The witch assigned as her counselor had sat across the desk at the end of the term with a frown, looking over Harper’s abysmal results. “Fortunately, you are still early in your path,” the witch had told her with a kind smile, as if she were doing Harper a favor by telling her she was expelled. “And that is a fortuitous thing. You haven’t even declared a discipline yet. There’s plenty of time to come back, once . . . well, once you’re able to handle the responsibility of full-time studies again. Self-care is not something you ought to be ignoring right now, Ms. Hollingsworth. A witch unable to care for her own well-being will never be able to provide service to her community or coven. I hope you seek the help you need. You’ll need to retake the entry exams, of course, but the Collegium’s doors will be open to you, once you’re fit to return.”
Bad grief was sitting numbly before the counselor witch, silent as her invitation to return to school the following term was rescinded, not finding her voice until she was standing before the frozen case at the mini-mart off campus. Her voice had come back to her in the form of noisy sobs, shuddering out in between the orange creamsicles and crinkle-cut fries, snot and drool and red-splotched skin, barely able to hold herself up.
The handful of other shoppers had circled her warily, an employee appearing at her elbow to ask if she was alright. She’d been unable to answer, the noises coming out of her sounding more like a wounded animal than a witch. Harper had attempted to bat off his hand around her elbow, winding up sliding to the floor. Another employee had appeared, each of them gripping her beneath her armpits, and she’d not had the energy to fight. They deposited her outside of the mini-mart’s door, leaning her against the wall like a sack of garbage, until the police cruiser had shown up and her sobs began anew.
Bad grief was sitting in the back of the police car, listening as the responding officers debated bringing her to the hospital or simply bringing her home.
“P-please just bring me home. I don’t want to go to the hospital. I swear I’m not crazy, okay? I just . . . my father died and I’m not going back to school and I just . . . please bring me home. I’m sorry for causing any trouble.”
The officers had softened, the one behind the wheel asking for her address while the eyebrows belonging to the woman in the passenger seat drew together as she met Harper’s eye in the rearview mirror.
“Hey,” the woman said as she deposited Harper on her stoop after they rolled into the parking lot of her small off-campus apartment building. “Crazydoesn’t mean anything, okay? That word doesn’t have any meaning. We all need help sometimes. A few days of inpatient might do you some good. And allthatmeans is you need a bit of help right now, got it? Is there someone you can call?”
She had mumbled that she would be contacting her mother, promising the police officers she would do so as soon as she was inside, although it was several hours before she had composed herself sufficiently to make the call home.Home. Another word that doesn’t have any meaning.
Bad grief was eating ice cream for breakfast. Her mother had called out the very behavior months earlier, but her mother wasn’t there just then, and there was no one at all around to see as she pulled a pint of cappuccino mocha chip from the freezer, dropping to the sofa with a teaspoon. Bad grief was an endless rotation of bad reality television and online shopping, taking the place of fresh air, exercise, and gainful employment. Bad grief was sleeping until two p.m. each day, even though she was positive sleep counted as self-care.
But more than anything else, the most significant difference between good grief and bad was that bad grief was as endless as the ocean, with no respite or relief in sight. She was bobbing on the waves with no hope of rescue and nothing but the voice in her head and the gaping hole in her chest for company, and Harper was beginning to wonder if she ought to simply succumb to the undertow.
She didn’t know if all the people who somehow managed to perform good grief, people like her mother, were still shredded on the inside. She didn’t know if they were still consumed with emptiness and longing for the way things used to be, or if they had all somehow filled in the hole left in their heart with friends and partners and community activism and social clubs.Maybe everyone is miserable all the time, and you’re just the only one who’s shit at hiding it.
OOTD: Bat-print leggings. Grey t-shirt with Nietzsche quote about suffering. Overwhelming sense of futility. Fuzzy socks with pumpkins, because it’s never too early to be thinking about Fall.
The buzz of her phone distracted her from her laptop screen for a moment, a text from her younger sister.
Mom said make sure you’re dressed and ready by noon.
Harper rolled her eyes. Her mother had gotten her wish, at least partially. A handful of witches from the coven were coming by that afternoon for tea, a two p.m. affair, hardly necessitating her fidgeting in her grandmother’s dining room for two hours.
It’s not like Morgan is going to be ready by then either. She and her seventeen-year-old sister were close enough, but still being in high school gave her sister something to fixate on, gave her focus and drive.
She’s going to leave for the Collegium and university and you’re going to be stuck here with mom and Ilea forever.Wrinkling her nose at the thought, she snuggled into the corner of the sofa with her ice cream and laptop. It had been several months since she’d left the Collegium with the order to do exactly that. Now the summer waned and witches would soon be returning to those echoing, hallowed halls. She’d not be among them. She wasn’t ready, still as unfocused and apathetic as she had been that day in the counselor’s office. She needed to give herself time to rest and heal, to stay in bed as long as her body needed and eat all the cappuccino mocha chip ice cream she wanted, and if her mother ever wanted her to rejoin polite society, Harper thought, her self-care should be the priority.
Holding her spoon in her mouth, she tapped open a familiar page. She had discovered an occult shop in the neighboring city that did an online auction every week on one of their social media accounts. The hypnotic voice of the woman who ran the auction was second only to the well-shaped hands of the man who held and placed the items, drawing the viewer’s eye with his long, lacquered black claws.
She had never purchased anything from the shop, possessing neither the space nor the money to start collecting haunted pocket watches and antique mortuary equipment, but her little goth heart loved watching the auctions each week, and she discovered that by watching the recording the afternoon following the live event, she could enjoy the spooky objects, the man’s hands, the woman’s voice, all while protecting her bank balance.
“A poison ring from 1763, taken from the excavations of a Tuscan Villa. Trace amounts of powdered belladonna are still embedded in the engraving on the inside of the hinged lid. The home this was taken from belonged to a witch of great renown, and it is likely this ring helped her keep her place as a confidant to local politicians. Let’s get the bidding started, shall we?”
She had just swallowed a spoonful of her ice cream when a sharp rapping against the glass pane of her front door merely made her choke. Morgan was the only one who slapped on doors with an open palm, having learned in childhood that she was able to create more of a racket, and the more noise she made, the faster she got her way. Harper struggled to push herself from her ass groove in the corner of the sofa, legs tangled in her blanket, staggering the few paces across the room to the door.
“Holy shit, stop that right this instant. What is wrong with you?”
Her younger sister didn’t bother answering, pushing past Harper and crossing to the sofa. Morgan dropped into her ass groove, picking up the ice cream.
“I forgot you always liked coffee ice cream. Mom is on a low-fat everything kick right now, all we have in the house is vanilla made with skim milk and it tastes like the dessert equivalent of forgetting why you walked into the room. Or like, you know how it feels when you have to drop something off at the post office and you get there and it turns out to be some human holiday and everything is closed? That’s how that ice cream tastes.Thisshit, however, is delicious. I have to remember you have it.”
“You are such a mooch,” Harper laughed, retrieving a second teaspoon from the kitchen before dropping to the sofa beside her sister. Morgan made no protest when she tapped her auction back on, and they watched in companionable silence as an alligator skull was shown, followed by an Odd Fellows death mask.
“This guy has sexy hands. Is he ever on camera?”
She shook her head, spooning up a scoop full of the ice cream. “He’s not. Unfortunately. He doesn’t talk either, only the woman.”
Morgan snorted. “That’s a waste. Maybe he has a really obnoxious voice. Wait, I like that ring. How much is it?”
“It’s an auction. It’s not just for sale with the price, you have to bid on it.”
“Well, bid on it! Wait, does it show you how much it’s going for?”
