A Fistful Of Sky Read online

  “Stop it, Gyp.” Jasper picked up the green stone, grabbed my hand, and closed my fingers around the stone. “Hang on. Hang on.”

  The stone was warm. I pressed it to my breastbone and felt its warmth wash through me.

  “See? You can do magic.”

  I remembered working Opal’s beauty brush, painting horns onto Jasper’s forehead. No problem there. If somebody gave me an object with magic in it, I could work it.

  “Come to me whenever the stone needs a charge,” Jasper said. “I’ll take care of you. Nobody needs to know.”

  “Not even Uncle Tobias?”

  “You don’t have to tell him. Let’s pretend we never did Image in the Air, okay? Let’s pretend you never asked the question.” He patted my shoulder.

  I could pretend, but I couldn’t deny that everything had changed. Jasper had never patted my shoulder before. He felt sorry for me now.

  I couldn’t wish away the answer to my question.

  I felt the warmth that came from the green stone, and thought, Well, all right. If pretending is what it takes, I’ll be the best pretender ever.

  “I don’t know my range, anyway. Maybe I didn’t look far enough ahead,” Jasper said. “Maybe you transition later.”

  How old did I look? I wanted to ask. Then I thought, Better if I don’t know. I had heard of late transitions, but they were even more dangerous than normal ones.

  I touched my forehead with the green rock. Warm as sunlight. I looked at Jasper, and noticed that his nose looked a lot like Flint’s nose, like my nose. Opal’s beauty brush could stroke away any resemblance we had on the surface, but Jasper and I had been together in her closet, together in my closet, together in the bamboo thicket a week ago, a year ago, three years ago. A thousand thousand memories connected us. Whatever else happened, nothing could change that.

  I slipped the green stone into my pocket. “Let’s go run through the sprinklers.”

  Jasper smiled. “All right.”

  Two

  THE summer I was sixteen, Dad took my brothers and sisters on a trip ninety miles south to Disneyland and Universal Studios. Uncle Tobias and Aunt Hermina also left on trips, though in different directions. It didn’t dawn on me until later how sinister this was.

  After everybody left, I wondered if the whole everyone-goes-on-a-trip-but-Mama-and-Gyp hadn’t been Mama’s idea. Why weren’t we on that trip, too? We did family things together every summer, so what was different this year? She’d probably used persuasion, one of her best skills, to get everyone else to leave and me to stay.

  It had been a while since anybody had cast something scary at me. I’d stopped carrying the protection stone Jasper had made me.

  Flint had transitioned the year after Jasper, and before I remembered I had the stone, he erupted at me—by mistake—and I ended up with my first broken bone. I was laid up in the hospital for a while, and I got to use crutches and have people sign my cast, and then a couple months later I had to learn how to get both legs to work together again. Flint felt really guilty about the accident; he left me alone until I recovered. Then he really went after me, maybe to get back at me for all the times I had beat him up. The stone came in handy at that point, when I remembered to carry it, and remembered to get Jasper to charge it.

  Dad played power chess with Flint to teach him what it was like to be outclassed completely and lose at something, and eventually Flint got the message and backed off on torturing me.

  Beryl transitioned the next year, after Opal moved to Hollywood to find work in the movie industry. By that time Beryl and I were pretty good friends, so I had never carried the stone around to protect me from Beryl.

  I had to do a lot of mental maneuvering so I didn’t spend all my time and energy getting mad at my siblings for being themselves. In time, my mind became well-trained and agile. It shied away from negative thoughts and impulses. I used a lot of mental whitewash. I believed I was perfectly happy.

  Nobody talked about the fact that everybody had gone through transition but me. Historically, there were late transits—Cousin Raychel hadn’t gone through the sickness until she was nineteen, and then it was touch and go, but she made it, and afterward she was one of the more powerful people in the family. Maybe everyone thought a late transition would happen to me. I wavered between hope and despair, with despair often outweighing the hope. After all, I had Jasper’s prediction to depress me. Every once in a while, though, like on Christmas Eve or the night before my birthday, I got all worked up and imagined: Maybe it will happen tomorrow.

