Undead Girl Gang(6)

“I’m Dr. Miller,” says Dr. Miller. “I’m so glad you could take the time to meet with me today.”

“Uh huh,” I say, hooking my boots around my chair legs. The metal is cool through the fabric of my jeans. “I’m sixteen. I pretty much go wherever they tell me to.”

She smiles at me tightly. I recognize the look. It’s very similar to the way Mrs. Greenway looks at me. It’s the “Oh no, you think you’re funny and I’m a humorless old snatch” look. There goes any chance I had at making a new middle-aged psychologist friend.

“I’ve been wanting to speak with you for a few days now,” she says, possibly also sensing that we aren’t going to be bosom friends. “I understand that you were very close to Riley Greenway. This must be an awfully hard time for you.”

I wonder what it would be like if I said no. Like “Nah, dog, my bff is dead but otherwise it’s been a super-chill week.” That seems needlessly combative, so instead I say, “Yes. It’s hard.”

She glances inside her red folder. I spy last year’s yearbook picture—the one with the uneven eyeliner and bulky Disneyland sweatshirt—paper-clipped to the corner of what I can only assume is my permanent record. Shouldn’t that be digital? Is Dr. Miller a Luddite?

“You only took two days off from school?” She gives me an exaggerated frowny face as though doing her best to actually become an emoji. “That’s not long at all. Do you feel ready to be back?”

“Again,” I say, slowly because I’m starting to think this woman might be even dumber than Dayton Nesseth, God rest her soul, “I’m sixteen? My parents told me to come back today, so I’m back. Kind of like ‘Ready or not, here I am.’”

I’m actually here because my walking out of the memorial service did not go unnoticed by my mom. She decided that disrespecting the dead—her words—was a sign that I was healed enough to learn. I think she’s actually punishing me for telling Izzy and Nora that if they kept trying to talk to me, I’d curse their tongues to rot out of their skulls.

“Right,” she says, in a way that makes me think she’s not listening. She’s peeking inside the folder again. I wonder if my life is really so complicated that she needs a cheat sheet. “Do you still believe that you’re a witch?”

People say witch the same way they’d say fairy princess. Like it’s a game that Riley and I should have outgrown. But to Riley it was a religion. And to me . . . well, I don’t know. Maybe it was make-believe?

Wicca came to me through Riley’s excited whispers shortly after I moved to Cross Creek. Choosing a new religion seemed so grown up, so definitive. I was eleven and had never realized that you could choose to be different from your family. We could be different and powerful. Which does sound a little like make-believe now, but Riley made me believe it in one sentence: “We’re gonna do great things together.”

So I went from elementary school on the coast, where I was mostly known for reading in class and making Post-it origami, to middle school in Cross Creek, where I was Riley’s friend and a witch. I don’t know if I’m ready to be either.

Is it possible to be a pagan agnostic? I’m open to the idea that there are more things in heaven and earth than I’ve dreamed of and all. I just don’t know if I’ll do magic now that Riley’s gone. The whole witch thing was her deal. She’s the one who started reading books on Wicca and making supply lists for spells. I was kind of along for the ride, mostly for the incense and crafting part of things. Riley never had the patience to join me in making jewelry, so we switched to spells.

Plus, when people know you spend your free time hanging out at Lucky Thirteen, the Wiccan store downtown, they tend to leave you alone. And I like anything that encourages people to give me a wide berth.

We’d mostly done spells for minor acts of vengeance—bumps to test scores, zits on the chins of people who talked shit in the halls, making sure that show choir never won a single competition, not that they needed our help there. Sometimes, we messed around with love charms—talismans that Toby, the owner of Lucky Thirteen, swore increased attractiveness or lust. We spent most of sophomore year trying to get crushes to reveal themselves, which worked in that Riley had a series of boyfriends and I quietly pined for Xander, the same way I had been doing since seventh grade, when I moved to Cross Creek.

I’ve never seen magic really work. But, as Riley would point out, I’ve never seen it not work. She was always vocally against my confirmation bias.

I don’t feel like I owe this explanation to Dr. Miller, especially since someone has fed her private information about me. I don’t think that’s how therapy is supposed to work. I wonder who spilled my secrets to her. My parents? Xander? I guess it was common knowledge that Riley and I hung out at Lucky Thirteen. Anyone could have mentioned this to the school psych.

“Witch is the word for a follower of Wicca,” I say airily. “Although, if you were going to be politically correct, you’d say wix. It’s gender-neutral.”

She picks up a pen and makes a note on her pad. Oh my God, she literally writes down wix and nothing else. When she’s done, she looks up at me again, her long neck stretched threateningly forward. “Do you believe that you’re capable of magic?”

“That question infringes on my religious freedom.”