It still took some convincing, though. The storm wasn’t supposed to hit us, but we’d still get bands of rain, probably some wind, and Mama was not crazy about me not being, as she put it, “in the nest” should the weather change.
“We’re staying at Ellen’s,” I told her. “And it’sextrasafe since it’s a hotel, and it has to be because of insurance.”
“I mean, of all the places in town I’d want to be if the weather does get a little hairy, the Shipwreck is way up there.” Dad had been smiling as he said it, my little brother, Sam, propped on one hip. He was five that summer, and getting too big to be carried, but we all did it anyway because he was such a sweet kid.
So Mama had let me go with a promise to be safe, to come back early Friday morning before the rain had a chance to hit, and I had hugged her and told her I loved her and then said I’d be fine because I’d be at Ellen’s and everyone knew Ellen’s house was the safest place in St. Medard’s. All those hurricanes, and there it still stood. Not even the churches could say that—First Baptist was smashed up in Betsy back in ’54, and the Methodists got it in Delphine.
The Shipwreck Inn was just a short walk from my house by the road, but I always cut through the scrubby little woodland behind us and made my way to the inn via the beach.
It was about three o’clock in the afternoon that Thursday, and I remember that the air seemed so clear, the sky marred by only a handful of clouds. Whatever Audrey was doing, it was far away, and I was actually a little disappointed.
It would be cool, I’d thought, if it started raining really hard while we were in Ellen’s big bedroom—an actual hotel room she used as a bedroom, which always felt so glamorous to me—all three of us sprawled in Ellen’s king-size bed, eating Oreos and drinking Tab, telling the scariest stories we could think of while a big thunderstorm raged outside.
That’s really all I’d thought a hurricane was back then. Just a big storm.
I was maybe halfway down the beach to the Shipwreck when I spotted Lo and Ellen walking toward me, duffel bags over their shoulders, Lo wearing a pair of bright purple star-shaped sunglasses.
The three of us ran to one another like we’d been parted for decades, laughing and whooping, throwing our arms around one another, giddy in that way only twelve-year-old girls with a slumber party and a surprise three-day weekend ahead of them can be.
And then Lo had put a hand on each of our shoulders and said, “So. Frieda, your parents think you’re at Ellen’s. Ellen’s parents think Ellen is atmyhouse, and Beth-Anne thinks I’m atyourhouse, Frieda, so we are free as fuckingbiiiiiiiiirdsuntil tomorrow morning!”
Like I said, Lo went through rebellious phases, and she was in one that May. Hence the calling her mama by her first name, the swearing, and the lying.
I glanced over at Ellen to see if she was as surprised by this as I was, but she was chewing her lip and not quite meeting my eyes. “It’s dumb, and we’re probably going to get caught,” she said in a rush, but then she smiled, a big smile even though she was usually self-conscious about the way her front teeth overlapped just a little bit. Her hazel eyes were shining as she said, “But, like, Lo has a really cool idea.”
“I do!” Lo crowed, then turned and faced the sea. It wasn’t as placid as it usually was, the waves a little higher, the whitecaps bigger,but there was nothing that suggested there was a monster miles away gathering strength, subtly twisting eastward.
“Okay, fucking ocean, you think we’re scared of you?” she cried into the wind.
“Lo,” I said, tugging at her shirt. I was giggling, but part of me was embarrassed that she was out here yelling like a lunatic, and another part of me was suddenly a little scared. Like she might actually piss the ocean off or something.
Shit, maybe she did.
“You might have fucked up this town years ago. You might have killed my daddy. But that was beforewewere here.”
She reached back for both of our hands without looking, and without hesitating, Ellen and I both clasped an upturned palm and let ourselves be dragged to stand next to her.
“We are the Witches of St. Medard’s Bay,” Lo went on, “and we protect this town now.”
I looked over at her, still giggling because this was still kind of embarrassing, but I had to admit, Lo looked… powerful standing there. The wind was blowing her hair, and those sunglasses didn’t seem as garish or silly anymore, and whatever new game she was playing, it seemed like it had the potential to be exciting.
Twelve is a weird age for girls. On the one hand, we were starting to like boys, starting to have opinions on lipstick, and we were quick to shun anything “babyish,” whether that was Barbie dolls or a T-shirt with a cartoon cat on it. On the other, we were still little girls in a lot of ways. We stilllikedthese games of pretend, we just felt embarrassed about it, and afterward, we swore one another to secrecy or pretended that we’d been enjoying it onlyironically, of course.
But there was no irony now, no affected sophistication as the three of us linked arms and Ellen and I let Lo pull us back down the beach the way I’d come, veering off at the little nature preserve the town had set up for Earth Day back in ’72.
There wasn’t much to it. A bunch of pine trees, a half-finished boardwalk that meandered over sand, and then, as you got deeper in, marshlands. There weren’t any alligators in the preserve, not then, butmy dad had sworn he’d seen a bobcat once, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled when Lo led us to a spot just inside the trees and pointed at a dark green tent set up underneath some low pine branches.
“You didn’t mention camping,” Ellen said, frowning, but Lo waved her hand.
“It’s notcamping. It’s the secret lair of our coven.”
“Looks like camping to me,” I replied, and Lo flipped me off while Ellen gave a nervous burst of laughter.
“Okay, fine, it’s a secret lair, but what if the weatherdoesget bad?” she asked Lo.
“Then we go back to your place. Say Frieda came over, and the three of us decided to stay at the inn instead because you have a TV in your room.”
But the thing is, none of us really thought the weather would get bad. We’d never lived through a hurricane, and maybe the twelve years after Delphine let our parents get a little softer. Maybe they trusted the news too easily, maybe they forgot that yes, usually we can predict these things with reasonable accuracy.
