I was sitting at my spinning wheel, pedaling away. Spinning was one of the few things I did without shoes on. I nearly always wore shoes, but not when I was spinning. Instead, I wore tiny little black footlets, or whatever pantyhose I had on that day. If I was barefooted, I felt like life had spun ridiculously out of control and I had to get control again, by putting on a pair of boots.

As I was spinning, I happened to look up. Nestled between the interlacing ribbons of our household notice board, were the letters I had seen in the crystal ball. I read them over and over.

When June came in, I questioned her. “June, were any of your sisters named July or August?”

She took off her wrap and hung it on a hook by the door. “I have seven sisters.”

“And I can’t remember any of their names at the moment.”

“Must we speak of this? It's a rather painful subject. My sisters insisted on having a proper coven, but since our mother had eight daughters instead of nine, some of us were no longer welcome. I was one of them. I have brown eyes instead of green, so they decided to discriminate against me for that.”

I was a brown-eyed girl and my temper flared. “Only for that?”

“The rest of them had green eyes. My sister, Hattie, who was also unworthy of the coven, has green eyes too, but in her case, it was more like she left them. She got married.”

Hattie? I looked at the letters on the note. “Look, June. The letters spell Hattie, don't they?”

She took the note from me and read it over, perplexed. “Yes, they do, but Hattie doesn't need anything. She posts everything she eats on Instagram. Trust me, she's eating well.”

I slipped into my boots, did up the side zippers, so I could get a good stomp, and stomped my foot indignantly. “You've got to call her and see if anything is wrong. Does she live nearby?”

“I think she lives in Idaho, or Ohio, or Iowa. I'm not sure which.”

I downgraded my indignation to tapping my toe. “Are you going to call her?”

“How about if I Facebook her?”

“What's the problem here? You came to me for a crystal ball reading and I gave you one. You must call her. I promise, she's miserable.”

“All right. Far be it for me to dissuade your talents. Do you want to listen on speakerphone?”

I joined her at the table in the bay window as her phone started dialing. I wanted to see if there was any wisdom in my scrying.

“Hello, Hattie. It's June. How are you?”

On the speaker, Hattie sounded choked up. “June? I don't know anyone named June.”

“I'm your sister,” she said patiently.

“We haven't spoken in thirty years,” Hattie said coldly. “Why are you calling me now?”

“Well, it's a funny story.” June told her about the crystal ball reading. “I thought I'd ring you to see if you were all right. I follow you on Instagram. You always seem fine, but--”

By this time, Hattie was sobbing gently into the phone. “I'm not fine. Freddie died.”

“Husband?” I mouthed to June.

June shrugged like she had no idea who Freddie could be.

“It was so sudden and I still haven't recovered.”

“But you're still posting food.”

“My therapist follows me, and whenever I stop posting, she comments about it in our sessions. My posts are all photos I ripped off the internet to keep her off my back.”

“Why do you see a therapist?”

“Because our family abandoned me, then my first husband abandoned me, then my second husband abandoned me, then my next three boyfriends abandoned me. One of them left town in the middle of the night, and now my cat, Freddie, is dead. Satisfied?”

June scoffed. “What about me? Our family abandoned me too and I've never even been on a date where I wasn't the one who did the asking. At least, someone wanted you once.”

“That's just like you!” the wounded sister shrieked.

I groaned.

“What was that?” Hattie blurted.

“It was me,” I said into the receiver. “Excuse me. I'm Veda. June and I are roommates. Would you like to come here for a visit? We have plenty of spare bedrooms.”

June glared at me.

I glared back.

“You're asking me to come to Edmonton?” Hattie asked through barely clear airways.

“Yes.”

“You're asking me to come to the heart of a witch-crafting community and just… visit? You know, I quit being a witch?”

I shook my head impudently. “I didn't know, but none of that matters. You're June's sister and you obviously need a break if even your therapist is driving you nuts.”

Both sisters sighed and then said in unison, “Let me talk to her about this privately.”

June shut off the speaker and put the phone to her ear for a more private conversation. I waited in the kitchen.

