Chapter 2

2

"Carter? Carter Velasquez ?"

Leilani's voice breaks up, but I hear her incredulity just fine, and it's making me clench my teeth.

"Yup." I run the sponge over the bowl in my hands. My phone's on speaker, angled at me against the window over Nadia's kitchen sink.

"But…it's Carter . Isn't he, like? You know? He's got nothing going for him? And you've been complaining about him following you around like a puppy dog since I've known you. And now you're dating him?"

Carter doesn't have "nothing going for him," but she's not wrong about the rest of it. Carter like -liked me for a long time. We were tight when we were little, but when I was sixteen, I got tired of him always being everywhere all the time, those light honey eyes looking at me like I was the whole world when he knew, more than anyone, how broken I was. It wasn't until we thought Sky was gone that Carter and I got close again. And by close, I mean late-night phone calls while Johnny slept, and him leaving me gifts at the gym or Nadia's for my birthday and holidays.

Even then, things remained platonic. Well. Mostly platonic.

"It's not dating. It's just a wedding." As friends , I don't add, because I feel like it would sound like I'm protesting too much. Her tone already has me on edge as it is. I swear, I can feel the storm clouds gathering up on the water, marching here to Nadia's like a line of thunderous soldiers.

"Your ex's wedding." Leilani still sounds stupidly shocked. For nowhere near the first time in our friendship, I wonder if she's high on some random organic, plant-based microdose.

I narrow my eyes at my phone. "What is your deal, Lani? You're the one who's been on my case to get out of the house and date guys with jobs." The last three guys I'd hung out with were, in order: a musician, an entrepreneur, and a deejay. For these particular men, each of those careers was code for unemployed and couch surfing.

She sighs, exasperated. "I meant, like, guys with real jobs. Not bartenders."

"He doesn't work at Lost Souls anymore."

"Okay, so now he hoists manure at the rose store. Real upgrade there."

"What the fuck, Leilani?" I throw the pot back in the sink with a clatter. "Did you forget that my sister works at that rose store , too? And so does her fiancé?"

There's silence for a minute, and then she speaks with a choked-up voice. "I'm sorry, Teal. You're right. I'm just so stressed out lately."

I grab my phone and sit on the table, stretching my legs out. When I glance around, Sky's leaning against the entrance of the kitchen. Her hair is so long, it reaches her waist, and the ends are as gold as Carter's eyes. She narrows her eyes at my phone as she cradles…yep. She's cradling a freaking squirrel , running her fingers along the bronze fur of its tiny head.

I turn back to my phone. "What's going on? You're stressed about the move?" A few months ago, Leilani purchased what she keeps calling her "dream house," but she hasn't let me see it yet, not till "after renovations." My guess is she's having a giant, cream-colored crocheted swing installed, alongside a greenhouse for all her houseplants, and probably she's waiting on expensive commissions from around the world for earth-tone tapestries to hang on every wall.

"It's—a lot. I'll tell you all about it on Sunday. It's super awesome news. You're going to be so excited to hear it!" Her teary voice is gone, replaced by nothing but cheer. It's almost, almost like the guilt was an act.

I stifle my sigh as I watch the clouds rolling in from the window. They're not gray like I anticipated—instead they're thick and white with the palest blue shadows. "Okay, girl. I'll see you at the wedding on Saturday, right? And then we'll be able to talk on Sunday." Leilani and I have been renting our own booth at the Cranberry craft fair every year for the last three years. It runs from the first Sunday of spring to the last Sunday of fall. At first, renting a table was just an excuse to drink papaya mimosas from the Lost Souls Lounge table and watch all the hot, local carpenters lugging around their work, but then we started actually selling our own shit. It's why I'm not worried about having just gotten fired. As long as I have my Sundays in the alternative parking lot of Cranberry Library, I'll be able to make ends meet.

There's a pause, and Leilani says, "I just meant, before. You and Sage have ambition . You, with the candles, and Sage with her jewelry. You both are like me. We are manifesting our realities. The whole universe is in motion, and we just don't have time for negativity. There's nothing but love in our lives, right?"

I pinch my mouth shut because Sky is currently holding in a laugh so hard, her eyes are tearing up. As her shoulders shake, I let out a reluctant smile. "Right, Lani. You know what's up."

We hang up after our goodbyes, which includes Leilani wishing me Blessed be all weirdly breathless, and as soon as the phone clicks off, Sky's laughter explodes out of her in sputters. "What is wrong with her?" she asks after she's caught her breath. "Is she always high? How does she turn every conversation into something about manifesting the universe in motion?"

I shake my head. Usually I can brush off Leilani's idiosyncrasies, but that phone call really annoyed me. She has some nerve, implying that Carter is some kind of loser, like he hasn't been working his ass off since he was fifteen years old, supporting his family any way he could.

"You're mad," Sky says, taking a seat next to me. She has to pull the chair out a lot, to fit her long legs under the table. "Is it because she was a big snob, acting like she was better than Carter and Sage and Tennessee?"

Instead of answering, I work my jaw until I feel a tension headache starting.

Sky tucks the squirrel on her shoulder, where it curls up like a damn cat and falls asleep instantly. "Sage doesn't like her."

