“—seven high tides,” I finish with a groan. Then I groan again, louder, when it doesn’t improve my mood. So I turn my back to the lawyer, take up a broom, and start sweeping.
Grandma Rose, why would you do this? Who puts a magical stipulation on a will!? Or whoclaimsto do so, I should say? Because I know you weren’t magical, Grandma.
To be fair, this is all par for the course. My grandmother’s loony lunacy looned deep.
Pretty much every summer of my childhood, Mom spent a couple months test-driving a new boyfriend in Canada or wherever. She would drop me off in Salem with Grandma. Taking advantage of the situation, Grandma leaned hard into the kindly matriarch schtick: she fed me a diet of home-cooked food and gingerbread cookies laced with medicinal, possibly illegal herbs; she took me shopping, outfitting me in a black and purple Gothic wardrobe; she regaled me with legends of our eccentric and paranormally inclined clan. When I was little, I ran with it. Sure, kids at the playground stared at us in our Addams Family cosplay, and the librarian banned us after Grandma kept sneaking in stray, flea-trafficking cats. But Grandma Rose encouraged me to ignore them all. After all, weren’t the little families she invited to her house cute and fun and accepting? Even if they were unusually hairy or had pets with tentacles, not arms?
I can’t believe I trusted Grandma when she said that was normal for homeschoolers.
Everything changed the last time I stayed with Grandma. Mom was excited about her most recent boyfriend, so she extended her vacation time with him into September. This meant Grandma had to enroll me inone of Salem’s public middle schools for the fall. I must’ve been handling the transition too well, because Grandma’s friends persuaded her that this meant it was time to introduce me, an innocent and unsuspecting twelve-year-old, to their favorite local community event. On Halloween night, Grandma brought me to a “very special” party in the Salem Woods. There, her best friend, Matilda, unsheathed a dagger and held it against my heart, her silvery eyes boring holes into mine. This is it, I thought. I’ve been Hansel-and-Greteled. Fattened up and dressed up and now I’m going to be dinner. I was sure I was going to die.
Of course, I didn’t.
No one ever planned to sacrifice me. It was all a joke they were playing while Grandma picked up pizza. When she returned, Grandma didn’t notice my shaking, my terror. The fact that I’d peed myself. She just cackled around the fire with her wannabe-witch coven while I stress-vomited into a barrel of bobbing apples. I still wake up sweating from nightmares about it, sometimes. The dagger part, sure—but the pants-peeing part especially, because on my way home from the forest, I bumped into a popular kid who witnessed my wet-jeans waddle of shame. His discovery ushered in new and horrible humiliations. Between every class period, I was afflicted by water bottles “accidentally” squeezed in the direction of my pants. In math, the substitute let us play hangman, and the answer was “Only gross girls pee their pants.” Thanks to social media, even the kids who’d skipped school nursing candy hangovers knew what happened and joined in the mockery. Overnight, I’d become something worse than “the new girl” or “another strange Spük.”
I’d become an actual pariah. A pee-riah.
After that, I decided to stay as far from Grandma—more specifically, from the unstable people orbiting her—as I possibly could. I called Mom, pleading with her to come pick me up. She sacrificed the nascent bud of whatever was happening with her then-boyfriend to rescue me and move us all the way to the West Coast. To the far-flung city of Portland, Oregon.
Unfortunately, life with Mom was only two degrees saner than with Grandma. That’s when I drew a line in the sand: I gave myselfa nickname, less witchy-sounding than Samantha, and I made it my mission to become as un-Spüky as possible. I’m holding to that, too. By the time I’m thirty, I aim to be as boring as Baldy. To be the wallpaper of people, an owner of 2.5 children and/or dogs living in a suburban McMansion. To be graced with a back-buckling mortgage and a partner with no ambitions beyond making money and watching Sunday football.
The dream, basically. The goddamn, paranormal-free American dream.
Which I can’t achieve while I’m stuck in this dysfunctional witch shop. In this dysfunctional witchtown. When I need to be starting my new job elsewherein two days!
“Samantha,” says Baldy. “Would you kindly refrain from sweeping dust over my feet?”
I’d rather not. I feel a flicker of joy at the pained bob of his Adam’s apple above his bow tie.
“You’re a true believer,” I say, sweeping more dust over his shoes. “I can tell. You really bought into the whole witch-town tourist package. But the joke’s on you, Baldy.”
“Bhauldeen.”
“Like I was saying, my grandma was a cosplayer. The furthest thing from a witch. There’s no magical binding on the will, no matter what she said, but if it helps, I’ll pay you to figure out a legal workaround to Grandma’s request—a magical workaround, if you will. Just call me before you send the invoice. I expect there will be a reasonable fee. And when you need me to do anything with the courts, I’ll come back. As of tomorrow, though, I’m—”
I wiggle my index and middle fingers like they’re running away. Baldy watches with intense, if pallid, concern.
“That is not possible, Samantha.”
“Believe me, it is. I know a lot about quasi-legal wiggle room.”
“Your continued presence in Salem, guarding your grandmother’s spirit, was one of Rosamund’s last requests. It deserves to be honored.”
Good lord. What does he think Grandma was, a Gothic saint?
“Well, tough for her. I’ve told you, I can’t stay here,” I say firmly. “Istart work Monday. In Manhattan. You might have noticed that’s not in commuting distance.”
From his blank expression, Baldy does not comprehend distance. This must be an advantage of owning a self-driving car.
“Don’t you kids all work from home these days?” he asks.
“I’m twenty-two, not a kid. Besides, aren’t you here in person?” I remind Baldy. “Same deal.”
“I see,” says Baldy, unaware it’s not even close to the same deal. I didn’t gun for a job at an accounting firm with a remote work model. I chose EFG New Yorkbecauseit insists on its employees living locally and working on-site. While I build up my suburban home savings fund, New York is where I have to be—mainly because it’s a place you can’t help blending in. In the city, no one will flag you down and expect you to stop walking. You can cross at an intersection wearing nothing but a brazen rainbow beach towel and the oiled-up pecs of a god andstillget hit by a taxi. I would know. I’ve seen it happen. The oily man got away largely unscathed, if more naked.
Besides, it’s a big deal to get to work at a corporate headquarters in the world’s financial hub. The way I see it is, most people want the best job they can get. That’s why I wanted it too. Because I’m so average. Average-zilla.
But I’m obviously not going to bare my soul to this Grandma Rose sympathizer.
