Witch Test, page 6
The house is empty, like always, but it feels particularly lonely this afternoon. I grab an apple and go to my room, the creaks and groans of the old farmhouse heightening the emptiness.
I settle at my desk and play music on my phone, all my notifications at zero, which I guess is better than them blowing up. I’m convinced Abby’s not going to let me get away with my outburst at the witch trial, but nothing has happened yet.
My favorite song from the summer comes on, an upbeat tune that always inspired me and my friends to bust out our best dance moves and sing at the top of our lungs. I groan, turn off the song, and toss the phone onto my bed. The pile of homework stares up at me, so I close my eyes and lay my head on top of my desk to block it all out and doze off.
When I wake, my mouth is dry and the sun is near setting, its orange glow sending a harsh light into my eyes. A blank page in my notebook sticks to my face as I sit all the way up.
The little light on my phone blinks with a missed call. My dad left me a message to say he’s working late and won’t be home for dinner. Just as well since I have nothing planned. I abandon the idea of homework and lay on the bed, facing the closet, the loneliness pressing in on me.
I jerk up when I remember what’s hidden in there. My mom’s diary. I haven’t allowed myself to think of reading it and prying into her private feelings. An ache settles in my chest, strong enough to make me groan out loud.
I think I miss my mom. Maybe that’s what’s been causing this feeling of loneliness that has been overwhelming me all afternoon. I think somewhere deep inside of me I’ve been missing her for a long time, but this whole Abby thing has finally made me realize how much I lost when I lost my mom.
I never thought of it like that because it’s weird to miss someone you can’t remember.
Maybe the idea of having a mother is what I’m missing. I love Candy, and she’s the best aunt, but she’s not my mom. Candy has this whole life with Felicity that she lets me visit, but it’s not home.
Home is this big farmhouse that my dad and I never seem to fill. How much different would it be if my mom were still here? Maybe we would paint together in her studio. Maybe I’d have a sibling or two. Maybe with my mom to guide me, I wouldn’t have screwed up my life so badly.
I don’t usually let myself think like this because that’s just not the way things are. All I’ve ever known is this emptiness where my mom should be. I’ve never really questioned it, but now I can’t help it.
Before I can think too hard about what I’m about to do, I dig out my mom’s diary, bring it to the bed, and turn to the first page.
The handwriting is in a neat, loopy cursive. Reading cursive isn’t something I’ve done a lot of, so it’s almost like translating a foreign language. I begin on the first page, the entry marked October 15 without a year. There’s no “Dear Diary” or anything, my mom just gets right to it.
The dreams started about a month ago, which I now know was right after I became pregnant.
I suck in a loud breath. She must have been pregnant with me. I eagerly keep reading, any guilt replaced by curiosity.
They started out okay with everyday kinds of things, though not a day like I’ve ever known. The clothes are old-fashioned, the people hardly smile. It’s hard work all day long, though I’m much younger than I am in real life.
And when I’m in the dream, I know things I wouldn’t know from real life, things only my strange, young dream-self knows. Like how to milk a cow or make bread without a recipe.
At first, the dreams were simple. Baking bread, cleaning with my mother, and taking care of the farm, all to prepare for the long winter ahead. It’s fall and I know the winter will be long. The winter is always long.
After the first few nights, the dream turned dark. My young dream-self woke in my bed, straw poking at my back like always. It was dark, the candle snuffed out before I went to sleep. I would never leave it burning. That would be a waste and a fire risk.
The tiny room is dark, but there is a spot in the corner darker than the rest. It grows and takes the rough form of a man. The mouth is a light gash in the shadow as it opens to let out a harsh laugh that turns into a roar.
That’s when I woke up for real, shaking and drenched in sweat. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Ben never stirred. He’s always so tired this time of year with the pumpkin harvest. I haven’t told him about the dreams…or the pregnancy.
I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. He’ll be so excited. We’ve been wanting this for a long time. I should be excited, but I’m not. And I don’t know why.
The loud bang of the front door rips me from my mother’s words. The last ones are stuck in my head. She wasn’t excited about being pregnant. She wasn’t excited about me.
My dad knocks and pokes his head in. I shove the diary under my pillow and grab my phone, like I’ve been on it this whole time.
“You shouldn’t stare at that screen in the dark.” He rubs the stubble on his chin. In the spill of light from the hallway, I can see the tired sag of his eyes.
My eyes are tired from squinting while reading my mom’s writing in the dark. I click on my nightstand lamp.
“Did you eat?” he asks.
“I made a sandwich.” I don’t know why I lie. Maybe because I’m not hungry and I don’t want to explain to him why I didn’t eat. Not that he would ask.
“I’m going to shower.” He yawns.
“Leftovers are in the fridge. Do you want me to heat them up?”
He stares at me harder than he usually does, and there’s something in his expression I haven’t seen before. “No, I can do it. Do you need anything?”
It’s an unusual request. Not that he’s thoughtless, more like he’s afraid to ask because he won’t know how to answer his teenage daughter.
I open my mouth to say no but hesitate. What my mom wrote was simple enough, but I have to know if maybe there was more to it. “Was Mom excited when she found out she was pregnant with me?”
