Riverland Read online

  Mike had chewed on her finger and nodded. I took her hand and squeezed so she wouldn’t tear at her cuticles. “We can do it.”

  But then she’d repeated what I’d said on the bus.

  If Mike had come home instead of going shopping with Momma, none of this would have happened. Or if Pendra had listened. Or if my spells actually worked.

  Say it’s okay, Pendra. Say you understand.

  I shifted the straps on my backpack, tightening them.

  Pendra slowed as we neared the walkway. “Okay,” she finally said. “Don’t be such a worrier.”

  Easy for her to say.

  By the time she joined me on the stoop, I’d undone the lock and cracked the door just wide enough for me. “Back as fast as I can,” I said as I slipped through.

  Behind me, Pendra sighed. “Fine, fine.” She dropped her backpack with a thud and a rustle as the weight of her notebooks tilted the bag over. She sat down on the stoop just as noisily. “Your mom’s a much better hostess than you, El.”

  I couldn’t care. Not until I made sure the house was safe on the inside too.

  The door clicked shut behind me and I set my purple backpack down soundlessly on the foyer floor. Laid my jacket over it inside out, ready to throw on if I needed to leave.

  At Pendra’s house, the entry hall was always a swirl of mail, backpacks, boots, dogs, a cat, and sports equipment. Since that first day they’d given me a ride from the library and Poppa had come to find me there, the jumble had kind of swooped me up too. Did I want a snack? Watch out for the dogs! Did I want to stay for dinner? (Yes, very much.) Someone laughing upstairs. So much fun that I’d forgotten the time.

  “You’re welcome always,” Mrs. Sarti had pretty much sung from the kitchen then as I rushed out the door, and every time she saw me outside of school after that too. Being there felt like spring sun on bare skin—warm and comforting.

  In my house this afternoon, the foyer sparkled. A new vase with heirloom roses in it lined up against the mirror over the entry table. I didn’t waste time looking in the mirror as I passed—I knew I was a windblown mess.

  My sigh of relief bubbled up on its own as I looked into the living room.

  Momma’s house magic had fixed everything while we’d been at school.

  The broken glass and china were gone, like always. A new game console sat in the same place as the one that had crashed to the floor last night. The television screen had actually grown larger.

  I almost loved this kind of magic. The kind where nothing was really lost, only bettered.

  Nothing that mattered to the house was lost, that is.

  Mike and I? We both worked really hard to matter, but sometimes we made mistakes.

  In the living room, one new silver frame had the word happiness engraved on it. There wasn’t any photo inside yet. The black mat looked like a hole.

  House magic wasn’t perfect, which was okay. I’d read enough books to know that no magic was. Still, Momma needed us to believe in it so that others would too.

  And this was good enough magicking that Pendra wouldn’t notice anything wrong. I swung the front door wide. “Come on, but don’t shout. Your book’s up in my room.”

  Mike would be sad The Hobbit was gone. I’d been reading it to her under the bed, some nights. I loved watching her expressions at each surprise, her excitement about the ponies and wizards. “But not the trolls.” She only liked my stories with trolls, she’d said.

  Now, Pendra jumped up from the stoop and swept through the door. Her hair hung straight, unbothered by the wind, all the way to her jeans pockets. When she shook her head, it made a beautiful curve, then settled back down. My own hair would barely stay in its braids.

  Maybe it wouldn’t rain. Maybe we could take our books outside soon. Then no one would know I’d broken a rule.

  After Pendra dropped her coat and backpack in a jumble beside mine, we both took the stairs two at a time to the landing. That’s what got my heart beating so loud, laughing quietly and climbing stairs at the same time.

  For luck, I brushed a fingertip over the old glass witch ball that hung on the landing. Cool and reassuring, the smooth surface an illusion: small, stilled ripples and bubbles met my touch. Then the deep blue sphere swung gently on its cord, the glass strands inside picking up the last afternoon light and throwing it on the walls. Hand-size and weighty, the ball had been Momma’s great-grandmother’s, brought over from Norway. It was the last of a net full of floats from when the Favre family—Gran’s last name—used to fish the neck of the river until everyone started using foam buoys.