June did not join me for over an hour. When she finally did, she looked ragged and sorry. “Veda, I don't know why you have to stick your nose into other people's problems. You do it with your cousins and you do it with students at the school. It's not your place to tell people how to dress and who to invite for a visit, but you do it anyway.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“Well, in this case, 'sorry' is not the right word. Hattie's troubles are harder than I thought. She's been living off alimony from husband number two and he just got diagnosed with cancer. As soon as he found out he stopped making payments, and she's not heartless enough to go after him for the money. Unless she gets an income to match what he was paying her, she's going to be out on the street. She's not trained to do anything. She's a professional wife. She had to put her house up for sale today.”

I didn't know what to say, so I waited.

“The point is you asked her to stay with us before you knew she was in trouble. That was key for her. If she had told me her problem and I offered for her to come, she wouldn't have accepted the invitation because she doesn't want to be a charity case. In this case, 'thank-you' are the right words.”

June didn't hug me. She knew I didn't like being touched. She nodded to me before clearing her throat and telling me the finishing touches. “I'm going to see her this weekend. I need to assess the damage. I can't do that from here.”

“Okay.”

“You'll be fine on your own?”

“I'll be perfect,” I reassured her. “I've got things to do.”

⚘⚘⚘

On Friday night, I put a bag together and went over to Pearl's house. If she was still planning on buying that white and black striped gown then I needed to help her choose a hair color to go with it.

The bag I put together had a black wig and a white wig since those were the only two colors I could think of for her to choose from. I also packed permanent hair coloring equipment. If she wanted the black then that would be simple, since it was only one set. For the white, I had a plan to bleach it and then dye it white. I helped Clementine with hers often, so it was I was not in new territory.

At Pearl’s, I was greeted with a most unusual sight. Intarsia and Fair Isle were already there. Why? They never hung out with Pearl.

Aunt Myra let me in. She looked happy, which was weird. She was never happy.

I came around the corner and saw the commotion. Pearl was standing on a stool in the living room. She was wearing her grad dress and Fair Isle was pinning the hem.

It wasn't striped.

She had chosen her color.

I dropped my bag. I was outraged. She had chosen her color without speaking to me and she had chosen badly. It was so bad, I didn't know how her mother had the spirit to smile and look that pleased.

She had chosen peach, flesh, nude, blush, light pink!

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Her gown made her look like a muffin, but it had lovely tucks of fabric that looked like flowers and faux jewels sewn in sequence. The dress wasn't awful. The dress was lovely, with one strap exactly where it should have been, exactly as thick as it should have been. It fit properly. She looked good in it. Her hair was dyed that color too. Obviously, the work of Intarsia who was better at dying hair than all of us put together.

The problem was that we were witches. Choosing a color wasn't about one night. It was about the rest of our lives. Skin colored trousers for the rest of her life? Skin colored hair? Baby pink until the day she died? Was she stupid?

I sat down and got my breath.

Fair Isle glared at me. “Don't you like it?”

“You look beautiful.” I directed my words to the girl on the stool. “Like a freshwater pearl.”

She beamed.

Fair Isle's narrowed eyes didn't move at all. She was sensitive about the color choice she had made. Or rather, there was some bad blood between her and me on the subject. It wasn't my fault. I chose my color when I was thirteen, which is the youngest they will let anyone choose their color. I chose black and never regretted that choice. She felt threatened because she had turned thirteen seven months before me and still had not chosen a color. Some people (I still didn't know who those people were) thought it was a sign I was more mature than her. She yelled at me for choosing the color she wanted. I said she could also have it. More often than not, witches in our coven chose black. So she did it too, but she was angry with me for being the one to do it first.

She picked up my bag and looked inside before I could snatch it back. “What's this?” she scoffed, as she pulled out the black dye.

Everyone stared at her.

I was calm as I explained. “I thought she was going to wear a striped dress she showed me. I thought I'd help her pick a color to match it. That's all. I didn't know she was going to do all this today.”

“A likely story,” Fair Isle said, dangling it between her fingers. “I think you just wanted her to pick black, so everybody can be just like you.”

“Not really,” I said, turning over my bag and showing the bleach and the white wig. “I just didn't want her to have hair that didn’t look good with her dress. I was just trying to help out, but you look lovely, Pearl. I'm just a little sad you didn't need my help.”

“Thank you, Veda,” Pearl said. “But we're all going to have to get used to you not helping us with every little thing since you'll be moving to Whitehorse.”

“I never said I'd go with him,” I retorted.

