The Forgetting Spell

  She opened the metal trash bin and heaved the bag in. When the lid banged shut, several crows cawed and took to flight. The birds in the tree by Ava’s bedroom complained as well. Ava raised her voice to compete with them, and Aunt Vera frowned.

  “Ava, pipe down!” she scolded. “You’re too old to be making such a racket!”

  She went back inside, and Darya shook her head. “There’s no pleasing that woman. There’s always going to be something one of us does that bugs her, isn’t there?”

  Natasha laughed. Darya shot her a quick sideways glance and allowed herself a cautious smile.

  “Hey,” she said, because she’d been thinking more about Natasha and Mama, the notes and now the letters. “Those notes Benton Hale left you last year, the ones that turned out not to be from Benton after all. We decided they must have been from Stanley, but they weren’t, were they?”

  Stanley was the boy Natasha had been holding hands with at school. Stanley was also Benton’s best friend. He was adorkable as opposed to adorable, but he was a good guy. After discovering that Natasha’s secret admirer wasn’t Benton, Stanley—at the time—seemed like the next best fit.

  “I thought they were. I even asked him if they were,” Natasha admitted. “It was super embarrassing.”

  “But they were from Mama. Got it. Why won’t you let me read them?”

  Natasha paced in a tight circle. “Because they’re mine. You’re worrying about the wrong stuff, Darya. Don’t worry about the notes, or the letters; worry about your wishes! You have the power to do something good—”

  “Oh, the power,” Darya said, making spooky fingers even as her pulse picked up. She did not have the power! She didn’t want or accept the power!

  “But instead of making things better, you complain. You skulk around and scowl at all of us. You accuse me of keeping secrets because I happen to want to keep some things private, but here we are—me and Ava and Mama and Aunt Elena—and we all want to be here for you! But you push us away, and you won’t say why, so doesn’t that mean you’re the one who’s hiding something?”

  Darya spun on her heel and walked away.

  “Where are you going?” Natasha said.

  “I’m over it,” Darya said. “You and your whole power trip thing. Why do you get to call all the shots?”

  “I never said I did.”

  “But that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

  An idea struck her. She changed her course.

  “Darya?” Natasha called. Darya heard a flurry of footsteps. “Darya!”

  “I really am slow, aren’t I?” Darya said over her shoulder. “Here I am, begging you for information when all I have to do is go to Papa myself. I’ll ask him for my letter.”

  “Darya, don’t.”

  “I mean, sure, he might ask why,” Darya said. “And it’s possible that I might slip up and mention that Mama isn’t gone after all. She wasn’t abducted by aliens, she didn’t get amnesia, she wasn’t attacked by a serial killer and left to die.”

  “Nobody ever thought she’d been attacked by a serial killer!” Natasha exclaimed.

  “Didn’t they?” Darya said, turning and staring at her sister. “You’re the one who said you thought she might have died, Natasha.”

  “But not attacked by a serial killer. Anyway, now I know better!”

  “I don’t know what I know, except that Mama is right here in Willow Hill, in a ‘charming garage apartment’ with Aunt Elena. Papa doesn’t know that, but I could tell him.”

  “You can be such a brat,” Natasha spat.

  Darya’s stomach cramped. She started for Papa’s studio, but Natasha grabbed her.

  “No,” Natasha commanded. “You win, all right? I’ll get you the letter. But you will not tell Papa. That’s Mama’s decision. Not yours.”

  Darya and Natasha stared at each other. It felt to Darya as if the world was slipping, as if all the pieces could fly apart if she wasn’t careful.

  Natasha gave Darya a rough shove, then strode to Papa’s workshop. She rapped on the door. “Papa, are you in there?”

  There was no answer.

  Natasha opened the door and went inside. Darya darted across the yard and slipped in behind her. She scanned the workshop to make sure Papa truly wasn’t there, and then she breathed in deep, allowing the smell of wood to overwhelm her.