  Pendra reached out too, but her hand hovered just above the sphere. “It always looks like a water bubble hanging in the air,” she whispered. “That’s probably part of the magic, right?”

  My fingers stuttered on the glass, then stilled the ball in its sudden, broader swing.

  She meant the float, not the house. I’d told her once how the colorful balls had supported fishing nets here in the nineteenth century, that the threads fascinated fish, luring them to the trap. That they were all very scientific, the fishing floats. Even one that hung alone on our landing, capturing light.

  But Pendra had heard Momma call the float a witch ball once, and the idea that it was magic had caught, just like Mike’s words had stuck today.

  The bauble fascinated Pendra as much as anything in the house.

  “Not everything can be magic,” I laughed. “Most things are just superstition.”

  Pendra stuck her tongue out at me, then flipped her retainer in her mouth the way she did sometimes when she was thinking. I envied the trick, even if it was a little gross.

  I let go of the ball. “They’re supposed to catch evil spirits before they can harm a house, I looked it up.” Pendra’s face lit hopefully, and she leaned closer, like she was looking to see what the ball had caught. “I love them, but the ones in the shops are all fakes. This one’s real.”

  “Real, like magic real,” Pendra mused. She didn’t listen.

  “They catch fish, that’s all.” I tried to move her down the hallway. If I was truthful, I loved the float too, but not because it might be magic. I loved it because no matter what else broke during the night here, the witch ball stayed untouched. Unbroken.

  Even though it was made of glass, it was the longest-lived object in the house. I wanted to be that strong. That beautiful.

  Pendra’s retainer clicked another circuit. “Know what isn’t magic? Two brothers and all their gym clothes, everywhere. And being the youngest. Even the dogs are older than me. In dog years.” She inhaled deeply. “Your house smells nice, like the river. My house smells like sports gear.”

  I sniffed. I didn’t smell anything much. Maybe a little freshener to conceal the fireplace-burnt-photograph smell. “Come on, Pen.” Let’s just get the book and get out before anyone comes home.

  My turquoise Converse All Stars kicked up the pile in the tan carpet. So did Pendra’s silver Keds. We left a trail of scuff-marks in the neat vacuum swaths all down the hall, but it would have looked the same if Mike and I did it, so I didn’t worry too much.

  A closed door on my parents’ side of the house blocked light from the brightest windows. The hallway, lined with relatives’ photographs going all the way back to when Favres lived here and not Prines—and even further than that—was dark except for the light thrown by the witch ball. Some photos glittered in the shadows, silvered with age. Grandparents and great-grands. A few older still.

  “Did you know any of them?” Pendra’s voice was quiet. Her grandfather had died over the summer, right after they moved. I wished we’d been better friends then. It felt strange to say sorry now.

  “Only Momma’s mom is still alive and she travels a lot. The last time she came here was when Mike was a baby.” I couldn’t remember Gran’s voice. Just her face. But my memory was grainy and black-and-white, just like the photographs.

  Momma said they’d fought once but wouldn’t say why.


  At the far end of the hallway, as far as you could get from my parents’ room, Momma had her own photo with Gran by the dock. The dinghy bobbed, its dock line wrapped in a half-hitch around a piling. Momma wore a white dress. Neither she nor Gran looked very happy. The photograph inside the frame had been taped back together, twice.

  The light from Mike’s room made the new frame on the photograph shine.

  Like the witch ball, few of the heirloom frames besides that photo required house magic to fix. Mostly just Gran’s. The rest seemed impervious and smelled slightly stale, like old books.

  I liked old things. They lasted.

  Sometimes, especially when no one was home, I wondered what it would feel like to break one. Sometimes I almost got mad enough to try. But I never did.

  Pendra lingered, looking at the other photographs. “Imagine what this place was like when there were no other houses but yours.” She reached out to touch a frame.

