The Forgetting Spell

  “Okay,” Darya tells the potato blobs.

  “Aunt Elena said you were wonderful,” Mama says.

  “Okay.”

  Mama sighs.

  “Let’s make up, Darya,” she says. “Let’s have a fresh start. Can we do that?”

  Seconds tick by.

  Mama squats all the way down and takes Darya’s chin. “Can you look at me, at least?”

  Darya does, reluctantly. She has so many feelings inside her that she doesn’t know what to do, and she digs her fingernails into her palms.

  Mama smiles, and a flare of hope lights up her eyes. “I know, let’s do a picture puzzle! Would you like that?”

  Darya shakes her head. Everything’s blurry because of Can you look at me, at least? And with everything blurry, a picture puzzle would be blurry as well, and Darya might get it wrong. Getting it wrong would be like falling off a cliff. That’s how scary it feels.

  “I don’t have any paper,” Darya says.

  “We have paper,” Mama says. “I can get some.”

  “I don’t have a pencil.”

  “I’ll get a pencil, too. Don’t you worry.”

  Mama rises, and Darya’s heart pounds.

  “No, because my fingers hurt!” she says.

  Mama pauses. Darya is afraid she’s going to say, “I’ll draw it, silly,” but she doesn’t. She just says, “My poor baby.”

  She lowers herself back to the floor. She sits all the way down and tucks her feet beneath her, and then she takes Darya’s hands and rubs Darya’s fingers. She doesn’t mention the moon shapes dotting Darya’s palms, although she traces them with the tip of her index finger.

  “How about a different sort of puzzle?” she asks. “A new kind. Not a drawing kind, but a thinking kind. A riddle. Would you like to try a riddle, my smart girl?”

  Darya takes a breath, then blows the air from her puffed cheeks. “Is it hard?”

  “Some are. Some aren’t. Hard isn’t necessarily bad, though.”

  “Then you should get out of bed in the morning!” Darya says. Immediately electricity shoots up and down her body. She did not mean those words! Or, maybe she did, but she didn’t mean to say them!

  Silence makes a storm cloud in the room.

  Darya switches positions and draws her legs to her chest, holding them tight-tight-tight with wrapped-around arms.

  “How do you make the number one disappear?” Mama asks.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the riddle. How do you make the number one disappear?”

  “Is there a picture that goes with it?”

  Mama shakes her head. She looks sad, and Darya wonders if this is her punishment. Making Mama sad makes Darya sad.

  “You add a g and it’s gone,” Mama says.

  Darya thinks about it. She does use a picture, but she makes it in her head, not on a piece of paper. G plus one equals . . . ohhhh.

  She smiles. Mama smiles back.

  “Okay, I have a riddle,” Darya says. “How do you make sad disappear?”

  “Hmm,” Mama says. “You tell me.”

  “You add a g and an l, and . . .”

  She stops.

  Mama chuckles, which doesn’t help. In fact, it makes her mad.

  Mad, sad, glad.

  They all have ad—but what do you add to get them?

  “Hey,” Mama says.

  Darya meets Mama’s eyes.

  “I like your riddle. I think it’s very clever, even if it doesn’t quite work.” She ruffles Darya’s hair. “I’m sorry I laughed, but Darya?”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t laughing at you. And do you know what else?”

  “What?”

  “When things don’t work, we just keep trying.”

  Darya can feel her chest go up and down. She already knows this. She does keep trying. Always.

  But sometimes saying things out loud makes them come true . . . and maybe Mama needs help? For herself?

  “Okay,” she says.

  Mama pulls her into a hug, and her sad feelings and her mad feelings slip away.

  For now, they are g plus one.

  Gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Darya didn’t go back to see Mama at the motel, and she didn’t visit her at Aunt Elena’s charming garage apartment.

  Autumn came on, and as the days grew shorter, Darya fell farther. She fell farther from Mama, and even the idea of Mama. She fell farther away from her sisters, her aunts, and Papa, too. She didn’t choose to. It just happened. The farther she fell, the lonelier she grew.

  Sometimes she thought about running away . . . but that would be ridiculous. Babyish. Mama-ish!

