Jessica
Into a carafe, mix chocolate and snow with salt. Stir together for some time. When mixed, eat with spoons. Lasting friendship soon will follow.
Goody Fletcher, Book of Useful Household Tips
By noon on Monday, I was sitting in the same high school guidance counselor’s office I’d sat in more than a decade earlier.
At least the new guidance counselor (whose title was now apparently “student success coach”) was thanking me for showing up, instead of me thanking her for taking the time out of her busy day to help keep me from getting drowned by Rosalie Hopkins.
“You don’t have any idea how hard it’s been to get volunteers for this new mentoring program,” Dr. Garcia was gushing. “We’ve been trying to get the word out, but people simply don’t seem to be responding.”
“Well.” I couldn’t help staring at the poster hanging behind her head. With all the technological advancements in the past decade and a half, could they not have come up with some new motivational posters for counseling offices? This one was of a daffodil sprouting from the earth, and urged me to Bloom where you’re planted. It was almost identical to the poster Dr. Fields had had up in her office! Ugh.
Except wasn’t this exactly what I had done, by returning to my hometown after college and buying a home and business here? Could it be that the inspirational messages on the posters in the guidance office at my high school had actually worked?
“Everyone is so busy these days, I guess,” I said, dragging my gaze from the poster. “Especially with the tricentennial coming up.”
“You’re right.” Dr. Garcia shook her head, then brightened. “But anyway, I think you and Esther are going to be a great match. I’m so glad Dr. DiAngelo thought of pairing up the two of you!”
“Me, too.”
Ha! Like any of this had been Sal’s idea. In fact, when he’d seen me enter the administrative offices, he’d hurried away in the opposite direction—not running, exactly, but moving as quickly as a man his size could without breaking into a sprint.
But the paperwork for my mentorship with Esther had been approved and was waiting at the front desk, so I couldn’t be mad at him.
“Now, don’t be discouraged if Esther seems a little on the shy side,” Dr. Garcia warned me. “She’s not exactly an extrovert, like you, Jessica. But I think once you break the ice, you’ll find that she’s a deeply intelligent, intellectually curious girl. Not exactly a joiner, but very willing to learn, if you can just get her to open up.”
“Great.” I clutched my bag—the largest tote I owned—into which I’d stuffed my secret weapon: a plastic container full of the sweet baked goods that Dina had spent Sunday afternoon whipping up for the occasion.
It was devious. It was underhanded.
But it was exactly what any good cottage witch would do . . . and what I needed if I was going to save West Harbor . . .
. . . and get rid of Derrick Winters and his distracting silver eyes.
“Now, I’m not sure exactly what period Esther has next.” Dr. Garcia turned toward her desktop.
“Lunch, I think?” I feigned ignorance. “It’s noon, so . . .”
The student success coach seemed surprised when her computer monitor confirmed the news. “Oh, yes. Well, look at that. You’re right! Esther has lunch now. Although I don’t know how you’re going to find her—”
“Oh,” I said, rising confidently from my chair. “I’ll manage. I used to go here, after all.”
Dr. Garcia smiled. “That’s right! Well, don’t forget to wear your—”
I waved the security badge that hung from a lanyard around my neck as I backed out of her office. “Got it.”
“Oh.” The phone on Dr. Garcia’s desk began to ring. She glanced at it distractedly. “Oh, dear. The senior parents this year—they’re so demanding.”
I waved as she picked up her phone, and mouthed, pointing at her cardigan, which I’d ordered just for her, It looks good!
Thank you! she mouthed back.
Then I shouldered my tote bag and set off.
One thing I’d forgotten in the years since I’d graduated from high school was just how young teenagers were. Had I really ever been this small, this fresh-faced, this awkward, and this anxious? Since I couldn’t bring myself to look at my diaries from when I was in high school, that probably answered the question. That and the way my palms got clammy just reaching to pull open the door of the cafeteria.
The kids who came into my shop to try on my clothes were often giggly and occasionally even shrill in their excitement when I helped them find the perfect gift or accessory.
