One Jar of Magic Read online

  “I get tired,” I said.

  “You won’t be tired,” Dad reminded me. “You’ll be UnTired. You’ll be ready. Your whole self will turn toward the magic. You’ll see.”

  He sounded so sure I almost forgot all my other questions.

  Maybe I didn’t need to ask them anyway. I’m lucky to have him looking out for me. To have him teaching me how to listen for magic and capture it and make it my own. I’m lucky that he does what needs to be done.

  Even when I don’t understand it.

  “And when it’s all done, I can rest. And have the feast,” I said, because thinking about bacon and pancakes helps me forget about other things, like the way Dad sometimes makes me feel or the things he’s said to Mom when he thinks I haven’t been listening or how sometimes all the things he says about magic don’t add up in my mind, but I was never very good at math anyway, so that must be why.

  Tomorrow morning, there will be a breakfast feast right here where we’re standing. I’ve heard the pancakes are so good you can’t ever enjoy regular pancakes again. I’ve heard there are fluffy eggs and platters of cheese and fruit so sweet it tastes like candy and hot chocolate that is just hot fudge sauce in a giant ceramic mug. I wish we were there now and could skip this next part.

  It surprises me, feeling that way.

  “Let’s go pick a spot,” Ginger says now. Almost everyone but us has started moving.

  “Let’s get the closest cabin,” Maddy says. “Everyone else will be trying to get all the way up the hill, since the view is so nice. Let’s get the one closest to the lake.” I can tell from the fake-casual way she says it that she’s been planning this forever but wants to pretend it’s a brand-new thought. I’ve seen her do this before. Maddy plans everything—who she will talk to at recess, what comment she’ll make about The Giver when we discuss it in class, how she’ll wear her hair for New Year’s Day magic capturing. But she likes all of it to look easy and accidental and natural. As if she doesn’t have to try at all.

  I’m waiting for it to be easy. Nothing feels very easy right now. Not even being with my friends.

  There’s a shout and a whoop and a holler from up at the top of the hill.

  “He’s got it!” someone calls, their voice echoing against our nervous silence. “The First Magic!”

  I wonder if Ginger’s and Maddy’s hearts sommersault the way mine does. Sometimes the First Magic isn’t caught for an hour. Usually it’s at least twenty minutes. But news travels down the hill at the speed of light, and we learn that the First Magic was caught by Evan Dell, who is the tallest boy in the grade and, according to me and Ginger and Maddy, the cutest too.

  I picture Dad in my head, rolling his eyes. Beginner’s luck, Dad would say. The First Magic isn’t the best magic. It’s not the most magic. It’s just the First Magic.

  Still, I wanted it to be mine. The First Magic is extra bright; it lights up your jar and turns different colors depending on the time of day, as if you captured a bit of sky.

  I would have liked to set a bit of sky on our mantel, in between the jar filled with starlight and the one with a bit of a tree’s long shadow trapped inside. I would have liked to sit with my father and watch it turn from orange to blue to black to gray to yellow. I would have liked to capture the First Magic so I could know, for sure, that I’m who my father has promised me that I am.

  My father knows everything about magic, and he knows that I am ready for big magic. So it must be true. It has to be. I just have to do what he’s told me, be who he’s asked me to be. Little Luck. Rose Alice Anders. A girl who is about to capture more magic than any other twelve-year-old has.

  “You guys get a cabin,” I say, sticking my chin a little into the air, straightening my shoulders so that I look as strong and sure as those boys who didn’t hesitate to run up the hill. “I won’t be sleeping.”

  I sit on the ground and take off my shoes, untying one, then the other. I don’t exactly want to. It’s cold out and the ground is covered in pebbles that will hurt the bottoms of my feet. But I promised my father I would, and I have to be something more than a person who is standing at the bottom of the hill, hearing about Evan Dell’s success. I have to become the person I am destined to be.

  “I thought it would be fun,” Ginger says, “the three of us rooming together. Like a sleepover.”

  “I thought you have to give up everything fun so that you can capture all the magic you need.”

