Enchantment (27 page)

“Holly, what did you mean when you said 'They were the same person'?”

Holly shook her head. “You'll just think I'm crazy.”

“No I won't. I promise.”

“You did before.”

“When?”

“The first time I saw him.”

She couldn't say Ohlan's name. Just thinking it raised a pang in her stomach.

“When was that? I don't remember.”

“When Mad took me up to show me the spring. Remember, she told you I was making up stories about seeing someone in the water?”

“Oh. Yes, I do remember something about that.”

“Well, I wasn't making it up. It was Ohlan.”

Mom frowned. “What was he doing in the water?”

Holly stared at the chrysanthemums. Was it even worth trying, or would it make everything worse?

Except things could hardly be worse. They already thought she was nuts. She drank the last of her ginger ale and put the glass on the ground.

“That's where he lives.”

Mom blinked, still frowning.

“He's the guardian spirit of the spring. Or was.”

Holly closed her eyes, waiting for the skepticism, the rationalizations. Grief coiled around her heart, squeezing the life out of her.

“Was?” Mom said softly.

“They destroyed the spring. He's gone.”

Her throat closed and she couldn't say any more. She felt tears dripping from her closed eyes and willed them to stop. Her attention narrowed to her breathing; trying to make it even, trying not to lose it again.

“But Ohlan's a real person. We met him.”

Holly nodded, and gave a little laugh. Somehow hearing her mother say those words made her feel a little better.

“He said he works for the Forest Service,” Mom added.

“With. Not for.”

A long moment passed. Holly wiped her face and glanced at Mom, who was staring at the honeysuckle.

“I don't quite understand,” Mom said slowly.

“Doesn't matter any more.”

Suddenly Holly couldn't sit still. She grabbed her glass and took it back to the kitchen, dumped the ice in the sink, then stood there leaning on the counter, struggling not to cry.

She heard Mom come in. After a moment a warm hand pressed between her shoulder blades.

“I know what it's like to lose someone you care about, anyway. I'm sorry, honey.”

With a gasp, Holly burst into tears again. Mom hugged her while she sobbed, slowly shifting her weight from foot to foot in a gentle dance of comfort. Gradually the tears subsided.

“Poor baby,” Mom whispered, stroking her hair.

Holly drew a ragged breath, then disentangled herself from Mom's embrace and turned the water on in the kitchen sink, splashing it on her face. When she straightened up, Mom handed her a clean towel.

“Thanks.” She dried her face, still feeling shaky. “I hate this. I hate crying all the time.”

“It's part of healing, honey.”

“It sucks.”

A rumble of thunder made her glance out the kitchen window. Dark clouds gathered over the mountains, and sheets of rain were starting to fall. The mountains were weeping too.

“Tea time,” Mom said. “Shall I make enough for us both?”

Holly sniffed. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Mom reached for the kettle, filling it from the sink. Holly watched, and realized her forehead was aching. She'd gotten the bandage wet, and it didn't feel good. She had pain pills, but she hadn't taken any today.

She went to her room for the pills. The florist's cards from the arrangements she'd left at the hospital were lying on her desk. She picked them up, thinking about the thank-you notes Madison had offered her.

It would give her something to do.

She fished her favorite purple pen out of her desk drawer and collected the rest of the cards from the flowers. With these and her prescription bottle, she went back to the kitchen.

Mom had set out fancy china teacups on the table in the breakfast nook. Holly put her things down and poured herself a glass of water to take a pill. Mom glanced up from the cutting board, where she was peeling a cucumber.

“Where are those note cards Mad had?” Holly asked.

“In the drawer under the phone.”

Holly got out the cards and sat down to write thank-yous. She started with the grandparents and the school, then a note to Debbie for the flowers from the gang and one to Jen for the plant. Pretty mindless work, and actually soothing. As she wrote out a polite note to Madison's roommates, she started composing an email for Mad in her head.

Sorry for the yell. I still want you to butt out of my life.

