Page 10

I want to believe Austin, but as we gobble down pizza while watching Bewitched reruns and fill Caroline in on what happened with the animal shelter’s newest resident, all I can think is What if he’s wrong?

The thing about bad luck happening in threes is that if it happens once, twice, three times, what’s to stop it from happening for a fourth?

Anxiety drapes over me like a cloak for the rest of the day.

Because Prior’s End, even at the best of times, isn’t just unpredictable, it’s frustrating and downright weird.

More than anything else, without my dad, our town is the thing that I hate admitting exists: magic.

Not the talking animal kind or the sort that spurts out of a wand.

Definitely not the kind that requires potions or incantations, pointy hats or mysterious ingredients.

It can’t be wielded or relied upon; it’s just something that is .

And it’s infuriating, the way that it just happens to you, usually when you never intended it. Neither cruel nor kind, it just is .

Austin’s grandma, Petra, thinks it’s because Prior’s End is alive. In the roots, in the soil. Cryptic. Inscrutable. Sentient. Like an Ent. Part of the natural world, yes, but also part of the supernatural one.

Which is why I keep a close eye on Kiara tonight at the Cauldron, a pub that prides itself on its year-round spooky-season fare.

She’s here with her friends, who all happen to be her ridiculously attractive exes: Tayla Holloway, Radhika Rose, and Evan Venables.

When I came in to order, I saw them sequestered in a corner booth, whispering and casting furtive glances at me.

An enormous pizza lay untouched on the table.

I’ve been trying to ignore them—trying…and failing.

They’re the most gorgeous group in here.

Radhika always crops her glossy brown waves to her shoulders every summer, and it’s just starting to grow out.

Absently, Kiara tucks it behind her ear while they all listen, enraptured, to whatever Tayla’s saying.

The gesture annoys me, and I pointedly look away.

It’s none of my business who she’s being affectionate with.

The last thing I need is for her to catch me looking over and tease me for staring at her. Again.

I shuffle my feet as I wait at the bar for the food and drinks, wincing when I can feel the stickiness under my soles.

Austin and Caroline are out front holding down a table since in here is full and there’s barely any standing room even for me.

Festival week is as busy as Mother’s Day and Christmas for restaurants around here.

Kinda regretting not taking Austin up on his offer to brave the crowds, but I was hoping the alone time might be good for them.

While I wait for the mozzarella sticks and fried pickles, I squeeze my arms tight to my sides, trying to minimize myself as large groups elbow their way around in what, admittedly, suddenly feels like a coffin-sized amount of space.

Kiara’s back is to me, but every so often she runs her fingers through her hair in an agitated manner, which is the first thing that strikes me as odd.

She never plays with her hair so her blowout looks fresh for longer.

Once after gym, sometime during sophomore year, I caught her in the changing room with her head down, brown hair flipped over almost to the floor.

It still looked great like that, not sweaty and limp like mine.

She was aggressively spraying dry shampoo at her roots.

“You’re so lucky your scalp doesn’t get as oily as mine,” she’d said with a rueful smile when the toes of my tennis shoes came into her eyeline.

I’d babbled something about how she could always cut her hair if she wanted something fuss free.

She’d just laughed, not meanly but like it should have been obvious she wasn’t actually inviting an opinion and there was no way she was ever going to touch the length.

And I get it; if I had the swishy, waterfall locks that only Kiara, Jonathan Van Ness, and models in TV ads have, I’d be against cutting it, too.

Evan, the only one in the group I actually like, grabs Kiara’s hand and tugs it down to the table.

Whatever they whisper seems to calm Kiara down.

The booth is too far away for me to eavesdrop, and it’s not like I can see Kiara anyway, so staring at her is pointless.

It’s not like I can just look at her and know if any other strange incidents have befallen her.

With my luck, she’ll feel my eyes on her and catch me staring like a weirdo or, worse, a moony, lovesick sap gazing at her from afar, which is the last thing I want to be mistaken for.

But I must have crappier luck than even I thought, because it isn’t Kiara who catches me. It’s someone way, way worse.

From where she sits opposite from Kiara, her best friend, Tayla, turns her head about thirty degrees and aims the full force of her resting bitch face at me. It actually isn’t too different from her actual face.

