Book of Shadows

CHAPTER 20 Broken

The night surrounded Bree and me in the comfy interior of her car. Matt's house, where the circle would be, was about ten miles out of town. As soon as Bree picked me up, I sensed that she had a lot on her mind. So did I. After my dream last night I was actually relieved to see her safe and sound and, apart from her quietness, normal.

I thought about the thousands of hours we had spent in cars with each other, first with our parents or Bree's older brother, Ty, driving us, then, for the past year, driving ourselves. We'd had some of our best talks in cars, when it was just the two of us. It felt different tonight.

"Why didn't you tell me about the spell you put on Robbie?" Bree asked.

"I put a spell on the potion, not on Robbie," I clarified. "And I didn't tell anyone. I thought the whole thing was pointless. I was sure it wasn't going to work, and I didn't want to be embarrassed."

"Do you really believe that it worked?" she asked. Her dark eyes were on the road ahead, and Breezy's high beams cut through the night.

"I… I guess so," I said. "I mean, mostly because I can't think of what else could have done it. On Monday he had awful skin; now he looks great. I don't know what else to think."

"Do you think you're a blood witch?" she asked. I was starting to feel interrogated.

I laughed to relieve the tension. "Oh, please. Yeah, that's it. I'm a blood witch. Have you seen Sean and Mary Grace lately? They just bought a new pentacle to hang over out living-room mantelpiece."

Bree was silent. I felt rough waves of tension and anger coming from her but couldn't pinpoint their source.

"What?" I said. "Bree, what are you thinking?"

"I don't know what to think," she said, and I noticed her knuckles were white on the leather-wrapped steering wheel. To my surprise, she pulled her car over onto the wide shoulder of Wheeler Road. She turned off the engine and shifter in her seat to look at me.

"I'm having trouble believing how two-faced you are."

I stared at her.

"You say you don't like Cal. It's okay for me to go after Cal. But the two of you are always talking, staring at each other like there's nobody else around."

I opened my mouth to reply, but she went on.

"He never looks at me like that," she added quietly, and the hurt in her face was plain."I just don't get you," she went on. "You won't come to circles, but then you do spells behind everyone's back! Do you think you're better than we are? Do you think you're so special?"

Shock made me tongue-tied. "I'm coming to the circle tonight," I said. "And you know exactly why I didn't come for a couple of weeks—you know how freaked my parents were. That spell was just experimenting, playing. I had no idea how it would turn out."

"You experimented by doing something to Robbie?" Bree asked.

"Yes, I did! And that was wrong!" I practically shouted. "But I made him look a million times better than he did before. Why is that such a crime? Why isn't that a favor?"

We sat there in silence, Bree's anger coming off her in rays.

"Look," I said after a minute. "Even though it turned out well for him, I know I shouldn't have done the spell on Robbie. Cal said it wasn't allowed, and I understand why. It was a stupid mistake," I went on. "I've been confused and freaked out, and I just… I just wanted to… to know."

"Know what?" she spat.

"If I'm… special. If I have some special gift."

She looked out the window, silent.

"I mean, I see people's auras. Jesus, Bree, I healed Robbie's skin! Don't you think that's a big thing?"

She shook her head, clenching her teeth. "You are out of your mind," she muttered.

This was not the Bree I knew. "What is it, Bree?" I asked, trying not to burst into angry tears. "Why are you so mad at me?"

She shrugged abruptly. "I feel like you're not being honest with me," she said, looking out the window again. "It's like I don't even know you anymore."

I didn't know what to say. "Bree, I told you before. I think you and Cal would be a good couple. I'm not flirting with him. I never call him. I never sit next to him."

"You don't need to. He always does those things to you," she said. "But why?"

"Because he wants me to be a witch."

"And why is that?" Bree asked. "He could care less if Robbie or I became witches. Why is he playing guessing games with you, carrying you into pools, telling you that you have a gift for this? Why are you doing spells? You're not even an official coven student, much less a witch."

"I don't know," I answered in frustration. "It's like something seems to be… waking up inside me. Something I didn't know was there. And I want to understand what it is… what I am."