I wait for the pained look that always crosses his face when I mention my mom, but it doesn’t come. Instead it’s thoughtful as he steps all the way into the room.
“She was.” My dad smiles, an actual real smile. It’s like a window has opened and the light is finally shining in on my father’s face. “We both were. We’d been trying for a few years, long enough that the doctors had us both tested to see if there was an issue, even though we were young.”
“Was there an issue?” I’m torn between wanting to jump at the chance to talk about my mom and risking scaring away my dad. I’m afraid that at any moment the window will shut.
“No. It just took a little extra time for it to happen for us.”
“And Mom was happy?”
“Very.” He rubs his stubble again with his dirty hands. “The pregnancy was hard for her, though. She wasn’t sleeping well and she got sick a lot.”
Now I’m the one closing up. What he’s saying is not matching up with what my mom wrote. I wonder how much she lied to him. The thought leaves a sourness in my mouth.
He moves toward the door and pauses. “Anything else?”
Any other day, I would have jumped at the chance to ask a million questions about my mom. But today, after reading the diary, all I do is shake my head. When my dad leaves the room, the house feels emptier than ever.
* * *
The next day school goes by quickly without any major incidences, not that I notice much with how distracted I am. Daya’s not in lunch again, so I leave early and spend the second half hiding in the bathroom. With my interrogation over, English class is less torturous and more like something to be endured.
After I get off the bus, I go straight to my room and sit on my bed with the diary. All day I thought I didn’t want to read anymore. I’ve had this idea of my mom in my head from photos and the stories Candy has told me. It all painted a pretty portrait, one that fit everything I would have wanted in a mother.
One entry in her diary has erased all that. It’s made me question who she really was, and the real reason why my dad doesn’t like to talk about her. I’ve always assumed it’s because it hurt too much, but maybe there’s more to it than that. It’s all I’ve been able to think about—this not knowing who my mother was.
I open the diary to the second entry.
October 16
I’ve read that writing down your dreams can sometimes make them go away, that the act of writing them banishes them from your subconscious. So far that hasn’t worked for me because the dream was back again last night. Perhaps because it is slightly different each night, it’s only the one iteration that gets banished while all the others stay.
If I’m learning anything about my mom from this entry, it’s that she was smart. I look up “subconscious” on my phone. I end up getting a little lost in my search before finally figuring out that the subconscious refers to thoughts that we’re not actively thinking, more like ones that are buried beneath.
Then I look up “iteration,” which means different versions. So she was saying that each version of the dream needs to be written down before it can be banished. But that would be impossible because there are an endless number of versions of any dream. That makes me think of infinity, and now my head is spinning a bit.
I never expected my mom’s diary would be so heady when all I want is to get to know her better. And to find out if she wanted me…if she loved me. She must have loved me, right?
I dive back into her words.
It started in a similar way as all the others, where I’m the old-fashioned girl. I’m in my straw bed and a shadow comes, but this time the shadow isn’t a man—it’s the devil, complete with the horns and tail. It beckons me to follow it out the window, and I do, despite the fact that I’m on the second floor.
I have no fear, so I step out the window and find I can fly. The flying is glorious.
I follow the devil to the forest on the edge of the farmland. We fly deep into it. The night is dark with so many stars shining above, much more than what I can see in the night sky in real life. It’s also cold, my breath puffing out before me, but the chill doesn’t touch me. In fact, my skin is hot, burning up like I have a fever.
A crow flies alongside. The devil leads us down into the trees to a small clearing. It’s a perfect round shape, like it was made by humans, not nature. A circle is carved in the dirt. Three girls of different ages stand within it.
“She’s here!” one of them shouts. I know her from town, I know them all. “Thank you, my lord.” She bows to the shadow before it disappears.
The crow transforms into a woman with long, auburn hair and black-feathered wings. The four of us stand within the drawn circle and clasp hands. Then we chant. That’s when I wake.
Once again I run to the bathroom and get sick. I have to tell Ben about the baby. My first appointment is next week, and he’ll want to be there. I stay in the bathroom a long time, staring at my face in the mirror, wondering when I’ll feel anything other than dread.
At that last sentence, I throw the book across the room. It lands in a pile of clothes on the floor of my closet. As tears streak down my face, I throw some more clothes on top of the diary, vowing to never read it again.
All it’s doing is destroying the image I had of my mother, and I’d much rather keep the imaginary one than find out who the real one was.
Chapter 14
Nate
In order to resist looking at my mother’s diary, I take sanctuary in my art studio. It was once my mother’s, but I’ve decided to take ownership of it.
I’ve also decided to stop hiding that I’ve been using it. I consider asking my dad to hang up a few pieces of my old artwork in here. Among my favorites is a drawing of the waterfall with the old mill downtown. There’s also a portrait of my favorite actress. They’re black and white, so they’ll do little to add color to the room, but I’m starting to appreciate the simplicity of the space. It serves to highlight the colors on my canvas.
The crow is an interesting study. My paint version catches the light in different ways as you move around the room, so the crow changes depending on where you are and what time of day it is. The effect is close to what I was going for, so it’s one of the only things in my life that’s working.