  Sometimes, on the way to and from school when the dying leaves sighed from the trees, she softened and let the thought in: What if, eight years ago, Mama disappeared because of someone else’s Wishing Day wish? It wasn’t impossible, was it?

  Or maybe it was, but maybe possible and impossible were adjectives without much meaning anymore.

  Plus, she’d remember that Mama chose to leave. She walked away on her own two feet because she was so sad about Emily. Now she was back—hooray?—but she wanted Darya to make things better. Except life didn’t work that way. Mama messed up, so Mama had to accept the consequences.

  If there weren’t any consequences, then why did anything matter?

  Only . . . what if Darya was being so sullen and withdrawn because . . . oh, who knew? Because Neely from her math class made a wish that spiraled out of control? Maybe Neely, whom Darya didn’t even talk to other than to compliment her outfit now and again, wished for a batch of cookies, and the cookies had poison in them—or something—and Darya ended up eating one, and voilà. Pouty Darya. Withdrawn Darya. “Darya”—cue dramatic movie preview voice—“falling from a tree.”

  Okay, not cookies, or Darya would have remembered eating one. Cafeteria Jell-O, then! Anything! Anything or nothing, because that was where the logic led her, and so no. No special allowances for Mama just because her wish went bad, if it even did.

  Thinking about it made her head hurt, and she’d forgotten what it felt like to be happy, it seemed, and nobody even noticed. Or if they did, they certainly didn’t ply her with cupcakes and soft words and Oh, sweetie, everything’s going to be all rights.

  “I guess I’ll keep suffering silently,” she told Tally in the art room, after filling her in on the basics. Not the part about her mother being back in Willow Hill. Just the most basic of the basics: that she was confused about her Wishing Day, and sad, and no one cared.

  “But too bad for me, right?” she said.

  Tally put down her pencil.

  “I’ll cry on the inside so that I don’t bother my family,” she continued, “because heaven forbid I bother anyone. They’ll regret it when I wither away, though.” She paused. “I’ll wither quietly, of course.”

  “Of course,” Tally said. “Just, help me out. Will you be suffering silently or withering quietly?”

  “Both!” Darya said. “I’ll suffer silently while withering quietly, and then . . . I don’t know. I’ll suffer and wither, and then I guess I’ll die.”

  Tally studied her for a moment. Then she returned to her drawing. “Fine,” she said.

  “Fine? Did you just say fine?”

  Tally’s sketch was of a small girl sitting in the middle of a large sofa. With quick, sure strokes, she added shading to the girl’s features. “We all will, won’t we?”

  “We all will what?”

  “Die. Eventually.”

  “But . . .” Darya made an indignant sound. “That’s not the point.”

  “You want me to feel sorry for you,” Tally said, adding crosshatches to the worn part of the sofa. “That’s the point, right? Only guess what? I don’t.”

  “I never said you had to feel sorry for me,” Darya argued, her cheeks growing hot.

  “Didn’t you?” Tally said.

  Not in those words, Darya wanted to say.

&
nbsp; Tally exhaled. She put down her pencil again and swiveled to face Darya straight on. “Listen. I am sorry you’re suffering silently or whatever, but you’re pretty lucky, Darya. In the big scheme, I mean.”

  “I am?”

  “Um, yes. You have a family who loves you, Darya. Do you know how awesome that is? Do you know how much I would give for that? Your mom’s not in the picture. That sucks.”

  Darya wanted to correct her, but bit her tongue.

  “Mine’s not, either,” Tally went on. “Or my dad.”

  “Where is he, your dad?” Yes, Darya was changing the subject, but she wanted to know.

  “Gone,” Tally said flatly. “He married my mom. She took his last name. Claimed she didn’t know what her own last name was. Can you believe that?” She gave a short laugh. “Bet they had fun with that at the courthouse.”

  “Is that where they had the ceremony? At a courthouse?”

  “I kinda doubt there was a ceremony, but you’re sweet—I guess—to think there might have been.”

  Darya’s cheeks heated up.

  “But, so, and then he left. I mean, first he got my mom pregnant, but he didn’t stick around to meet me. Too bad, so sad, right?”

