Tentatively, Angie said, “I’m just yourgardenfriend, not afriend-friend. You’re sixteen. Practically grown up.” She yanked at her gross locks, her ire rising. “Plants listen to you. You get to help design new magics with the earth witches. You tamed that garter snake and itsleepswith you. And . . . And I havepuke green hair!”
“Shhh.” Mud glanced out the door, peering all around in the dark. She came back, nearly whispering now. “Not everybody knows about Sir Thamnos, and some people are scared of snakes, even nonvenomous ones. And friends don’t always look just like you do. Sometimes they can be older, or different from you, and grow leaves.” Mud scowled at her. “I’ve never made friends here either, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Angie had noticed. The same group of cool, mean girls who picked on her also picked on Mud. Carmelina and Jessamine—Carm and Jessa—were both in Cabin A, where all the older trainees lived, the ones who were in their last year of summer Magic Camp. They were powerful teenaged witches from important witch clans, and they led their own small gang of seventeen-year-old mean witches.
Technically, Angie could turn her hair back to normal, but everyone here would figure out way too much about her magic if she did and revealing that secret was against Everhart Clan rules. Angie was one of the rare witches who could work raw magic. That made her dangerous should she lose control (she never did, not since she was a little kid) and put her at risk from people who might want to exploit her magic.
“We might as well team up and be friends,” Mud said, giving a weird shrug as if she was embarrassed or something.
“Really?” Angie said.
“Yes, Stupid.”
Despite her hair, Angie grinned. “No,you’restupid.”
“I have to be, to like someone as spoiled as you. You’re what old people call a piece of work.”
Angie frowned at herself in the mirror over the row of sinks. “Not spoiled.”
“Humph,” Mud said, her tone disagreeing, though her next words changed the subject. “How did they turn your hair puke green, anyway?”
“Carm pretended to be my friend,” which Angie had wanted so bad. “She offered to help with the maths to imbue a malachite focal stone with a glamour charm. She ‘messed up’ on the math and directed the working at my hair. But she did it on purpose.”
“How do you know it was on purpose?”
“I saw her face.” Angie had really seen the magics leave Carm’s fingers and shoot to her formerly strawberry blond hair, not that she could say that. Angie’s face flushed at the thought of what she wanted to do to Carm. And couldn’t. Not only were revenge and direct attacks punished at Magic Camp, Angie had never studiedattackmagic, and the only time she had tried to turn her magic violent, she had hurt someone. Maybe worse. Mama had never said so, but Angie had been mad and she thought she had killed. She was too powerful to have that ability yet, according to her parents, and since Angie couldn’t give her power-level away, the accident-that-wasn’t left her with green hair. Carm got off scot-free. She grumbled, “I want to get her back so bad.”
Mud shoved the leaves away from her face. “I’m in.”
“In what?”
“Holy Moly girl. I’m in on the revenge. Wait. You don’t want to kill them do you?”
“I don’t think I could get away with it,” Angie groused.
“I’m not sure that’s a good answer, Angelina Everhart Trueblood, but it’s at least honest. Friends?”
Not sure how friends were supposed to work, Angie held out her hand. “Friends.”
Instead of shaking hands, Mud laced fingers with hers and squeezed once before she let go. “Now pull these leaves outta my hair and help me be presentable or some random tree will try to pick me up on the way back to our cabin.”
Angie wasn’t sure Mud was entirely joking. She yanked leaves off and stuffed them into Mud’s overalls pocket. Together they snuck back into Cabin L and into lower bunks next to each other.
???
“I could catch them with vines and hold them still while you cut their hair off at the scalp. Or make them trip while we’re on the hike and fall into the lake.”
“Anything with vines and leaves will send the counselors straight to you. They’ll blame you, and not me, and punish you. This has to be sneaky. AndIhave to do it.” Angie fell behind on the path to bite off and spit out the jagged end of a broken fingernail. It tasted vaguely like dirt.
They were taking the trail to the corner of the garden they shared as part of earth magic coursework. Overhead, oak and maple trees met across the path, their shade muting the heat by a few degrees. The route took them past the barn, which smelled of horses and manure, past the Earth Magic Shed, which smelled like aromatic herbs drying in the hot air, and the greenhouse where the older girls like Carmelina were working on projects. Laughter echoed through the opaque plastic greenhouse walls and unidentifiable shapes moved, blurry and indistinct.
Mud had a place in the greenhouse too, but she only went there when she could be alone with the plants. Mud didn’t use magic workings like witches did, to make plants grow. She just talked to trees and bushes and seeds and they sprouted and rooted and grew.
Because of Mud, their corner of the garden was bigger and greener and had more plants than anyone else’s and Angie was learning all sorts of things about talking to plants. Mud insisted that thinking the right “grow thoughts” make plants happy which made them bigger, stronger, and healthier. Working with Mud, Angie had even modified two minor witch workings to keep away pests and stop weeds with runners underground from invading.
She smashed into Mud’s shoulders, nose first. “Hey what—”
Mud cussed.
