Page 116 of The Witch They Fear

"Want me to show you something?"

I look at her. "Yes."

"It's a little thing. My mother taught it to me when I was twelve. I was—I had just lost my grandfather, and my magic was doing some things it wasn't supposed to be doing, and I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't eat, and Mom sat me down at the kitchen table and gave me this and told me to use it whenever I felt myself getting big in a way I couldn't put back down."

"Okay..."

She gets up and disappears into her bedroom. When she comes back she has a small wooden box in her hand. She sits cross-legged in front of me on the couch.

The box is the size of a deck of cards. The wood is dark and oiled. There's no clasp; it opens on a hinge. Inside, on a bed of soft black cloth, is a braided cord—dark, fine, the color of river silt, with a small smooth wooden bead worked into the knot at one end. Long enough to wrap around a wrist twice.

"My grandmother gave this to my mother. My mother gave it to me. I am giving it to you."

"Nellie. No."

"Cal—"

"That's a family thing—"

"I have at least six other ones at home and Mom will give me a new one the minute I ask. This one is supposed to be yours. I can feel it"

"How do you—"

"It's yours, Cal," Shandy says, simply. “Take it before she hits you with it.”

I can't speak.

Nellie takes my left hand and ties the cord around my wrist. Her fingers are quick at the knot—it's a working knot, the kind she’s obviously tied a hundred times. The cord settles against my skin like it's been there for a long time. The wooden bead sits at the inside of my wrist, against my pulse.

She’s beaming beside me. "It's not a fix. It's a touch-up. When the magic wants to spiral, when your head wants to leave your body, you take this out, you breathe three times, and you remind your body that there's a down."

I close my hand over the bead again. The settling is still there. Smaller. Real.

"Nellie."

"Mm."

"I don't know how to—"

"I know,” she cuts me off.

All these feelings and I can’t express them. She’s the best–the only true friend I’ve had. "I want to call your mother. Tomorrow."

"She'll pretend to be busy and then she'll sit on the phone with you for an hour."

“I don’t care,” I say. I look down at the cord on my wrist and turn the bead once with my thumb. The settling holds. "Thank you," I say. It comes out rougher than I mean it to.

"Don't thank me yet." Nellie tips her head back against the couch cushion, easy, like she's decided the heavy part of the night is behind us. "I'm about to ask you for something. Are you walking home tonight?"

"I—yeah. Eventually. I should."

"Or you could stay."

I look at her.

"We have an extra mattress under Tess's bed for emergencies. I'm proposing we drag it out, throw it on the floor, and call the whole thing a slumber party."

"Nell, I'm not sure I'm allowed to—"