  “Rose,” Ginger says. “I’m allowed to try. I’m allowed to do it my way.”

  “Dad says trying is the opposite of magic,” I say. It’s not something Dad’s really said, not exactly, but close enough. I don’t like the way Ginger’s looking at my bare feet, like they’re weird and maybe even gross and almost as bad as Jamie Ollander’s unwashed hair. I don’t like that she’s had all these thoughts and feelings that I haven’t known about.

  “What are you doing with the bare feet? Isn’t that trying?” Ginger asks.

  “You don’t understand—” I start, and I want to tell her about last week, when I asked if I really had to go barefoot for New Year’s Day. I want to tell her that Dad’s shoulders tensed and he slammed the front door and Lyle made me promise to go barefoot whenever Dad said to go barefoot. I want to tell her that I don’t understand everything my dad says and does either, but that he is Wendell Anders and he’s magical and special and the best person in all of Belling Bright, so it doesn’t matter if I understand or not. I want to tell her yes, I do whatever my dad does, whatever he says to do, and it’s impossible to imagine doing things any other way. But I don’t say any of that. I don’t let myself.

  “You’re right,” Ginger says. “I don’t understand you at all right now.”

  “Come on,” Maddy says. “Let’s just go. We knew this might happen.”

  It’s that word—we—that changes everything. It’s been a bad morning, but Maddy saying we makes it worse. Ginger and I are supposed to be the we. Maddy is the extra person, the tagalong, the sort of friend who is supposed to be decidedly outside our we.

  My throat closes up. But I can’t care about any of that. I have to find my magic. Or let it find me.

  “I really can’t have the distraction of you two anyway,” I say to the shape of their bodies leaning a little toward one another and away from me. I say it to the way that Ginger’s shoes match Maddy’s and the way she’s looking at me now, like she feels bad for me. I say it to the jar at her side, which is open and ready for capturing, even though we promised I would open her first jar for capturing every year and she would open mine, the way we used to do when we were seven and eight and nine and playing New Year’s Day. It was supposed to be our ritual, fitting right in with the way we make each other Valentine’s Day cards every year and dress in identical outfits for the first day of school and spend our birthdays together.

  Except not this year, I guess. Not anymore. Something vanished before I even had a chance to say goodbye to it, and it makes me sad, but more than sad it makes me angry. I want to stomp on her already open jar and all the promises and plans we’ve ever made.

  Ginger sees me seeing her already open jar.

  She doesn’t say anything. She shrugs like I should have known it was coming.

  But I didn’t. I didn’t know at all.

  Ten

  I don’t feel very magical right now, but I know that TooBlue Lake itself has more magic than practically anywhere else in the world and definitely more than anywhere else on this beach. Dad says it’s where all the magic comes from. That it’s brewed up in the lake and then lapped onto the shore and the breezes blow bits and pieces of it this way and that so that we have to go searching for it. But the most magic is right there in the lake. And if I could catch one of those glints of sunlight in a jar, it would be like catching ten regular jars of magic.

  Dad also said to trust myself, that I am the luck, that I will know how to do it because I am meant to do it.

  And that’s what I hav
e to believe, because that is what has always been true. The lake is there, shining and blue, and all I know is I want to run away from Ginger and Maddy and their cabin and their plans and their stupid matching sneakers and the way they shrug at the things that matter to me. I roll my pants up past my knees so I can wade in. Later, adults will dive in, older kids will swim out to the other shore, and my classmates will maybe skim the shoreline looking for the kind of magic that gets lapped up in little lake waves.

  But right now, TooBlue is mine. The magic there is slippery and sometimes impossible to get ahold of. It’s for last-minute miracles, not for the early hours when magic is everywhere. But Dad says to follow my instincts, that they are good, like his, and my heart, which is pure and open and big like his. And my heart and my guts say lake lake lake, so I don’t ignore them. I walk right up to the place where water meets sand and let it hit my toes for one second before walking in. It’s so cold that if I hesitate I’ll never do it at all, so I don’t hesitate, I go all the way to my knees and I stick my jar in the water and bring it back up. And when it’s out of the water, I look hopefully inside. It’s pretty much impossible, to get lake magic on a first try, but I’m special, I’m Rose Alice Anders and my father is Wendell Anders and he captured one hundred sixty-one jars of magic because I was born, and everyone is waiting to see what my first year will bring, what my legacy means. Who I am.