The big pine tree isn’t where I want it to be yet. And the background needs work. I’ve painted the golden cornstalks, but I haven’t decided on the details of the sky. Originally I planned on sunset, but my own dreams have me second-guessing that.
I’ve had more dreams where I’m a crow, and it’s always night, so I consider setting the painting at night. But that would change the light, which would change the coloring of the crow. I’ve worked so hard to get that aspect just right, so I decide to stick with my original vision.
Dreams are stupid anyway.
* * *
All I want to do on Friday after school is head home and paint. It would worry Candy if I missed our standing date, so I head to Mother Goose Apothecary.
Candy is busy with a tarot client, and I aimlessly wander around the shop, looking for fairies and examining the new merchandise. There is a bone-white ring that looks like the pointy skull of a small bird. The card says it’s not a real bird skull, so I try it on. When I flip the card over, I discover the ring is actually carved out of “ethically sourced cow bone.” I shudder and take it off.
The bell on the front door rings. I look up, expecting Felicity, but it’s not her. It’s Nathan. I suck in my gasp of surprise and hiccup instead. I haven’t seen him since Abby’s party.
He stops in the open doorway when he sees me and looks like he’s considering walking right back out. Instead he takes a step inside and lets the door shut behind him. The rush of fresh air disappears and now I’m sweating.
“Hey, Liza.” He avoids looking directly at me and awkwardly glances around the shop.
“Hey, Nathan.” I glance around just as awkwardly. Then I remember what Daya said about his name. “I mean Nate…right?”
Now he does look at me, a surprised tilt to his brows. “Yeah.”
“Daya mentioned it.” I hiccup and cover my mouth in embarrassment.
Candy saves me when she pokes her head out of the beaded curtain. “Nate!” Of course she would know to call him that—it’s the kind of thing she’s careful about. “We’re almost done. Your mom’s soaps are ready and I’ll bring them out in a few. Liza, you can open a box of chocolates for the two of you, the ones with the sea salt.”
I rub a lavender leaf between my fingers and let the scent waft over me. Lavender is supposed to be calming, but my heart is racing like I’ve run a mile in gym class. My armpits are sweaty, too.
I head to the register, closer to Nate than is comfortable. I hold up a box of gourmet dark chocolates and look at the floor. “Do you want one?”
“No,” he says. “Thanks.”
We’re left trying not to stare at each other. The last time Nate and I were this close was at Abby’s party. She and Nate were the ones who spent time in the shed together, but it was Nate and I who ended up kissing. Abby managed to create a frenzy on social media about it.
When Nate’s parents saw some of the posts, they flipped. They called my house a couple of times, but I managed to intercept them all to keep my dad from finding out. They enrolled him in the private all-boys Wellburn Academy before the school year started.
“How’s your new school?” I ask after a long silence, in which all the sounds of the shop—the old heater kicking on with a bang and the buzz of the lighting—seem too loud. I hiccup again.
He smiles and shows off his braces-free teeth, just like Daya mentioned. “It’s really good. I made the lacrosse team.”
“That’s good.”
I search my brain for something else to talk about, but he cuts into my thoughts. “I didn’t think you and Abby hung out with Daya.”
“We don’t…I mean Abby doesn’t, but I do…now.” My face burns, and I want to retreat behind the beaded curtain and never come out again, but Candy and her client are still in there.
That makes him say a thoughtful “hmm” and it makes me hiccup real loud.
“I’m not friends with Abby anymore,” I admit. “Or Mia or Gabrielle.” I hesitate and then go for it. “I’m sorry about that night at Abby’s party. She was just jealous of us…” I leave off the word “kissing.” “I shouldn’t have let her lie about you.”
That night Abby caught us behind the shed, she screamed to everyone that Nate was gay and didn’t want to kiss any girls and the only reason he kissed me was because I slipped him a love potion.
“There’s nothing wrong with being gay,” Nate says quietly. “It’s just not who I am.”
“I know.” There’s a strawberry size lump in my throat that makes it hard to talk. That and the hiccups, three of which come out of my mouth one after the other.
Even quieter, Nate says, “You know I really liked you.”
“I know,” I say again. I look at him properly for the first time since he walked into the shop. His face is tan and he’s let his dusty brown hair grow out, which looks good on him. Despite the uncomfortable situation, he holds himself with the same confidence I remember. I look him right in the eyes and say, “I’m sorry.”
I’m not sure if I liked Nate that way. Our kiss was okay, a little salty, and weird because of the braces. Nothing like what I’ve read about in books. There was no instant spark that made me want to keep doing it. Before I could think too hard about it, Abby interrupted us and everything fell apart. A disaster of a first kiss if there ever was one.
More silence passes between us. He doesn’t thank me for the apology, which is fine. Saying “I’m sorry” isn’t enough, but I don’t know what else to do.
Candy and her client, a man I don’t recognize, probably from out of town—my aunt’s readings are kind of famous—enter the main shop. He leaves, the little bell clanging after him, and Candy snaps her fingers. “Your soaps.”
