“I’m Carol,” the witch says.
“You’re a warning advertisement for tanning beds,” I say.
“She just came back from Tampa,” Matilda explains. “She lives there now. Part-time.”
“There’s a nice community of brujas down there,” adds Carol. “Except for when Mercury goes retrograde on a full moon.”
One of the witches on the lawn, wearing bedazzled butterfly clips in her silky white hair, messes with the dials on a boom box. She is wearing white tiger-paw gloves.
“Why are you all here?” I ask the group—bravely, I might add. “Isn’t your thing to meet up in the woods at night on Halloween? Not waking up innocent twentysomethings at the crack of dawn, digging up the yard like a herd of wild hogs?”
“It’s a special occasion!” Matilda sucks in her breath, coughs, thenlifts her arms dramatically to intone: “We blessed sisters seven, tied together by eternal bonds—”
The others chime in, monotone: “—seven tied together by eternal bonds—”
“STOP!”
They do, thankfully. My heart is going wild in my chest. I can’t believe what I just heard. Actually, I must’ve misheard it. It sounded—
It sounded like they saidseven tides.
“Say that again,” I demand.
“We didn’t finish it,” says the tiger-pawed one. “We didn’t talk about the highs and lows yet.”
“I still prefer saying ‘thorns’ and ‘roses,’?” says another.
“I thought it was eight, not seven?” asks Carol.
“I don’t know about any of that, but I heard you all just say,” I repeat, breathless, “that you were seven sisters, tied together by special bonds.”
“Eternalbonds,” confirms Matilda, her neck cracking. “That is true.”
“See, that’s why I think it should still be eight sisters,” says Carol. “Including Rose.”
The witches look at each other, nodding and shaking their heads like a dashboard of bobbleheads. Their confusion aside, I’m more confident than ever with what I’ve heard. And what I think it means. These seven still-living witches are best friends, tied together by their cabal. Seven,tied together… the “tides” that Grandma must’ve been referring to in her will. But Grandma was using that grammar-checking app that Bulan talked about, with its nefarious and inaccurate AI! Which means all this time, the words in her will had nothing to do with the ocean, lunar time, or a scuba shop.
Grandma Rose was trying to say that she needed her friends to say goodbye.
Why didn’t I realize it before?
I zoom in on Carol, the Florida Orange and the seventh member of the cabal. She’s the reason I must’ve discounted them. Because before, there’d only beensixwitches.
“You weren’t at Grandma’s funeral,” I accuse. “Were you?”
“Well, I tried to make it!” protests the witch. “But I couldn’t very well let myself be hexed by—”
“Carol, we all know it’s because you hate the Halloween traffic,” someone interrupts.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say. Streams of hope are springing in me unexpectedly. Like a leak in a water main. I have a vision: an idea. A feeling that I finally know what to do to settle Grandma’s spirit once and for all. “Come on, witches. Come with me. Not because I’m me, obviously. But for Grandma Rose. She needs her sisters. And that boom box.”
I all but skip to the cemetery with Grandma’s witch cabal in tow. It’s more crowded than ever, but I easily ignore the pilgrims and their cameras as I lead us to the grave site. This time, I have to admit, the trip goes much more easily. This is the advantage of not needing to cut security wires and jump fences and lie to attractive pine-cone gatherers named Hanry.
I’m fluttering with excitement and nerves as I arrange the witch cabal atop the grave, like I did the flowers.
Here you go, Grandma Rose. I hope this does the trick for you. I hope you feel better and can do your whole ascending schtick now, knowing that you’re not alone. That your community, the Community, always had your back.
“Now what?” croaks Matilda.
