“Why only one?”
“Is that your question?”
“No. No!” Darya thought hard. She wanted to ask about Emily, but she couldn’t figure out how to formulate a single question that could tackle all she needed to know. She wanted to ask where Mama’s letter was, but what if the Bird Lady didn’t know?
At last she decided to ask the one question that the Bird Lady and only the Bird Lady could answer. She phrased it well before speaking. She checked for loopholes.
“On my birthday, you told me that when I was six, I asked you for a Forgetting Spell,” she said. “That’s not my question. That’s a statement.”
“La, la, you know grammar. Look at you!”
“Back when I was six, when I asked you for the spell, what did I want to forget?”
The Bird Lady smiled as if she were pleased. “Think outside the box, pet,” she said. “And now, I’m off. Cheerio! Best of luck! Don’t give up the fight!”
“I’m not . . . what fight?” Darya called to her retreating figure. “And how is what you just said an answer?!”
“It’s not. It’s a hint!” the Bird Lady called back, and she disappeared around a bend in the path. Poof! It was almost like magic, if the deepening gloom of dusk could be considered magic.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Natasha pulled Darya into the laundry room as soon as she returned from town. “So?” she said. “What did it say?”
“What did what say?” Darya replied, trying to buy time.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Natasha said. “The letter from Mama!”
“Ohhhhhh. That. Um . . . lots of things. So many. But, to quote someone who thinks she’s very wise, it’s my letter, so I get to decide what to do with it. And I’m going to keep it private.”
Natasha looked puzzled, and then hurt. But what else could Darya do? Admit she’d lost it?
After dinner, Darya slipped outside and sat on the swing, gripping the rope handles and tilting her face to the waxing moon. In two days—or two nights—the moon would be full. Papa had a Farmer’s Almanac, which was a book that listed such things. During the day of October thirtieth, the temperature would most likely be in the sixties; during the night, it would dip into the forties. There’d be a thirty percent chance of gusting winds.
Also on October thirtieth, Darya would have to decide whether or not to honor the Wishing Day tradition. Although she wouldn’t necessarily have to let anyone else in on her decision, she supposed.
If a tree falls in the forest, but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
If a girl makes three wishes, but no one serves as a witness, will the wishes come true?
If a girl comes back from GONE, a girl named Emily, for example . . . is she truly back?
A screech owl hooted, and Darya scurried back inside, reminding herself to relax her shoulders and hold her chin high. I’m cool, everything’s cool. Nothing to see here, people.
She dreamed that night of an enormous owl that swooped down and caught her in its talons. The owl spirited her away—good-bye, sisters, good-bye, home, good-bye, Papa, all alone—and an endless sky swallowed her up.
The next day was a teacher workday, so there was no school. Darya called Tally and said, “I need to talk to you.”
“I know,” Tally said.
“You do? Oh. Well, can we meet? Back at Starbucks in, say, half an hour?”
“I can get there quicker.”
“Then, sure. See you soon.”
She fast-walked to town, but Tally was already standing outside the coffeehouse when she arrived. She waved Darya over, and Darya flashed on the Bird Lady’s hint.
Think outside the box, the Bird Lady had said.
How about outside of the Starbucks? Darya wondered. Outside the Bux?
“No, no, and no,” she muttered to herself. She waved at Tally and rushed over. When they were within two feet of each other, they both started talking.
“Omigosh, thank you so much for coming,” Darya said, while at the same time, Tally said, “Darya, I am so sorry.”
They blinked at each other.
“Of course,” Tally said.
“For what?” Darya said.
Tally had circles under her eyes, and her blotchy skin suggested she’d been rubbing at it. Maybe crying?
“Tally, what’s wrong?”
Tally pulled a rumpled envelope from the backpack slung over her shoulder. Darya peered at it, then gasped and flung her arms around Tally.
“You found it!” she cried. “You are the best friend ever!” She let go of Tally and took the letter. Mama’s letter, still sealed, with “Darya” written in Mama’s own handwriting across the front. Darya bounced on her toes. “Omigosh, where was it?”