“But you promised to date him at least twice a week,” Intarsia interjected.

“Yes, but I did that for Antony last month and I’m not running away with him. Neither of them will understand how wrong I am for them if they never see me.”

Fair Isle got up and dropped the box of black hair dye on my bag. “You really believe that? I never thought you were stupid, but clearly, I was wrong. If they date you, they think they have a chance with you.” She strode out of the room with angry footfalls in her heavy boots.

I looked at the crowd: Pearl, Myra, Intarsia. “Do you all think I'm stupid?”

They nodded, though reluctantly.

“But he's going to grad with Intarsia!” I reminded them.

“He's not going with me because he likes me. He's going with me because he's cool enough that he would go with a girl he's not in love with. He probably liked you before he got here.”

“I never wrote to him!”

“Doesn't matter,” the red-head refuted. “He's always known about you. I think he'd decided on you years ago.”

I scowled. “I hate this. I don't want him.”

Intarsia put an understanding hand on my shoulder. I wanted to shrug her off, but she was being so nice. Her voice was sweet as sugar as she said, “I know you don't. You always give your boyfriends away. Fair Isle thinks this is different because Salinger's from a coven, but I don't. Well, I did, but Antony changed my mind.”

“Really? What did Antony say?” I asked, wondering if she would ever take her hand off my shoulder.

“He said that you told him to date Pearl before Salinger confessed to you. Why would you have done that if you didn't want our happiness above your own?”

I didn't have the words for how uncomfortable she was making me. In that instant, I feared she knew my secret and my breath became shallow as I waited for her next words.

“Look how happy you've made her,” Intarsia said, pointing at Pearl.

I released a breath of relief. I wasn't caught and what she said was completely true. Pearl had always looked like a straggly little kid and now she looked like a more enchanting piece of womanhood than… well… me. I never looked that lovely. She was sure to knock Antony’s socks off.

I took Intarsia's hand off my shoulder and patted it. “Dye her eyebrows.”

⚘⚘⚘

On Sunday, I had Salinger over for blueberry pancakes and bacon. June was getting Hattie so we had the place to ourselves.

He was delighted.

After he had eaten four pancakes and almost all the bacon I cooked, he started talking. “Have you seen Pearl?”

Taking my teacup in hand, I nodded.

“She looks great, huh?”

“Yup. If you want to change your target to her, I wouldn't mind,” I said dully.

“Why would I do that? All I said was that she looks great. Did it make you jealous?”

“No.”

“Then what's going on?”

“My goal for Pearl was to get her to stop wearing stripes. I was going to help her pick a color that was right for her. I think I was thinking navy all this time, to offset her eyes. She went and chose it without me.”

“And you're bummed?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “That was my lifelong goal for her. Now it's done and I wasn't any use to her at all.”

“So, come up with a new goal for her,” Salinger suggested.

“No. I haven't got the energy. She has been so hard to help with the one goal, I thought she wouldn't stop wearing stripes before she turned thirty.” I shook my head and came out of my reverie. “How is your book coming?”

“I have made pretty good progress for one week, provided I don't need to go back and undo my work.”

I chuckled. “You don't knit, do you?”

“No. Why?”

“I knit. You almost always need to go back and redo some of your work. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. I would be surprised if it was different when writing a spell book.”

“Well,” he started saying when he was interrupted.

Someone was coming through the back doors. June was back, but she wasn't the first person to enter.

To understand the magnitude of the moment, a person must understand who June was. She was a tall, athletic woman who had spent many years studying ballet. Regardless of her age (which was in the neighborhood of fifty), she had silver hair and enormous brown eyes. Her hair was cut in a bob which was often done in a bun. She wore pantsuits, skirt suits, and very sensible, but stylish, gray loafers. She spoke in clear, rhythmic tones. You never saw a classier lady.

When Hattie came in. I knew it was her because it couldn't be anybody else, but I nearly froze in horror. She said she had given up witchcraft, but no declaration could have prepared me for the woman who came through the back door.

She was wearing every color. All of them. Not just the primary colors or the secondary colors. She was wearing all of them. She was wearing orange, vermilion, blood red, scarlet, rose red, crimson, cranberry, raspberry, pink, magenta, mauve, wine, and all through the color spectrum until you got to orange again. The dress had a black collar and brown cuffs. Her hair was a mass of frizzy, unnatural red curls, and her roots were showing. Jewelry banged about her wrists. She wore bracelets. Not just bangles, but chain links too. She wore beads from her neck, pearl ropes, and at least three dangling pendants. She seemed enormous and glittering like a circus tent. I didn't know how we would find room for her in the house.

