Graceful

  Tara offered to ask her mom if she knew anything about preparing potions. After all, it was a potion from Angelina that indirectly led to their family moving here. Plus, her mom knows a lot about gardens and herbs. Mrs. Brennan was happy to help, so now I have a whole list of instructions.

  “Ready?” Bailey asks, rolling up her sleeves. She’s come over to help me prepare the potion. The first step was to dry out the herbs and flowers, so they’ve been hanging upside down in small bundles in my closet for a week. I was afraid Mom would find them when she put away my clothes, but she’s been so distracted lately I don’t think she’s done laundry all week. Or maybe all month. I’m down to one clean sock.

  When I unclip the herbs from the hanger, a few stiff, white petals fall to the floor. I can’t take any chances on messing up the recipe, so I crawl around the closet and pick them out of the carpet.

  Suddenly a low, rumbly voice reaches my ears. I duck my head out of the closet. “Did you say something?” I ask Bailey.

  She shakes her head.

  I crawl back in to get the last leaf and hear it again. A man’s voice for sure. “Just give me one more chance,” he says. “I won’t let you down.”

  “Bailey!” I call out in a loud whisper. “I think someone is trying to reach out to me! I’m hearing voices!”

  “So am I,” she whispers back.

  My eyes widen. “You are? Maybe you share my powers because you’re my best friend!”

  “Pretty sure that’s not it,” she says, pointing to the back of the closet. “It’s coming from in there.”

  We push past the hanging clothes and press our ears up to the back wall. Sure enough, the voice comes through again.

  “One more day, Mr. Murphy, you’ll see. Things at home have been” — he pauses and I picture him stopping to gulp down what’s probably his tenth coffee of the day — “difficult,” he finishes.

  “Mr. Murphy is my dad’s boss,” I whisper, my heart thumping.

  “I thought your dad was still at work,” Bailey whispers back.

  “So did I.” We wait for another minute, but my dad must have gotten off the phone or moved farther away from his bedroom wall. I grab Bailey’s sleeve and tug her through the clothes again.

  “That didn’t sound good,” she says once we’ve closed the closet door behind us. “It sounds like he might get fired!”

  I don’t answer. I have a tight ball in the pit of my stomach. I stuff the crumbly herbs into the bowl I’d snagged from the kitchen earlier. “Let’s hurry up with this. Looks like we don’t have any time to waste. We have to save my dad’s job!”

  Half an hour later we’ve ground the herbs into a fine powder using a rock and a bowl, soaked them in vinegar, strained them with my last remaining sock, and are in the process of drying them in my Easy-Bake Oven. We could dry them in the microwave, but I don’t want to risk running into a parent. Plus the Easy-Bake Oven still smells like the chocolate chip cookie Bailey and I made in there when we were seven. Before the vortex, baking that cookie in my toy oven was the most magical thing that had happened to me. Well, that and meeting Jake Harrison!

  Connor’s voice floats in from the hall. “It’s me,” he says, knocking on the door. “Can I come in?”

  He never used to knock. I kind of wish he hadn’t started treating me differently, but I can’t blame him. My parents are obviously taking it the hardest, but having a sister in my situation can’t be easy on him. I open the door and yank him inside.

  He wrinkles his nose. “Why does it smell like Easter eggs in here?”

  Bailey holds up the jar of vinegar.

  “We’re making the forgetting potion,” I explain.

  He bends down to peer inside the toy oven. “You know that’s just a one-hundred-watt lightbulb in there, right? It’s not actually cooking anything?”

  “We totally baked a cookie in there once,” Bailey says, jutting out her lip.

  “No, you didn’t,” he says. “I switched it out with a store-bought one when you guys weren’t looking.”

  I put my hand over my ears. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  He picks up the list of instructions. “Why do you need to dry them twice if you’re making tea? Won’t they just get wet again?”

  I glance over at the list. There does seem to be a lot of drying and wetting and drying again going on.

