Not just the part about being Ava’s cousin. All of it.
Pauper to princess.
Orphan to heiress.
Girl shuttled from foster family to foster family only to discover—gasp!—that she had a big warm family of her own waiting just around the corner.
It was a huge, beautiful bubble, yes. It would be awful to reach out for such a bubble only to have someone pop it. But Ava wasn’t going to pop it!
What piece of the puzzle had Ava left out? What would it take to get Tally to view the situation from a fresh perspective?
Of the three Blok sisters, Tally was closest to Darya. Could Darya be the way in?
“My sisters think I don’t see them,” she said, earning her another annoyed glance from Tally. “Especially Darya. Darya thinks I’m like, ‘La la la, nothing’s wrong with Darya,’ but there is something wrong with her.”
“Oh yeah? What?”
“Not wrong,” Ava clarified. “Different. Darya changed after her Wishing Day, and you noticed it too. I know you did. You two had a fight right before her Wishing Day, and then afterward, you didn’t talk to each other for like a week.”
“More like two weeks,” Tally muttered.
“Yes! Good!” Ava said. “I mean, not good, but . . .” She linked her arms behind her back, grasping her wrists and pulling hard. “Listen, sometimes the truth is hard to see. I get that.”
“The truth?” Tally said. “There’s no such thing as the truth.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe there are just different versions, and if you look at them the right way . . .”
“The pieces will magically fall into place?”
Ava reddened. “Maybe.”
“See, that’s the thing, Ava. You can’t account for things using magic. Want to know why?”
“No, and I’m not—”
“You said magic is ‘weird.’ Your word. And by weird, you meant that magic doesn’t have rules.” Tally pushed her hand through her hair. “If magic doesn’t have rules, you’re basically saying it’s a free-for-all. Can’t explain something that doesn’t fit your worldview? Blame it on magic! Problem solved!”
“I never said there weren’t rules,” Ava protested.
“You claim we’re cousins. You claim there’s magic involved. But you’re conveniently skipping over something.”
“What?”
Tally searched Ava’s expression, and for a microsecond, Ava saw how vulnerable Tally was. Tally did want to be part of Ava’s family, but there was more to her longing than that. Like everyone in the whole wide world, Tally wanted the gift of knowing who she was.
Then Tally’s mask slipped back into place, flinty-eyed and stoic. “You can’t use magic to explain things because magic isn’t real.”
Ava scowled. Magic was impossible to pin down, yes. That didn’t mean it wasn’t real.
Tally started walking. They were still on the path that would take them to the lake, but Ava took care not to point that out. Instead, she matched Tally’s pace, or tried to. Tally was taller than Ava, and her stride was longer. Ava couldn’t keep up without adding a jog here and there between steps.
“Last year, after Darya’s Wishing Day, did she tell you any of her wishes?” Ava asked.
Tally didn’t answer.
“Did she tell you her impossible wish?”
Tally snorted. “If a wish is impossible, then by definition . . .”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ava thought. “She didn’t tell me, either,” she said, panting. “Not at first. I had to bug her and bug her and bug her.”
“Fascinating,” Tally said. Her arms swung at her sides, and her sneakers slapped the ground.
Sweat pooled at the back of Ava’s neck as she took hop-skips to keep up. “Her wish was about your mom,” she said, forcing the words out.
Pwoomf. Flesh smacked flesh as Tally came to a dead stop. Ava bounced backward, stumbled, and landed on her tailbone. “Ow!”
Tally stared down at her. “Darya made a wish about my mom?”
Ava extended her hand. “Are you going to help me up?”
“What do you mean she made a wish about my mom? What did she wish for?”
Ava sighed. She lowered her hand. “She wished to know the truth about Emily. All of it. Like, was there an actual Emily who lived in Willow Hill, even though no one remembers her? Did she grow up to be your mom? And, of course . . .”
“Go on.”
Ava hated the next part. She would always hate the next part. “Well, if my mom did make Emily disappear . . . where did she disappear to?”
Tally jammed her hands in her pockets. She toed the ground of the footpath. “Not that I’m necessarily going to believe you, given that every word that comes out of your mouth is impossible,” she finally said. “But what did Darya find out?”
This was the tricky part, as Darya’s wish hadn’t exactly been granted.
Yet.
“Ava? What’s wrong, no answer?”
Ava slowly got to her feet, buying herself time. She could catch glimpses of the lake when the breeze blew certain tree branches certain ways, and the effect felt magical. Maybe it was magical, as if the world were giving her tiny windows—there and then gone—through which she could see her hoped-for future.
She reached a decision and continued walking forward. “Just come with me. You can see for yourself.”
Tally complied, though grumpily. “If this is some wild goose chase . . . if this is some dumb ‘Let’s Play Pretend’ game . . .”
Ava didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, as they walked the last quarter of a mile to the lake, Ava doled out bits and pieces of her theory with Tally. She wanted to keep Tally engaged. She needed to keep Tally engaged. But if Ava said too much, or the wrong thing, Tally might throw her hands in the hair, spin on her heel, and stalk off.
That would be bad. Ava would be left without a spotter.
“My mom’s version of the story,” said Ava, “is that my mom and your mom—”
“If it’s my mom.”
“For the sake of argument, let’s just assume—”
“Nothing. Let’s assume nothing.”
Ava had no bargaining power, so fine. She started over. “According to my mom, she and her best friend, Emily”—she gave Tally a loaded look—“were going to make their wishes together, because their Wishing Days fell on the same day.”
Tally snorted.
