I close my laptop. Maybe I’d better flip through the cantamen instead. I search my room, but the book’s nowhere to be found.
Right. My mother said she was working on a spell. I cross the hall and enter her bedroom where I easily find the codex on her nightstand. When I pick it up, a stack of travel magazines falls to the floor. Along with something else. Staring up at me from in between the pages of an issue on desert oases is a small, red leather book with one word written across the front.
DIARY.
Five block letters centered on the cover saying so little and yet so much. Instinctually, my eyes flicker across the room. My mother’s downstairs “reading,” which means she’s probably fast asleep. Using my powers, I shut and lock her bedroom door.
Clutching the diary to my chest, I pace in front of the bed. A simple snap keeps the journal closed. No lock needs picking for me to invade my mother’s privacy.
My hand rests on top, as if I could absorb her thoughts by osmosis. I can’t. I tell myself I don’t have to open it—to which my self replies, What if she wrote about your father?
A gentle pop and the snap closure releases. The spine cracks so that I’m somewhere in the middle of the diary, but the page is blank. I thumb forward a few pages. Blank. I move a few pages back. Blank. I go to the very first page. Blank. Flipping through the entire diary, I can’t find a single written word.
I slam the book shut. Total rip-off.
Wait, of course. Magic must be concealing the writing. I sit on the end of the bed, open to the beginning, and concentrate. Still blank. I really have no idea what I’m doing, though. If my mother’s thoughts are hidden by magic, she probably used a spell. I know nothing about using spells.
I fling the book toward the headboard, and a page falls out. Great. Now I damaged the stupid thing. But I didn’t. It’s not a blank sheet of diary paper. It’s a photograph. My mother, younger and just as beautiful, planting a kiss on some guy’s cheek. Even though her eyes are closed, she exudes a happiness I’ve never seen. The dude in the photo, though? Him I think I’ve seen. In fact, I know it.
In her closet, I find the white linen pants I wore on my birthday. I slide my fingers into the back pocket. It’s still there: the picture of my mother and her prom date that I pulled from her old photo album. Holding the two photographs side by side, I confirm the guy whose cheeks are attached to my mother’s pursed lips and the guy whose arm is wrapped around my mother’s tiny waist are one and the same.
Both my mother and her beau look slightly older in this new photo. I turn it over, searching for a date or a name or any clue as to who he is or why my mother would have a picture of him stashed in a blank diary.
In the corner, surrounded by a tiny heart, are the letters “K+X.” That’s it. “K” for “Kalyssa,” my mother, and “X” for, appropriately enough, “mystery man.”
As far back as I can remember, my mother’s never gone on a date. She’s not a hermit. Though most of her socializing hours have been spent with either Samara or her Zar, she has gone to parties, to the movies, to the occasional dinner with human friends. But not with a man. If a man was involved, he was always part of a larger group.
Though Samara’s dated lots of men, it never occurred to me before now that my mother’s nonexistent love life was peculiar. Can’t blame me, really. No one wants to see their mom making out with some random stranger. I still don’t, but knowing how I feel when I’m around Nate, who’s not even my boyfriend (cue mixed feelings), it’s a bit sad to think my mother hasn’t felt that, at least not in my lifetime.
Her soft footsteps don’t make much noise as she walks toward the stairs, but sixteen years of listening assures I’m attuned to even her lightest tread. I place the diary and the magazines back on my mother’s nightstand, unlock her door, and app across the hall with the cantamen. I leap onto my bed and slip the two photographs inside my pillowcase.
“Come in,” I say over my drumming heartbeat in response to her gentle knock.
She sits at the foot of my bed. “Feeling okay, kiddo?”
I nod. I don’t know why I lie any more than I know why I don’t ask her about the guy in the photographs.
“Well,” she says, smoothing out my comforter, “I just wanted to say if you were playing host to a swarm of butterflies, they will eventually find themselves a new home. It gets easier.”
So weak is her smile that I doubt she expects me to believe this. I mirror the forced grin right back, and we stay that way, each pretending we aren’t aware the other is full not just of butterflies but of bull—
“Night then.” She eyes the laptop. “Don’t stay up too late doing research. I imagine Ms. Wood will be pretty straightforward.”
*
But she wasn’t, at least not in my dreams. All those random potential wish texts from Henry gave me nightmares. Another reason I should have texted my Zar sisters instead of him. Is that karma or hindsight? Probably both.
On the kitchen table is a note from my mother. “At the beach with Samara.” She hasn’t been all summer. Funny that she waits until my day off to go. Aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be embarrassed to be seen around her?
I traipse around the house, trying to send the butterflies that are ricocheting off my intestines back into their cocoons. Iced coffee, the latest mermaid book, texting with Laila, binge-watching TV shows with pithy HITs, nothing slows down the flapping wings.
The only thing that will is granting Ms. Anne Wood’s wish. Which is why I grab the note card with her address and settle into the couch with my laptop. Having not really used my mind-reading skills with Zoe or Lisa, I have no idea if they’re good enough to rely on. No matter how silly it feels, I need to do some research.
As I flip the paper over to double-check the address, my eye is drawn to the 7.
The 7 that’s not a 7.
The 7 that’s a 1.