“Oh yeah. Big-time. You should come to my house at Halloween. I spend, like, weeks turning our front yard into a psychedelic graveyard filled with ghosts and zombies.”
“Nice!”
Ridley took another sip of her drink and set it down slowly. What should she do now? After the big… whatever-that-was with the two covens and Iris and Penelope at lunch, Greta had pulled Ridley aside and given her explicit instructions: to accept Penelope’s offer to go out for coffee, find out if she was, in fact a witch, and—if so—invite her to join their coven. Greta was convinced that Div was trying to recruit Iris and Penelope to her coven, and she wanted to get there first. Ridley knew that Greta didn’t approve of Div’s form of magic, and that she wanted all witches to practice her way, which was 100 percent Callixta. Natural, creative, nurturing. Love and light.
But sometimes, Ridley wished they’d stop it with their rivalry. Honestly, couldn’t they just put their differences aside and help each other—support each other?
Ridley watched Penelope as she bent down and offered a piece of her blueberry scone to Socrates. So Penelope was a witch. Or she was probably a witch… the only “evidence” they had so far was Div’s apparent belief that she was one of them. But she could be. Was that why Ridley had been drawn to her yesterday in history? Had Ridley’s inner witchness sensed Penelope’s inner witchness? Was that even possible?
She and Binx and Greta had not found each other via witchness radar. Instead, one evening last September, Ridley had spotted a couple of bullies in the park, beating up on a smaller kid. The park appeared to be deserted, so she’d hidden behind the swing set and brandished Paganini, to stop them. But then she’d spotted Binx behind the slides, doing the same with a video-game console (Kricketune) and Greta behind the monkey bars with a fountain pen (Flora). Afterward, the three witches had carefully, tentatively walked up to each other in the middle of the park, and Greta had introduced herself and invited Binx and Ridley to come to her house for a pot of rose-hip tea and carrot muffins, then burst into (happy) tears and hugged them both.
Thankfully, no one needed magical rescuing on the Starbucks patio at the moment. So how was Ridley going to suss out if Penelope was a witch or not?
“Colter seems nice,” Ridley blurted out. Smooth. She was supposed to steer the conversation toward witches, not boyfriends.
Penelope nodded and touched something on her right wrist peeking out from under her sleeve; it was a silver charm bracelet with a single heart charm.
“He’s super-nice. His family’s nice, too.”
“That’s nice.” Hadn’t Penelope just said that? Dumb. “Soooo… what are they like?”
“Mr. Jessup’s a real-estate developer. Dr. Jessup’s a pediatrician. Colter’s got an older brother, Hunter, who’s at the university, and two little sisters, Cassie and Caitlin. They’re twins, fourth grade, and they’re way into rainbow hair and making music videos of themselves.” Penelope grinned and added, “They’re kind of obsessed with my YouTube channel, even though their mom said they can’t wear makeup until they’re in middle school.”
“Cute.”
“I know. The whole family’s super-close. I wish my family was like that. I mean, don’t get me wrong! My parents are great. But my dad’s always traveling for his work, and my mom has a stressful job, too—she has her own PR firm—so we don’t do a lot of stuff together. Plus, I wish I had a sister or brother. Do you have any? Sisters or brothers, I mean?”
“I have a little sister. Harmony. She’s four, almost five. And, um…”
Ridley hesitated, wondering if she should mention Daniel. Nope, bad idea. She’d never even told Binx, or Greta, or anyone else in Sorrow Point. She didn’t want to jeopardize her true identity. More than that, it was too hard to talk about, and she’d come to believe that if you didn’t bring up certain matters, or think about them even, then you could make them go away.
But. There was something about Penelope. A deep, warm, sunshiny kindness. For the first time in a long time, Ridley found herself wanting to connect, to be vulnerable, to reveal herself to another person.
She dropped her gaze. “I have an older brother. I mean, I had.”
“Had?”
“He, um, died. When I was in eighth grade.”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!”
Penelope jumped to her feet, rushed to Ridley’s side, and wrapped her arms around her in a fierce hug. Such a tidal wave of emotions hit Ridley—relief, gratitude, grief, sorrow—that she felt as though she might pass out.
And from somewhere within the tidal wave, a small, shimmering voice rose up.
“I’m a witch,” she whispered.
Penelope didn’t let go. “So am I,” she whispered back.
The two of them stayed like that for a long time, holding each other, not saying a word. There would be plenty of time for conversations later. And Ridley hadn’t told Penelope all her secrets. It was enough to come out as one thing at a time. For right now, the moment was exactly right—not in a happy way or a romantic way, but in a necessary way. A new beginning.
Ridley began to cry. Penelope hugged her harder.
Under the table, Socrates leaned against the girls’ legs with a quiet sigh.
It was almost six o’clock by the time Ridley said goodbye to Penelope and Socrates at the intersection of Lilac Street and Coyote Drive, just inside the Seabreeze development. The two girls promised to have lunch together tomorrow, just the two of them, and to meet up over the weekend, too.
Ridley was dizzy with wonder from their talk… and also exhausted, spent, weak. She wanted to go home and curl up in bed and sleep for a month. She’d told Penelope about Daniel. They’d revealed their witch identities to each other. They’d told each other about their discovery moments (Ridley’s at age ten, when she’d wished for long, beautiful hair and it had spontaneously happened;
