It was edging into May, the weather was that perpetual rain-shine, rain-shine that made the outdoor courts steam, and Summer and I had now been friends for well over a month. People's jealousy followed us around the school corridors like a bad smell, and I was getting more unsubtle attention than I could stand. It turned out that being under the wing of a Grace still didn't make you invulnerable.
It started in homeroom, while the teacher, Miss Franks, called attendance. She said my name. Before I could reply, Niral stuck her hand up.
"Miss," she said. "She's not here."
Miss Franks peered at me, trying to work out the game.
"She's right in front of me, Niral. I can see her."
I was mute. I should have just come out with something quick and slick and wry, and it would have broken Niral's attack before it could really begin. But my throat closed up on me, betraying my body's fundamental cowardice, its life mantra: better to be silent than stupid.
Niral's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Oh," she said. "You mean River?"
She looked at me.
The whole class was silent, soaking it up.
Miss Franks waited for me to say something, then cleared her throat. "Her name is not River, Niral."
"Well, that's not what I've been told. I think she's changed it."
She. Her. They were talking about me and I still couldn't speak.
Silence.
Everyone waited for me to defend myself. But I knew if I opened my mouth, it would all come out wrong, or not at all.
Summer would have sighed, lounging on her chair. "You're just jealous, sweetheart," she would have said. "I mean, your name means 'calm' and you're, like, a screaming clown. Your whole existence is one big irony."
Laughter. Niral somehow smaller than before.
This scenario ran through my head while the room stared at me. I ducked my head down.
Miss Franks sighed. "Well, thank you for your delightful input, Niral, but I think I'll stick with her given name."
She moved on down the list.
I heard giggling.
I heard someone whisper "pretentious bitch."
I sat outside in the last dregs of the afternoon light and read through the instructions again.
The chant was stupid. I'd flicked through my books for help, but I couldn't find anything that wouldn't make me feel like an idiot saying it out loud. One book said you could make up your own chant, which fit in with what Summer had said about magic—it wasn't the words, it was the intent. The words just helped you form your intent. So I'd written my own, and in the dark of my bedroom at three in the morning, it had sounded shivery good. In daylight it was all wrong.
I picked through the objects I'd brought—a coil of black satin ribbon, a black clove-scented candle, and the picture of Niral I'd printed out from the array of photographs she had put online.
"Boo."
Startled, I dropped Niral's picture, and caught by the wind, it skipped across the ground. Summer's biker boot clamped it down with a jangle.
I clutched my stupid spell toys. Summer planted herself down beside me. She was dressed head to toe in black, and her legs looked endless in the skin-tight jeans she was wearing. I'd chosen a scrubby spot on the riverbank, a ten-minute walk from school. We were shielded by a few spindly trees, but right opposite was a supermarket parking lot, filled with people going to and fro with their shopping bags.
"Why'd you pick this spot?" said Summer.
"You need a river, to carry the ashes away from you. But this was the only part of the bank I could find that was easy to get to. It's stupid, isn't it? Someone's going to see."
"Even if they did, they wouldn't know what you're doing."
"Bet they would," I said. "This whole town is obsessed with witches."
With Graces, I wanted to say.
"Come on, then," said Summer. "Get on with it."
I frowned at her.
"Oh please, you can do it in front of me. Why did you even ask me to come down here?"
"So you could check I was doing it right. I don't want to mess it up."
Summer crossed her ankles, leaning back on her hands. Her hair was loose and the ends blew around her arms. "It doesn't matter how you do it, or what with. It's your will that drives it. Remember?"
"So if I used, like, a neon pink ribbon instead of a black one and vanilla instead of clove, it wouldn't make a difference?" I was trying to be sarcastic.
"It makes a difference in the beginning, I guess. Certain things amplify certain other things. And you make those associations in your mind, you know? So: Red for love. Black for restraint. First comes ritual magic, with specific objects and tools to help you focus. Then channel magic, where you don't use anything except one object to channel your will through. Then thought magic. Thought magic is just you. You change things with just yourself, your presence in the universe like a weight on a piece of string, bending it to your will."
My heart began to thrum painfully in my chest.
This was the kind of knowledge I needed. How it worked. How to control it. How to actually do it. She spoke the language of the possible and it gave me hope.
"So now I get why you wouldn't tell me who the binding spell was actually for. It's not polite to cast spells on your friends, you know," Summer remarked.
I looked down at the printout of Niral.
"Are you joking?" I said, coldly. "We're not friends. She hates me."
"She's just jealous. She doesn't hate you."
"What could she possibly have to be jealous about?"
Summer grinned at me, but it was all jagged at the edges with apology. "I guess because we're friends now."
"She didn't like me before that, either." I held the picture up, rolled it into a scroll and started to wind the black ribbon around it with deliberate slowness, making sure each strip was touching the one before. No gaps. Screw the chant—I didn't need it, did I? As I wound the ribbon, I silently asked the universe to shut Niral up so she couldn't say one more nasty word about me.
Careful, said a voice in me. Just be careful. What if something really does happen to her?
Go away, I told the voice. She deserves it.
When the ribbon was knotted and secure, I placed the clove candle in front of me. A lighter appeared before my hand.
"Thanks," I muttered. I lit the candle and held the dangling end of the ribbon over the flame until it caught. I let go of the whole thing, dropping it into the tin can balanced on the ground before me, watching the ribbon burn and fizzle, the paper curl to ashes.
When it was burned through, I took the tin can, slid down the incline of the riverbank, and crouched precariously, stretching out one hand to tip the ashes into the water. I would not look up. I would not see the puzzled open mouths of the shoppers opposite as they wondered what on earth I was doing.
"Do you even know why Niral goes after you like that?" Summer said from behind me. She hadn't moved.
The spell done, I pulled myself back from the bank and sat, copying her pose. "Who knows?"
"Because you're all impervious. You have this shell around you like no one can touch you. Like no one is as good as you." Summer saw my face and held her hands up. "I know, I know. But until people get to know you, you can seem a bit like that. And to someone like Niral, it just feels like a 'screw you,' you know?"
"It's not a screw you. I don't even want her to notice me. That's why the shell."
"Don't be angry, I totally get it. But Niral doesn't because she's all surface. She only sees that far."
I sighed. "Logic or whatever."
"The truth hurts."
I felt a splat on my neck. And then another.
"Crap, it's raining," I said. "We'd better go."
But Summer's hand was on my arm. Her slender black nails.
"Wait," she said. Her face was suddenly animated, alive in that changeable way she had, flitting from emotion to emotion. "Wait."
"We'll get soaked."
She grinned. "So let's. Stay here with me."
I couldn't say no. I was beginning to wonder if I could ever say no to anything she wanted. She didn't have to come here. I was spelling one of her friends, and she didn't have to be okay with that. She didn't have to spend her time with me at all. But she did.
The rain poured down on us. All of a sudden it got violent, buckets tipping from the sky, drumming down so hard I couldn't catch my breath. I watched her kneel on the ground, her legs soaking up the wet. She still had my arm, and she shriek-laughed, and I wanted so much to be that carefree. Her face turned toward mine, and her hair was stuck to her cheeks. I was laughing, too, uneven gulps that sounded more like choking.
The rain eased.
"Hot chocolate at my house?" she gasped out, water running over her lips in rivulets.