But the wall of sound that hit me as I entered the cafeteria of West Harbor High was a thousand times louder than that because it was joined by the clank of silverware hitting plastic meal trays, the thunder and squeak of rubber-soled athletic shoes against tile flooring, as well as the cacophony of teenaged voices, all trying to be heard over the sound of the video games they were playing on their cell phones. That, plus the sight of the hokey Halloween decorations on the walls and the overwhelming smell of industrial strength cleaner and burnt pizza brought me right back to the mid-2000s.
Thank God I’d had Dina and Mark and, yes, even Goody Fletcher’s book to help me through my teenaged years. Otherwise, I might have ended up like the small, forlorn figure I immediately spotted sitting all by herself beneath the Emo Dome.
Esther.
I’d have known her anywhere, and not just because Derrick had given me her photo and she was the only African American girl in glasses under the Dome. But also because she was wearing a black zippered sweatshirt over her school sweater vest, black Converse high-tops beneath her uniform khakis, and was intently reading an actual book with what looked like a homemade black knitted book cover over it. The jury was still out over whether she was a witch, but she certainly had the look down.
“Esther?”
With all the anarchy around us, the girl hadn’t noticed me approach. She glanced up from her book at the sound of her name, her dark eyes wide. “Yes?”
“Hi. I’m Jessica Gold.” I slid onto the bench across from her. The tables in the cafeteria must have gotten a lot smaller than they used to be, because it seemed like a tighter fit than the last time I’d eaten there. “Your new mentor. From Reach for the Sky—locals helping locals reach their goals? I own Enchantments, the clothing boutique over on the Post Road.”
The girl continued to stare at me unsmilingly. All around us, chaos reigned. Down the table, a group of boys were screaming in excitement as one of them won a game he was playing on his cell phone. The number of four-letter words the boys used to celebrate this victory was astonishing even to me, and I enjoyed a good swear word.
Esther seemed oblivious to the din. “Right,” she said finally, and gave one of the protective braids into which she’d twisted her long, dark hair a flick, so it settled behind her shoulder with the others. “Dr. Garcia said you’d be coming by.”
“Yes!” I gave her my biggest smile. She was prettier in person than she’d been in her picture, with strikingly large eyes and a pouty mouth. She was so slim, a good breeze off the Sound might have blown her away—probably, I noted, because she wasn’t eating properly.
“Did you not get lunch?” I asked, realizing there was nothing in front of her—no tray, no sandwich container, not even a bag of chips, only a refillable metal water bottle. “Aren’t you hungry? You weren’t waiting to eat until I got here, were you?”
She gave me a tiny, polite smile. “No. I normally don’t eat lunch.”
“Oh, you have to eat lunch! It’s the second most important meal of the day, after breakfast.”
“Is it?” Her eyebrows were raised skeptically.
“It absolutely is.” I tried not to allow myself to be distracted by the fact that the gamers down the table were now sitting on the actual tabletop, and thumping their feet excitedly against the bench I was sitting on every time they scored. “Your brain can’t retain everything it’s learning in school if you’re not eating enough. Did you know you burn more carbs thinking than you do working out?”
“You do?”
“Well, okay, maybe not while working out, but definitely while doing math and stuff as opposed to vegging out in front of the TV.” I turned to my tote bag and began rifling through it. “Here, I brought you some brownies, homemade by my friend Dina. She’s an amazing baker—”
As a fellow cottage witch, Dina was also as aware as I was that cocoa, butter, and sugar promoted feelings of peace and harmony, both of which came in handy when trying to make friends with a possible teen witch.
For the first time Esther actually looked interested in something I was saying. She leaned forward so that she could see into my tote. “Are they vegan brownies, by any chance?” she asked. “Because I’m vegan.”
I winced. “No. Sorry.”
“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try one.” Esther shrugged her slim shoulders as I pried the lid off the container, and the scent of fudgy brownie filled the air.
“Here you go. Help yourself.”
“Thanks.” Esther selected one of the smaller brownies and bit into it delicately. A second or two later, her face transformed, going from merely pretty to outright beautiful as she smiled—a genuine smile this time, not one of politeness. “Wow. This is really good.”