She'd have to improve on that, but it would be good to get it done.

Mom brought a steaming teapot to the table, then a plate of little cucumber sandwiches and one of shortbread cookies. Holly paused in her writing while Mom poured the tea. Just as she finished, another thunderclap sounded, and rain started pelting the windows.

Holly picked up her teacup and gazed out at the storm. The mountains were hidden now, shrouded in tears. She still felt sad, but for the first time she had a vague feeling that she might one day feel better.

So she'd honor Ohlan's wishes, and find something to live for. Eventually. Meanwhile, just getting by was the best she could do.

She sniffed and swallowed, too tired to cry any more. She looked up at Mom, who was watching her.

“Thanks,” she said, summoning a feeble smile.

Mom smiled back. They both sipped tea while they watched the rain wash down.

Mom drove Holly to school that week. The doctors didn't want her riding her bike until she got her stitches out. She had a doctor appointment Wednesday and a therapy session—which she hated, though the therapist was better than Dr. Staples—on Friday. She'd dreaded the therapy, assuming that Mom would have told them what she'd said about Ohlan being a guardian spirit, but apparently she hadn't. So the therapy was less awful than it could have been.

She wondered if Mom had talked to Dad about Ohlan. She figured they had discussed it and decided not to bring it up, as if she might forget about it if she wasn't reminded.

She knew she'd never forget. You don't forget your first love. Gradually, though, she became able to think about him or look at his picture without bursting into tears.

She did her homework and her makeup work, for lack of anything better to do. She'd lost interest in her classes and her grades slipped, but her parents didn't comment. Probably they assumed it was because of the days she had missed. She knew better.

One day Mom caught a glimpse of her computer with the wallpaper of Ohlan. She didn't say anything but Holly could tell it upset her. Holly changed her wallpaper after that and only looked at the picture of Ohlan when she wanted to think about him.

The days crept by. For her parents' sake, she tried to concentrate in class, but without much success. She was going through the motions, but her heart wasn't in it.

Her friends complained about her behavior at first, then let it drop. They stopped asking her to go to the movies or football games, because she always said no. She still sat with them at lunch but didn't say much. After a while they quit trying to make her talk.

Except Jen. She was stubborn, and kept dragging Holly into conversations on the slimmest excuses. Holly responded by answering her questions in as few words as possible. It became a tug of war between them. Sometimes it was annoying, but mostly it was amusing. Holly made a game of figuring out how to answer in one word if she could, and Jen responded by making sure she never asked a yes or no question.

At home, the folks left her alone, mostly. As long as she showed up to dinner, answered a couple of questions about school, and did her chores, they didn't bother her. Evenings became her favorite time of day. She would get her homework out of the way quickly, then lie in bed thinking of Ohlan until she fell asleep.

One night she realized she'd forgotten what he'd answered when she asked if he liked candy. That scared her—she didn't want to forget anything about him—so she turned a blank spiral notebook into a journal and began writing down everything she could remember, starting with the day they had met. Looking at the date she'd written on the top of the first page, she realized with surprise that it had been only two months since that day, and almost a month since she'd dived into the spring trying to save Ohlan.

He'd already been gone as long as she'd known him.

Stupid reason to cry. She wiped at the tears and kept writing, determined to record everything.

As she wrote about Madison's impatience when she saw Ohlan in the spring, she was suddenly angry. She stopped and put the pen down, pressing her fingers to her eyes as she tried to master the feeling.

The anger wouldn't go away. It was old; it wasn't just about Ohlan. It was about every time Mad had pooh-poohed her. Imaginary friends, fairies, Santa Claus.

Oh, yeah. Mad was the one who told her Santa Claus wasn't real.

Probably she should just let it go. Mad was gone to college, and they might not see each other much from now on. But the anger was still there; if she didn't want to live with it festering inside her forever, she had to do something.