  I lift the jar of magic high above me. It’s easier to see what you’ve got that way, my father says. Magic needs a little light on it, and the sun is bright enough to help now, so I hold the jar this way and that, looking for the flicker, the shimmer, the glint, the diamond of light that appears on the surface of the lake.

  The jar is full. But not with magic. Just with lake water. TooBlue Lake has the prettiest water in the world. But there’s a difference between beautiful and magical, and Rose Alice Anders is supposed to be able to tell the difference.

  I dump the contents back into the lake and try again.

  Dad says the best magic capturers are resilient. He calls it grit, and I call it hope, but it’s all the same. It means you don’t let one jar of lake water ruin your day.

  I lower the jar back into the water and rush at a glint of sunlight sparkling in all that blue. I throw my whole body at it. Then I lift my jar to the sky and peer underneath.

  Just lake water again.

  More buses are rolling in, and cars behind them. Somewhere, Lyle and Mom and Dad are driving around a corner, seeing the sign for TooBlue Lake, wondering if I’ve caught the First Magic. It’s too late for that, but I am positive that I will catch a bit of lake magic, I’ll be the first one to do it, something that’s never been done before by a kid who is only twelve.

  I walk farther into the lake. My jeans get soaked. I walk all the way to my waist, and my mustard-colored hoodie isn’t dry anymore either, but none of that matters; nothing matters except the jar and the glint and the magic I am about to proudly possess.

  I skim my jar across the water, thinking about fireflies and heartbeats and Dad’s lucky scarf around my neck and how much he loves me and my destiny to be Rose Alice Anders, the next great capturer of magic.

  I do not think about Ginger and Maddy and their laughter as it peals across the lake’s surface. I don’t think, not even one little bit, about what will happen tomorrow and next week and next month if Ginger and Maddy are now best friends and I am not a best friend anymore. I don’t think about the never hearing magic and the never feeling very magical and the always wondering why Dad has so much magic and Mom has so little and if any of that makes any sense.

  I don’t think about how I once whispered to Lyle, Do you trust magic? And how he didn’t answer.

  I don’t think about how very very cold it is and how very very wet my clothes are.

  I let my heart find the magic. And it does. I’m positive it does. I feel my heart surge and my eyes get a little weepy and my hands shake and I swear I can hear it now, magic. It’s a hum and a whisper and the world’s tiniest wind chime and it’s beautiful. And it’s mine.

  I lift the jar into the sky. People have gathered along the shore. Kids in my class, but others too. Older kids. Parents. Teachers. I’m pretty sure I can see Lyle’s long hair and Mom’s sharp shoulders and Dad’s scruffy beard.

  “Lake magic!” I call out. I say it loud enough for my father to hear. I want him to be a part of this moment with me. I want him to know that I have believed everything he’s ever told me, and I have the gift he promised I would have and that I am the greatest young capturer here on TooBlue Lake. I want him to see that magic found me, because I was worth finding. “I captured lake magic!” I say again, lifting my jar even higher up, even closer to the sun, so that the glint will reach shore, will bounce off the lake’s surface and the sun’s beams and really show itself off.

  “Rose,” my father calls back. I wait for his congratulations. Maybe he will run through the water to reach me, lift me into the air, kiss my hair. Maybe he will cry.

  “I did it!” I call back.

  “Rose,” Dad says again, more stern this time. He isn’t diving into the lake water, he isn’t grinning from ear to ear. In fact, he doesn’t look happy at all. “Look up,” he says. “Like I taught you. Listen. Lunge. Look.”

  There’s a chuckle from the crowd. The Anders family secret is that simple. Listen. Lunge. Look. Any of them could do it. Of course, if you believe my father, there’s the fourth thing, which is luck and heart and being the kind of person who leans toward magic, being the kind of person who magic leans toward.