Tally didn’t answer, and Darya’s smile fell away as she put the pieces together. Blotchy skin. Tired eyes. Darya, I’m so sorry.
“You . . . took it?” Darya said.
Tally nodded miserably.
Darya’s stomach dropped so hard and so fast that she thought she might throw up. She checked again to make sure it was sealed. Truly sealed, not opened sneakily with a knife and glued shut again.
“I didn’t touch it!” Tally said.
“Well, you did. Um, you stole it from me, so guess what? That counts as touching it.”
Tally flushed a dark, painful red. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t read it, I promise.”
“And your promise means . . . ? Wow, not too much, does it?” She heard how dispassionate she sounded and marveled at herself. Then an aching lump rose in her throat, and she couldn’t fake it anymore. Whimpering puppy noises wrenched themselves from her chest.
“Darya . . .”
Darya cried harder. She thought of her tests, her challenges, and how she’d succeeded at all of them, and still her friend had stolen from her. No test could have prepared her for this.
“Why?” she managed, her voice thick.
“I don’t know.”
“You do so.”
Tally’s eyes darted from side to side. “Can we go inside? I’ll buy you a coffee.”
“No.”
“Or a doughnut! Do you want a doughnut?”
“No.”
She gestured to the curb in front of the coffeehouse. “Can we at least sit down?”
“No. We can stand right here, and you can tell me why you thought it was all right to stick a knife into my heart and twist it. Because that’s what it feels like, Tally.”
Tally didn’t answer.
Darya turned on her heel and started furiously across the parking lot.
“Darya! Wait!”
She heard the slap of Tally’s tennis shoes.
“You have so much,” Tally said. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”
“So you’ve told me, and sure. Absolutely. I’m so lucky to have a backstabbing friend who steals from me.” Her breath hitched. “Did you want to punish me? Is that it?”
“Yes, actually!” Tally said. She started crying, too. “But that was so so wrong of me.”
“You think?”
“You seemed to be wasting it, that’s all.”
“Wasting what? The letter you stole?”
“No. Yes. Everything!” She reached for Darya. Darya shrugged her off. “Darya, you don’t want to hear this, and it doesn’t make what I did right, but your mom might not be the bad guy you want her to be.”
“I want my mom to be the ‘bad guy’? That’s just . . . that’s messed up.”
“She smokes! Oh no! There are bigger problems a mom can have than being a smoker.”
Darya fished for a retort, but found herself imagining Tally at . . . at the treatment facility or wherever, trying to visit her mom and being turned away.
She strode off, clutching Mama’s letter. She had it back, and that was what mattered. She’d be reading it in ten minutes or less.
“The thing is, I think you’re afraid,” Tally said, hop-skipping to match Darya’s p
ace.
“Oh yeah? The thing is, you don’t get to tell me what you think.” She swallowed. “Well, you can. I just don’t have to listen.”
“And maybe you feel, like, inadequate?”
Darya shot Tally a look of disbelief. “You’re inadequate. Stealing things is very inadequate. And who says ‘inadequate,’ anyway?”
“My therapist,” Tally said.
“You have a therapist?”
“I’ve had lots of therapists.”
Darya was a wreck, but she wasn’t heartless. But also she wondered if it was fair, Tally throwing out I’ve had lots of therapists so matter-of-factly.
Well, not matter-of-factly. Tally was as teary as Darya was. Whatever.
“I’m sorry that you are afraid and that you feel inadequate,” Darya said. She sniffled. “And no doubt I should be the one going to a therapist, and maybe one day I will. But today? Please just leave.”
“Darya . . .”
From the side of her eye, Darya saw Tally stop walking. Darya clenched her jaw and kept going. She continued on for several steps before whirling around.
Tally held out her hands. “I gave it back, didn’t I?”
Darya clenched her jaw. Tally won no awards for giving back something she stole.
