo,” says Elena.
“It’s fine,” concedes Sophie. “I’ll probably just fall asleep anyway.”
“I knew you’d come around,” Elena says. “You always do.”
Sophie gives her a look like “ha-ha,” but I’m not sure she finds the jab entirely funny.
Satisfied, Elena pulls out the vodka. The top is off in a second, and she takes a swig.
She passes it to Joey, who sips once. Sophie pours too much into her mouth, which makes her cough and pull a face.
I’m last. The smell reminds me of my dad.
I put it to my lips and pretend to take a sip, just for appearances.
I can tell Joey notices, but she doesn’t say anything.
She just grabs the blue Gatorade from the side table and pours vodka into it, passing it around like we’ve done a hundred times before. When it gets to me, I skip that too.
***
Whenever we watch movies, Sophie is always the first one asleep.
When I look up from my spot on the floor, she’s on her side, facing away from the TV, fully committed.
Joey and Elena share a single pillow, their eyes closed too.
I look past the credits flickering black and white on the screen, toward the open window.
The clouds must have moved away from the moon because the trees beyond my yard look skeletal in the moonlight.
Silently, I pull on my socks and a sweatshirt.
Then, I tiptoe to the nightstand. The cookie plate is speckled with black crumbs.
The empty Gatorade bottle sits discarded on top of it.
I close the cap to stifle the stench of alcohol.
Then, I quietly tug at the drawer underneath.
It slides out easily. Even with just the flickering TV light, I can see the rough edges of the book clearly.
I take it in my hand. There’s something about the feel of it that’s different tonight.
It’s warm to the touch. I know it’s just my imagination, though, because I want there to be some sign, some physical proof that what I am wondering about could exist.
On my bed, Joey, Elena, and Sophie are cuddled into each other like cats. I hesitate at the door.
But the pull is too strong, and within a minute I’m tugging on my hiking boots, shrugging on my coat, and slipping silently into the night.