If the hill to Helene was hard to climb, it feels impossible to descend. Each step is crushing my very soul.

Everyone, every animal, is watching me leave. Watching my failure—even before I began anything of earnest. I don’t understand any of this in any solid way. There are only pieces of the puzzle, and they are the easy, outer pieces, that are in place. The inner picture is starkly blank.

But I know I just did what I had to do. It’s their problem if they invested in a bum deal. Even Anna, giving a year and a half of her life in a nursing home toward it. It was what she choose—I did not ask her for it. I should not feel guilty.

But I do. Lead weights of guilt are in my shoes, my legs, my arms. I’m a walking Neanderthal of bent guilt. Read the rest of this entry

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

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

If you ever have the chance to be nowhere, I highly suggest it. Seriously. It’s like nothing you have ever known. Like being up with the stars on the darkest night, when they are just popping, only you don’t see them, you feel them. And you can dance like you had no weight at all. You don’t think about how heavy you are when you’re somewhere, but really, in comparison, it’s crazy how much we lug around.

Time is strange, too, like it doesn’t matter. Not like you forgot your watch, but like you can’t imagine why anyone would even think of such a concept as time in the first place. Like weight, dealing with time just makes everything harder. But when there is no time, you don’t worry about anything. I mean, like anything. Because what can hurt you if you’re never going to meet up with it? Everything that can hurt you is pretty much in the past or the future, and if you don’t have a past or a future, you’re golden. 

Yes, that’s it. You’re golden. Like those tiny flakes they put on the outside of things to gild them… that kind of gold. And it feels wonderful, because you can float and float and float, until time immemorial, I swear. Read the rest of this entry

“Thanks for coming,” Michael says to me from across the restaurant table, “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

Immediately, my gut takes a dive. I don’t have any idea what it is he is going to say next. I only know I’m not going to like it. In fact, I’m going to hate it. It’s good we are in the farthest corner table, out of earshot of anyone here unless a waiter comes over, which none have so far. Maybe Michael told them to leave us alone. But why? And why does it feels so dire all of a sudden? Already I feel tears starting to form behind my eyes, which is just so ridiculous.

“You’re leaving,” I blurt out, having no idea where it came from. Just one of those things I know before I really know it.

Michael nods. “Saturday night.” Read the rest of this entry

Something isn’t right. I can’t say what, for sure. But something.

It isn’t Bea, even though she is banging around in the kitchen, upset about something she won’t talk about. It isn’t Dad, who is sitting here at the table, reading the newspaper and ignoring everyone else. Or Sally, who is eating her hot cheesy grits in stony silence. Or even Michael, who should have left for practice an hour ago, and hasn’t said a word as to why he’s joining us for breakfast.

It’s just… something.

“I have an idea, Julie,” Dad says, without laying down his newspaper.

“Okay,” I say.

“We will need your help, Michael,” he continues. Now, he puts down the paper to look at Michael, who is all ears.

“We?” Sally says. So I guess the idea is news to her, too.

“Your Aunt Helene will be coming back just before you return to school, won’t she?” he asks Michael. Read the rest of this entry

I’m sure my face is beat red, in part from the exertion of our finger wrestling and in part from my not being able to move an 88-year-old lady’s little finger a millimeter. My whole hand shook like crazy. But did hers? Not a bit. Embarrassing to say the least. 

“Good,” Anna says, nodding her approval when we finally call the truce.

“Good?” I nearly cry out, massaging my poor finger. “I didn’t move you a bit.”

“But you held your own,” she said, seeming to think this is really worthy, “and you were not writing in pain, either.”

“That was probably more due to you than me,” I argue with a pout.

Anna smiles wryly. “Probably.”

“So what did that tell you? Could you feel Magic in me yet?”

“Oh yes, yes indeed,” she says proudly. “You’re a natural. It won’t be long before…” She trails off, noticing a butterfly has landed on her medicine bag. Read the rest of this entry