Borrowing Mom’s car is usually only an issue when she’s busy, but tonight she’s worried about the moon. She finishes polishing one of her dress shoes and signals for me to give her the other. “I suppose I’d rather you drive than be out on foot or on the bus tonight. Just be careful.”
Tonight is spring solstice. There’s a supermoon in the sky to signal the start of spring. Even though Mom doesn’t talk much of magic, she follows astrology, sun and moon signs, religiously. A supermoon can cause large shifts in human emotion, can make people feel physically ill or drained, and can heighten senses. It also reminds me Jasmine isn’t here to see it.
“And watch out for the siyokoy,” she says in a joking tone.
When we’d go swimming, Papa would say the siyokoy were in the water with us. He said the myth in the Philippines is that these scaled sea creatures liked to eat humans after drowning them. Hearing Mom mention it makes me happy. I reassure her I’ll be careful, and she smiles. I want to kiss her on the cheek, but I’m not sure how to close the gap. She looks down at the shoe polish and starts to sing. The song from the hallway again. I stand to leave, but her voice fades until she’s humming. I’ve heard the melody before. It’s the same as the night Natalie and I played sungka. Suddenly, it sounds like she can vibrate the whole room. The hair raises on my arms. “Mom, what song is that?”
She looks up at me, confusion crinkling the lines on her forehead. “What song?”
“The one you were singing,” I say.
Her brows dip. “I wasn’t singing.”
“You were.” I take a few steps toward her. She scooches back in her chair and away from me. I stop moving. Tears gather in my throat, betray me when I say, “I’m not going to touch you. I just want to know if you’re okay.” I want to know if she’s getting sick again. I want to know why she’s humming the same song the spirit did. Maybe she still senses it here.
But she turns away from me. “I am. You be safe out there, Miliani.”
Convincing Inez’s mom that Inez needs a night out like a normal teenager doesn’t take as much begging as we’d prepared for. She seems softer these days. Maybe it has something to do with the news about Inez’s father. Either way, we rush to leave so she doesn’t change her mind. On the ride to Conimicut Point Park, we open Mom’s sunroof, and Inez unbuckles her seat belt and shoves her body through it. Natalie shakes her head and says, “You’re so damn wild,” and we let Inez be something other than pregnant.
I slow the car down a little but not too much because then she’d notice.
She says, “Nat, you next.” But Natalie shakes her head.
At the beach, there’s nothing but open space, and we pick a spot by the water, a dip in the sand, some rocks and shells under our feet. We lay a blanket down, and Natalie takes so many pictures of the moon Inez jokes the clicking hurts her ears. But it’s nice to see Natalie using her camera. I try to think of how good it feels to be here with my friends and how the spell we’ll do tonight can help ensure we don’t have to see another supermoon without Jasmine, so I don’t think of my mom and the song. I open my bag and take out mason jars.
“Wait.” Inez plops down on the blanket. “Not yet.”
We follow her, lying faceup with the tops of our heads pressed against one another, legs off the blanket and in the sand.
“Whoa, this is so fucking beautiful,” Inez says.
The Worm Moon is probably the brightest supermoon. It got its name because it aligns with the spring equinox, a time when earthworms come out of the ground. Lying here with it looming above us—this glowing thing lighting up the beach—makes me think of Auntie telling me I have to find my roots. I reach my arm out, dig my fingernails in the sand, and breathe.
My body feels like it might levitate off the blanket, maybe bring my friends with me.
“Remember when magic was fun?” Natalie says. She sounds wistful, and I do remember. We’d sneak out here to create love potions with the seawater, drink the beer I stole from Mom’s stash in the basement, dance with bare feet on the sand. Jasmine would give each of us braid crowns, and collect seashells and small stones for necklaces she’d string together later.
Inez laughs. “It could still be fun if Miliani didn’t forget to bring the beer.”
I don’t mention she shouldn’t drink because she’s pregnant. I take Darleny’s necklace off my neck and let it dangle between us. “There’s something I didn’t forget to bring.”
She gasps and reaches for it, pulls back. “Should I be prepared for something intense?”
“Maybe.”
When she takes it, she rolls the cage in her palm, then puts it around her neck. A few seconds later, she sulks. “Nothing. I feel nothing.”
“You sure?” I ask. “Give it a second.”
She does. Then she takes a breath so loud it makes Natalie flinch. “It’s warm,” Inez says. “It’s almost hot against my skin.”
“Really?” I turn on my side to touch it, but it feels cool to me.
“Yes. It’s incredible.” She balls the crystal in her fist. “Thank you for finding it.”
“Stealing it,” Natalie chimes in. “Mili says ‘borrow,’ but we committed a crime for you.”
Inez grasps it and smiles. “I’m very loved.”
Before the spell, we get to work making protection jars. I fill four mason jars with water from the ocean, add sea salt, pink Himalayan salt, and raw rice. I give two to Natalie and two to Inez. Natalie adds juniper berries to her salt jars—lots of juniper berries—then peppermint oil, peppercorn herbs, and cloves. Inez does the same with her jars. They add in leaves from the bushes, then grass, and leave the lids off the jars so they can bake under the Worm Moon awhile. Inez mentions feeling lighter here. Like the spirits couldn’t make it out onto the beach. I don’t make a jar for myself, and Nat cracks jokes about me wanting spirit friends.
Inez laughs. “You can do as you please, but I’d rather not wake up with a ghost sitting on my chest again.”
I ignore her comment and hold a jar to my own chest, chanting what Papa taught me. Mom used to leave these jars all around the house, but she’d chant to herself so low I could never make out the words. Papa said she was placing a trapping spell. If a spirit got close enough to the jar, it would get caught there, becoming mesmerized until it got sucked in. But trapping spells act more as a deterrent than anything else. A spirit can easily break free once the spell wears off.
“Place them in the corners of your bedroom,” I say. “They should help protect you.”
“Here’s to hoping,” Nat says before she pulls a Ziploc bag from her back pocket, opens it, and holds out a ball of hair. She hopes it’s enough for the truth spell. I tell her it’s plenty.