  Lutes in various stages of construction filled the room, carved from tangy cedar and sweet-smelling rosewood. According to family lore, Mama used to play the lute. Her fingers would dance over the strings, and she and her sisters, Aunt Vera and Aunt Elena, would sing old Russian folk songs. Papa would sing too, smiling with pride at his beautiful wife.

  Papa, happy. It was difficult to imagine.

  Natasha went to the back of the workshop, where an antique chest of drawers stood against the wall. She patted the top of the chest.

  “What are you doing?” Darya asked.

  Natasha whipped her head around. “I told you to wait outside.”

  “Oops.”

  Natasha frowned and returned to her task. Her fingers made purchase on something. A key. She used it to unlock the top drawer of the chest, which she then opened.

  “That’s where the letters are?” Darya said.

  “Not mine. Just yours and Ava’s.”

  “Wow. Great hiding spot.”

  Natasha pulled a sealed envelope from the drawer. It was made of creamy card stock. Across the front was Darya’s name in graceful, elegant cursive.

  Natasha closed the drawer, locked it, and put back the key. She crossed the floor and offered Darya the letter. When Darya didn’t take it, Natasha shrugged and moved as if to return the letter.

  Darya snatched it. “Thanks so very much for giving me what was mine already!” she called as she hurried out of Papa’s workshop. Her eyes filled with tears—why? why?!—and she strode half-blindly across the backyard, into the woods, and to the path that led to town.

  Get away, her footfalls said. Away, away, away.

  In her head spoke another voice, the voice of a little girl: If I tell you a riddle, will you stay?

  She shook the voice out, but it found the rhythm of her feet as they slapped the trail. Stay and stay and stay! Go away, away, away!

  She was going crazy! It was really and truly happening! Birds crowded her skull, their stubby wings pumping. She wanted to scream. She couldn’t scream. She must not scream. She was going to scream whether she wanted to or not!

  Then—peace, or a measure of it, gradually came to her as she stopped still, held her breath, and counted.

  One, two, three . . .

  The noise between her ears died down. The need to scream receded.

  Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six. Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine. You can do this, Darya. You can.

  The birds flew from her skull.

  Seventy-two, seventy-three.

  She was liquefying from the inside. She would burst if she didn’t get air.

  Make it to seventy-five. You’ve done that before.

  She made it to a hundred.

  Now a hundred. Come on. Don’t give up!

  She clenched her letter. She closed her eyes.

  A hundred and one, a hundred and two . . .

  It was her farthest yet! And she’d been right, her tests had been preparing her for something, and surely this was it!

  At a hundred and four—one minute and forty-four seconds!—the white light flooded her senses and drove everything else away. Her eyelids fluttered. She nearly dropped Mama’s letter.

  Then, in a wonderful whoosh, she let her stale breath out. She sucked fresh air in, clean and crisp and scented with the same tang she’d smelled in Papa’s workshop.

  Her mind was clear. She could think again, and thank goodness, because she needed to think.

  She also needed to open Mama’s letter, and she would! Obviously!

  So why resist it? Why didn’t she rip it open right this second?

  Beca
use what if it doesn’t say what you want it to say? a small voice whispered. What if it doesn’t fix things?

  She grimaced, remembering the other small voice. The little girl’s voice. If I tell you a riddle, will you—

  NO. Not helpful.

  She started walking, tapping the envelope that held Mama’s letter against her open palm. The envelope was sealed, and that was a plus. The pages wouldn’t spill out of their own accord.

  As she walked, she ran things over in her mind, and she realized that she needed a plan. Obviously! And the reason she needed a plan was this: before she did anything, she had to sort herself out. Then she would open Mama’s letter. She’d be stronger. She’d be prepared. She’d be able to handle whatever the letter said, whether good, bad, or neutral.

  What needed sorting out was . . . well, she had no easy answer for that. So many things needed sorting out. What she mulled over now was her encounter with the Bird Lady, way back on the afternoon of her birthday. The memory was tender, so she prodded it gingerly, like exploring a sore spot in her mouth with the tip of her tongue.

  Feeling sorry for yourself will hardly help, the Bird Lady had told Darya, after ambushing her on the way home from the library. If you don’t like your life, maybe you should change it.