Bree was quiet for several minutes. In the dark small sounds came to me: the faint ticking of my watch, Bree's breathing, the clicks of Breezy's metal as the car cooled. There was a black shadow rolling toward me, toward the car, and instinctively I braced myself. Then it hit.

"I don't want you to come tonight," Bree said.

I felt my throat close.

Bree picked a piece of lint off her silky blue pants and examined her fingernails. "I thought I wanted us to do this together;" she said. "But I was wrong. What I really want is for Wicca to be something I do. I'm the one who's gone to every circle. I'm the one who found Practical Magick. I want Wicca to be for me and Cal. With you around, he gets distracted. Especially since you made it look like you can do spells. I don't know how you really did it. But it's all Cal can talk about."

"I don't believe this," I whispered. "Jesus, Bree! Are you choosing Cal over me? Over our friendship?" Hot tears welled up in my eyes. Angrily I dashed them away, refusing to cry in front of her.

Bree seemed less upset than I was. "You would do the same thing if you loved Cal," she informed me.

"Bullshit!" I yelled as she started the car again. "That's bullshit! I wouldn't."

Bree made a U-turn in the middle of Wheeler Road.

"You know, you're going to realize how stupid you're being," I said bitterly. "When it comes to guys, you have the attention span of a gnat. Cal is just another in a long line. When you get tired of him and dump him, you'll miss me. And I won't be there."

This idea seemed to make Bree pause. Then she nodded firmly. "You'll get over it," she said. "After Cal and I are really going out and everything calms down, it'll be a whole different picture."

I stared at her."You are delusional," I said hotly."Where are we going?"

"I'm taking you home."

"To hell with that," I said, popping open my door. Bree, startled, slammed on the brakes, and I lurched forward, almost whacking my head on the dashboard. Quickly I un-snapped my seat belt and jumped out onto the road. "Thanks for the lift, Bree." I slammed the door as hard as I could. Bree roared off, spinning a fast doughnut twenty yards down, then whizzing past me again on her way to Matt's. I stood alone by the side of the road, shaking with anger and hurt.

In the eleven years of best friendship that Bree and I'd gone through, we'd had our ups and downs. In first grade she'd had three chocolate cookies in her lunch, and I'd had two Fig Newtons. She rejected my offer of my Fig Newtons for her chocolate cookies, so I had just reached out and snatched them, cramming them into my mouth. I don't know who had been more appalled, me or her. We hadn't spoken for a whole, agonizing week but finally made up when I presented her with six sheets of handmade stationery, each of which I had monogrammed with a B in colored pencils.

In sixth grade she had wanted to cheat on my math test, and I had said no. We didn't speak for two days. She cheated off of Robbie's test, and it was never mentioned again.

Last year, in tenth grade, we'd gotten into our worst fight ever, over whether photography counted as a valid art form or whether any idiot with a camera could capture a stunning image every once in a while. I won't tell who took what position, but I will say it culminated in a horrible, screaming fight in my backyard until my mom came out and shouted at us to stop.

That time we didn't speak for two and a half weeks, until we finally each signed a document saying that on this issue, we would agree to disagree. I still have my copy of our promise.

It was cold. I zipped my jacket up to my chin and pulled up the hood. I started walking toward Matt's house but then realized that it was too far away. The tears began to run down my face, and I couldn't stop them. Why was Bree doing this to me? In frustration, I turned around and started the long walk home.

The sharp-edged moon was so close, I could see its craters. I listened to the sounds of the night insects, animals, birds. My eyes and ears became still more attuned, and I let them. I could make out insects on trees twenty feet away in the darkness. I saw birds' nests high on branches with the soft, rounded heads of sleeping birds visible at the edge. I became aware of the fast-paced fluttery thumping of the baby birds' hearts in syncopated rhythm with the much slower, heavier thud of my own.

I turned the volume of my senses down. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the tears kept coming.

I didn't see how Bree and I would ever recover from this, and I cried about that. I cried because I knew this meant she and Cal would really get together; she would make it happen. And I really cried, my stomach hurting, because I thought this meant I had to close all the doors inside me that had so recently opened.