One Jar of Magic Read online

  Mom turns the scone over and over in her hands like she’s never seen such a pastry, but I have a feeling it’s the person who gave it to her that she’s really trying to figure out.

  “Who doesn’t love the snow?” Mom says, in this sad sort of voice, and Zelda’s mom nods back with equal sadness, and so I try to look sad too, or at the very least wistful. But it’s hard, because the scone smells incredible.

  I take a bite. It’s delicious and strange. I’d thought the icing would be lemon, but it’s not.

  “Pineapple?” I say, the strong taste taking over my mouth.

  “I should have warned you,” Zelda’s mom says.

  “No, it’s awesome,” I say. “I like pineapple. Mom, you’ll love it.”

  Mom blushes. “We ate a lot at the feast,” she says. She looks at Zelda’s mom. “We already ate,” she repeats herself, like she didn’t hear her the first time.

  “At the feast,” Zelda’s mom says.

  “Yes.”

  “And now you’re here.”

  “Yes.”

  Zelda’s mom steps away from the table and to my mother’s side. She puts a hand on her shoulder, and Mom clears her throat. “Are you okay?” Zelda’s mom asks.

  Mom looks at me, at Lyle emerging from the bathroom, at the scone in her hand and her car out front. “Yes, yes, of course,” she says. It’s not convincing. “I’m sorry, I should have properly introduced myself. I’m Melissa Alice Anders, and this my daughter, Rose. My son, Lyle. We’re— It’s been— We aren’t usually— Thank you for the scones.”

  Zelda’s probably-dad laughs. It’s a big laugh. “We know who you are,” he says. “We know you.”

  Mom shakes her head. She’s always been embarrassed by Dad’s fame. Zelda’s mom puts a hand on Zelda’s dad’s arm to quiet him.

  I wait for Zelda’s family to introduce themselves, but they don’t. Everyone’s standing around with these strange looks on their faces, each of them looking like they want to say something, then deciding not to.

  “We’re glad you’re here,” Zelda’s mom says.

  My mother nods. I can’t place the look on her face. It’s sad but confused but happy but scared.

  “I’m Elizabeth,” Zelda’s mom says. “You’ve met my daughter Zelda. This is our oldest, Lucy. And their dad. Bennett.”

  “Bennett,” my mother repeats.

  He nods.

  Lyle and I try to decide how to stand, what to do with our hands. I want to unlock what is strange about this moment, about this place and these people and also about my mother, but the answer, I’m pretty sure, is the answer to everything today. My failure is making everything all wrong, is opening up moments like this one that were never meant to be opened.

  “So you don’t, um, go to TooBlue Lake?” I ask. My mom keeps not speaking but also not leaving, so I have to say something in the spaces that remain, and that’s the only thing I can think of.

  “We’re Not Meant for Magic,” Elizabeth says. She says it very easily, like it’s fine, like it’s as simple as painting your door pink instead of black or taking a vacation somewhere no one else has gone.

  “We need to go home,” Mom says.

  I don’t say anything.

  Zelda looks at me. I wonder if being Not Meant for Magic means you can tell when someone else isn’t meant for magic. I wonder if she can see it on me, the way she’d be able to tell if I had freckles or a missing tooth or bangs that needed a trim.

  “We should really be going,” Mom says.

  “Don’t forget your coffee!” Bennett says.

  “Oh yes, right, thank you,” Mom says. I’ve never seen her so nervous. If Dad were here and being himself, he’d make a joke about how many cups of coffee Mom drinks a day.

  But Dad’s not here.

  Mom takes her coffee and reaches for her wallet, but Elizabeth gently shakes her head, and for some reason Mom doesn’t argue, she just nods and looks at the floor. I thank them for the scones, but before we reach the door, Zelda grabs my hand. “If you ever want to talk—” she says.

  “About what?” I ask.

  “Magic,” she says. She shakes her head. She smiles. “Or not-magic. Or, you know, anything. About us. Or about nothing. Whatever friends talk about.”

  I shrink. Whatever she sees in me is magic-less and strange, like her. I don’t want to look that way; I want to hide whatever she’s catching sight of.

  “I have magic,” I say.

  “Oh?”

  “A jar,” I say.

  “Oh.”

  “It’s enough,” I say.

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t,” she says. She shrugs. “But it’s not a lot.”

  I want to ask her what she knows about magic anyway, if she’s never studied for New Year’s Day, if she’s never tried to capture any.

  Still, she looks at me like she knows something. Maybe not about magic. But about me. And I’m feeling like I don’t know too much about either of those things anymore.

  “We’ll see each other again,” she says before letting go of my hand.

  “Probably not,” I say, but she sounds so sure, her head is so steady, her shoulders so relaxed, that it’s easier to believe her than myself.

  I pay attention the whole way home. I watch the way the road winds and which trees are where. I make a map in my mind of how to get from here to home and back again. Not because I plan on going back. Not because I want to see Zelda and her family again. Not because I am Not Meant for Magic.

  Just because.

