The ritual has to be done at dawn, they said, so we only got five hours of sleep last night. But I am wide-awake. I can tell the other girls are too. Elena jokes loudly as we walk, trying to make Sophie snort-laugh, and Joey looks like she’s going to puke from nerves. I’m lightheaded with excitement. Finally, we come to a stop at the end of the trail. It’s still pretty dark, so it’s kind of hard to see, but I can just make out a circle of stones sitting at the center of a ring of aspen trees. My heart races, and Joey wipes her palms on her pants. I catch her eye and see that she seems to be thinking exactly what I am.This can’t be real, can it?
They jostle us by our shoulders into place, the four of us pressed together, back-to-back inside the spell circle. Joey’s mom placesThe Book of Aspenson the ground in the middle of us before taking her place inside the spell circle with her arms above her head. My mom does the same, and she tells us to hold hands. Surrounding us as best they can, they both close their eyes, and so do we.
Within seconds, I feel something tickling me, like fingernails sliding over my skin, only it’s on the inside of my body. My mom drops to the ground suddenly. At first, I think she’s fallen, but when I look down, I see her leaning between my feet and Sophie’s. She begins to read. Her words are musical. I don’t understand what she’s saying, but I know she is casting a spell because she told us this is how it would happen. The tickle inside me grows. It becomes a fizz that bubbles through me like Pop Rocks—pop,pop,poppingbeneath my skin. Up to my hair and back down to my heels. Out to each fingertip, passing directly through my heart. I hear one of the other girls gasp and another one release a breath of a laugh. It makes me feel so strong, so excited that my friends are here with me, knowing that they are feeling this too.
And then, just like that, the spell is finished. The words stop, and the Pop Rocks fade. They don’t leave completely, though. I can still feel the faint crackle of them in my blood, and I secretly hope the feeling will last forever. We unclasp our hands and spin around to look at each other.
“Was that it?” asks Elena. Sophie starts to laugh. Soon, the rest of us join in, and the spell circle is filled with our sudden, uncontrollable giddiness.
When we have recovered, the four of us circle up again, and Joey’s mom guides us through some practice spells. We take turns giving it a go. Sophie reads too quietly, and Elena too fast. Joey is frustrated with her pronunciation and starts over. It takes all morning for us toget the hang of it. Until I finally do a perfect illusion spell, turning a golden aspen leaf green. It’s such a small spell, but it is the best feeling I’ve ever had. We all stare at the leaf like it’s the start of our new life. Because it is.
5Joey
The coffee shop is the busiest it’s been in weeks.
The temperature is expected to touch seventy today. If Joey was in a clearer headspace, she would have put a sandwich board outside advertising their cold brew. And she would start selling cold brew.
She’s on edge and hasn’t eaten at all today; it’s already almost one.
Her mind is still back in those woods, the whispers all around her.
The bell jingles as the door swings wide. A child runs in, followed by her grandmother. She gives Joey a friendly wave. Beyond them is Front Street, which is busier than usual. Small clusters of people she doesn’t know stand nearby, not ogling the mountains but the movie set, which Joey can’t see from here, thankfully. Other than the gawkers and what she assumes are film crew, the town looks just as it always has from her vantage point. The square lines of old brick buildings look small against the shadow of the mountain behind them. Beyond that, though she cannot see, she knows there are two more peaks, making up the famous Three Elks that surround the town. The tallest is capped white with snow.
The credit card machine beeps, making her jump. She gives Zachan apologetic look as she passes him yet another order for a lavender latte.
“We need more lavender syrup from the back,” says Zach, wagging an empty bottle in her direction. There’s a small stain of sweat on his chest just below his beard. He does not look happy.
“I’ll go,” she says quickly. She should give her employee the break and not take it for herself, but she doesn’t. She can tell Zach notices this lack of good management, but she is desperate for a minute of quiet. She just needs to think.
She ducks into the storeroom, where the din is a little more tolerable. A fleeting thought about how she wishes she ran the kind of coffee shop that served freshly infused syrups to her customers. She’d serve it as a latte with a sprig of lavender on top of thick foam, and the air would smell of wildflowers and steamed milk. While she was at it, she would get rid of all the old tables and replace them with something natural but colorful—a hygge-meets-mountain-town vibe. Quinn would have loved that.
But as it is, Joey barely cares if anything is nice. What right does she have to dream about rattan light fixtures when Quinn is in the ground? Joey’s mom too. That happened five years after Quinn, almost to the day, which made the dulling pain sharp again. And Joey has been bouncing between sharp and dull ever since, never quite free of the caked-on grief that, at some point, had stuck to her bones.