  “Lots of fishing and crabbing and farming.” I echoed Poppa’s sales pitch for the development. “A lot of hard work.” One last farm remained near our property. Poppa was trying to buy it so he could add more houses by the river. “Before the farms, there was a fishing camp. Before that? The Susquehannock and the Algonquin.” Mike and I had looked it up at the library last summer. “Come on, Pen. Do you want your book or not?”

  “It’s just so quiet here,” Pendra said, closing her eyes.

  It wouldn’t be quiet for long. We were going too slowly. Someone would be home soon, and if it was Momma, that was mostly fine.

  We hurried past the guest bedroom, kept ready though no one ever stayed there. Down to the two rooms at the end of the hall. Mike’s, then mine. Connected by a shared bath.

  Mike’s door was open. Mint-green walls, all the lights on. The space clean and neat.

  Pendra lingered, looking back at the witch ball again.

  At the end of the hall, the door to my bright turquoise room stood open. “Oh.” I could barely breathe.

  My sneakers crackled static across the carpet, I moved so fast.

  Everything in my room had been straightened.

  “Oh no.”

  My notebooks and sketchpads were stacked magazine-perfect. But that didn’t matter. Those were decoys.

  The dolls too. They’d been arranged against the wall, by period. The room felt smaller, then larger, too hot, then too cold by turns. Calm down, Eleanor, they’re just dolls. The pioneer doll, then the Victorian. The one from New Orleans, the World War I doll. The dolls from India and China. I rarely played with them, but Grandma Favre had sent them, so I kept them nearby, in their boxes. Now they were on display.

  Words I’d heard often but couldn’t say pricked my tongue. Curses that would maybe not shock Pendra because of her brothers, but ones that would absolutely crack house magic. Much worse than dammit and other words.

  “What’s wrong?” Pendra, suddenly right behind me. I startled and she held up a hand. “El, you’re so jumpy. What is it?”

  I couldn’t answer. Breath held, I dropped to the floor and lifted the thick bed skirt. A row of tiny bells jangled a merry warning.

  “What are you doing?”

  Nothing. Everything. “Just checking something. Shhhh.” I tried to sound cool, but there I was, crawling on my carpet in broad daylight in front of my friend.

  In the shadows, the space beneath the bed looked undisturbed. The old pillows were there. A blanket. The Halloween lights. Just like Mike and I had left them.

  Pendra crawled under the bed with me. “You still make forts!” Her voice was right in my ear. The bed frame was close above our heads, and Pendra’s shoulder pressed mine. “A bit low though.”

  “It’s for Mike, when she can’t sleep,” I said, scanning the shadows, looking for The Hobbit. Not there. I startled and hit my head on the wooden slats of the old frame. Ow. On an old bruise too.

  But, Pendra’s book. My eyes itched, and not from the carpet. There were only two books under the bed now, not three. A book on birds. An old book about a tollbooth.

  The Tolkien was missing.

  I scootched back out, carpet fibers grating my elbows. Knelt by the bedside table, counting books: one two three four five six seven eight—not there either. Had it been magicked?

  House magic didn’t come into bedrooms unless a rule was broken. Mike and I had been so careful lately.

  I winced at a memory from the night before: I’d slammed a door. I’d lost my temper. I’d yelled. I’d been so tired of the shouting from downstairs and Mike snuggled tight against me asking if I could make it all stop.

  I’d made it worse instead.

  Momma and Poppa slammed doors too, but their rules were different. I should have stayed under the bed.

  That was our safest place. No one knew about it except Mike and me. House magic had never gotten under the bed before.

  “Pendra, don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  She didn’t hear me. She was looking in every corner, as if she might find something magical there. But she wouldn’t even find the missing book.

  In the entire house, not one place was safe anymore. For a moment, I wished I were small enough to crawl inside the glass float. Maybe that was safe. Because now I had to tell Pendra I’d lost her book, and then I had to get her out of the house before she decided to search everywhere.

  I felt panic build. We were going to get caught.

  Once, Mike had gotten chocolate on one of Pendra’s books, and now I had to promise to never eat over a book when I borrowed one. It had been months. But a lost book? “It was right there.”

  This wasn’t magic. This was just mean.