  I hadn’t asked Jasper to charge the stone with protection for me in about a year. My siblings cast prank spells on me sometimes, do-my-work-for-me spells sometimes, and sometimes favor spells if I asked for them, like spells to help me study for a test without getting distracted by TV, or a spell that guaranteed me good hair on school picture day.

  I was completely unprepared for Mama’s spell.

  I didn’t even know Mama had spelled me at first. I woke up like I did every summer morning and went down to the kitchen to put together breakfast. Breakfast was my favorite meal of the day. You couldn’t have too much bacon, in my opinion. Fried eggs were okay if you put paprika and maybe garlic powder on them, and toast was a great excuse to eat butter and jam, or better yet, peach preserves. On the other hand, a nice layer of melted butter on warm toast could be doused in brown sugar, which would melt into a deep brown frosting, or you could spread a sweet spicy mixture of white sugar and cinnamon into the butter. Yum!

  So why did I take out skim milk and a box of Fiber Plus cereal? Why was I measuring a cup of cereal and a half-cup of milk into a bowl? What was this measly amount of food I didn’t even like doing in front of me at the table?

  I tried to get up and grab a jar of raspberry jam, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. Instead I found myself eating bits of pulverized plywood wetted with thin white liquid. I finished the whole thing, small as it was, then washed my bowl and spoon and the measuring cup and left the kitchen.

  My stomach cried aloud, “My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”

  Well, maybe not in those words.

  All the luscious things in the kitchen, bananas, cupcakes, ice cream, the candy jar, the cookie jar, last night’s leftover lasagna in the fridge, they all whined behind me, saying I was neglecting them. Yet I left the kitchen.

  What was wrong with me?

  Maybe if I could just get away from the house . . . I still had some allowance left. I could go buy Hostess Cupcakes at the liquor store down on the Old Coast Highway. Or head up to the village, where we had a charge account at the market, and stock up on all kinds of stuff.

  My body had other ideas. I went up to my room and changed into my bathing suit, then went outside and jumped into the pool.

  I never jump into the pool. I believe that such a move can be deleterious to the health. Getting into a pool takes time. One toe at a time, specifically. Okay, then you have to go down a whole step. Then another. Then another. Once you’re standing on the bottom and your suit is wet up to the waist, you can take ages edging along toward the deeper water, until your body has time to get used to the water decently.

  That summer I had an awful black-and-yellow suit Mama had helped me buy. The suit didn’t have any of those features that helped disguise how fat a girl was, like a little skirt to hide the upper thighs, or extra material to disguise one’s width. It was a tank suit that showed every bulge. Mama had even tried to get me to buy a bikini. Insane! That had made me suspicious, too. My mother was a total fashion plate. She always looked great. I should have suspected something was up when she made me look terrible.

  The result of having an ugly swimsuit was that I hadn’t gone swimming so far that summer unless nobody else was home. And the beach? Forget about it.

  The only saving grace about this situation was that no one was around to see me.

  I plunged into the pool. My skin screamed in horror at its coldness, and then I found myself swimming fro
m one end of the pool to the other.

  Those Y-camp swim lessons I’d had when I was twelve were finally coming in handy. I guessed I could do the freestyle and the backstroke and the breaststroke, after all. I sure did them that morning. I swam until my sides heaved and my muscles ached, back and forth, back and forth as the sun crept up the sky behind the house and the passion flowers on the poolyard fence opened.

  I woke up at the bottom of the pool, trying to breathe water. I lunged up, coughing, and dragged myself out of the water to collapse on one of the chaise longues on the pool’s cobbled rim. My chest heaved. My arms and legs felt as though they had been beaten with sticks, and my stomach gnawed on itself, I was so hungry. I coughed my throat raw. Everything hurt so much I doubted I could crawl to the house and ask someone to help me. Who was even home?

