Page 8 of Everything She Does Is Magic (Fableview #1)

Darcy

My fairy wings keep clanking against our wall of ceramics.

More than once I’ve had to make a hero save, stopping one of our family masterpieces from crashing to the floor.

This isn’t my first time wearing this costume.

I’ve never had a problem navigating our front desk space in it before.

Somehow, my sense of place has shifted, like everything in my world has been moved a fraction of an inch, and I no longer know how to get around like I used to.

I keep turning to look out the window directly to my left, watching for Anya.

She told me she was going to come today.

Why would she bother to say that at the planning meeting if she didn’t mean it?

Even though I saw her every day in French class this week, I couldn’t bring myself to turn around and ask her.

We don’t exist that way to each other in school.

She seems to agree, because she hasn’t said anything either.

Outside of school, though, she’s stuck her neck out for me twice —once at the shop, and again at the planning meeting. There’s no way she’d ghost me now.

Right?

Our front door chimes, and I get a crick in my neck from glancing up so fast. It’s not Anya. It is the least Anya person to ever exist.

Kyle Holtzenberg.

“Daaaaaarce,” he says, holding his hand up for me to high-five. When I reluctantly lift my hand to match it, he pulls his own back. “Too slow! What are you supposed to be? A bird?”

My costume is an exact replica of the spring fairy figurine directly behind me, down to the daisy crown on my head and the butterfly perched on my shoulder.

Even without that context, it’s so obvious that I am a fairy.

There is nothing birdlike about what I’m wearing, except for the presence of wings.

But they are whimsical, glittery wings. Fairy wings.

“I’m working right now,” I say.

Kyle grips the back of his neck. He’s gotten a fresh haircut, sharp auburn edges that contrast the hundreds of round freckles smattered across his face. “Aw, c’mon. It’s like that now?”

“It’s like that,” I confirm.

“Then I take it you’re not trying to go with me to the FallBall?”

“You’ve taken it correctly.”

“Not even if I promise to get a better-fitting tux this year? My mom said she’ll take me to the mall. My arms have bulked up too much from all the lifting I’ve been doing.” He kisses one of his biceps, flexing it so I can see the muscle definition.

Kyle Holtzenberg and I first dated in sixth grade, when Grace dared us to kiss behind the middle school dumpsters.

That exchange has bonded us together in ways that can never be undone, because it’s Fableview, and everything that happens here becomes some kind of unbreakable tradition.

As a result, Kyle has been the guy I sort of talk to sometimes.

I wouldn’t even call it dating. He’s just always around , and so am I.

Occasionally, we’re around together.

Last year, gazing up at the sky from my hammock as I so often do, I had my first of many panics about my future.

I thought that maybe I’d been wrong to dump Kyle in sixth grade.

Maybe Kyle and I really were endgame. It made sense on paper, and, well, it’s Fableview.

My parents found each other here, and everything else about my life had so far aligned with theirs.

So I let Kyle take me to the Fall Ball. He got me a corsage.

I got him a boutonniere. His tie matched my dress.

It was all shaping up to be a decent idea on my part.

There was no chemistry between us, but he could be funny when he wanted, and I hoped I could grow into our relationship the same way I’d grown into bad haircuts.

His parents were ecstatic, and I pretended not to notice all their little comments about the Holtzenbergs finally getting in on my family’s Halloween empire.

All night, Kyle would not stop trying to lift me up over his head.

The entire evening, every song, it was his singular focus—to lift me over his head.

We tried it at least ten times. It was embarrassing from the very first failed attempt, but Kyle would not relent.

He couldn’t let it go, and at a certain point, I became invested in helping him figure it out.

Finally, on the last song of the night, he succeeded.

As he held me up, I admit, the moment was cool.

But it was a bittersweet kind of cool. With all our friends gathered around us, sweaty and cheering, gazing up at me as Kyle death-gripped my rib cage, I saw my entire future.

Marrying Kyle. Him lifting me up the same way at our wedding.

Us owning Pam’s Paints together. Taking over the condo from my parents.

Running the annual Fableview fall extravaganza.

And it all seemed…fine?

It wasn’t bad. It’s nice when things are planned in advance.

I appreciate a template, and my parents have given me an excellent one.

But I love a challenge. I love when my classes get harder and I feel like I have to sit up straighter and really listen to my teachers to understand.

I love when someone brings me a problem they think they can’t solve, and we put our minds together to come up with a solution.

I love when my friends have different opinions than mine, because it forces me to sharpen my own—to really understand why I believe something or, sometimes, why I shouldn’t.

I didn’t see any room for that in my imagined future with Kyle. I saw everything I already knew.

