The thing was, I believed her. Bee had always been loyal, the best best friend a girl could have. It wasn’t jealousy that was making me want to cry. Ryan and I were more than done, and while things with me and David were not all that simple right now, there was still no one else I’d rather be with. So it wasn’t the actual kissing bugging me, it was the secrecy of it all. Bee had always told me everything, but she’d been keeping this a secret from me. I got it, but I didn’t like it.
“If you want us not to see each other anymore, I’d totally understand,” Bee said, and then Ryan came up behind her, laying one hand on her shoulder.
“I wouldn’t,” he said, looking at me, but I was still staring at his fingers curled over her shoulder. Since the night of the fair, she’d said, but that had been just a week ago.
There was a lot of intimacy in the way Ryan’s hand lay there at the crook of her neck.
“Ryan,” Bee said, but he shook his head, a muscle working in his jaw.
“I was okay with Harper and David,” he said, “so Harper can be okay with me and you.”
“I am okay with you. Both of you,” I replied, but the words came out too fast. I thought of me asking David if we were okay, how quickly he’d answered me and how fake his answer had sounded. I guess I sounded every bit as fake, if the matching frowns on Bee’s and Ryan’s faces were anything to go by.
But for now, I didn’t care; I needed to get out of here.
“Seriously,” I told them as I turned to hurry back down the hall. “It’s fine. So super fine.”
Luckily, neither of them followed, and I managed to get to the dressing room, shucking off my leotard like it was on fire. I threw my clothes back on, and hurried out the back door of the rec center before anyone could see me. I’d e-mail Sara and tell her I’d gotten sick or something.
Getting into my car, I pushed my hair back with hands that were still trembling. I needed to talk to someone, but I sat there in the driver’s side, the air-conditioning raising goose bumps on my skin, and racked my brain for someone I could talk to. Not David; things were still tense with us, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to explain why Bee and Ryan were weirding me out so much without him thinking it was a jealousy thing. But if I couldn’t talk to David, and I couldn’t talk to Bee, who could I talk to?
When the answer came, I felt a wave of relief wash over me.
It only took a few minutes to drive to Aunt Jewel’s, and when I got there, she was outside watering her roses, dressed in a pretty light green top that seemed to have some kind of bird on it, and matching polyester slacks. As soon as I pulled up, she turned the hose off and waved me inside.
“Well, isn’t this a nice surprise?” Aunt Jewel led me into the living room, and I flopped on the flowered sofa while she went into the kitchen to get us something to drink.
I fiddled with the hem of my dress, and when Aunt Jewel came back in, I blurted out, “I have something to tell you.”
Aunt Jewel had leaned down to hand me a glass of iced tea, and she froze in place, the glass halfway to me. “Oh, Harper Jane,” she said on a sigh. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”
I was, of course. In lots of trouble, and I almost said answered yes. But then I realized Aunt Jewel thought I was in that kind of trouble.
“No,” I said quickly, taking the tea before she spilled it. “No, no, no. Not even a little bit.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Aunt Jewel pressed her hand to her chest, right over the painted hummingbird on her sweater. “Well, thank heaven for that at least.” She squinted at me, leaning a little closer, and I picked up the scent of Estée Lauder perfume and the slightest hint of baby powder. “But if you’re not in the family way, why do you look so sick?”
I didn’t know I did look sick, and when I pressed both hands to my cheeks, Aunt Jewel clucked, sitting next to me on the couch. “I’ve thought you looked peaked for a few weeks at least. You aren’t doing too much at school, are you?”
The tea was cold and sweet, and I gulped nearly half of the glass before setting it back on its coaster. “It’s not school, Aunt Jewel. Or it is, but not the way you’re thinking. Last year, during the fall, something . . . something happened to me.”
She was squinting at me now, reaching down to pick up the glasses suspended on a glittery chain around her neck. Once they were on her nose, she settled deeper into the sofa and said, “What, exactly?”
It all spilled out then. All of it. The night of the Homecoming dance, Mr. Hall, killing Dr. DuPont, learning what a Paladin was, David being an Oracle, all the training with Saylor, Blythe, how there hadn’t been an earthquake the night of Cotillion. How that had been me. How Ryan could do magic, and I’d made him do a spell that had wiped everyone’s memory.
When I was done, the living room was very quiet. I’d drained my tea during my confession, but Aunt Jewel hadn’t touched hers. The ice was melting in it now, leaving a dark ring on the coaster in front of her. I could hear the grandfather clock ticking in the main hallway, but that was the only sound.
Aunt Jewel heaved a sigh, and I waited for her to tell me I was insane or to say she was calling my mom.
Instead, she got up and patted my knee. “Come on, baby girl. We’ve got somewhere to go.”
Chapter 26
I FIGURED AUNT JEWEL was taking me home. Or maybe driving me all the way up to the psychiatric hospital in Tuscaloosa.
So when she pulled into the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, I was both relieved and confused.
“The grocery store?” I asked as Aunt Jewel attempted to squeeze her massive Cadillac into a teensy parking space.
I winced as one of the side-view mirrors clipped the car next to us, but Aunt Jewel didn’t seem too concerned.
“I think better when I’m shopping, and you have given me a lot to think about.”
I was fairly certain my mouth was hanging open, and I imagined my eyes popping out like something in a cartoon. “Aunt Jewel, I just told you that I have superpowers. That my current boyfriend is an Oracle, and my ex-boyfriend is more or less a wizard. And you want to do a little shopping? I’d hoped you wouldn’t freak out, don’t get me wrong, but I expected some freaking out.”
Heaving a sigh, Aunt Jewel gathered her pocketbook in her arms and faced me. “Harper Jane, I am nearly eighty years old. I have lived through a world war, buried two husbands, and when I was eighteen, I told my parents I was going to a church revival, but I actually spent a weekend in Biloxi with a traveling salesman. In other words, young lady, I understand that weird crap—Lord forgive me—happens. Now get out of the car and stop overthinking things.”