I get a tight feeling in my chest and brace myself against the wall. Something feels different today. Even Rose felt it.
I can hear Lula shout and Maks press down on his horn. A cold breeze blows through the window and knocks a photo off my altar. It’s a picture of Aunt Rosaria. In it, Aunt Ro is alive and smiling. Her dress is as blue as the summer sky and in her arms is a crying baby. It was a few days after I was born, and my parents chose her as the godmother for my Birth Rites. It’s how I want to think of her. Not dead. Not rotting. I put the picture back in place beside my turquoise prex—a bruja’s rosary—and a candle that’s been burned to a tiny stub and not replaced for months.
Something inside of me aches. “I miss you. Mom’s getting crazier every day without you.”
I put on jeans and a plain gray T-shirt and fasten my watch. I gather my hair in a long ponytail. I stare at myself in the mirror. Sometimes I’m afraid I’m going to wake up and my magic is going to show. It shows on Lula. It makes her radiant, breathtaking. She walks with her head tilted to the sky, and a knowing smirk on her face because she can feel heads turning.
I’m not jealous or anything. Lula’s the beauty in the family, and I’m okay with that. Rose is the special one, and I’m okay with that too. I’m not sure what I am yet, but I’m certain I wasn’t born to be a bruja.
I grab my backpack and double-check that everything I need is in there. Another breeze knocks Aunt Ro’s photo from my altar again, kicking up the dust. I’ll have to clean it when I get home. Rose’s altar has a picture of our father and a statue of La Estrella, Lady of Hope and All the World’s Brightness. Lula’s altar is the only clean part of her bedroom. It’s a shrine to La Ola, Lady of the Seas and Changing Tides. Lula’s got a prex made of every kind of stone, and she has all kinds of feathers and candles for all the moon cycles. She mostly chants her rezos for good grades and for Maks to stop a lot of goals.
I don’t ask for anything. Not anymore.
I place a candle on top of Aunt Ro’s photo, so it can’t be blown off again. Then I go to shut the window but find it isn’t open.
A third breeze.
I feel something inside of me stir, and I have to hold my breath to reel it back in. It’s my guilt. The thing I’ve kept hidden from my family—the thing that makes me a liar every single day. I know the reason Lula’s canto to bring forth my powers didn’t work. Lula thinks my powers are sleeping.
She’s wrong.
I can feel the secrets pushing against my veins, and in turn, I push right back—hiding them deep inside, where I hope one day even I won’t be able to find them.
3
Hear me, La Mama, ruler of the sun,
levanta a la bruja, her power undone.
—Waking Canto, Book of Cantos
“You okay?” Lula turns in the passenger seat of Maks’s car.
I nod. If I tell Lula that a photo of our dead aunt jumped off my altar by an invisible force, she’d just make us go investigate, light some sage, and then we’d really be late for school. Priorities. Plus, we’d have to come up with some elaborate lie for Maks. Or maybe not.
“Hey, gorgeous.” Maks turns to Lula. “I like your new sweater.”
I hit my head against the window in the backseat. Lula takes in his compliment with kissy noises, then holds his free hand as he pulls out of the driveway. We wave good-bye to Rose as she boards her bus to school.
Maks is okay. Though, he is superclueless. He’s been dating my sister for a year, and when he drops her off at her Circle meetings, he just thinks she’s doing yoga. If he had any sense, he’d feel how amazing my sister is, that he’s not worthy of her.
Lula fawns over him—his dark hair, his new shirt, the irreverent shape of his earlobes. My own sister! I miss the days when we were kids, before magic became our sole focus, before my dad vanished and took away my mother’s happiness, before Lula discovered she liked kissing beautiful boys because she was beautiful too.
“Someone has a b-day coming up,” Maks says. His bright-blue eyes find mine in the rearview mirror.
“They do say the whole word now,” I say. His smile is contagious. “You’re not texting.”
He laughs, making a sharp turn at the light. Who gave this boy his license?
“Alex!” Lula snaps.
Lula thinks I’m too cold. I like to think I’m the right amount of cold. That way, no one can hurt me. If Lula were more like me, she wouldn’t have such a large collection of heartbreaks.
I just have the two.
Then Maks slams on the brakes. Tires screech and Lula screams. My head slams into the back of the driver’s seat. Pain flares down my neck. Car horns blare and people shout. There’s the smack of hands on the bright red of Maks’s car and pain pulsing through my skull.
I hear my name called from a distance. A woman’s voice I haven’t heard in a long, long time.
“Alex, look at me,” Lula says, louder than the voice in my head.
My head feels heavy when I lean back. I squint against the pain behind my eyes. Maks is already out the door. Cool fall air carries impossible smells: deep-red blood and the smoke of just-blown-out candles from my nightmare.
At the crosswalk, Maks shoves someone. The guy we almost hit is hidden under a blue hoodie. He points a finger in Maks’s face. Maks puffs up his chest, but the guy in the hoodie is bigger, more muscular, and doesn’t look like someone easily intimidated.
Lula climbs into the backseat and holds up my chin.
“Focus on me,” she says, snapping her finger in front of my face.
I blink a few times, then settle my eyes on her gray ones. “My neck hurts.”
In seconds, she goes from my unruly sister to the healer she was born to be. Mom says Lula’s power comes from the goodness of wanting to do good. Lula presses a hand on my neck. Her warmth spreads through me like sunshine. I see her and me—the thing that links us together—beyond this world and into the next.
And then my vision is clear and she says, “Better?”
Better than ever. I feel like I’ve been hit with adrenaline. Until I see Lula’s face. “Oh, Lula…”
A bruise blooms on her smooth forehead. She presses her hand on it. “Recoil. You know that. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” I hate the recoil, the unyielding give-and-take of the universe. My sister can heal, but it comes at a price. Mom tells her to save it. Nicks and scratches heal easy enough. But Lula doesn’t listen.
“Let me worry about me.”
“But look at you!” I try to take her face in my hands, but she pulls away from me. The green spot on her forehead is darkening.
“This is what we do, Ale.” Ah-ley. My family nickname. “I know sometimes it’s scary. But we can’t just turn our backs on who we are.”
I scoff. “Right, and end up like Aunt Ro and Mama Juanita and Dad. Our lives are cursed. Magic is the problem.”
Lula looks down at her lap. “Don’t say things like that.”