"I know," I snap. "But you know what? Lani was the only one who didn't abandon me when—" I stop myself.

Sky smiles sadly. "When I fell off the cliff and became suspended in animation for eight years? Was that the end of your sentence?"

It's as wild as it sounds. Sky fell eighty feet to what should have been her death. They looked for her body for days and days. I looked for her body for weeks. Months. Even years after, I would take a walk at the bottom of that cliff, my eyes combing the brush for any sign of her—a shoe, ragged and half gnawed-on. A ring, with a sliver of silver shining through a deep black patina. A bone, white, porous, licked clean by some starved scavenger.

I would've settled for a strand of her caramel brown hair curled around blooming dandelions, but I found nothing. And the reason for that is because in the fifteen minutes it took for me to rush down to where she had fallen, Sky was taken. She was taken by these basically unexplainable, immortal beings Nadia calls the "old gods" to a giant, old tree less than a mile away. She was kept inside it in a supernaturally induced coma for eight years . Believe me, I know how bananas that explanation is to anyone outside the family. To anyone who wasn't raised to know that the wild earth is autonomous and sometimes chooses startlingly miraculous fates for us.

It's really too bad everyone in town has instead come to the conclusion that we're all freaks, Sky most of all.

When we thought she was gone for real, everyone retreated. At the time, Carter's grandfather was in and out of the hospital, and between that and all the jobs he always seems to have, he and I could only chat here and there. I didn't blame him. He tried the best he could, but in the end, I needed more support than what he could offer.

Nadia, my great-aunt, was a wreck. All she did was cry for what felt like decades, so much that I was the one checking in on her several times a day, and never the other way around, ever. But that's Nadia. Her emotions and needs always came before ours.

My grandmother Sonya threw herself into re-renovating her giant, colonial-style, beachside mansion, and pretended like she never even had a third granddaughter to start with.

And Sage? Sage took off and lived in her old red van before finding a job teaching jewelry design in Philly. She chose a van made in 1989 with stained, threadbare upholstery and not one but two cracked windows over me.

Is Leilani perfect? No. Is she sometimes really annoying? Yes. But she was there. She was there .

I close my eyes and do my counting breath. "Yes," I say on the long exhale. "Sky, I'm sorry. Lani just pissed me off, and I'm nervous about Carter."

Sky raises an eyebrow. "Right. The man you don't have feelings for even though his kiss was so lethal, you ended up dumping Nate Bowen because you couldn't stop thinking about it." She nuzzles the squirrel, who lets out an eerily humanlike sigh of contentment. "The man we told you to not ask to the wedding, because he's so desperately in love with you." Her smile can only be described as that of an evil villain. " That man, you mean?"

Now I'm grinding my teeth. At this rate, I'll have a migraine before dinner. "Subject change," I finally grit out. "I need to distract my brain right now. Please."

"Hmm." Sky puts a finger on her chin, tapping. "Oh! Have you ever had your ass eaten?"

It's too bad I'm sipping a cup of tea when she asks. I only just avoid spraying the table.

"What," I say, coughing, "the hell, Sky?"

"I'm curious . I read about it in one of Nadia's romances and I thought it sounded bewitching."

I snort so loud I can't help but dissolve into giggles. "Bewitching?" I belt out. "Ass-eating sounds bewitching, huh?"

She's laughing, too. "Are you distracted yet?"

"Thoroughly."

"Good." Sky checks her phone. "Oh, don't forget. Spring equinox tomorrow." She stands, the squirrel still perfectly balanced on her shoulder. "And Leilani Rodriguez is not invited."

"But I already invited her!" I say. "She always comes!"

Sky just tilts her head up and gazes down at me, like she's royalty or something. "She can't come until she apologizes to Carter. And I lost years of my life, Teal, so I can call the shots for my first spring equinox in almost a decade. Got it?" Before I can respond, she's already on her way up the stairs, her squirrel friend still knocked out on her shoulder.

I throw my head back and think about saying some kind of prayer to get me through this sudden wave of anxiety. But I'm not really the praying type, so I grab my phone and try to figure out how to white-lie Lani's un-invitation. I don't feel like telling her the truth because I don't want her to actually apologize to Carter and come to Nadia's spring equinox party. Sky's right that Sage hates Leilani. If Leilani does come, Sage'll spend the night making passive-aggressive comments about her and it might piss me off enough to conjure a nasty storm. And if Leilani doesn't come, I might actually have a fun time with just my sisters for once.

Hey , I type. Sorry but the equinox shindig is canceled

I leave out the for you at the end of the sentence. That is my version of a white lie.

Omg you're not mad at me are you??!!? She writes back instantly.

I narrow my eyes. Why would I be?

As soon as I hit send, another text comes through. My heart feels like it jumps right out of my mouth when I see it's from Carter. Pick you up at 12:40? On Saturday?

Leilani's next text is as fast as it is unfathomable. No reason, just remember that the universe exhales and inhales, you know?

I send her back a thumbs-up. After a stupid amount of time, I send Carter the same emoji. After that, I'm so jittery, I grab my running shoes even before I hear the distant rumble of thunder, and this time, a creek doesn't stop me, so I keep running for miles and miles.