Somewhere between taking off in a flat out run and meeting up with Anna, an odd thought struck me: Should she be drinking wine? For the past eighteen months she’s been drugged up and nearly dead to the world. Now she’s standing, gesturing, laughing…and drinking? I don’t know why that thought, in particular, came to me. But it did, and now that I’ve caught up to her, I’m both ecstatically excited to see her walking around, and worried, too. Something isn’t right.

“Anna!” I say, nearly running into her, out of breath.

“Mayden!” she replies, seemingly as delighted to see me as I am to see her. We hug right there in front of everyone, careful not to spill her glass.

“I can’t believe you’re here, like this,” I say. I want to ask…Was it the healing I did? Is the Magic I carry that powerful? But I don’t dare. I don’t know the people she’s talking to. She might not want them to know where she’s just been for the past year and a half. Read the rest of this entry

“I think we’re ready,” I say to Michael and Jake, who are at the door, ready to welcome guests. In one way, it’s sort of weird having them here together. But in another way, it feels perfectly normal. Like of course there are two awesome, gorgeous, totally amazing guys I didn’t even know a month ago at my front door. MY front door, welcoming guests to MY party.

“You’re not ready,” Michael says flat out.

“Actually, I think I am,” I say, then notice him looking at my dirty apron and flour-flecked jeans. “Oh, right. I guess I should think about getting dressed.”

And about what to wear. What does a sixteen year old hostess wear to such a party? I mean, I should know, given that I’m throwing it. But I don’t. All out Goth? Mildly Goth? No Goth? Jeans, slacks, dress? It’s been the last thing that’s been on my mind, and now I’m stuck without a clue. Read the rest of this entry

I’ve just done the math and I think I will surely vomit from nerves.

A hundred folding chairs waiting are for me outside on the lawn, each with a fabric cover here inside the laundry room with little Cinderella me. They are sealed in a heavy tough plastic that needs to be 1) carefully cut open—no ripping and tearing these buggers, 2) STEAMED for wrinkles—per detailed package instructions, 3) pulled tight over the seat frames, and 4) tied into a bow on the back. I’m thinking a bad job will take five minutes, a good job ten…each. One hundred times the minimum five minutes and I have five hundred minutes of work in chairs alone. I don’t want to think about how many hours that is, because when you add to that the other gazillion items yet to be done, each of which has it’s own five to fifteen to fifty minutes associated with it, it becomes crystal clear that I will not accomplish my tasks in the exactly three hours and seventeen minutes I have before people start arriving.

Had someone told me I needed to add labor to the delivery fee, we would be fine. But did anyone tell me? Did anyone say, when you order the fancy white linen covered folding chairs, keep in mind you will have to assemble them? Did anyone say anything at all about wrinkles? No. They did not. I guess they forgot. Read the rest of this entry

Chapter 26 and rolling… check out where we are and the final stretch!

I’m thinking this means I have a boyfriend.

Maybe.

I keep thinking about him. Jake. My boyfriend. Maybe.

I hadn’t remembered about the dreams he has been appearing in until he said something. Or, rather, did a mind-meld about it. And since then I’ve been remembering more and more: He’s been visiting in my dreams ever since I met him. I just wasn’t fully aware of it. But now I am. And the most amazing thing, the very most amazing thing in the entire world of all of this, is that he’s said he loves me at the end of every single dream. Like, a lot of times. And I said it back, too.

Can you really do that though, go from nothing to love as fast as I’m gunning the car to get to Anna? I want to ask her that. I need to ask her that. But I think I know what she will say already. She’ll say I didn’t ever NOT love Jake. At least, I hope that is what she will say.

I also hope she’ll explain why, and how, it is going to get hard, like he said. Why I’ll have to remember that Jake is on my side when it is so clear, right now, that he is. I have a feeling I know about that, too. One word: Helene. But maybe not. You never know. I could be wrong. Only lately, that’s not happening so much. Read the rest of this entry

“I can’t do it!” I nearly scream at Bea, handing her the stuck jar of artichoke hearts like everything—every single last thing on earth—is her fault.

She takes it, giving me a look I don’t understand, and opens it easily. “Use your belly next time,” she says.

“To open a jar?” I ask, sarcastic, rolling my eyes, like I sometimes do with Dad or Sally. That’s pushing it, I realize, but it’s a pushing it kind of day.

“To do anything,” she replies, not fed up just yet. Maybe she even understands. “That’s where your energy is stored. Call on it, and send it to your hands. Easy.”

Easy. Easy. Everything for them is easy.

“That’s not what’s bothering you,” she says, eyeing me again. Read the rest of this entry