  “Tally . . .”

  “No. Please don’t. Just admit that I’ve got a point. My mom’s gone; your mom’s gone. My dad’s gone, but yours isn’t.”

  “Well . . .” Darya hedged. She imagined Papa in his workshop, his graying hair flopping over his lonely eyes.

  “No, not, ‘Well . . . ,’” Tally said. “You have a dad. He’s here. He’s physically present and part of your life. And he loves you, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And your sisters! They’re cool, Darya! Natasha’s really nice every time I talk to her in the hall—”

  “You’ve talked to Natasha in the hall? When?”

  “And Ava is adorable. She’s like a wind sprite or a . . . an elf. A cute elf, not a creepy one. And back to your Wishing Day, which is stressing you out. Think about it like this: At least you get a Wishing Day, so you better not even think about wasting it.”

  Oh yeah, Darya thought. Tally moved to Willow Hill after it was too late for her to have a Wishing Day of her own.

  Tally narrowed her eyes. “Did Natasha’s wishes really come true?”

  Darya had a brain zap, a buzzing behind her skull that came and went and left her feeling dizzy. “Did they? I don’t know. Who said that?”

  Tally’s gaze softened. She put her hand on Darya’s forearm, and Darya flinched.

  “People say your family’s special,” Tally said. “Not just Steph and Suki. Other people say that, too.” She nodded, more to herself than to Darya. “Special in a good way.”

  “Ok-a-a-a-y.”

  “So don’t stress out about your Wishing Day. Plan for it. Use it. If there’s even a chance that your wishes’ll come true . . .”

  “Wait. Now you believe in the magic? At first you were so . . . you know. Skeptical.”

  Tally half laughed. “It does sound nuts, but just take advantage, you know? Don’t throw something away just because you’re mad about your sisters not”—she circled her hand through the air—“bringing you hot tea and those stupid warm washcloths scented with jasmine or whatever.”

  “Um, my sisters have never brought me warm washcloths scented with jasmine,” Darya said. “Or hot tea.”

  “Idiots,” Tally said.

  “Ingrates!”

  Tally smiled. After a second, Darya joined in.

  “So . . . do what you can while you’re still able,” Tally said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Use your wishes. Use them wisely, like old ladies in fairy tales say. And then move on, and don’t worry about it, because in the long run, everyone will forget anyway. Like you said.”

  “I said that? When?”

  Tally shrugged. “You used different words, maybe. But yeah, eventually we’re all going to die.”

  “Lovely,” Darya said, slightly shaken. For one thing, it was much more satisfying to die when you weren’t immediately forgotten. For another, Darya hadn’t said that. Tally had.

  She pulled her gaze away from her friend and stood up. She’d had enough of being comforted for the day.

  Darya.

  Darya.

  Darya.

  —MAMA, AGE THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The weather grew cooler as September drifted into October. Darya’s Wishing Day was getting closer. So was Halloween. Most people, Darya figured, cared more about Halloween.

  But she’d been wrong about Natasha and Ava. They had noticed her melancholy. Natasha tried to broach the subject more than once, but Darya couldn’t make the closed feeling around her heart go away. Natasha had continued to go visit Mama. She’d told Darya so. That meant Natasha was in league with Mama, which meant that Darya had lost her mother and her big sister. That was what it felt like.

  She might as well throw in Aunt Elena as well, since Aunt Elena had been living in her charming garage apartment for nearly a month now. She hadn’t invited everyone over yet because she was still getting the place set up. That’s what she claimed.

  Or you’re trying to figure out where to hide Mama when and if Aunt Vera and Papa do come over, Darya thought. She’d think things like that even when Aunt Elena was right there in front of her, smiling and practically begging Darya to let her back in. But for the indeterminate future, Darya’s heart was shut to Aunt Elena just as it was to Natasha and Mama.

  Ava hadn’t betrayed her, though. Not yet. She even baked cookies for her. Not tea and jasmine-scented hand cloths, but better!

  “I wanted to cheer you up,” Ava told her out by the rope swing.