  Darya had argued that she liked her life just fine, which had made the Bird Lady practically roll her eyes. And then had come the weird part, which had been so weird that Darya had decided to block it from her thoughts altogether.

  But things leak out.

  Wasn’t that what the Bird Lady had said?

  It was. Of course it was. If Darya lied about it now, she’d be lying to herself, and maybe she was growing tired of such childish behavior.

  She kept walking, steadying her breaths and regulating her gait.

  Think about something else, she told herself. Just for a moment, to give your mind a break.

  She felt the wind on her body and shivered, glad she’d thought to throw on her army jacket. Her army jacket! She loved her army jacket.

  Think about that, then, she told herself.

  Its cut was narrow and flattered her slender figure. Delicate vines meandered up the sleeves, embroidered in olive thread that was one shade darker than the fabric. The vines were so subtle that most people didn’t notice them. Darya, in her thirteen years, had concluded that most people failed to notice most things.

  But Darya loved the vines. She also loved how broken-in her jacket was, how its sleeves were frayed and how loose stitches straggled from their edges. It made her feel both pretty and tough.

  Tough enough, in fact, to let her thoughts drift back to her run-in with the Bird Lady.

  She prodded that strange memory again, and this time it opened itself up to her like a tulip whispering secrets into the bud of her ear.

  Fireflies in a jar, their bodies butting against the glass.

  A lid twisted tight.

  Spells, as in magic. Magic magic, at least as seen through the Bird Lady’s ancient eyes. Spells and magic and . . . expiration dates?

  It came to Darya then, and once it did, there was no shaking it free.

  You were six, and you wore a dress with cherries on it, and you asked me for a Forgetting Spell, the Bird Lady had said, studying Darya keenly. Do you remember now?

  She’d said she hadn’t, but she kind of did. Almost.

  It had to do with Mama. She was sure of that.

  Perhaps it had to do with Mama’s letter?

  Darya’s skin felt clammy. Her pace had grown slower and slower without her noticing, until she was practically slithering along. A snail. A girl-shaped snail, clammy and full of ooze.

  Ick.

  She shuddered and walked faster, flipping up her army jacket and tucking Mama’s letter into the back pocket of her jeans. She would find Tally, whose life was as tangled in darkness as her own. Maybe Tally didn’t know her as well as Natasha or Ava or Aunt Elena, all of whom were so eager, according to Natasha, to “be there” for her. But shouldn’t Darya have a say in who was there for her, and when?

  Anyway, Darya and Tally were members of the Missing Daughters Club. Tally would listen sympathetically. Best of all, Tally wouldn’t add any new twists to the story—secret letters, undercover rendezvous, whatever—because Tally wasn’t part of the story.

  So, Darya would talk to Tally. She’d share what she wanted to share—no more, no less—and she’d get herself sorted out.

  Then she’d open Mama’s letter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  To find out where Tally lived, Darya went to the library, strode to the reference desk, and pulled out Willow Hill’s ridiculously thin phone book. She felt old-school cool looking the address up by hand instead of using a computer. She rifled through the pages until she found an entry for Kaufman, Deanne. 45 Magnolia Lane, she read. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy.

  Nosy Ms. McKinley swished over in her overstuffed nylons and matronly dress, and Darya flipped the phone book shut.

  “Can I help you?” Ms. McKinley asked, smelling strongly of bottled flowers.

  “No thanks,” Darya said.

  “Who were you looking up?”

  “No one,” Darya said.

  Ms. McKinley pursed her lips. Then she switched gears and smiled. Her lips were bright red, and there was a piece of food caught between two of her back teeth. A piece of flesh, from the looks of it.

  “Well, what news do we have of your mother?” she asked.

  “‘We’?” Darya said. She screwed up her face to say, I don’t get it. What do you mean, “we”?

  Ms. McKinley huffed. The piece of meat swayed, and Darya had a difficult time dragging her eyes off it. “Have we—have you—heard from your mother at all?”

  Darya made an elaborate show of grasping the librarian’s intent, widening her eyes and saying, “Ohhhhh. My mom. You’re wondering if she’s been in touch? Actually . . .”