I was wearing a gothic tea dress, with a minimum of ruffles and lace. I felt the black lace shawl over my shoulders slip to my elbows. June came in behind her. She was wearing a dove gray overcoat that billowed gorgeously when she moved. Salinger was wearing a black v necked sweater with intricate cables down both breasts. He looked fabulous (especially to a knitter).

Hattie span around the room as though she were looking for someone. She didn't seem to notice how out-of-place she was.

“Is Veda around?” she asked me breathlessly.

I stood up and put out my hand. “I'm Veda. This is Salinger, my gentleman caller.” I called him that to annoy him, but he did not seem the least bit nettled. He smiled like he was having a great time. He got to his feet and greeted Hattie properly.

“Nice to meet you.”

Hattie's expression read, “Are you for real?” She looked alternately between Salinger and me before settling on me and admitting, “From your voice, I thought you'd be older. Are you a teenager?”

“Of course, I am. This is my mother's house, but she's not in town. June and I share the living space. Plus, I get extra tutoring on decorum and propriety.”

Hattie humphed.

I got Salinger to take her bags to the spare room on the top floor. There were six suitcases and they were fatter than coffins. How had the plane managed to find room for them? And how was Salinger going to take them upstairs? I followed him. He was using strength spells.

I muffled a laugh. He sounded adorable telling off an inanimate object.

Afterward, all of us sat in the dining room.

June and Hattie recounted their triumph. The short version began with June's arrival. She found Hattie in a mess. They spoke frankly between them before June took command. She called a second-hand store and had them come with a truck to take away all of Hattie's furniture. Hattie cried. June bought the six enormous suitcases and put them in the living room. Everything that wasn't furniture had to be given away, thrown away, or put in the bags. Hattie felt like June was cutting her arm off. She had quite a lot of clutter.

With the beds gone, June took them to a hotel to stay. Hattie had not been to a hotel since her honeymoon with her last husband. The place was positively a palace compared to her house, which helped June convince her to throw out most of her belongings without regret. They ordered room service and watched a home decorating channel. Hattie had not had that much fun in a long time.

The next day, June had them on a schedule that said they had to be finished sorting everything by four o'clock. She had hired a crew of professional cleaners to come. They helped move, sort, and clean every last thing. June didn't even help them. She worked in the yard until it was tidy.

At four o'clock, everything was packed into the six cases and a home inspector was there. He said her house was worth twenty thousand dollars more than the last home inspector. They called the realtor and re-listed the house for more money.

They went back to the hotel, had a huge celebration, went to bed early, even though they were still squealing like schoolgirls, slept for a few hours, and then hot-footed it to the airport to make it back to Edmonton.

It was a superb victory.

I was also very excited. This was exactly the sort of opportunity I had been waiting for. Salinger seemed to notice both the bubbles brewing in my head and the hiccups my nerves kept having whenever Hattie spoke or moved. I was entertaining him, merely by being myself, which I didn't enjoy.

When it came time for supper, he got up to leave. I walked him out.

He paused just inside the storm door. For a moment, I was petrified he was going to try to touch me. Instead, he leaned against the door and asked, “Are you a good witch?”

“What do you mean? I'm not the Wicked Witch of the West. The title was already taken.”

“No. I mean, are you good at what magic you try to do?”

I cocked my head. “No one gets it right every single time.”

“Of course not. I mean, do you fail often?”

My voice became hard. “What an awful thing to ask! Of course, I'm a failure more often than I'm a success. I'm seventeen years old. Just because I fail more than half the time doesn't mean I'm nothing, and it doesn't mean I haven't been extremely successful in important ways. You look for my magic and you’ll see how successful I've been.” I opened the door for him and shooed him from the house.

He went and blew me a kiss on his way. It was a motion that made my breath catch. He knew how to cast a spell with a flick of his wrist. I thought he was adorable, and I should not have. I had just told him off. but he was not bothered by my resistance. He looked pleased.

That was not a feeling I wanted a man leaving my house to feel.

I turned my back on him.