  A vision of loveliness drifted into focus above me.

  “Gyp! What’s the matter, honey?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered hoarsely.

  Mama, warm and jasmine-smelling, sat beside me on the chaise and felt my forehead. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I swam and swam until I started to drown. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “A little too much oomph,” she muttered, and tapped signs with hot fingertips on my forehead. I felt something tight inside me loosen a little.

  “What are you doing?” I rasped.

  “It’s for your own good, honey.” She smiled and stroked her hand across my short dark hair. “You know I worry about your weight. It’s holding you back, sweetie. How can you enjoy your womanhood if you’re hauling around all that fat? I thought it was time for you to get a taste of another way of life.”

  I groaned. She’d been on my case to go on a diet ever since I was twelve. When she got too pushy, I complained to Dad, and he told Mama to back off. Dad said I was perfect just the way I was.

  Dad wasn’t witchy, the way people in Mama’s family were, but Mama listened to him anyway.

  Which was probably why he wasn’t here now.

  “Don’t do this,” I whispered to my mother.

  “Oh, honey.” She patted my cheek. “Just try it. You’ll like it.”

  BUT of course I didn’t like it. For lunch I looked longingly at sliced ham, cheddar cheese, sourdough bread, pickles, mayonnaise, Twinkies, potato chips. My hands made me a sprouts-and-olives sandwich, piled carrots on my plate, and added an apple. Dinner was a giant salad. In between lunch and dinner I powerwalked all through the village without stopping to look at anything.

  I had a couple of hours of down time, but every time I picked up a book—which was what I liked to do during the summer, curl up on the porch swing with a cool drink and a hot book and read—I put it down again before I could finish a page, got up, and ran up and down the stairs for fifteen minutes. I was sweaty and exhausted, my stomach churning, after every one of these incidents. I learned not to touch books.

  Mama had left in the afternoon to go to the TV station, where she was a special reporter who covered social events and local arts news—she knew everybody important in town, and they all liked her and told her things they wouldn’t tell anybody else; it was part of her gift, and made her invaluable—so I had dinner alone.

  When Mama got home around eight, I was waiting. “Stop it, Mama. Please. Stop it. This is torture.”

  “It’s hard the first day. It’ll get easier, honey.”

  I wished she wouldn’t call me honey. I couldn’t even look at the honey pot. “The first day? How long is this supposed to last?”

  She smiled, though her eyes looked sad. “Just a week. After that, we’ll see.”

  “Mama.” I rubbed my eyes. I didn’t think I could take another day of this.

  A tear streaked down her cheek. “This hurts me more than it does you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  She brushed past me and went to the kitchen.

  I headed upstairs. I took a shower, contemplating the week ahead, then tried not to think about it. I went to my room, tired enough to sleep at eight-thirty in the evening. I lay down, pulled up the covers, and opened the fantasy novel I was reading.

  I found myself running up and down the stairs. Mama came out of the kitchen, and I yelled at her. No words, just thumping shrieks as I pounded up and down the stairs. She ran away again.

  I tried fighting the compulsions, but nothing stopped them. Mama was the best witch I knew. She could craft seamless, inescapable spells in her sleep. I had no hint of power to fight them.

  The second night, while Mama was at work, I called Dad’s hotel in Anaheim. The family was all out. I left voicemail begging him to call me back, then waited all evening for the phone to ring.

  I called every afternoon as soon as Mama left for work. The family was never at the hotel, and they never called back.

  On the sixth day of salads, fruit, fiber, and skim milk, I powerwalked past my friend Claire’s house, a couple blocks from mine. It was the third time I’d circled her block. I couldn’t go up to the front door; on these walks, which lasted until I was almost too tired to crawl home but not quite, I seemed confined to the sidewalk, no dawdling, no going up anybody’s driveway; but at least I could choose my direction.

  Claire came out of her house. That day her short curly hair was magenta with black streaks. “Hey, Gyp!” she called.

  I walked past. “Hey, Claire,” I yelled over my shoulder.