  Connor whips out his phone. “I’ll call Tara and ask.” A few seconds later, he says, “Yo, New Girl! What’s with this potion recipe you gave my lil sis? Is it legit?” He pauses to listen for a minute. “Okay, roger that.” He slips the phone in his pocket and looks over to me. “Yeah, her mom may have guessed on a few steps.”

  I frown at the soggy mess inside the oven.

  “Maybe you can just put it in the tea now,” he suggests. “That should be fine, right?”

  I shake my head slowly, not taking my eyes off the oven. A vision is unfolding in front of my eyes of me using the mixture. A brief snapshot, but it’s enough. “I’m not putting it into tea after all,” I tell them confidently.

  “But, Grace,” Bailey says. “You heard your dad. He could lose his job, your mom’s a mess, and everyone’s always bugging you at school about the hospital and whispering about how you grew four inches in one summer and —”

  I look up in surprise. “I didn’t think anyone at school noticed that.”

  “Trust me,” she says. “Everyone noticed. You really need to —”

  “Wait a second,” Connor interrupts. “You heard Dad say he might lose his job?”

  I nod. “Sorry I didn’t tell you right away. I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “It’s not your job to protect me all the time,” Connor says. It’s the closest he’s come to snapping at me since all this started. It kind of is my job to protect him, but I’m smart enough not to point that out. Instead I say calmly, “Anyway, I didn’t mean I’m not going to do the spell, only that no one needs to drink it. Turns out it isn’t for our parents, it’s for me.”

  Connor and Bailey exchange their Grace has lost it again look. “What do you mean, for you?” Bailey asks. “Are you going to try to make yourself forget?”

  I shake my head. “I just had a vision of me asleep with the herbs under my pillow.”

  “A vision?” Connor asks. “What do you mean?”

  How can I explain? Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m never sure what to tell and what to keep. I don’t want to freak them out, or the other extreme — make them jealous — so I wind up keeping a lot from them. I still haven’t told anyone about seeing Angelina in that garden at her house. That didn’t feel like a vision, though, not in the way that this did. That felt like I was really in the garden with her.

  “A vision is when a picture pops into my head,” I explain. “Like, I’ll see a scene that hasn’t happened yet, or I’ll see some place different from where I am.”

  “Does this happen a lot?” Connor asks, his voice thick with concern.

  I shake my head. I won’t ask his definition of a lot.

  “That’s good,” he says. “I’m sure that’d be real distracting.”

  To change the subject, I ask Bailey if she has the pouch with the key in it.

  She reaches into her backpack and roots around for it. “You’re trying to get in the store again?” she asks, handing me the pouch.

  “Not yet,” I reply as I pull out the key and tuck it into my desk drawer. “I think I’ll know when it’s time to go back there.” I open the oven door and slide out the little tray. The mixture is only a little drier than when we stuck it in there. I place my hands over the tray and focus on pushing warmth out through my palms. In seconds, the mixture is dry again. I let my hands fall to my sides.

  Connor breathes in sharply. “Wow, how did you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I just suddenly knew I could.” Before they can ask anything else that I won’t know the answer to, I grab the pouch and pour the dried herbs int
o it. Then I head over to the bed and stuff the pouch under my pillow. Tonight’s the night.

  Dinner is very quiet. Mom and Dad basically push food around their plates the whole time. Dad is wearing sweatpants instead of his business suit. It’s like he’s given up already. I don’t have to be a mind reader to know Connor and I are thinking the same thing — this spell better work!

  Connor comes into the bathroom later while I’m brushing my teeth. “Are you ready?” he asks. “Did your vision thingy show you what’s going to happen?”

  I shake my head and spit into the sink. “All I saw was me sleeping with the pouch under my pillow.”

  “Did it show you with your mouth open and drooling?”

  I punch him in the arm. He doesn’t seem fazed.

  “I know!” he says, backing away. “It showed you snoring and talking in your sleep, right?”

  I wait until his mouth is full of toothpaste. “Keep it up, big brother. Maybe I’ll add to the forgetting spell that you forget how to tie your shoes.”