  “You did,” Darya said with her mouth full. Crumbs spilled out, and she made deliberate lip-smacky sounds. “Nom nom nom! Cookies! From you, because you are the Good Sister!”

  Spots of color bloomed on Ava’s cheeks. “Don’t say that.”

  “All right. Cookies from you! The Bad Sister!”

  “Don’t say that either. Darya, come on.”

  Darya chewed and swallowed. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” She scooted over on the swing’s wooden seat and patted the spot beside her. “Come sit with me, Sister of Neutrality. Sister of Switzerland! Come sit, my little Swiss Cake Roll. I am happy with you, and so yes, please, you may join me on my throne.”

  Ava screwed up her face. “You’re weird.”

  “And you’re not? I like that you’re weird. I like you, period—as long as you’re not here to talk to me about yucky stuff, and I know you know what I mean.”

  Ava squeezed on next to Darya, who pushed against the ground with the toes of her sneakers to get them moving.

  “Actually . . .” Ava said timidly.

  “No, no. No, no, no,” Darya said. “Zip it. Let’s just swing.”

  “But . . . Mama’s weird, too. Don’t you think? Maybe?”

  “Not cool, Ava. Bad transition. Bad segue. Utterly lacking in subtlety, so boo. Hush or hop off.”

  “You said you liked ‘weird.’ You said it yourself!”

  “Did I? No. I said I like you, and that you happen to be weird. What is it with people saying I said things I didn’t say these days?”

  “Huh?” Ava said.

  They swung without speaking for several moments. The feeling of moving through the air, forward and back, forward and back, reminded Darya of being a kid.

  You’re okay, she told herself as she and Ava pumped in unison. Everything’s fine. Better than fine, because Ava made cookies!

  Ava cleared her throat. “I just think . . .”

  “Do you? Really? Can’t we just swing?”

  “That we don’t know what Mama’s gone through,” Ava said.

  “Fine. We don’t. And we don’t have to.”

  “But shouldn’t we try?”

  Darya stopped pumping. “You know I don’t want to talk about this, Ava. Don’t make me say something mea
n.”

  “I asked Natasha, and it wasn’t like you think.”

  “You don’t know what I think,” Darya said. She paused. “What wasn’t like I think?”

  “The bad stuff. All of it. Because Mama didn’t wish for Emily to disappear.” Ava sighed. “Will you at least say, ‘Okay, I hear you’?”

  “Okay, I hear you,” Darya said. “But Mama isn’t some angel, you know.”

  “I think she’s really lonely and really sad,” Ava said. “And it’s gross that she smokes, but—”

  “Wait. You know that Mama smokes?”

  “She’s trying to quit. It’s hard.”

  “Have you seen Mama? Ava?!”

  “Yes, at Aunt Elena’s new apartment, which you can come to anytime, you know. Mama misses you. She wants to see you.”

  “What about Papa? And Aunt Vera?”

  “Oh! I think Papa might know! Or almost know, or okay, I don’t think he knows, but did I tell you about the lady at the art festival?”

  Darya didn’t like the sound of this. “No.”

  “She was weird too, but not the good kind. She didn’t smoke, but she hung around Papa all day.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Just, why would she, right? She was nice enough, but we didn’t know her.” She paused. “Papa might have known her. He knew her name—Angela. But I didn’t know her.”

  “What does this have to do with Mama?”

  Ava swung her legs. “What if she’s one of Mama’s friends? Someone from the olden days? What if Mama sent this Angela to, like, check up on Papa since she’s not ready to see him herself?”

  Darya blew air out from between her lips, mad at herself for having been baited by Ava’s theory for even a moment. “No, Ava, I’m pretty sure Mama isn’t using her old friends to spy on Papa. Mama doesn’t want anyone to know she’s back, remember?”

  “But—”

  “People at art fairs are friendly. I’m sure she’s just Papa’s friend, because—was she a vendor or customer?”

  “A vendor. She sold bracelets. They were cool, I guess.”

  “Then see? Papa made a friend, and they probably run into each other at all the art fairs, and I’m glad. I’m not glad that Mama still hasn’t said, ‘Hey look! It’s me, your wife!’ Why hasn’t she?”