  “Stop!” she cried.

  “Can’t.” I walked on and turned a corner, then went around her block again, hoping she’d still be in the yard when I passed the next time.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked as I cruised past.

  “I can’t stop.”

  She opened the gate and caught up with me. “Are you on some kind of program?”

  I reached for her hand. If only I could cling to something and make myself stop!

  We had never held hands before, so for a second she didn’t get it, but finally she put her hand in mine. I tried to stop, but even Claire’s touch didn’t free me. I tugged her forward with me. “Slow down, will you?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry, Claire. I can’t slow down.” Tears gushed out of my eyes. “I’ll let go if you want me to.”

  “What is it, Gyp? What’s wrong? You look sick.”

  “My mama—I—” Of course Mama would put a “protect secrets” component into the spell; she was thorough that way. No matter how much I wanted to tell Claire everything, I wouldn’t be able to.

  Claire and I had met three years earlier on the school bus, a couple weeks after she and her mom and little brother moved to our neighborhood. She was slender and pretty and a little punky. I was just starting to gain weight.

  We didn’t know why, but something pulled us together. By the end of the first day of school we had given each other friendship bracelets and were looking forward to spending eighth grade together.

  The weird thing was that Claire’s mom, July, was trying to teach herself how to be a witch. She wasn’t secretive about it. She wasn’t like any witch I’d ever met in our family, but she was a witch of sorts.

  I had never told Claire about my family.

  Now I physically couldn’t.

  “I can’t tell you,” I said.

  We marched up the block toward Hennings Park.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  I shook my head. I wanted her to save me. How could she save me? I wanted her to know what was happening, but I couldn’t tell her.

  “Gyp, you’re hurting my hand.”

  “I’m sorry.” I let go of her. “Claire . . .”

  “Your mom did something to you?”

  My throat closed up. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to gasp air in, but there was no passage.

  I kept walking, and then the sky went dark.

  I woke up a little later flat on my back on the sidewalk, Claire’s face above me, her expression horrified and concerned. “Are you all right?” she ask
ed.

  I could breathe again. My clothes, hair, forehead were wet with sweat. My throat hurt. Muscles in my legs jumped and jerked even though I was trying to lie still.

  “Don’t move. I’ll call an ambulance,” she said.

  “No.” I gasped. “Don’t.” I reached for her hand, and she took mine.

  “You don’t look well, Gyp. You just fainted. Stumbled and fell right onto the sidewalk before I could catch you. Your head hit the ground. You might have broken something. I better get help.”

  “I’ll be all right in a minute.” Now that she mentioned it, the back of my head did ache, and some other things stung and burned. But it was so nice to be lying down.

  I savored it for a couple more minutes, just lying there, the breeze cooling my sweaty face, Claire’s hand in mine, my breath easing in and out of me. Then I sat up. One of my elbows was scraped, and the back of my head was pounding now. Apart from that and the now-constant cry of despair from my stomach, I felt all right.

  I felt like I didn’t have to powerwalk anymore. At least not this minute.

  “I’m okay.” I squeezed Claire’s hand. “Thanks, Claire.”

  She shook her head. “You’re sick, Gyp. You look terrible.”

  “I’m having kind of a bad week, but I feel better now.”

  “You stay here. I’ll see if I can get Mom to come and drive you home.”

  I pulled myself to my feet. “It’s only three blocks,” I said. After all this powerwalking, three blocks seemed like nothing.

  Claire frowned at me.

  I took a couple of steps. My head pounded and my elbow burned, but the rest of me felt all right.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said. I started walking. I strolled, in fact, at a leisurely pace I hadn’t been able to use since Mama laid the spell on me. I felt happy just to be able to walk the way I wanted to.

  Claire walked beside me. “What did your mom do to you?”

  “Don’t ask.” What if I fainted again to prevent myself from answering a question?

  “Gyp—”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It is not either nothing! Do you want me to call the child protection agency, or whatever it is?”