  Nineteen

  A Story About the Other Time I Went to TooBlue Lake, a Secret Almost No One Knows

  Dad took us to TooBlue Lake, once.

  Not me and Lyle and Mom. He said Mom and Lyle wouldn’t understand.

  He took me and Ginger.

  “Is this allowed?” Ginger asked a dozen times on the car ride there. She whispered it to me at first, then turned her attention to Dad, asking him over and over and over what the rules were.

  “There are no rules,” Dad said. I didn’t think this was exactly true. Our teachers spoke of magic-capturing rules, and there were signs every few miles on the road to TooBlue Lake reminding us of some of them: You can’t capture magic any time but New Year’s Day. You can’t capture magic until you turn twelve. You can’t live here. You can’t swim here. You can’t run fast here. You can’t take photographs. You shouldn’t really be here at all, probably, and will have to answer a bunch of questions if anyone finds you.

  Dad shrugged them all off.

  “Those are suggestions,” Dad said. “There’s no law. It’s a public space. Plus, I’m Wendell Anders. This is my lake, isn’t it?” He smiled because it was a joke, but I think it felt true to him too. It felt true to me. My father was Wendell Anders, the most magical person in all of Belling Bright and maybe the world, and if it was anyone’s lake, maybe it was a little bit his.

  My heart surged with the thought. Because I was like my father, and that meant TooBlue Lake was a little bit mine, too.

  When we finally got to the beach, Ginger was a panicked mess and I was kind of excited. We were wearing our bathing suits under our clothes and it was a hot July day. If we’d stayed home Mom would have shown us how to make Popsicles and we could’ve set up the sprinkler in the front yard and run back and forth and back and forth in our new matching bathing suits.

  Instead, we were here, and the lake was bluer than I’d ever seen, and Dad practically ran for the water, throwing his shirt off on his way, letting it fly out behind him, landing wherever, it didn’t matter, since we were the only people here anyway.

  “We can’t,” Ginger said. She was leaning against the car like it was an anchor.

  “If my dad says it’s okay, then it’s okay,” I said. “Trust me.”

  “I don’t want to,” Ginger said.

  “Well, I want to,” I said. I took off my shorts and the blue tank top I always wore on the hottest days. I ran all the way to the water, feeling like a zebra in
my black-and-white-striped bathing suit. And I dove in. Even though it said not to. Even though I was pretty sure it was against the rules. Even though Ginger was keeping one finger on Dad’s car and peering at me nervously with the rest of her body.

  It felt good, the water. Cold. Lake water is always colder than you think it’s going to be.

  “Look at you! My little lucky mermaid!” Dad called from farther out in the lake than I thought I could swim.

  “No one’s here!” I said. All the lakes I’d ever been to had been filled with families, kids littler than me running around, building sandcastles, older kids playing volleyball, parents putting sunblock on every limb they could get their hands on. TooBlue Lake was empty.

  “They’re all afraid,” Dad said. “But you don’t get magic by being scared.”

  I waded farther in.

  “So Ginger won’t get any magic?”

  Dad looked over my shoulder to Ginger. She had shuffled a little bit farther away from the car and was pulling at her shirt like she might almost be ready to take it off.

  “She might be okay,” Dad said with a smile. “Ginger! Over here! You’ve got this!”

  “I’m not a very good swimmer,” she called back.

  “All the more reason to practice!” Dad said.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in practice,” Ginger said. She was starting to smile. Once Ginger started to smile, she didn’t stop, so I knew that in no time at all she’d be splashing around in the lake. Ginger took time to get happy, but once she was there it was big and full and relentless.

  “We’re practicing swimming, not magic capturing,” Dad said. “I believe in practicing swimming.”

  She took a few more steps away from the car. Her toes were on the sand, her heels still on the parking lot pavement. “Shouldn’t we practice swimming at a normal lake? One we’re allowed to be at?”

  “Look at this place!” Dad said. “You won’t be able to look at it when the time comes, not like this. And it’s worth seeing.”

  Ginger looked. I looked. It was really nice, but I don’t think I saw what Dad saw. The most interesting thing about TooBlue Lake was how empty it was. The blue was deep and real, but the rest of it was like every other lake. Still water. Mountains like shadows hovering over it. Trees all over the place, different sizes and shapes and degrees of green. Sand that wasn’t extra soft and a sky that was gray and air that was muggy. It smelled like summer—kind of sweaty and yellow. The way sunscreen smells when it’s baked on your skin for an hour to two.

  Finally, Ginger walked over to the lake. She didn’t step in. She motioned me over to her.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “Why? My dad’s here. Everything’s fine.” Dad was doing somersaults in the water. He looked like a little kid, but also like my dad still.

  “My dad said to follow the rules,” Ginger said.

  Ginger’s dad had died not very long before that day, and I could still hear his voice in my head when she said things like that. Her dad hadn’t been much like my dad. He was shorter, for one, and quieter. He caught magic every year, a normal amount. Twenty jars, maybe twenty-two. Enough. And the magic inside was fine. Useful. Fixing a car or the air conditioner. Making the dog behave. Once he was even able to put more stars in the sky. I loved that night. Dad was jealous, I think, of that jar of magic. Hundreds of new points of light crowded the night.