Even though she’s a glorious redhead, she has that effortless, powerful vibe of raven-haired Neve Campbell in The Craft . One of her eyebrows lifts in a silent question and dismissal. The other muscles in her face don’t move, which is doubly terrifying. I break eye contact first.

When our order is ready, I scurry out as fast as I can, feeling her unnerving hydrangea-blue eyes on my back as I weave through packed bodies like an eel.

Outside, my friends occupy the last of the outdoor seating, Caroline Chen’s legs propped up on the black wrought-iron chair.

Across the leaping flames of the firepit, her defiant face dares anyone to ask if the seat is free.

She swings her legs aside, smoothing a nonexistent ruffle in her plaid skirt. Her black eyebrows draw together. “What’s wrong? You look kinda panicked.”

I sink into the seat she saved me. The table wobbles when I put the tray down, like one of its three legs is short. “Tayla’s stink eye.”

Caroline shudders, though it’s probably more from the cold. Austin almost knocks our drinks off the rickety table when he whips off his jacket to drape over her shoulders.

Subtle , I mouth.

He glowers.

“Thank you,” Caroline says, snuggling deeper into the sherpa-lined denim jacket. She probably doesn’t even realize that she’s seeking out Austin’s body warmth.

I wish I could just grab them both by the back of their necks and smash their heads together, demanding that they just kiss already!

the way Caroline and I howl at the TV when we watch rom-coms. It’s not even like they hide it all that well.

They’re so painfully into each other that it’s more uncomfortable watching them walk on eggshells around me instead of just admitting they’re deeply In Like.

“I have to tell you something,” Caroline says now after exchanging a glance with Austin so laden with meaning that my heart skips a beat.

Is this it? Are they going to finally stop denying what’s been obvious to me for weeks? Did my plan to leave them alone work? Meddling and matchmaking isn’t my calling. Too much stress and not enough progress. Nowhere as fun as the movies make it out to be.

Austin gives a little shake of his head before shoving his hand through his styled blond hair, lips pursed unhappily around his straw. Whatever Caroline wants to share, he’s not on board.

Which makes me want to know even more.

I can just about bear the mysteries of Prior’s End but not my best friends keeping secrets from me. When she bites her lip, he mimics the action like he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

I glance between them, swishing the straw in my mocktail, a gory purple muddle of pomegranate and acai juice and lychee syrup. All three lychees bob about, stuffed with a plump blueberry in their cavity, the juice staining the white flesh to look like strained, bloodshot eyes. “Well?” I ask.

Caroline leans in and drops her voice to a whisper, even though I can barely hear her over the conversations surrounding us. “You know how Kiara drives her mom’s old Mini Cooper?”

I nod, scooting my chair closer. The legs shriek as they scrape against the stone.

Caroline darts her eyes carefully around us the way you only would if you’re about to impart something secret.

“Well,” she says, “after you two left, I heard my parents talking. My dad was at the garage for a routine maintenance check this morning when he overheard Kiara’s dad having an argument.

Apparently one of the mechanics must have had a utility knife in his back pocket or something when he sat in the driver’s seat because there’s a huge rip in the leather.

The service writer and mechanic both claimed the car came in like that, so Mr. Mistry refused to pay the bill for service, Kiara was in tears, and now both my dads want to take our cars to a new place. It’s a whole thing.”

At the conclusion of the tale, Austin sighs. “Care, I told you, that’s not bad luck. That’s an accident, a couple of shady employees who wouldn’t own up, and shitty customer service.”

I pop a lychee in my mouth whole, teeth tearing through tender flesh. “Weren’t you the one who told me bad luck isn’t picky? That it takes what it can get?”

“But this is normal bad luck,” he insists. “Listen. A few months ago my mom took her car to the same garage, and the next day she heard this horrible clanking in the engine. When she investigated, she found a screwdriver knocking around in there and a half-eaten tuna sandwich.”

“Gross,” says Caroline, wrinkling her nose.

“Dangerous,” I say at the same time, knowing absolutely nothing about cars but pretty sure having an extra piece of metal and hot, rancid fish does an engine no favors.

Austin steeples his fingers together. “And what does this tell us?”

I snort. “That the people of Prior’s End need to find a new garage.”

Caroline giggles and reaches for a mozzarella stick, sighing happily at her first bite.