“As for your mom . . .” Tally’s voice cracked. “What if she leaves again? And what if this time it is your fault, because you could have stopped her and you didn’t even try?”
“I did try to stop her!” Darya bellowed. “She left anyway!”
Tally’s mouth fell open. Darya swayed, light-headed from a swirl of confusion. Where had those words come from? What long-buried memory had risen and bubbled out, only to evaporate the instant it reached open air?
The world went blurry, and Darya ran. She had to get away from Tally. She had to get home. She ran faster and faster until her heart banged against her ribs and her breath rasped within her lungs. She ran until she reached the backyard. She ran past Papa’s workshop, past the rope swing, and—smack. Right into Natasha.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Darya!” Natasha said. “Are you okay?”
Darya reeled back and stumbled, falling on her tailbone. “Ow! Sheesh! What are you doing?”
“Looking for you! We had that . . . fight last night . . . and I wanted to make up.”
Oh, Natasha, not now, she thought hopelessly. “Well . . . thanks. But we’re good. Really.”
“You don’t look good. You look teary.” Natasha peered at her. “Oh, wow. Are you teary?”
“No. I’m sweaty, but I’m not teary. I . . . went for a run.”
“A run?”
“Uh-huh, to be healthy.”
Natasha extended a hand, and Darya reluctantly took it. Natasha pulled her to her feet.
“Is that Mama’s letter?” Natasha said, her focus narrowing on Darya’s free hand.
“Actually . . . yes.”
Natasha twisted Darya’s forearm to get a better view, and her eyes widened. “You haven’t opened it? But . . . you said . . .”
“I didn’t say anything, really. Not anything that mattered. But I don’t want to fight with you anymore, so could we just . . . not?”
Natasha let go of Darya. “But Darya . . .”
I am afraid, Darya thought. I am inadequate.
“There’s something Mama wanted to tell you, but you never let her,” Natasha said. “And tomorrow’s your Wishing Day.”
“Yep, it sure is.”
“So I decided that I should tell you. Will you let me?”
“Not today. Not now. I really can’t take it right now.”
“It’s just, Emily was more than Papa’s little sister. Emily was—”
“Natasha, please,” Darya said. Her vision blurred, and her anger seeped away as all of her failings rose up inside her. “Listen, I’ll use my wishes well. I’ll do something good.”
Natasha’s eyes widened. “You will?”
Darya spread her arms. Yes, she hoped that her gesture implied. Here I am telling you yes, so will you please stop telling me stuff?
“Darya, that’s great. You won’t regret it!”
Darya didn’t explain that she had no idea what “good” things she planned to use her wishes on. She didn’t explain that she wouldn’t know what she would wish for until she figured out the riddle of the Forgetting Spell. That was the key. She just knew it.
She also didn’t explain that the one thing she was positive she wouldn’t wish for was the one thing Mama wanted her to wish for, for Emily to come back.
She didn’t explain herself at all, and yet Natasha’s expression changed from flummoxed to happy.
Darya had to look away.
“Can I still—just quickly—tell you what Mama wanted you to know?” Natasha asked.
Darya tried to imagine she was behind a waterfall, watching the world from a peaceful place where nothing could hurt her. She’d read that was a good meditation practice.
“When Mama was in the seventh grade, there was a contest, something called an Academic Olympiad, and everyone had to write essays and solve problems and all sorts of stuff. Then came the judging, which was a whole ’nother deal. Anyway, Emily won. Mama was thirteen, and her best friend did better than she did. She was jealous.”
The waterfall didn’t work. Natasha’s words got through regardless, as did the contradiction between reality and make-believe. Because Mama had won that contest, the Academic Olympiad, which Darya knew because she’d seen the pictures in the old yearbook. And Academic Olympiad, that goofy term. The yearbook was where Darya had heard of it!
“Mama’s Wishing Day was the day after the winners were announced, and Mama wished that she’d won instead,” Natasha said. “That was her impossible wish.”