  Darya leaned close. Ms. McKinley leaned closer.

  “Can you keep it a secret? What I’m about to tell you?” Darya whispered.

  With wide mascaraed eyes, Ms. McKinley nodded. She looked like she might wet herself, she was that excited. “Absolutely!” she whispered back.

  “Well . . .” Darya started. She bit her bottom lip and gave herself anxious eyes.

  “Oh honey, you can tell me anything,” Ms. McKinley urged.

  “Anything?”

  “Anything!” Ms. McKinley said, and she actually circled her hand to say, Go on, then. Spill!

  “In that case, there is one thing I can tell you, and I guess you can share it if you feel like it’s, you know, safe.” She dropped her Anxious Girl Act. “When I want to share information about my mother with you—which, for the record, will be never—I’ll tell you straight to your face. Which looks remarkably like a pudding. Got it?”

  Ms. McKinley gasped and put her hand to her heart. Her pudding-face turned a mottled red, and her mascaraed eyes went beady, like tiny round spiders with enormous legs.

  “This!” she spluttered. She jabbed her finger at Darya. “This! You! Your manners are abominable!”

  “‘Abominable.’ Nice word.”

  “Although we all know why, don’t we? Given that you were raised without a mother!”

  “If you say so,” Darya replied. “What’s your excuse?”

  Ms. McKinley choked on her own spit, and Darya strolled past her and out of the library.

  When she arrived at 45 Magnolia Lane, she saw a small house with a smaller yard. Junk overflowed from both.

  In the yard, Darya spotted four yellow-and-red Big Wheels, two pull-along wagons, and a liberal scattering of naked Barbie dolls, Matchbox cars, and an assortment of other toys. Also a blue plastic pool with green slime growing along the inner edge. Also a plastic play structure that might have been fun if Tally had been two, and if she didn’t mind the absence of the slide. Two hinges jutted out where a slide used to be, but from the amount of dirt accumulated on them, Darya suspected the slide itsel
f had been gone for years.

  In the house, rising higher than the windows, Darya saw teetering stacks of boxes, newspapers, and magazines. There was other stuff, too, but Darya would have had to cup her hands around her face and peer through the grimy panes to make out what it was.

  She lifted her hand to knock on the door, but Tally inched it open before Darya’s knuckles hit the wood, or fake wood, or whatever the door was made of.

  “Darya, what are you doing here?” she asked, her eyes huge within her pale face. She slid through the crack and shut the door behind her.

  “I came to see you,” Darya said. “To talk to you.”

  “You couldn’t talk to me at school?”

  “What happened didn’t happen till after school. Can you talk or not?”

  Tally made a tch sound. “Fine, but not here.” She fast-walked away from the house.

  Darya trotted to catch up. “Where are we going? Don’t you need to tell your foster mom?”

  “Starbucks. We can go there. And no, I don’t need to tell anyone, but thanks for asking.”

  Darya felt stung by Tally’s tone. They walked without speaking until they reached the coffeehouse.

  “Sorry,” Tally said gruffly. “Deanne’s house is kind of . . . messy, that’s all.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Darya said.

  Tally arched her brows, then pushed through the Starbucks door. Starbucks was a new addition to Willow Hill, and Darya had been inside only once. The shiny interior intimidated her, as did the friendly—so friendly!—baristas. As did the fact that they were baristas!

  At the Bluebird Diner, there were just waitresses, and they served coffee, not fancy drinks Darya didn’t know how to decode. At the Bluebird Diner, Darya could get pancakes jubilee, not a Slow-Roasted Ham, Swiss, and Egg Breakfast Sandwich or Bacon-Wrapped Dates or a Gluten-Free Marshmallow Dream Bar.

  Although all of those sounded good, except for the Gluten-Free Marshmallow Dream Bar.

  Tally, on the other hand, seemed at ease inside Starbucks. Her shoulders relaxed. She no longer buzzed with angry energy.

  “Want something?” she asked Darya, breezing up to the counter.

  “Um, I don’t have any money.”