  He tries to answer, but I run out before he gets the chance. I don’t really mind him teasing me (even though I do not drool in my sleep!). Teasing is still better than him treating me like a fragile creature that’s going to break any second.

  I climb into bed, and once I get used to my head being higher on my pillow than usual, I relax pretty quickly. With my eyes closed, I try to clear my mind of all the worries of the day (there were a lot!). After a few minutes I start thinking about my garden, and how Angelina said that’s where my power is waiting for me. But how do I get back there? I’ve tried imagining myself walking into Angelina’s house again, but each time I do, I just see a regular house. No tropical garden in sight. When I had visited the garden while I was in the coma, I hadn’t made any specific effort to get there, I was just there.

  Maybe I’m making it too complicated. Angelina said the garden was my higher self. What is a higher self? It’s got to be higher than my regular self, right? Okay, so what are some ways to go up? An airplane? A staircase? Before I know it, I’m picturing myself stepping into an elevator. It’s carpeted, with gleaming mahogany walls. Like a regular elevator, there are buttons to press for each floor. Only these don’t have numbers on them. Not helpful, imagination!

  I take a chance and press the top button. Speakers pipe out light jazz music as the elevator rises. I find myself tapping my foot along to the beat. After what feels like a long time, a bell dings. The doors slide open to reveal a whiteness so blinding, so utterly all encompassing, that for a second I forget where I am and who I am. All is completely quiet, and yet it’s the loudest place I’ve ever been. Or at least I think it is, since I have no memory of being anywhere other than here. Then the doors automatically swoosh closed, and the walls, floor, and ceiling of the elevator reappear. I blink and take a breath. I may have gone a bit too high.

  With a shaking finger, I press the middle button.

  The elevator descends slowly. Ding. Then, swoosh. The fresh breeze reaches me first, followed by the smell of flowers and ocean air. My garden! I hurry out before the doors can close again. The stone benches are gone, and in their place are a row of beach chairs. Three tropical birds with long orange feathers have taken up residence in the nearby palm trees. I reach out and an icy lemonade appears in my hand. I take a sip. Ahhh, refreshing! I could get used to this.

  I wander around the garden, feeling the sand and soft grass beneath my feet. In the same way that I knew how to dry out the herbs with my hands, I know that every single person has a place like this inside them. Most people will never find it because they don’t even know to look for it. I could hang here all day, just exploring.

  But I’m not here on vacation — I have a mission. Reluctantly I give a pat on the head to the fluffy, orange kitten that has appeared in my arms and lay him down on a patch of clovers. Then I walk over to the beach and look around my feet until I find a stick with a pointy end.

  The tide has just gone out, leaving a swath of wet sand along the shoreline. I think about all the people who love me and who are rooting for me, and imagine a bubble of light surrounding each of them, protecting them, keeping them safe.

  I let my mind wander back to the moment my parents brought me to the hospital on my birthday. I had just been hit with all my powers and I was slipping away. I knew where they were taking me, and I knew they were so scared, but I had no way of telling them they shouldn’t worry. Their joy when I awoke quickly turned to fear and worry when they learned about my powers and how much responsibility was now on my shoulders. I know they were happy I had been able to help cure David’s father, but they weren’t shy about letting me know they wished the vortex had chosen someone else’s daughter. I can’t give them that, but maybe I can give them this.

  I hold the stick like a giant pencil, and in my best handwriting, I write the word FORGET. As I craft each letter, I imagine myself pulling the memories of the last two months from my parents’ heads, like a spool of thread unraveling. Then I stitch the gaps together so they don’t feel the loss of time.

  Once the word is complete, I lie down on the sand next to it and close my eyes. When I open them again, I’m in my bedroom like I never left. Which, I guess, I didn’t.

  It’s still dark, and my alarm clock reveals it’s not yet midnight. My door flies open, and I sit upright. The light on in the hall reveals the shape of Connor standing in my doorway in his pajamas with the Minecraft characters all over them. Maybe the knocking-before-entering thing wasn’t so bad!