  Ginger was so proud.

  My dad said it wasn’t as powerful a magic as magic that could make the moon grow or the seasons change, and I nodded in agreement but wondered in my own head why that even mattered.

  Couldn’t we just enjoy the stars?

  Ginger’s dad went to work in a suit and always wore his shoes outside. He played piano in the evenings and didn’t smile much, but he didn’t not-smile either. When he died, he gave Ginger his college ring and she wore it, now, around her neck. She played with it when she wasn’t sure what to do. I wondered how often she thought about that extra-starry night, and if she hoped to capture something similar one day, to remember him by.

  I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t want her to get that sad look she got when I talked about her dad. So I said nothing, wondering all the while if I should have been saying something.

  Dad got out of the water. He always knew what to do and what to say. He bent down so he was face-to-face with Ginger. “Your dad was a great man,” he said, loud enough for me to hear, but quiet enough for it to feel like hers alone. “A great man. And you should honor the things he told you. But following the rules isn’t the way to get magic. And I know your dad was counting on you to get magic for the family. Now that he’s gone.”

  “We follow rules,” I said. It wasn’t the point, but I didn’t like thinking of us as rule breakers and Ginger and her father and her family as perfect rule followers.

  “We bend them,” Dad said. “We play with them.” He splashed Ginger. She gasped from the shock of cold. Even on the hottest day of the year, the lake was icy.

  Ginger followed every rule. She had never turned in one sheet of homework late. She ironed all her shirts. She never stayed on the swings for longer than ten minutes even if no one was waiting for them. She wouldn’t like Dad telling her to break the rules. She would want to do whatever her dad had told her to do. And maybe she should do whatever he said, because he was able to capture that one extra-magical jar of starry magic.

  But I didn’t say that.

  Sometimes, around my dad, I forgot to say the things I wanted to say.

  And I didn’t need to say anything. Because what Dad had said and done made her pause, but then it made her smile. She swung her arms back. She pushed a giant wave of water forward, getting me and my dad both soaked.

  We stayed in the water for hours, for so long that the temperature of the air began to feel strange, the temperature of the water normal. We stayed in there so long that I forgot about magic and New Year’s Day and Lyle back home on the couch and how it sometimes felt like Mom and Dad were never in the same place at the same time, how we hadn’t had family dinner since Thanksgiving and even that had been quiet in the wrong moments and louder in the wronger moments.

  We stayed in the water so long I thought I might not need magic anymore. I might just need a weekly soak in TooBlue Lake, the light in Ginger’s eyes, the sound of Dad’s limbs splish-splashing in the water.

  When the sun was setting we ate cheese and crackers and fruit on the beach.

  “I thought a picnic might be nice,” Dad said.

  “Did Mom pack this?” I asked. I had never known Dad to think of things like the necessity of food. It was Mom who brought tissues and snacks and at least three books and a change of clothes everywhere we went.

  “I can put together a picnic!” Dad said. There was no picnic blanket to sit on, and no utensils or plates either. So I believed him that he did it himself. We tore chunks of cheddar from a big block of it and let berry juice run all over our fingers. We didn’t complain about sand getting in our mouths, in our hair, in our bathing suits.

  None of that mattered.

  “This is the best day of my whole life,” Ginger said when we were down to a small mound of Havarti, three crackers, and a banana.

  “The best day of your life will be New Year’s Day,” Dad said.

  “That will be the best day of Rose’s life, not mine,” Ginger said. “I won’t do anything special.”

  “Sure you will,” I said. “Maybe you’ll get some of that starry magic that your dad caught.”

  Ginger beamed. I did too; I was so happy to have finally said the right thing about her dad, to have made her smile like that.

  My dad didn’t smile and I tried not to notice it. I even leaned in a little, hoping to block Ginger’s view of his not-smiling face.

  “When you get a hundred jars of magic, will you still be my friend?” Ginger asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “A thousand?”

  “Of course!”

>   “A million?”

  “No. When I have a million jars I am going to magic myself to Mars and become queen of the planet.”

  Ginger broke into giggles. “That’s fair,” she said.

  “But you can visit,” I said.

  “I’ve always wanted to travel,” Ginger said.

  “You two,” Dad said. He ate the last bit of cheese and broke into the banana too. “You’re lucky to have each other.”

  He looked a little sad, like he wanted a best friend as great as Ginger. I felt a little sad too, because sometimes being so happy made me feel sad that something might change all the happiness.

  And I was right. Something did.

  We never came back to TooBlue Lake again, but it was a secret that pulsed between the three of us, a thing we’d done that no one else had done. The closest I ever got to feeling magic.

  Twenty

  When Dad finally comes home from TooBlue Lake, it’s late.

  Later than late, it’s at least midnight and it’s been hours upon hours since any of us have said a word. We haven’t talked about Zelda or those who aren’t meant for magic or the ways I let everyone down or our missing father. Lyle and I are asleep on the floor of the living room, where we’ve made a fort of pillows like we used to do when we were little.