Page 5

Alonso

“ALONSO.”

The chain on Alonso’s belt jangles as he stops with one foot out the front door. He almost pretends he didn’t hear his mom, but the opportunity to escape is gone the second he hesitates.

“I know you’re there,” she calls.

“What is it?”

“Come here, please.”

Alonso rolls out his neck. He’s been waiting for this. His mom always bides her time after he fucks up, drawing out her silent treatment for maximum guilt before she finally dumps on him. These fights are a reminder that Vera De Luca would gladly exchange him for another son if she could. She’s never said it out loud, but she doesn’t have to.

Alonso can’t really blame her.

He drags his feet into the living room, where his mom is perched on her favorite velvet armchair. A book lies face down in her lap, and she’s texting when he comes in.

“Sit,” she says without looking up.

Alonso gives a heavy, pointed sigh before he plops down onto the ragged love seat. It creaks underneath him, threatening to split. Most of their furniture is either half-eaten by termites or so old it’s disintegrating, but the De Lucas don’t get rid of anything. To buy new furniture, you need money, and they haven’t had money since the De Luca Pharmacy closed. You can’t use your coven’s magic to make medicine if nobody in the coven has magic anymore.

Alonso’s mom sets her phone down and interlaces her fingers. “I’m going to need you to stop provoking Corey Barrion.”

Alonso grits his teeth. “Why do you think I started it? It could’ve been him.”

“Because he has a Fourth of July party at the lake every year, and you’re the one who decided to go.”

Fair. But, for once, Alonso didn’t show up to kick Corey’s ass. He showed up because he thought—he hoped—Penny Emberly might be there.

Writing a note in her yearbook was a mistake. He knew it from the moment the yearbook landed in his lap at the cafeteria. Most people at Idlewood Central pass their yearbooks around on the last day of school, letting everyone write notes. Alonso usually draws penises and passes them along, but when he saw Penny’s name written under THIS YEARBOOK BELONGS TO on the inside cover, it was as if he was possessed. He couldn’t stop himself as the Sylvia Plath quote bloomed from his pen:

I think I made you up inside my head.

He didn’t sign his full name. Just his initials. Afterward, he realized how stupid that was, because if he didn’t want her to figure out who it was from, he should’ve left it at the quote. Not that Alonso should care. Growing up in Idlewood as a De Luca meant learning what hatred felt like before he understood what it was. He’s fine with being the problem, especially if it means people leave him alone.

But that doesn’t apply to Penny. If she were to despise him—even if she laughed at him the way other people do—that wound would never scab over. It would fester until it turned Alonso into an even worse version of himself.

Which is why Alonso ended up at Corey’s party, where everything backfired.

I know you don’t like me, okay?

Just leave me alone.

Alonso could barely sleep last night as those words ran circles in his head. But he’s not about to say any of this to his mom. She wouldn’t be able to comfort him; she probably wouldn’t even try, which is worse. Alonso relies on his tried-and-true excuse instead. “I wanted to go to the lake because it’s half mine. Don’t I have a right to be there?”

“It’s not about what you had a right to do. It’s about what you did.”

There’s a meow , and Nimble jumps onto Alonso’s lap, staring at him with huge saucer eyes. He scratches her behind the ears. “Corey deserved it. If you’d heard what he said to me—”

“I don’t care,” his mom says, matter-of-fact as always. “If you keep this up, the Barrions will use it as an excuse to force our family out of Idlewood forever.”

“Maybe I want that.”

There are some thoughts that shouldn’t travel from Alonso’s brain to his mouth, and that was one of them. Vera has that look on her face—the same one she used to give Alonso’s dad when they were still married. It says, I have more brain cells than you, and I’m not afraid to use them.

Alonso looks at people exactly like that. It’s one of the many traits he inherited from his mom, but she doesn’t seem to understand her role in his development.

“You want that?” Vera says.

Too late to back off now. Alonso can’t look at her as he says, “The Council is never going to unbind our magic, Mom. We’re mortals now. There’s no point in staying here.”

This is the grand irony that has defined all their lives: Idlewood is convinced the De Lucas are creepy witches, but they’re not. Not anymore.

And that’s all thanks to Alonso’s grandpa, good old Giovanni De Luca. No witch coven can curse endless generations of mortals without punishment, so the Council of Witches sealed the De Lucas’ magic forever. Now, every De Luca until the end of time will be born with their magic under lock and key.

Or that’s how it’s supposed to work. As far as Vera knows, Alonso is as magic-less as the rest of them.

Nimble blinks slowly at Alonso as if she can read his mind. He glares at her, then looks away.

Somehow Alonso’s mom manages not to yell. “You know as well as I do that when our family gets its magic back, we’ll need to be here. This plot of land is where our ancestors settled, and this soil gives our magic strength. It’s almost impossible to resettle a coven—it takes decades to get back a fraction of the power you had before. I don’t want to know what my great-great-grandmother would think if she heard you right now.”

“What do you think she would say about your dad cursing the Barrions?” He ticks off his fingers as he lists the Council of Witches’ three big rules: “No interfering in human wars, no necromancy, and no curses. See? I know my stuff. And I know the only person to blame for the loss of our magic is Grandpa Gio.”

Vera stands up, the book tumbling from her lap. That’s when Alonso sees the title: The Magic of the Every-Day. An ugly sense of shame bubbles up in his stomach. It’s pathetic that his family studies their old magical texts even though they can’t use them. They even tried to get Alonso to read them when he was in elementary school, and it was the first time Alonso used the words fuck that in a sentence. It was magic that destroyed their lives in the first place. Why would Alonso want anything to do with it?

“You’ve never known what it’s like to live as a witch, and that’s my dad’s fault,” Vera says. “But I won’t stop fighting for a world where you’re free, just like your ancestors were.”

“Yeah, all the persecution must’ve been super fucking cool.”

The look on Vera’s face is familiar. It’s the way people looked at him at Corey’s party last night: like he’s a wild card who isn’t worth the risk. “My mom always said you were exactly like him, you know. I didn’t used to believe her.”

Like him. As in, Giovanni. Anger wells in Alonso’s chest, and if his mom says one more thing, it might erupt. Then Nimble purrs, bringing Alonso back to the present. He quickly pictures the anchor image his therapist created to help him when he’s on the verge of losing control: gray skies, warm rain, distant thunder . Slowly, Alonso’s heart rate comes back down, and when he opens his mouth, all he says is, “I never would’ve offed myself the way he did. He left you and Aunt Donna and Aunt Emilia to deal with all of this by yourselves.”

Vera sighs. “Sometimes I want to leave this town as much as you do. But this is our home, and we’ll find a way to restore favor with the Council and get our magic back. Someday you’ll thank me.”

Alonso stands up, tucking Nimble under his arm. “No, I won’t. Once I graduate, I’m out of here forever.”

Pain flashes in Vera’s eyes, and Alonso is filled with the nagging guilt that comes from making your mom sad. As a consolation he says, “I promise I’ll stop punching Corey, okay? Unless he comes at me first.”

He walks out of the living room before she can respond. But her disappointment follows him like a ghost.

Alonso’s mom thinks he would be a better person if he understood what it was like to have the responsibility of magic. But that’s the problem: Alonso does understand.

He puts Nimble down on the stairs. She looks up at him, purring. She’s a happy cat, as far as cats go.

You’d never know that, when Alonso found her ten years ago, she was dead.