Page 109 of The Witch They Fear

"Mostly," Tess says, cheerfully, lifting her teacup at me from the armchair like she's toasting my impending injury. The grin is enormous. "She'll survive mostly… Probably."

Margo turns a page. "Tess."

"What? I'm being supportive."

"You're being unhelpful."

Tess settles deeper into the chair, satisfied. "It's a brand."

I swallow my smile and take a sip of my cider.

Nellie shoves a throw pillow at me and I lean back into the couch cushions. Shandy is still on the rug, the cards spread out in front of her in a loose semicircle. She's just listening. I have the distinct sense that I'm being felt out but that she would never say that out loud. It doesn’t feel like judgment–just a getting-to-know-you type of caution.

Hours pass. I don't notice them passing.

Margo finishes her chapter, closes her book, and produces a plate of grapes she has, at some earlier point, cut into halves.

"They were too big," she says, by way of preemptive explanation, setting the plate on the coffee table.

"Margo, we are adults," Nellie says, holding back a giggle.

"You're a healing track student in training," Tess says from the armchair, tossing back one of her thick braids, "and you cut grapes into halves for adults?"

"I cut grapes into halves for anyone. Choking is a leading cause of accidental death in—"

"Margo," Shandy sing-songs like a reminder. Like they’ve had this conversation before. Many times.

"I'm not finishing the statistic." Margo throws her hand up in surrender.

"Thank you."

Tess produces, from somewhere, a small speaker, and a playlist starts up that's mostly Stevie Nicks and the occasional Patsy Cline. Shandy hums along to Landslide without looking up. Her voice is unexpectedly low and good. In some parts it even gives me chills.

Eventually Shandy gathers her cards back together and reshelves them on the side table but stays cross-legged on the rug, propping her chin on her fist.

Tess says something I half-catch—something dry about Midus and his clipboard—and Nellie laughs into the throw blanket and I am, somehow, laughing too. The laugh surprises me.

It surprises the room.

Tess catches it and grins like she's won a game I didn't know was happening.

We keep talking. The fae girl in Tess's seminar who falls asleep in lecture, who Tess has decided is her project. Shandy's recurring dream about a kitchen she doesn't recognize—butter-yellow walls, a window over the sink, a porcelain teapot she has never seen before in waking life. Margo's mother in Lafayette who has called twice this week to remind her about All Hallows' weekend, because it's family tradition and there will be hell to pay if she misses it.

I don't talk much. I sip my cider. I let the room talk over and around me, and it doesn't feel the way I always thought a room talking over and around me would feel.

It feels nice. Like I can just exist in the margins and soak up girl time.

Around nine, Margo claims the armchair Tess vacated, settles in with her textbook, and Tess wanders off to her own room to take the phone call she's been putting off. Shandy stretches out on the rug with a book. It's just me and Nellie on the couch under a throw blanket that smells like Nellie's perfume.

Nellie tucks her feet under mine.

"OK," she says.

"Ok what?

"You know what."

I shake my head. "Nell, I really don't."