Undead Girl Gang(8)
The old boarded-up farmhouse at the edge of town is mottled green with patches of brown where fifty winters have washed away the lead paint. There are a couple of raccoon families that live underneath what’s left of the wraparound porch. The woods that frame Cross Creek back up almost all the way to the house’s unlocked back door.
When Riley and I first started hanging out here, neither of us had any idea what we’d find between the rough-barked oaks and bushy maples that wept milky, obscene-looking sap. We didn’t even know to look out for the thick patches of poison oak until a sticky summer afternoon when we ducked into the woods for shade, our sandals clacking so loud that we startled the birds out of the trees. By the time we limped back to my house, we were both covered in balloon blisters and scaly red rashes up to our knees.
Stretched out on holey beach towels on the floor of my bedroom, covered in calamine lotion and oatmeal up to our thighs, we watched hours and hours of Disney movies, hoping the happy endings would distract from the fire-hot pain and explosions of yellow goop down our legs. As the sun went down, I looked over at Riley and asked why she was still with me when she could go home and recuperate alone. And she laughed and said, “You can’t get rid of me now. We’re blister sisters. Blisters before misters.”
And it wasn’t that funny, but the pain and the grossness and the stupidity of it made us laugh so hard that we couldn’t breathe, and Izzy started banging on the wall to tell us to shut up, and eventually my mom came in with more cold oatmeal and her disapproving head shake.
After that, I found my boots and baggy denim jacket at Goodwill and stared wearing them in all weather, and Riley made sure that she always had on long pants and high-tops. The next time we went to the woods, Riley shimmied up to the top window of the Yarrow house and broke the lock on the back door so we’d have somewhere to go if we ever wanted to wear sandals.
The Yarrow house had been abandoned for years. According to Mrs. Greenway, the town council has been trying to find a way to tear it down forever but can’t get around the fact that it is, technically, a historical landmark.
“This is the problem with Californians,” she’d say in her sharp Michigander accent. “They think anything older than a hundred years is priceless. The Yarrow family hasn’t lived in Cross Creek for fifty years.”
For Riley and me, this meant that there was no chance that the house’s owner would come sniffing around, wondering why the house smelled like raccoon shit and incense.
Most of the rooms inside the farmhouse are wrecked with disuse. The floor droops in the living room. The ceiling sags with water leaking from the bedrooms above. The stairs are missing planks. There’s a basement that I’ve never been brave enough to explore. But the kitchen is solid as long as you aren’t skittish about seeing the occasional mouse or wolf spider. It’s the brightest room in the house since it has a whole window with no boards. The October breeze isn’t strong enough to slip through the hairline fractures snowflaking in the corner of the glass.
It’s hard to believe that it has only been a week since the last time I was here. Riley wanted to drop off a bag of new white candles for a spell that had to be completed on the full moon. The candles are here, lined up carefully in the sagging cabinetry. None of the cabinets have doors, so all our magical inventory is visible.
Chunks of pastel stones, candles in all colors, brown vials of essential oil, herbs drying in bundles, cast-iron pots from Goodwill to contain anything that needed burning, Riley’s entire magic library—from the first Silver Ravenwolf book she ever read, still adorned with the Cross Creek library barcode, to the handwritten spells she bought off Toby at Lucky Thirteen. A glossy blue full moon chart is tacked to the wall where a fridge used to be.
There’s a shelf just for Riley’s fortune-telling supplies—multiple packs of tarot cards and polished gem rune stones and bags of muddy-tasting tea next to a chipped teapot. She loved the instant gratification of divination. Knowing what was coming was half the joy for her. The rush of expectation that makes me want to puke.
There’s a dollar-store broom propped in the corner, its bristles weak and basically useless for anything but swatting moths away. I pick it up and try to clean a square for my backpack. If I come home dirty, Mom will flip out and make me spend the weekend shampooing the carpets.
Mr. and Mrs. Greenway wouldn’t let Riley keep anything related to paganism in their house. They’re good Christian morticians who thought Riley was inviting the devil into their home when she bought a box with the Celtic Green Man painted onto the top. Mrs. Greenway smashed it with a hammer and tossed the splinters into the yard. After that day, we’d started sneaking anything witch-related to the Yarrow house. Xander had helped, carrying loads over on his bicycle since we’d all been too young to drive.
Magic makes my parents vaguely annoyed and uncomfortable; it made the Greenways livid. When Riley had asked her mom about the idea of Jesus as the embodiment of love rather than a literal, physical being, she’d been gifted a slap in the face and some emergency weekday church.
Wicca doesn’t mind if you work in metaphor. Wicca never minded that Riley and I didn’t really know what we were doing. The only vengeful deity in witchcraft is yourself. Do bad shit, get bad shit. Do good, get good. Or be like me and Riley and do almost nothing but giggle over incense and get perfumed smoke in your nose in return.
The floor is still dusty with old chalk circles and sigils. Riley and I have only been here a couple of times since the school year started. The last big spell we worked was the end of last month for the autumnal equinox. We’d spent an entire day running through the woods, picking up the first fallen leaves and acorns off the ground and dragging them inside. The decorative squash Riley had stolen from her parents’ mantel is starting to decay in the corner of the kitchen. I can picture her setting it victoriously in the center of the chalk circle, the sunlight winking against the rose quartz necklace she never went anywhere without. There is nothing flashy about an equinox spell, and there was something about its simplicity that made it feel realer.