Was this it? Was this the light? Had I implanted it merely with my presence and Dina’s good baking?
But no, it didn’t appear so. Butter, cocoa, and sugar were merely making her happy.
“Thanks. So, uh . . . your parents own the West Harbor Brewport?”
She nodded, concentrating on the flavors in her mouth. “Yes.”
“That’s a great place. I go there a lot. I belong to a team that competes on Tuesday Night Trivia.”
Her smile turned polite again. “Oh?” The median age of attendees of the Brewport’s trivia night was around thirty-five, so I could see how this information was not exactly impressive. “My mom and dad want me to start hostessing there. They want me to ‘come out of my shell’ as they call it.” She made air quotes with her fingers. “And also learn how to manage my money and develop a strong work ethic—which I think I already have, but whatever.”
“Oh, really?” I pointed at the book in front of her. “You look like a hard worker to me. Doing homework at lunch?”
“Oh, this isn’t homework,” was Esther’s surprising reply. She’d finished her first brownie and was now digging into the plastic container for a second, larger piece, her veganism apparently forgotten for the moment. “It’s a book I’m reading for fun. Did you know that the first citizen of America ever to be tried and hanged for witchcraft was a woman in Hartford, Connecticut? And it happened in 1647! That’s almost fifty years before the Salem witch trials.”
I stared at her. “I did know that.” Hadn’t Sal—and Dr. Garcia—said this girl was shy? She didn’t seem shy to me. Also, had she said witchcraft? She was reading a book on witchcraft for fun? Had the light been implanted when I wasn’t looking? “Are they teaching that in U.S. History now? Because they sure didn’t when I was in school here.”
Esther snorted. “Oh, please. I only know because I saw something about it in the Tricentennial Celebration stuff. A ton of women were accused of witchcraft right here in West Harbor. Or rather, the settlement that would go on to become West Harbor in the seventeen hundreds.”
“Oh.” Of course. Rosalie was head of the Tricentennial Celebration Committee. She would have made sure that information about her witchy great-great-grandmother got out. “I see.”
“I thought it was so interesting, I went and asked the librarian here at the school library if there were books about it, and she found this for me.” She peeled back the book’s cover so I could see the title: A History of Witch Trials in Western Europe and the U.S., 1500–1700.
“And how are you liking it?” I asked, ridiculously nervous about her reply.
Esther took a swig from her water bottle and shrugged again. “I don’t know. Obviously, it’s pretty upsetting. So many of the people who were accused of witchcraft in those days were women who’d inherited wealth or property from their husbands. When they didn’t want to remarry or sell their property to certain men, bang! They were found guilty of fraternizing with the devil, hanged, and that property suddenly went to their neighbors. Pretty convenient, don’t you think?”
I nodded and broke off a piece of one of the brownies in the container, then shoved it into my mouth to keep myself from saying the wrong thing in reply.
“And some of the other accused,” Esther went on, having gotten a good head of steam going, “were just people other villagers had it out for. Midwives who’d had a baby die on them through no fault of their own, or poor women who spoke ill of the rich men in charge. The whole thing is simple misogyny. One woman got accused because her neighbor saw her dancing under a tree after a couple of glasses of wine. Can you imagine?”
Thinking of Rosalie, who would definitely complain if she saw her neighbor dancing tipsily under a tree, I said only, “I could, actually.”
“And here’s what gets me: people—especially women—are still being accused of witchcraft today, all around the world. We need to set an example that persecuting women for their beliefs is wrong. Massachusetts has officially exonerated everyone who was executed for witchcraft in Salem. That needs to be done everywhere.”
Oh my God. This was it. This had to be it. The light had been implanted—by education. All I’d had to do was show up with brownies and listen.
“Maybe that’s something you could help with,” I suggested.
“What do you mean? Like go into politics?”
“Well, no, not that, exactly.”
I was really floundering here. There had to be some way I could find out if Esther was the Bringer of Light before the bell rang, and she had to return to class. Why hadn’t Derrick given me more information about just what, exactly, I needed to do in order to determine whether or not this girl was right for the job of saving West Harbor?