She opened her desk drawer, looking for the box of thank-you notes that Mad had given her. There was one card left in the bottom of the box. Holly took it out, and the envelope that went with it, and threw the empty box in the trash.

She stared at the script “Thank You” on the front of the card for a minute, then got out the biggest magic marker she owned and wrote a huge “No” over it. Opening the card, she wrote a note to Mad about all the things she was angry about.

Her hand moved faster than she'd thought possible, as if the thoughts were crowding to get out of her head. The strokes of her writing were heavy and dark. She filled the card, turned it over, and filled the back. When she ran out of room there she turned it around and wrote in every available space on the front, all around the big “No Thank You.” Finally out of room, she stopped.

Still angry. Still not satisfied. She read through what she'd written, and realized she was talking about incidents—symptoms—not the core of the problem.

So what was the core of the problem? What was it that made her so angry at her sister?

She frowned at the card and the pens lying on her desk. Madison wasn't a bad person. She knew that objectively, but right now she couldn't stand the thought of being in a room with her. It was as if Madison negated everything she loved. Didn't believe in any of it.

Mad didn't believe in her.

Holly's eyes began to sting and an ache filled her eye sockets. She was all too used to the signs, so she went to her bed and grabbed a tissue before lying down. Tears wouldn't come, though. She lay there thinking about Mad, trying to remember some time when her sister had validated her instead of putting her down.

She'd brought the note cards. That was trying to be nice, but then she'd turned around and criticized Holly for not using them right away.

Holly closed her eyes. She didn't like any of her choices: pretend everything was fine and keep on aching inside, confront Mad and probably have a huge fight, cut Mad out of her life as much as she could. That would hurt Mom and Dad, but it was the least awful choice as far as she could see.

Her stomach hurt. She hated this stuff. The more she thought about it, the more she knew she couldn't just ignore it.

If Ohlan had been alive, she would have asked him for help. She tried to imagine what he would say. Probably he'd say she should forgive Madison, because she was family. That love was the best cure for the problem. Love was his cure for everything.

Now the tears came. She couldn't have Ohlan's love, so why should she bother to give love to anyone else?

Selfish, Holly. Ohlan was never selfish.

Sniffing, she sat up and went back to the desk. She read the note again, feeling a vicious satisfaction in imagining Madison's reaction. Then she dropped it in the wastebasket, opened her laptop, and spent half an hour composing a careful email.

Madison:

Ohlan was real. I know you didn't believe it, but it's true. Ask the folks.

I need you to respect what I believe in, at least enough that you don't deny it to my face. I'll try to do the same for you.

—Holly

She stared at it, trying to think of something more to say. Couldn't. As she read the words over and over, the tears finally came. She hit “send” and flung herself back on the bed.

Her cell phone startled her awake. She rolled over and groped for it on her nightstand. The face lit up as she opened it, blasting her night vision.

“H'lo?”

“Holly, it's Madison.”

Holly inhaled and discovered her nose was stuffed up. “Just a minute.”

She put down the phone to blow her nose, giving herself time to wake up. She didn't really want to talk to Mad right now. Maybe she'd ask to call back later.

“Sorry about that,” she said into the phone. “I was asleep.”

“Well, I'm sorry I woke you, but I got your email and I didn't want to answer online. You know how email gets misinterpreted sometimes.”

Great. She was winding up for a fight. Holly swallowed, glancing at the clock on her nightstand. It wasn't that late—only 9:30.

“Sure,” she said, bracing herself. Whatever Mad said, she was determined not to get angry. She'd stick to love, like Ohlan.

“I owe you an apology, Holly. I wanted to explain why.”

Apology?

“OK,” she said slowly. “Why?”

Mad hesitated for a second. “I saw the guy in the spring.”

Holly blinked, confused. “Who?”

“Your guy. Ohlan. I saw him that first day.”

Holly's stomach dropped out from under her. “What?” she whispered.

“I'm sorry, Holly. I thought he was some weirdo, that he would hurt you. I just wanted to get you out of there.”