Hunger pains reminded me that I’d slept past dinner, and I needed to use the restroom. I headed out to the hallway to take care of the most urgent concern first and then headed downstairs, expecting to see Grandma either in the living room knitting or in the kitchen. She was sitting by her chair, her knitting needles clinking together as she created a blanket in yellow and orange.
Mom and Max were going back to Great Falls to look for a place to live while they waited for Mom to get that job. They’d made the announcement as we were eating breakfast. All of us except for Gray, that is. She’d been up until the wee hours of the morning listening to music, so chances were she’d be sleeping all day. Max had nailed her window shut while I was sleeping the night before, so there was no way she was getting back out that way. I prayed he came up with no reason to do the same to mine since that was the way Sam had gotten in. Once they moved, I got the impression Grandma wouldn’t mind if he came in the front door and announced to her that he was go
I hadn’t been standing in the forest holding the giant ruby for long when I heard footsteps coming from the direction I’d just come from. I knew it wasn’t Horace. He wouldn’t dare follow me home, but since no one else had been there when I left, so I didn’t know who it was until Joshua appeared on the path in front of me.“Hi,” I s
Grandma was cooking when I got back to the house. I knew that meant she was feeling better because she had only stopped cooking when she’d gotten sick. Before that, it was about all she ever did.“Oh, are you back?” she asked me,
I sat there for hours, not paying attention to the time, to the sunlight beginning to fade on the other side of the forest from when I began, to the chirping of the birds or the scampering of the squirrels. I sat there with my eyes closed and felt the energy of the forest dance around me.It was almost twilight when I became aware that someone was walking toward me t
My parents weren’t crazy about me making the trip to Great Falls with Sam, not because they didn’t trust him, although I’m not sure how much my mom did trust him, at least as far as keeping his hands to himself was concerned, which was a legitimate concern, but because his truck was almost as old as she was. That’s what she said, anyway, when I asked if I could go. She said we could borrow the minivan, but the idea of me asking Sam to drive my mom’s van seemed ridiculous to me. Max didn’t offer his truck, so I just had to assure my mom that, if something happened and Sam’s truck broke down, I could fix it with my magic. It was the only thing t
I had heard what Sam said, about the memory that I’d just conjured up of having donuts and chocolate milk with my dad at a small donut shop when I was a little girl, but I was having trouble processing it. “It was here?” I asked him. He nodded. “And… you were here, too?”“I was,” he said. “It’s kind of a strange
Just being in the truck with Sam made me smile, even though he was busy driving, and I was probably driving him crazy with all of my questions. We had the radio on, and even though he refused to sing along, even to the songs I knew he had to know the words to, and I peppered him with a million different questions about what it was like growing up in Whispering Hollow. I stayed away from the personal parts, about his family, about his dad and Horace in particular, and he let me know that it hadn’t been easy for him being a kid out there in such an isolated part of the world. They hadn’t had much, and he still didn’t have much, even though it was clear he worked hard f
As the other car came careening toward us, I didn’t think there was anything any of us could do to keep the two vehicles from colliding. It seemed like the path of Sam’s truck and the other car were destined to meet, no matter what. The panicked look on the other driver’s face locked in my field of vision as I saw his cell phone go flying in the air.He h