  “What is it?” I ask him, squinting.

  “You have to see this!” he says. “Come on!”

  I hurry out of bed and follow him down the hall. “What is it?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”

  He waves for me to follow him down the stairs and then stops halfway, just far enough to let us peek into the living room below. “Look!”

  One of Dad’s favorite classic rock songs is playing from the portable speaker on the coffee table. I haven’t heard music in the house in two months. That in itself would be a good sign that the spell worked. But what seals the deal is the fact that my parents are dancing! In their pajamas! Around the living room!

  “You did it!” Connor says, squeezing my arm.

  “Let’s go back up,” I reply. “I think they want to be alone.”

  We giggle like when we were little kids, and sneak back up the stairs. We run back into my room and have just shut the door behind us when my cell phone starts ringing.

  “Do you have some big secret life I don’t know about?” Connor jokes. “Who would be calling you at midnight?”

  “I have no idea,” I reply. “But I’m pretty sure I only have one secret life.”

  I grab my phone from the dresser and turn it over to see the caller’s name. “It’s David!” I tell Connor as I press the speakerphone button. At the same time Connor and I ask, “Is everything okay?” David starts talking so fast I can barely make out his words. I think he’s crying, too.

  “Slow down,” I ask. “I don’t understand. Your grandfather what?”

  “There’s a picture of my grandfather on my night table!” he shouts.

  “Um, that’s good that you’re close?” I reply, not sure what to say.

  “No, you don’t understand,” he cries. “My grandfather died when my father was three years old! I never met him! But now he’s alive and living in Florida, and I went to the zoo with him and we pet a giraffe! It’s in the photograph!”

  What he’s saying finally sinks in. Connor must have gotten it at the same time because he inhales sharply and sits down on the bed.

  “And that’s not all!” David says. “All the piles of paperwork and news articles and old medicines of my dad’s, they’re all gone! Like they never existed! The house is filled with other stuff that was never here — games and books and sports stuff and a huge family tree on the wall going back to the founding of Willow Falls! Did you know it was originally going to be called Willow Hills? Anyway,
we never moved away after my great-great-grandfather got sick because he NEVER GOT SICK! It looks like that forgetting potion not only made all the doctors forget about my dad, it made the disease forget about itself! You did that, Grace!” He’s full-on crying now. “You saved my whole family!”

  I’m so speechless that I just let the phone fall to the carpet. Connor swoops it up. “Hold on, buddy,” he says to David before turning to me. “Are you going to be okay, lil sis, savior of a long line of Goldberg men? Why don’t you get back in bed.”

  I let him lead me back to my bed and help me climb in. I curl up around Green Bunny, my bedtime companion since I was four. Connor pats me and then the bunny on the head. “You did good,” he whispers, then takes the phone with him and shuts the door.

  My head is spinning. When I made my parents forget about me having special powers, that meant they had to forget about me healing David’s dad! And I guess by doing that, they had to forget he was ever sick. Like a stack of dominoes falling over, one event undid another until the first person in David’s family to get the disease — his great-great-grandfather — never got it! Tears start to slide out of the sides of my eyes — a mixture of relief, gratitude, and amazement, along with a little bit of fear at the power I seem to be able to wield.

  After a few minutes, it occurs to me that I can’t feel the lump of herbs under my pillow anymore. I sit up, turn on the lamp, and lift the pillow. The pouch is still there, but it’s flat. I unzip it and peer inside. The herbs are completely gone. Not even one ground-up flower wedged in a corner. What is there, however, is a postcard. I pull it out. Instead of the huge rocks of Stonehenge on the front, three giant stone pyramids stare up at me along with the words, Greetings from … the Great Pyramids of Egypt!

  I flip it over to find only one sentence scribbled on the back in Angelina’s unmistakable handwriting:

  The student has surpassed the teacher.

  I peer closer. On the very bottom are two more words in letters so small I have to hold the postcard up to the lamp to read them.