  I crawled backward until the bed skirt ruffled my hair. Then I sat back on my knees and looked all around the room. Pendra’s feet and legs stuck out from under the bed. Striped leggings, the hem of a pink skirt. “Maybe it’s under a pillow?” The bed skirt rang merrily as she moved around. Jarring music for my growing doom.

  While she searched, I checked one more thing. Not a book, not at all, but still a good gauge of the doom. “Please be there,” I whispered to the house. I flipped back the blue comforter and picked up the pillow. I’d tucked the edge of the pillowcase in, so it didn’t flap or look sloppy.

  Pendra’s sneakers wriggled under the bed. “I don’t know how you and Mike both fit under here,” she said.

  Practice. I bit my lip. If Pendra knew how much time we spent under there, telling stories, I know she’d look at me funny.

  I unfolded the edge of the pillowcase and reached inside. The pillow’s rough seam was still safety-pinned together, a good sign. Careful not to prick my fingers, I unclipped the pin, then reached into the foam insert. I pried off the piece I’d cut away then pasted back together with washi tape. My fingers touched the hard weight of the small paring knife I’d stolen last spring from the kitchen.

  It was a tiny theft. So far our parents hadn’t noticed. So many things came and went in the house.

  But on days when I worried about disappearing too much, it helped me feel better. Even if I didn’t know what I’d use it for. I had it, and that was what mattered.

  It was the most daring thing I’d ever done.

  But I couldn’t ever brag to Pendra or Mike, or anyone that I’d done it.

  If slamming a door got books magicked away, a stolen knife would be far, far worse trouble. I smoothed the foam down and stuck the tape back in place, repinned the pillow, and refolded the outer case. The pillow went back on the bed and the comforter over it in one well-practiced move.

  A shadow darkened the window and I jumped again. Just a heron landing on the tree outside. Spying on fish in the river maybe. The afternoon sun had cast its shadow far into my room. I relaxed my fingers, which had curled up tight into fists.

  “Bad bird,” I murmured. “Go lurk in someone else’s tree.” We still needed to leave the house. “Come on, Pen.” The words came out sharper than I meant them to.

  Pendra slid out from beneath the bed.
She’d gotten pale carpet fuzz on her leggings and yellow T-shirt. She began to brush it off slowly, not looking at me. “Hey, Eleanor, don’t worry. Take three deep breaths and let them out slow. That always helps me relax.”

  Three deep breaths weren’t going to cut it with a missing book and family bound to come home soon.

  “Did you find the book?” she asked.

  “No, nothing.” I braced for a proper scolding. I hoped that was all I’d get.

  Downstairs, the front door opened and shut. “Eleanor?” Momma. “Who’s here with you?”

  Worse and worse.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CONSEQUENCES

  Mike passed us on the landing, her new shoes still in their box. Her eyes widened when she saw Pendra. “Ooooh. Trouble.” She mouthed the words. I fought back my own annoyance, but I let Pendra shush Mike.

  Still, Momma didn’t seem mad once we got downstairs. She waved her hands merrily. “You can’t do homework without a snack! But it’s late enough to call it dinner.”

  She wouldn’t let us in the kitchen. Plates with heart-shaped grilled cheese sandwiches and mugs of hot cocoa appeared in the dining room and she sat with us to watch us eat. “Eleanor, really, you should know better than to not feed your guests.”

  She’d put pesto in my sandwich. My favorite. Avocado in Pendra’s. Pendra practically glowed with happiness while she texted her mom to let her know she was eating here. “Your mom is so great.”

  Momma was being great. Better than great. She was being magic.

  I tried to chew my sandwich while Pendra’s phone buzzed with reply texts.

  I longed for a phone like hers, but it was easy to make myself not want one right now. That would be the first thing to disappear in house magic. And there was absolutely going to be some house magic after this.

  We ate, but Mike wouldn’t quit goggling at Pendra and me, so wide-eyed she looked like a fish. I couldn’t meet her gaze, so I kicked her under the table. I knew what she was thinking and hoped it didn’t come right out of her mouth. Poppa would be home any minute. I had a surprise guest. And this was not a proper dinner.