But my fuse is shorter than it was last week, and Caleb said three dead girls, which, by my count, makes this more personal.
My boot shoots out, connecting with the bottom rung of Caleb’s stool with enough force to knock it out from under him. Arms waving in panic, he topples over into Aniyah and some people who were walking behind her. Textbooks clatter to the floor with gunshot-loud bangs. Aniyah’s legs waggle in the air, her backpack holding her to the ground like a felled turtle. Caleb is holding his face and screaming curse words into his palms. There’s no blood. For a second, that bums me out. At least he’s stopped smiling.
I turn and see Mr. Cavanagh hanging up the phone on the wall. He jerks his head toward the door. “Not okay, Mila. They’re expecting you in the office.”
I leave the classroom picturing Cavanagh’s disapproving frown lines filtered through creek water. Riley had him for fifth-period chem.
“Miss Flores?” The secretary stops me as I reach for Ms. Chu’s doorknob. “You’re here to see Dr. Miller.”
I pause, turning around. There’s a second door in the office that I’ve never paid any attention to. It’s not as fancy as Ms. Chu’s frosted glass with her name etched into it. The one on the other side of the room is the same metal door as the ones leading to the classrooms, painted institutional cream. The sign to the right of it says: Dr. Miller, school psychologist.
I bite my lip hard and dig my nails into my palms. I should have seen this coming.
I look back at the secretary. Her eyes are pitying and liquidy.
Oh God. She knows.
Part of me is really tired of being pitied. But part of me doesn’t feel like I’ve been pitied enough. I mean, my mom has been accusing me of being psychotic this week because I haven’t been able to instantly bounce back after my best friend died. The secretary—Ms. Pine, if her nameplate is to be believed—is close to my mom’s age, but her brown skin is papery and her curls are starting to fade to gray. She looks like she’s going to be someone’s super-loving grandma someday. I bet if she wouldn’t be immediately fired for inappropriate conduct, she would totally give me a hug right now.
No one has hugged me since Riley died.
But Ms. Pine doesn’t know that I’m supposed to be hard as nails. When you earn a reputation as a grumpy witch, there are no tender hugs coming your way, no matter how sorry people feel for you. You don’t suddenly get to be squishy when bad shit happens.
“Go on in, sweetheart,” Ms. Pine says. She sounds so sincere that I can’t even be mad at her for being part of this nightmare.
I step into Dr. Miller’s office. One step is about all I can take because it’s a glorified closet. Actually, it might have been a real closet. It has no windows.
All four walls are painted lavender. Directly across from me is a giant vinyl sticker that reads: Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to DANCE IN THE RAIN!
The font is very aggressive.
Dr. Miller is a thin white woman with fluffy blond hair like goose feathers. There’s a pad of paper, a plain red folder, and a cup of steaming tea in front of her. Her computer is turned off.
Was she just sitting here, staring at the door, waiting for me to show up? That is terrifying.
“Camila Flores?” she asks with a slight tilt to her head. She has a neck like an ostrich.
“I go by Mila,” I say. I realize she’s waiting for me to close the door behind me. I do, and it thunks into place. The walls reverberate, making the vinyl words wiggle.
“Please have a seat.” She points at the only other chair in the room, which happens to be directly next to my leg. It’s a standard school chair—maroon plastic, the same as in most of the classrooms. It doesn’t go with the lavender walls at all. I’m starting to think that Fairmont doesn’t spend a lot on the school psychologist. Does Ms. Chu even know that this isn’t a broom closet?
“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.