“What about writing?” I punted, since I couldn’t bring myself to say the words Do you believe in magic? to her. “Journalism? Is that something you’d want to study in college or . . . ?”
“Journalism?” Esther made a face. “No. What I really love is science. I’m thinking about majoring in psychology. There’s a mental health crisis in this country. The demand for psychologists is off the charts—as you can probably tell.” She sent a menacing look in the direction of the boys. “Brayden over there is a prime example of a kid in need of dialectical behavior therapy.”
That was not at all what I was expecting to hear from a sixteen-year-old. Granted, I don’t normally hang around sixteen-year-olds—except to pass them items they wanted to try on through the dressing room curtains at my shop.
Still, I was pretty sure this was exactly the kind of thing the Bringer of Light would say. And even if this kid wasn’t the savior of West Harbor, I was surprised to find that I liked her enough that I actually wanted to be her mentor—her academic mentor, not her witch mentor. Although both would be fine with me.
“That sounds amazing,” I said. Then I added, “You know, working in fashion retail can be a little like being a therapist in some ways. People need a lot of positive reinforcement and reassurance while trying on new clothes.”
Esther smiled at me, going in for a third brownie. “My best friend Gabriella loves your store. She’s always in there buying stuff—like those lounge pants you sell, the tie-front ones in the different prints? You’re wearing a pair now.”
“Oh, the bamboo loungers.” I nodded, feeling even more buoyed. I was glad Esther had a best friend. And of course I loved it when anyone said something positive about the shop. I hoped Becca was having an okay time running it without me. But it was a Monday morning after a weekend sale, when things were usually slow, so she’d probably be fine. “Yes, they’re very popular. So soft and flowy and romantic.”
“Yeah,” Esther said. “Well, Gabby’s a Pisces, so she loves anything flowy and romantic.”
I paused as I reached for another brownie. “You like astrology?”
“I love it,” Esther said. “Of course astrology is a pseudoscience, but I find that a person’s star sign can often be surprisingly accurate about many of their character traits.”
I was already trying to figure out how I was going to report this to Derrick. He didn’t exactly strike me as someone who put a whole lot of faith in star signs.
“Well,” I said. “I don’t know if you can definitively—”
“Like you.” Esther was polishing off her fourth brownie. And they were pretty big brownies, too. “Aquarius, right?”
I stared at her. “How did you—?”
“It’s pretty obvious. You’ve got the flowy romantic thing going on with how you dress, too, just like Gabs. But you’re reserved—until you get to know someone. Then you’re warm and friendly. So you have to be Aquarius on the cusp of Pisces. A Valentine’s Day baby, maybe?” At the sight of my stunned expression, she nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense, because you definitely seem like the creative type—and a romantic, even though you’ve been a bit disappointed by love, haven’t you?”
I stared harder. I might even have been goggling at her. “H-how—?”
“It hasn’t made you bitter, though,” she added hastily, mistaking my wonder for disapproval. “You believe in love. You just think it’s better to be alone than with the wrong person. Which is so totally Aquarian, and I so totally get. No point in wasting time on bad company. Oh, and you’re a witch, right? But a good witch—at least, you try to be.” She shoveled the largest bit of brownie yet into her mouth.
I gaped at her. “How—how did you—?”
She took her time chewing and swallowing. “Well, the witch part was easy.” She pointed at the pendant I’d forgotten I was wearing around my neck.
“Y-you,” I stammered, fingering it. “You’ve heard of Gaia?”
“Sure. Hasn’t everybody? She’s like, Mother Nature, right?”
“Um . . . yes. But the rest of it . . . How . . . ?”
Then, as the table we were sitting on shook because Brayden won the game he’d been playing, and was stomping around on top of it in triumph, Esther banged her water bottle down and shouted, “Brayden! What have I told you about putting your feet on the table? Get. Down!”
On the word down, the cafeteria table where we were sitting gave a mighty wobble—only this time it wasn’t because anyone was stomping on it. It was as if a massive hand reached down, grasped the end of the table where the boys were sitting, lifted it a few inches in the air, and shook it.
