Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

“It’s Spanish. Well, kind of. I don’t know how to say table . . .” Shut up, Thomas, before you hurt yourself.

“Thanks.” Chelsea set down her lunch, then waved. And suddenly Thomas realized that the princess came with an entourage. Gillian Duncan and two others sat down, and the minute they arrived, it was as if Thomas himself didn’t exist.

Still, it was better to eat his lunch with Chelsea Abrams just six inches away from him on a wooden bench than by himself. His breath caught when she mistakenly reached for Thomas’s napkin and touched it to the corner of her mouth in nearly the same spot where Thomas had touched it to his own mouth. He winged a silent prayer to God for Chelsea to leave first, so that she wouldn’t see his thoughts broadcast across his groin.

“Maybe he’s some kind of pervert,” Meg said, and Thomas jumped a foot, wondering if they could sense his hard-on even through the barrier of the picnic table. Then he realized that Meg was talking about someone else entirely. “You don’t see other grown men lurking around outside the high school gym.”

“Lurking? God, Meg. You think you’re being dramatic enough?” Whitney tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Perverts live in places like Detroit and L.A., not Salem Falls.”

“First off, my dad has always said that crime statistics don’t mean much if you’re the victim in that one percentile. Second-I talked to him, you didn’t.”

“Still,” Gillian pointed out, “I wouldn’t be so quick to cast stones at someone who made you look like Mia Hamm.”

“Are you talking about the guy out by the soccer field?” Thomas asked.

Chelsea turned. “Do you know him?”

Thomas felt the heat of their attention. “Sure. He works at the diner in town.”

Gillian took a drink from a water bottle and glanced in the direction of the playing fields, where the man might even now be standing.

“You can work at a diner and still be a pervert,” Meg murmured. “That’s all I’m saying.”

It seemed to Jack that the kid at the counter had been there long enough to warrant concern, but then again, it wasn’t his diner or his place to care. He sat stone-faced at the cash register, a job he’d won by default because he couldn’t get his bandage wet.

The girl kept staring at him. She was lean and pretty, coltlike, although she wore too much makeup. She was in the process of ripping open her sixteenth sugar packet and pouring its contents on the counter.

Addie burst through the swinging doors, plates balanced on her arms like armor. “Help me a second, will you?” Jack obligingly stood up and trailed in her wake. He lifted each dish, setting it down where Addie directed.

“Thanks,” she said. “If I can keep Chloe from getting underfoot, I just may actually finish getting out the orders for the dinner rush.” She started back into the kitchen but stopped when Jack called her name.

“That girl . . . she’s been here for three hours.”

“She can stay here for three years if she wants, as long as she’s hungry and has her daddy’s charge card. That’s Gilly Duncan . . . daughter of the guy who owns the pharmaceutical plant.”

Jack sat back down and watched Gilly Duncan rip open sugar packets number seventeen and eighteen and pour them on the Formica. Well, hell. It was one thing if Jack himself was busing tables, but with his burn, Addie had taken on that work. The thought of her having to sweep up after this spoiled little brat fueled his courage. “You’re making a mess,” he said.

Gillian raised one delicate red brow. “Oh, my. Did I spill?” She stuck her forefinger in her mouth, rolled it in the white grains, and started to suck on it. “Sweet.” She coated her finger in sugar again and held it up. “Very sweet.”

Jack jumped back, as if she’d brandished a gun.

“I didn’t mean to make more work for you.” She began to scoop the spilled sugar into the cup of her hand and empty it onto the side of her saucer. “There. I’m Gilly, by the way. And you are?”

“Going,” Jack said, and he ducked from behind the counter and walked out the diner’s door.

In Whitney’s garage, Gillian cupped a small heap of cinnamon in her hand and began the third casting, trailing a ring around her friends. “Set me apart from the world of man. Set me apart from the world of spirit. Hold me between the two, so I might work my magick.” The last bit of cinnamon sparked from her fingers, and she turned to the others. “The circle is perfect.”

She knelt in front of the altar and reached for the green candle they’d brought to the garage. Rubbing oil from the tip to the base, she began to chant: “Heal him whole, heal him whole.” Using the quartz from the Wiccan Read, Gillian scratched into the candle a crude sketch of a caduceus, to symbolize perfect health. “Who has the matches?”

Whitney grimaced. She pointed toward the hood of her mother’s car, a silvery Volvo. “Damn. I left them over there.” She picked up the knife on the altar and cut through the invisible boundaries of the circle to open it, reached for the matches, and then stepped back inside. “Here,” she said, pressing the small box into Gilly’s hand.

The flame rose higher every time the girls breathed in, visualizing Stuart Holling as he rose from his hospital bed and walked away from it. Wax slid down the candle until the etched snakes were smooth again. And then, a quick draft coming from beneath the garage door blew the fire out.

“Do you think that means he’s better?” Chelsea whispered.

“Either that or he’s dead.”

“Maybe we should call the hospital to see.”

“They wouldn’t tell us,” Gillian pointed out. “We’re not related to him. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.”

The girls sat, lost in thought. “It was different tonight,” Whitney said finally.

“Like I was humming inside,” Meg agreed.

“Maybe it was because we weren’t just doing it for ourselves.” Whitney spoke slowly, choosing her words with care. “When we cast a spell for money or for love . . . it was to change us, to help us. This time, we were sending all that energy to Mr. Hollings.”

Chelsea frowned. “But if we were sending the energy away, how come it felt so powerful in the circle?”

“Because it takes more strength to change someone else’s life than it takes to change your own,” Gillian replied.

“And if it works-” Whitney said.

“When it works.”

“When it works . . . it will be something he wanted all along, anyway.” Whitney stared at the altar, at the smoking candle. “A true witch can cast spells for someone else.”

“A true witch can cast spells on someone else.” Gillian raised her finger, smudged brown with cinnamon, and blew so that it clouded the air in front of her. “What if we hadn’t healed Mr. Hollings? What if we made him sicker?”

Chelsea’s eyes widened. “You know that goes against the Wiccan rede, Gilly. Whatever you do comes back to you threefold.”

“Well, okay. Mr. Hollings is a stupid example. But if Wicca’s all about keeping the balance of nature, then why couldn’t we use magick for that?”

Whitney looked at Gillian. “I don’t get it.”

Meg leaned forward. “She means if we help people who’ve helped others, it’s natural to hurt people who’ve hurt others. Right?”

Gillian nodded. “And to do it so that they don’t know who’s making it happen.” Her voice skimmed over the others’ reservations, smoothing in its wake. “Think about how powerful you felt tonight, healing someone. And then imagine how powerful you’d feel if you could ruin someone’s life.”

“Hailey McCourt,” Meg whispered.

Gillian turned. “That’s a start.”