The first symptom we notice is an aversion to chocolate milk. Inez takes small sips and complains it tastes sour, even though Natalie takes the carton from her and says it tastes just fine. We’ve known about her pregnancy only a few days, but she already throws up in her mouth off the smell of it. That’s when we all stop drinking milk. Soda sits well in Inez’s stomach, and when she’s done she finishes my can too. Nat says we’re already doing healthy pregnancy wrong. I tell her she sounds like Leanna. She makes a face and says she sounds like me. I’m not concerned about the soda. People do far worse while pregnant, but I am concerned Inez doesn’t want to talk about it.
“Let’s do the water ritual,” she says every day at lunch, and when we tire of it, she insists we cut lunch altogether for me to practice elemental magic in the patchy area of grass across the street from our school. I pretend to know what I’m doing and she asks if I can teach them, but there’s nothing to offer. I feel sick about it, especially when Inez says, “Jas really needs us. We can’t leave her over there to become like those evil spirits.”
I’m scared to ask her where this new determination is coming from because I don’t want to break it, but right after the séance she looked like she never wanted to touch magic again.
I’ve spent afternoons at Auntie’s house, trying to connect with nature. She’s shown me how she channels the energy of fire by stoking the flame of a candle, but it seems to me she’s only intensely staring. She’s tried to teach me how to relax my aura because the birds find me repulsive instead of magnetic, but I usually find myself holding back frustrated tears until I leave her house.
Today, I’m here alone. Auntie’s gone on an artist retreat, even though I’m stressed Jasmine’s still on the other side. “And she’ll stay there if you don’t get to learning,” she said, and gave me a spare key to water her plants while she’s away. The back room is off-limits. Just water the plants reads a note she left on the kitchen table, along with fifteen dollars and three spring rolls.
I take special care to water the plants we started growing the day she began teaching me elemental magic. Her plant is overgrown and beautiful: green leaves trickling down in a vine of an impossible length for such a short time. Mine is smaller, but it’s budding and branching off more than it probably should be as well. I marvel at the only proof that I’m learning something.
When I’m done, I pick up Auntie’s note, crumble it into a ball, and throw it in the trash before heading to her room.
I don’t come in here much because Auntie says bedrooms are for sleeping only. Her room is all white: the linen, comforter and curtains, the platform bed. There’s a huge mirror on the wall and a desk with nothing on it but a blank notebook. Some moon water we collected last week sits in a jar on her nightstand. I open it up, swirl my finger around until the blue-calcite, amethyst, and orange-citrine crystals stir at the bottom of the jar. And finally, I throw myself onto her bed, turn on my side, and imagine Jasmine in my arms, stroking my hair, smelling my neck, asking me if when we touch it feels like lightning to me too. I can see her so clearly—until her eyes turn green and the beauty mark above her lip disappears and suddenly she’s Darleny.
I inhale sharply and shake my head again and again, but then my senses pick up. My eyes flicker to the mirror hanging on Auntie’s wall. I see me and see someone else too.
It’s not Darleny or Jasmine.
My body goes rigid when the shadow moves closer to me on the bed. I try to control the erratic beating of my heart, but the shadow stands and disappears. I can’t see it anymore, but I feel a brush of wind by my face and hear footsteps on the floor. I’m up and following the sounds before I can think. All the way to Auntie’s back room. I hear her warning in my head before I turn the knob and push the door open.
There are no more sounds or shadows, but the room pulls me in like it has mastered magnetism. It feels different now than it did the night of the séance. The meld of potential energy buzzes as it comes off the collection of artifacts and books. I think I can see it. But what draws me closer are the few canvases lined up and facing a wall. My fingers are fast to find the edge of one, like it’s calling out to me, but before I can turn it around, the house phone rings.
I flinch and hurry out of the room, steadying myself before answering the phone, hoping the distance blots some of Auntie’s abilities.
“It’s time for you to leave my house.” Auntie seems a bit out of breath. “Hope you enjoyed the spring rolls, and my bed.”