Page 49 of Summer of Salt

“Oh. I just got there and I saw the lights and I heard all the people laughing, and I couldn’t do it.”

“You’re cold.”

“Can I stay in here?”

Usually it was cramped with the two of us in one bed,but tonight Mary felt smaller, like she took up less space.

“Of course.”

“Did you have fun? At the party?” she asked.

“I didn’t stay either. Why are you so cold?”

“I don’t know,” Mary said.

I reached down to the foot of the bed and found the extra quilt that was folded there. I draped it over her, tucking it under her chin.

I knew I should have told her about the Ouija board, about finding her necklace in the barn, but I couldn’t. She was shaking she was so cold, and I couldn’t make myself ask her why she had lied to me. I couldn’t make myself ask her what had really happened.

The bed felt so much colder with my sister’s shivering body next to mine. I moved an inch away from her.

“Stop that,” she said. “You’re mysister.”

When she said that word it felt more like a curse than a familial relation.

I took her hand in mine, and my fingers froze to ice.

“Mary?”

“Not now,” she said.

When I woke up, she was gone.

In her place: plain white feathers.

Feathers

The next morning I picked white feathers off my white sheets and stuck them into a white pillowcase I’d taken off one of my pillows. My mother came in when it was halfway full.

“What’s all this about?” she asked.

“I think something’s going on with Mary.”

My mother picked up a feather and held it between her thumb and her middle finger. She looked at it. She smelled it. She licked it (gross).

“What are they?” I asked.

She sat down on the bed, causing a small swarm of feathers to rise up and float around her. She collected them in her lap, examining each one, twirling them around.

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“Are they coming...”

“From your sister?” She exhaled slowly, thinking. Shelooked very unmagicky today. I think, given everything, that was a deliberate choice. She wore faded baggy jeans and a white sleeveless collared shirt tucked into them. She had rainboots on and her hair was tied into a ponytail at her neck. I felt a sudden rush of emotion for her, this woman picking feathers from my bed and piling them into a careful mountain on top of her thighs.

“Your sister has had an emotional upset,” she said finally. “We all have.” That seemed to be putting it lightly. She opened her mouth to say more but paused, decided against it, dumped the feathers from her lap into the pillowcase. Then she sniffed. Once. Twice. “Georgina,” she scolded. “You smell like cheap tricks.”

“Oh, it was nothing—”