Brittany Geragotelis - Life's a Witch

“Sure thing, hon.” Darcey sounded like she felt bad for me. She had no idea how bad I felt, though.

This new development made me begin to think the worst, but I shook it off. I couldn’t let myself go there right now. There were other things to do. Like, tell the rest of the coven what had happened.

But instead of heading straight for the living room, I went to the kitchen first, hoping I might be able to pull some strength from my mom for what I was about to do. I’d half hoped to see her standing there at the sink like before, or cooking up a storm. It was what she would have been doing had she been there. Weekends had always been our time. During the week, we never had a chance to eat breakfast together, because I was usually running late for school and she was trying to get to the shop on time. And since Dad was always traveling, Saturdays were our time to slow down and catch up, just the two of us. She’d make waffles or pancakes and top the plate off with some eggs and bacon. If Mom was in a particularly good mood, she’d surprise me with smiley face pancakes with chocolate chips for eyes and a mouth.

Though I never would’ve admitted it to her before, I’d looked forward to it all week long. And when I saw that the kitchen was indeed empty, my heart felt like I was on a roller coaster racing down the tracks at a hundred miles an hour.

I walked over to the sink and placed my hands where my mom’s had been, taking a moment to miss her. I’m not sure how long I stood there, but eventually I heard someone cough behind me.

“See anything out there?” a voice asked. I turned quickly to see Fallon standing there and almost groaned.

Great. The last person on earth I wanted to see was standing in my kitchen, arms folded over his chest and looking at me with a smirk on his face.

But when he saw my expression, his softened, and then his arms dropped to his sides. Surprisingly, he walked over to the table and took a seat, motioning for me to sit, too. I swiped at my face in an attempt to make myself look like less of a mess. I sighed because I knew it was futile and crossed the room to join him.

“What do you want, Fallon?” The words came out sounding harsher than I’d intended.

I braced myself for a sarcastic retort, but instead, he just looked at me with this weird expression on his face. If I hadn’t known him so well, I might’ve said he looked sorry for me. But that wasn’t possible. This was Fallon we were talking about.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice surprisingly quiet. Almost caring, even. I nearly snorted at him for mocking me, but something told me he was being serious. It threw me off so much that he had to repeat himself just for me to believe he’d said it.

I wanted to tell him to mind his own business, but I didn’t have the energy to be mean to him. Not tonight. Besides, it seemed wrong somehow, to start something up when he appeared to be waving the white flag on our frenemy war.

“Honestly? Not really,” I answered finally. I looked down at my hands to avoid his eyes, because how do you tell someone something like this? That my mom was dead and his parents were too? How could my mom and Jasmine have actually thought that I’d be able to do this, not once, but over a dozen times?

“Look, Fallon, something serious is going on and it’s heavier than anything I’ve ever dealt with before. I have to tell you guys something, but I really don’t know how. I don’t think…” I got choked up and had to stop talking in order to swallow the lump that had formed in my throat. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to do this.”

I had no idea why I was being so open with him. He was my least favorite person, pretty much ever, and it went against everything I believed to show weakness to anyone, let alone an enemy. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t hold it together. I knew there was a chance that Fallon would use our private conversation against me. But I just couldn’t shoulder all the responsibility alone anymore, and Fallon was asking to be let in.

“So what do I do?” I asked, staring down at the table.

He was silent for a minute and I resisted the urge to look up at him. “Use the Band-Aid approach,” he finally said.

“Huh?”

He rolled his eyes at me, but it wasn’t malicious for once. “You know. If you pull a Band-Aid off slowly, then you feel every single hair rip out of your body. And it hurts like crazy. But if you pull it off nice and quick”—he made a quick tugging motion at an imaginary wound—“it’s over fast and it hurts a lot less.”

I crinkled my eyebrows.

“Oh, come on. This is sort of common knowledge, Hadley,” he said, teasing me now. “Where have you been?”

“I don’t rip off my Band-Aids. I use magic to make them disappear,” I said simply. “Why would you willingly rip off a Band-Aid? Unless you’re a glutton for punishment, and in that case…” I let the sentence trail off as I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Fine, fine, whatever, but you get my point, right? Tell us quickly. It’ll hurt less that way. Don’t think about it, just do it,” he said. Then he looked straight into my eyes and said it again, more as a command this time rather than a suggestion. “Just do it.”

I took a deep breath and did as he said. “There was a fire where our parents met last night and they were caught inside,” I blurted out, not able to look at him as I said it. “Fallon… I don’t think anyone survived.”

There was total silence, and after about thirty seconds I dared to peek at this boy whose life I’d just turned upside down. I felt awful about being the one to break the news because I knew exactly what he was feeling. He was realizing that the life he’d once had was over. That it would be a long time before he felt safe again.

When I finally looked at Fallon, he was staring out the window behind me, his body as still as if he were frozen in place. His mouth was pulled tight in a straight line, but other than that, I had no idea what he was thinking. I was almost scared to find out but knew I had to check if he was okay. After all, I’d done this to him.

I reached out my hand and placed it on his arm, hoping to give him some solace. But almost as soon as I’d touched him, he pulled away and turned his gaze back at me. “So,” he said, taking a deep breath, “what do we do now?”

It wasn’t what I’d been expecting him to say, but I was glad I wasn’t going to have to get all touchy-feely with him. He wasn’t my favorite person, and the truth was, I had no clue how I was supposed to help him with his emotions when I hadn’t been handling my own all that well.

“Well, first I think we need to tell everyone else,” I said, still hating this part of the plan. I had a feeling not everyone would react like Fallon had.

“Then what?” he asked.

“Then we get out of here. Go someplace the Parrishables won’t come looking for us.”

“Any ideas on where that might be?” he asked.

Remembering my mom’s suggestion of our family’s cabin, I nodded. “Yeah. I think I do.”

“Okay,” Fallon said, getting up from his chair. “Let’s do this, then.”

“Rip it off like a Band-Aid?” I asked.

“Just like a Band-Aid.”

It felt like the longest day of my life.

And the most exhausting. I knew it would be difficult telling everyone what had happened to our parents, but I had no idea it would be like this. In a way, I should have known it wasn’t going to be a quick fix. After all, how long had it taken me to simply become coherent again after figuring out what had gone down at the Elm?

After my talk with Fallon, we’d gathered the Cleri members who’d been at the Elm and discussed what we were going to do next. I told them about the dream I’d had of Mom and shared my suspicions that the Parrishables were, indeed, back. Given the circumstances, they couldn’t argue with this fact and quickly agreed. But identifying our enemies didn’t help to make us feel any better.