Sure, kid, you can win that Academic Olympiad, Darya imagined a wish fairy whispering to her mother when she was thirteen years old. Gotta go back in time to make that work, though. And what are we gonna do with the original winner? Can’t have two girls winning the contest. One girl, one winner. Winner winner, chicken dinner!
“And then the next day, when Mama woke up, Emily was gone.”
Sure, Darya thought. Buh-bye, Emily, and thanks for playing. You take care, hear?
Natasha touched Darya’s shoulder. She waited for Darya to focus on her, and then she said, “Emily didn’t go missing, as if she’d run away or been kidnapped or something. She was just . . . gone, as if she’d never been born. As if she’d never been Papa’s little sister, as if she’d never been Mama’s best friend. And do you want to know the worst thing?”
“It’s all the worst thing,” Darya mumbled.
“What? I missed that.”
Darya pressed her lips together.
“The worst part was Mama was the only one who remembered Emily at all.”
Goose bumps rippled over Darya’s forearms. If a living, breathing human being could disappear on the whim of a jealous thirteen-year-old, the universe made no sense at all.
“But Mama never meant that to happen,” Natasha said.
But it did, Darya thought.
“She felt horrible.”
So horrible that she went on to marry Papa, Emily’s big brother. So awful that they had three daughters: you, me, and Ava, and everyone was happy, until Mama unraveled it all. She abandoned us because of something sad that happened years and years ago, and I’m supposed to say, “Oh, it’s so sad, but since she feels horrible about it . . .”
“Darya?” Natasha said.
“Mama was as bad a friend as Tally,” Darya muttered.
“What? You’re not making sense—and why won’t you look at me?”
“I am looking at you.”
“No, you’re, like . . . looking through me. Maybe you should go to your room and rest or something.”
“Yes, that sounds good.” She headed, robot-like, toward the house.
“Darya, for real, are you okay?”
Darya didn’t reply. Then she thought, What
the heck?
She looked back at Natasha and said, “You know, I’m really not. Do you care?”
“Of course I care! Do you? Because I try and I try, but you’re so negative about everything!”
Darya felt the heavy weight of despair again, because she didn’t want to be negative. She was sick of being negative. Natasha could see so many things, so why couldn’t she see that?
The hopefulness that had brightened Natasha faded away. Darya watched it happen. “Well, I’m still glad you’re going to help Mama.”
“I’m glad you’re glad,” Darya replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Alone in her room, Darya opened Mama’s letter. She shook out the sheets of paper—there were three of them—and read them:
Darling Darya,
I know you must be mad at me, and I’m sorry.
I know you understand none of this.
I know I’ve let you down.
I’m so very sorry.
I could tell you I’m sorry all day long, and it wouldn’t be enough, would it?
My feisty girl. My redheaded spitfire. There’s an old Russian proverb about gingers. Did you know that? For that matter, do you know what a “ginger” is?
Ack. You’re thirteen now, not five, and here I am being the sort of parent I promised myself I’d never be. The parent who gives her daughter paper dolls when she’d prefer makeup, or a copy of Black Beauty when she outgrew horse stories when she was eleven.
I’m not thinking of you in particular, Darya. Well, I am. Obviously. But I’m also thinking about Emily, who was my best friend when I was your age. Emily’s parents were divorced. Her father didn’t live in Willow Hill, and although he loved her, he didn’t know her. How could he? He talked to her on the phone. He saw her for two weeks every summer. Sometimes he drove from wherever he lived to Willow Hill and took her and her brother out for dinner.
He was a good man. He tried to be a good father. But to Emily, he felt like “an acquaintance plus.” That’s how she put it. Not a stranger, but not her dad. Not the way the rest of us had dads.
For Emily’s thirteenth birthday, her father gave her a pillow with a rainbow and a unicorn on it. She’d wanted a new set of pastels. She was an artist; she won first place in the Academic Olympiad that year. The contest covered all disciplines—math, history, English—but it was a question about freedom of expression that made her entry stand out. The rest of us wrote essays. Emily drew a picture, a landscape she called “Lavender Field and the Milky Way.”