17 Sophie #2
Sophie’s about to type out a reply when she sees that she has no service.
She considers going back, but then she sees the slender foot-trodden path, lined with shimmering green aspen leaves.
It rolls out before her like a bridge to the past. Slowly and with real effort, because she’s not sure she’s making the right decision, she slips the phone back into her pocket.
They’ll be fine without me, she says to herself, and she almost believes it.
Summer is almost here, and the aspens always signal it first. It occurs to her that this trail isn’t hidden anymore.
The illusion spell that used to hide it has long since worn off—it would have been ten years ago now.
Illusion spells need to be updated, since they only last for five years, but she and Elena have been gone fifteen.
This fact reminds her how invincible they once felt.
And how wrong they were to feel that way.
“So now that we’re a mile out of earshot of the pregnant cop, can you tell us why we’re out here?” Elena avoids an elbow-shaped root that juts above the ground. Her incongruous black boots look like a cross between army-issued and Spice Girl.
Joey plods on. “Let’s just get there first,” she says over her shoulder.
They walk for several minutes in silence, and soon, Sophie settles into the rhythm of their footfalls as they sidestep puddles. It smells of fresh spring mud. Busy birds converse above their heads. Spots of sun fleck the ground like splatters of paint.
Soon, though, they are at the spell circle, and memories press into her chest. Why is it always the happy ones that hurt the most?
Joey breaks the moment by turning to face them. “So,” she says, “I was hoping that maybe, if the trees oblige, you could hear it for yourself.”
Sophie tosses a glance at Elena, who returns it.
“Maybe it sounds stupid,” says Joey. “But I think if you could just hear them for yourselves…”
“How exactly are we supposed to do that?” Elena seems annoyed.
“I thought we could try to channel the magic.”
“No book,” Elena reminds her.
Sophie has ached for the magic over the years—not in the same way she ached for their friendship or for Quinn—but she remembers how powerful the magic used to make her feel.
And then the book disappeared around the same time as Quinn’s death, and she knew they would never get that feeling back.
As years passed, Sophie learned to silence her inner voice.
It repeatedly warned her that by leaving Whisper Ridge and not finding the book, she was not protecting the magic.
And yet, as much as she tried to silence that voice, another, devastated voice grew louder.
They may have been responsible for protecting the magic, yes, but was the magic not at all responsible for protecting them?
It did not help them when they needed it most. She feels it now—the strange combination of love and resentment. Like two daggers in her side.
Joey is undeterred. “I didn’t have the book when the trees whispered to me on Monday. And somehow it still worked.”
Silence drips from the branches all around them. It creeps along the earth and fills every space inside the clearing.
Then Elena clears her throat. “Let’s get this over with.”
Sophie isn’t sure if she wants to encourage Joey, but she wonders if maybe, when this doesn’t happen how she wants it to, Joey will realize that the trees never whispered at all.
Joey closes her eyes and so does Elena, after a questioning glance at Sophie.
Sophie shrugs and decides she might as well follow through.
She tries to focus her mind like she used to.
Trees, whisper to me, she thinks, and she feels ridiculous.
There is no book in front of them to catch any spells.
This is entirely pointless, but she goes through the motions anyway.
A minute passes. Two minutes. Three. Elena sniffles.
Eventually, they open their eyes. “Fuck.” Joey stomps out of the spell circle and toward the crag.
Sophie’s heart cracks, and she hurries after her.
The top of the rock is crusted with lichen.
Careful steps bring her up to the edge. She spreads her toes inside her shoes for balance.
It’s a rush, looking down. Inches from the tip of her shoe, the rock face ends sharply where some ancient ice shelf or landslide or crack of lightning lopped it off.
She’d guess it’s about thirty feet down.
A sheer drop. Below them, a cluster of sharp peaks wait like hungry piranhas, one among them the peak that ultimately ended Quinn’s life.
One wrong step, a slip on a rainy afternoon. Life is so unfair.
She coughs quietly. “Joey, listen. Would it be okay if I gave you my therapist’s number? She’s incredible. The real love of my life.”
Joey says nothing, just stares down at the space below them, as if searching for an answer there. Sophie continues carefully. “She does virtual appointments. I really think you might benefit from talking to someone. If you want.” She stops to give Joey a chance to think it through.
Elena, who lingered in the spell circle for a while, steps up alongside them.
“It’s not just Quinn,” says Joey. “We were supposed to protect the magic too. We haven’t seen the book for fifteen years.”
“We were busy grieving. I think that’s reasonable,” says Sophie, lacing her fingers through Joey’s, grateful that she lets her.
Elena clears her throat. “I, for one, didn’t feel like summoning a few bottles of Mike’s Hard Lemonade would help at all, not when our best friend was dead.”
Before them, a tiny bird dips and soars in the open sky. Sophie can’t decide whether the move is a show of grace or power. It’s somehow both at once.
Joey scuffs her shoe against the rock. “I have a theory…about what happened that night.”
Sophie and Elena let her speak.
“Quinn died at about five o’clock. That’s what the coroner’s report said.
After the last day of school, she went to her mom’s, but then she must have gone to visit her dad, and they must have gotten into an argument—maybe she was threatening him with rehab, or maybe he was just drunk and angry.
I don’t know. Then, she ran to the woods, and he followed her, and they ended up right here, still fighting, and he…
” She makes a shoving motion with her hands.
Sophie gives it a moment and keeps her tone controlled so she doesn’t upset Joey. “Interesting. I wonder, though, if Tom would get mad over his daughter suggesting rehab, no matter how drunk he was.”
“And he’d have to be pretty fucking mad to, you know…” Elena mimics Joey’s shoving motion. “Plus, the illusion spell would have hidden her if she ran this way.”
Joey is nodding, like she is agreeing with them. Maybe, Sophie thinks. Maybe she will come around on this all on her own. Maybe she’ll let it go without having to be convinced.
“You’re right on both counts,” says Joey. “But something happened with Tom that day. I know it did.”
Sophie hasn’t forgotten the words the trees supposedly whispered to Joey.
“Dad? No!”
She thinks back to that day. She remembers it all more vividly than she’d like.
Finding Quinn’s body, legs twisted unnaturally, creek water soaking her sneakers.
The police, the businesslike way they took care of her body, as if they saw this kind of thing all the time.
She recalls the time-turning spell they attempted hours after they found Quinn’s body.
They had never managed to turn time before, but they desperately wanted to go back a day to save her, and for some reason they thought their desperation would be enough to make it work.
They sat in the spell circle and tried through their tears.
The problem was that, just like today, they didn’t have the book.
They couldn’t find it. Sophie remembers the moment she realized time-turning would be impossible.
She remembers the sudden crushing blow right to the center of her.
Quinn was gone. The magic was gone. Nothing could help them.
Something about this memory bothers her. “Was the book already missing before Quinn died?”
Elena bobs her head. “She said she lost it. It was the day before, and I wanted to do magic for something, but Quinn told me she couldn’t find it.
I guess I should have asked her more about it then, but I thought she was lying.
Like, how could you just lose the book? We were at school at the time so I couldn’t do much, but I planned to confront her about it later. Never got the chance.”
“We went looking for it the day we found her, remember?” says Joey. “We checked everywhere. Her room, the spell circle. We thought about asking Barbara, but we didn’t want to worry her.”