Only there was no one at the other end of the table lifting it to shake it.
And when the shaking stopped as abruptly as it started, an ashen-faced Brayden climbed meekly down from the tabletop and mumbled his apologies to Esther.
“Sorry,” he said, bowing his head almost as if to a queen. “My bad, bro.”
Esther rolled her eyes tolerantly. “I’m not your bro.”
“I mean Esther,” he said.
Esther glanced back at me and grimaced apologetically. “Brayden can’t help it. He’s an Aries with ADHD.”
I gazed in awe at the teenaged girl sitting across from me as she dug into the last brownie.
“H-how did you do that?” I demanded breathlessly. I hadn’t seen a display of magic that powerful since—well, since Rosalie.
“I don’t know.” She gave another shrug and sipped from her water bottle. “It’s just a thing I’ve always been able to do. Gabby says I’ve got the ‘gift.’ I don’t know if that’s true, but whatever it is, I figure it will come in handy when I go to college. Keep the frat boys in their place!” She laughed.
It was fortunate that the bell rang just then, because I was too shocked to say anything more. I had, I knew, found West Harbor’s Bringer of Light.
“Well, I better get to class,” Esther said, scooping up her book, water bottle, and enormous black backpack. She looked at me curiously, probably because I was just sitting there in stunned silence. “But this was nice. We should do it again sometime.”
“Yes.” I roused myself. “We should. Tomorrow?”
Her eyes widened. “That seems a bit soon, but I guess if it fits your schedule—”
“It does!”
“Oh. Well, I do want to go to NYU to have the urban experience, but my parents say that place is stupid expensive. So I could really use that scholarship money.”
“Great.” I quickly pulled my cell phone—and something else—from my bag. “Let’s exchange numbers, and then we can figure out a time to meet again.”
“Oh.” She could not have looked less enthused. “Okay. Sure.”
It happened so quickly, she didn’t notice. As she was typing, I slipped the amethyst stone from my necklace into a side pocket of her backpack.
After everything that had happened with Billy, I’d sworn to myself never again to use magic on someone without their permission.
But this was different. This was to protect someone.
Did I feel bad that I was lying to a child? No. If Derrick was right, and catastrophe was coming to West Harbor, it would be worth it.
Besides, we lie to children all the time about things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Then when they get older we tell them other lies, like that there’s no such thing as magic. What I was doing seemed mild in comparison, especially considering the magic I’d just witnessed Esther use with my own eyes.
After Esther thanked me politely for my time and the brownies and headed back to class, I noticed the boys follow her, murmuring amongst themselves in what I felt was a semi-worshipful manner. Surprisingly, Brayden in particular looked smitten.
My God. Esther hadn’t been sitting alone because she had no friends. She’d been sitting alone because she wanted some time to herself. Esther was a teenaged witch queen.
I packed up Dina’s now-empty brownie container and then, looking down at my phone, texted Derrick.
Hi, it’s Jess. Met with Esther. Pretty sure she’s our Bringer of Light. When/where do you want to meet to talk about it/plan next steps? Let me know.
I put my phone away, shouldered my bag, and headed toward the closest exit, which fortunately led straight out to the lot where my car was parked, since I could see through the skylight overhead that it looked like rain—which was odd because the sky had been a bright, cloudless blue when I’d walked into the school.
Then, just as I was about to reach the exit, my gaze fell on a folding table set up near the soda machines, with a sign hanging from it that screamed:
SIGN UP HERE FOR THE CHANCE
TO BE A WEST HARBOR HARVEST PRINCESS!
Get college scholarship $$$
for helping your hometown celebrate its Tricentennial!
I’d never heard of a Harvest Princess before. But I was so shocked at the regressive antifeminist sound of it that it took me a few seconds to notice the slim woman in the pale pink sweater set and tweed slacks standing behind the table, staring at me, hatred in her ice-cold blue eyes:
Of course. Who else? Rosalie Hopkins.
Even worse, beside her stood a tall, broad-shouldered man in a crewneck sweater and khakis, looking everywhere but at my face: Billy Walker.