  I am the kind of person that magic leans toward. I have to be. That is the story of the day I was born, and that has to be the story today.

  I am Rose Alice Anders, and I am the first twelve-year-old to ever catch lake magic.

  I look up at last.

  The jar feels heavy, something I should have noticed before.

  I look more closely. It is filled to the brim with water. It seems to be getting heavier by the moment. I turn it this way and that, searching for the telltale glint, the spark of something more than a jar full of water.

  Magic is there or not there, Dad told me, back when I asked him how I would be able to tell if I’d caught magic or not. He walked me to our windowsill, to one of the many rows of jars in our home. He was right, of course. The magic was simply there. I couldn’t have said what exactly it looked like—was it the extra-orangeness of a leaf or the almost-green of a drop of water? Was it a floating piece of glitter or the fuzz of a feather? Or was it something else entirely?

  I didn’t know. It didn’t matter. I could tell the difference between a jar of magic and a jar of not-magic. Magic was there or not there.

  And today, as I’m soaked in lake water, I can tell. Magic is not there. It’s not here, in my jar. I didn’t catch anything but a jar full of water.

  That, and the sinking feeling that the map of my world, the list of things I was promised, is shifting as quickly as kids are running up and down the hill, as quickly as a firefly bats its wings against your hands, as quickly as any magic has ever moved.

  Eleven

  It is a long walk from the lake to the shore.

  Long and wet and downward-gazing, because the idea of knowing who was on the shore watching my ridiculous performance is more than I can handle. It’s enough to know my family was watching, and to suspect that most of my classmates were, too.

  Mom covers me in a towel the second I reach her. “You must be cold,” she says, which is nice, because it’s what she would say in any circumstance where I’ve been standing in the water in the wintertime. It makes me feel almost normal. I’m still Rose Alice. I’m still her daughter. I’m still okay.

  Except I’m not really okay. I’m shaking, first of all, and even though there are hours and hours and hours of New Year’s Day to go, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to try again. I’ve been waiting my whole life to capture magic, and I failed so spectacularly, the idea of trying again makes
me sick.

  “What were you thinking?” Lyle asks. He’s blushing, like just being related to me is a humiliation.

  “I thought I had it,” I say.

  Lyle rolls his eyes. “’Course you did,” he says. “Rose Alice Anders. So magical she dives right into the water. As if there isn’t easy magic right here in the sand, or stuck in between blades of grass.” Lyle is only sarcastic when he’s scared, so I guess he’s scared. But I’m not sure of what.

  I look around. He’s gesturing all over the place, as if the magic is so obvious that I must see it too. But I can’t seem to tell the difference between grass waving a little in the wind and grass thrumming with magic. Dad always said it would be obvious. When magic is stuffed in a jar, I can see it. But out here, at TooBlue Lake, all I see is a lake and the shore and the people of Belling Bright doing a million times better than me.

  I look at Dad, but Dad’s looking at the lake. He steps away from us, out of earshot, so I lean closer to Lyle. “Can you show me?” I ask.

  “Show you what?” The crowd around us is starting to dissipate. They’re heading to the cabins, up the hill, and to the edge of the lake. The air is punctuated with cries of success. Little bits of magic trapped in jars like it’s nothing, like it’s as easy as Dad said it would be.

  “Show me where the magic is,” I say.

  Lyle squints and shakes his head. “Rose. What have you been studying all this time?”

  “How to capture magic,” I say. “Or, well, no. I’ve been practicing how to help the magic find me. Like it’s supposed to. Right?”

  “That’s what Dad says,” Lyle says. “That he has magic because he’s supposed to have magic. That he gets powerful magic because he’s worthy of it.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “Right,” Lyle says. Sometimes I can say one word and Lyle can say one word but we’re actually saying a thousand words.

  “We trust the magic to know what it’s doing,” Lyle says. He waits for me to agree, and I know I have been taught exactly that, but it has always been hard to be sure about, hard to trust. I look at my big brother to see if it’s hard for him too. If he wonders, the way I do, late at night and even right here and right now on the shores of TooBlue Lake.