Which is why I went home and looked up colleges out of state for the very first time. It felt dangerous. Risky. Something I could only do with all the lights off and the covers pulled over my head.

But it also felt exciting. I loved looking at the different campuses, imagining myself there.

Was I the type of person who’d want to go to school near the beach?

Or did I want to live in the cornfields at one of those state schools in the middle of nowhere?

Maybe I was meant for navigating college in the big city while learning the subway system.

I wasn’t sure which place would suit me best, which was what I liked the most.

Everything in Fableview is fixed. And my potential life outside of here is unpredictable.

I told myself that looking at colleges didn’t have to mean anything. I was just browsing, the same way I do when I get an ad for a cute shirt on social media.

But the more time that passed, the harder it became to give up. I kept looking at colleges. Every night, I’d browse campuses before I fell asleep. By the time my junior year ended, I’d taken both the ACT and the SAT without my parents knowing.

It wasn’t hard to do. I have my own bank account thanks to working at Pam’s Paints, so I paid for both tests myself. And because it was our offseason at the shop, my parents didn’t think too hard about me being gone for a few hours. I told them I was off studying.

In a way, I was. Studying for what a future could look like outside of our home. A lot of colleges don’t require either test score anymore, but I figured if I did well, it certainly wouldn’thurt.

And I did do well. Better than I even expected. At that point, I thought, Well, surely I can’t waste these good scores. That would be a shame. Might as well see what they can do for me.

So when college application windows opened up this past August, I found myself applying to one school. Only one.

Just to see.

I won’t find out if I got in until next year. Plenty of time to decide what it means.

And it all started at last year’s Fall Ball.

Ever since that night, it’s been easy to see Kyle as a comedian of sorts, whose whole bit is pretending we’re in love.

He doesn’t believe it, doesn’t really mean it.

He just hasn’t experienced anything different.

If I ever get out of here, he’ll be able to find someone else who can appreciate all his biceps kisses and failed high fives.

“Have you ever considered that maybe you’re too good for me?” I ask him, attempting the brave and possibly reckless move of pulling a reverse UNO on him, if only to stop myself from checking the window so often. “We both know I’m not the gym rat princess of passion you deserve.”

“Damn,” he says, genuinely rocked. “Nah, I hadn’t really given that any thought.” He looks up at the painted ceramics behind me and points to the fairy. “Is that the bird you’re trying to be?”

“Yes.”

He does a little fist pump for himself. “Nice.” Then he does his favorite kind of smile, the one he thinks makes him look like a charming prince, which I wish he’d never told me, but unfortunately, he did.

“Don’t I look like a charming prince when I do this?”

“Do you mean Prince Charming?”

“No, I mean, like, any prince who’s charming. I think I’m kind of my own prince. Don’t you?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go with me, Darce?

” he asks, tilting his chin down in his princely way.

“One-last-date-for-us-as-seniors kinda thing? I could lift you over my head so easily now. I know what I was missing last year. I wasn’t engaging my core.

Kind of embarrassing when I look back. Obviously I needed the support of my trunk. ”

“I don’t want you to take this too personally, but I will never be with someone from Fableview,” I tell him, saying it with so much intensity that he actually backs up a few steps. “There is not a single person in this town who could ever excite me enough to want to date them.”

The front door chimes.

I stand so fast, my wings crash into the ceramics above. Three go sailing to the ground— smash, smash, smash in rapid succession.

Kyle turns to see who’s gotten this reaction. When all he sees is Anya, he looks around, like surely someone else has entered with her.

Someone else has entered with her—a woman with similar brown eyes and the same downturned mouth.

Quick memories slot into place. All the times I’ve seen this woman around town through the years.

She’s reserved, much like Anya, though much more eccentric, always in that patchwork quilt jacket and a large sun hat.

This must be the aunt Anya lives with. The one Grace told me is equally as sinister as Anya.

I bend down to pick up the ceramic pieces.

I’ve broken a fairy from my mom’s collection.

A mug my dad painted before I was born. It wasn’t anything fancy, but as a young kid, I used to stare at it, transfixed by the uniformity of the dots, each one exactly spaced from the one before it. And I’ve broken the gnome.

It’s only some ceramics. But to my family, this is our whole entire world. It’s hard not to see it as a warning—this is what happens when I’m reckless.

Who else could take over this shop but me? Who else could look down at these broken pieces and know they need to be reassembled?

No one.

No matter what happens with the college I applied to, I have to stay in Fableview.

Maybe the changes Anya and I are going to make around here can be for the future me. The owner of Pam’s Paints me. At least then I can make sure that I’m around to fix anything that might break.

I can keep our town’s magic alive.