But this morning, when the trees whispered to her, something changed.
Everything changed.
She climbs on a sturdy box and reaches up to the top shelf. She heaves herself to her tiptoes, pulling down the bulk syrups she ordered online, bottle by bottle. This is the kind of thing she has done since she took over the place six years ago. She pretends she doesn’t know about the rumors that the coffee shop has gone downhill and that she doesn’tmaintain the same level of quality as Barbara did. Barbara used to wake up at four in the morning to bake lemon blueberry scones and spent her evenings slicing vanilla beans to make her own syrup while on the phone debating the high school athletics budget with the school board. After what happened to Quinn, Barbara didn’t want the coffee shop anymore, and, honestly, neither did Joey, but it was the least she could do. A thin cloud of guilt, one she has gotten used to by now, moves into and out of her thoughts.
“The director is Phillip Granger,” someone at the table closest to the storeroom is saying. “Cal Pierce is in it and, what’s her name, Nicola Bianco.” The speaker’s companion doesn’t seem to know any of these people, so there ensues a long explanation of previous movie titles and accolades that sounds like it’s read straight from IMDb. Joey rolls her eyes as she arranges the bottles on the tray she’ll bring out to the front. Though the weather is nearly perfect, and the promise of a seasonal change is so close you can smell it in the air, that’s not why the coffee shop is busy today. It’s this stupid movie. The whole town is in heat over it.
She stops for a second and thinks about what she heard in the woods this morning. Fifteen years is a long time to go without knowing the truth. But today, a slow trickle of terror and exhilaration has been filling her veins, making her feel out of control, like she’s hooked up to an IV drip with the wrong medication. She’s been searching for answers for so long. Now that she thinks she has something, what is she supposed to do with it?
She lugs her tray of fresh syrup bottles out to the front. In her absence, the noise has grown to middle school cafeteria levels.
Zach runs the steamer, and there’s an extra ringing that stays in Joey’s ears for a minute afterward. He says something to her, asking her a question, but she can barely hear him. Someone stands at thedoor looking straight at her, someone who makes the rest of the world disappear. Joey goes completely numb and knocks a bottle onto the floor. It shatters, but she doesn’t even flinch.
Sophie.
6Sophie
Being back inside the coffee shop makes Sophie yearn for the family karaoke nights of years past, when the four of them belted Leona Lewis into one microphone. She steps inside, catching a glimpse of Joey, who looks almost the same as she did fifteen years ago, but then she turns away, and Sophie is forced to order from an unhappy-looking barista and wait, heart pounding. Joey keeps her head down for a half hour, pouring drink after drink. When she finally has a moment to come over, she just says, “You came,” in a tense voice that makes Sophie’s heart squeeze. That crisp alto—she hasn’t heard it in a million years.
They don’t linger. Instead, Joey peels off her apron, and Sophie follows her to her house, watching her, amazed at how long it’s actually been. They stick to small talk—“What have you beenup to?” “It’s beenforever.”—even though Sophie is aching to ask Joey one thing in particular. What exactly did her text mean? What does she know about Quinn’s death?
The Three Elks rise up behind them in the distance as they walk, three familiar peaks stretching into the brilliant blue sky andoverlooking the town. She’s struck by the snuggled-in beauty of Whisper Ridge. They pass the bar, the brewery, and the old inn. The warm brick buildings blend with the steep exposed rock face of the mountain behind them. There are a few new shops, but it’s otherwise the same quaint Front Street of her youth. Two bored teenage girls sit on a curb in front of the inn. One girl must say something funny because the other goes wild with laughter in the way that only teenage girls do. Sophie feels the tug of nostalgia, and at the same time, she’s unexpectedly jealous. She had all those years to change her mind and come back to this town. Why didn’t she?
Joey’s house is a few blocks away. A small faded blue bungalow. Weeds sprout along the front path, and the front porch step has a bow to it, warped from time or cold winters, or both. She jiggles her key into a stubborn lock and shoves open the door. Sophie doesn’t know what she was expecting before she steps inside—tidy bookshelves, maybe, or a cozy single girl’s setup, with scented candles and throw blankets. She sees none of that. In fact, the place looks stark. It’s neat, which is very much Joey’s style. But that’s only because there’s hardly anything in here. A few boxes sit in the corner, and the couch and coffee table are plain, sparse, and definitely IKEA. There’s a TV and a dining table—if you can call it that. It’s a small pine square with four legs and four neat chairs tucked underneath.
