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“If I hadn’t said anything,” she whispered, “everything would be as it was. The magic wouldn’t have backfired. It wouldn’t feel the need to put me in my place.”

Tess leaned closer, snatching Alana’s free hand. Her friend’s palm was soft and warm. It was so different from her youth—calloused hands from playing in the woods and helping in the vineyard, fingernails painted different shades of pink and red and orange instead of the plain, pale color she wore now. “Lana, I really believe in my heart that the magic doesn’t work that way. I think it just has its limits.”

“Limits…”

“Yes. It can give us all the luck. It can make small moments go smoother and our conversations easier and can unburden everyday life. But there’s one thing it has never been able to do. Your grandparents and your mother are proof.”

“It can’t cheat death,” Alana replied. She knew that. She always had. “But what about Courtney? Why didn’t the wine save her from making such a horrible choice?”

“You know the answer to that one too.”

13

For the longest time, it was just the pair of them. Alana and Tess, inseparable best friends. Two menaces to any rule of authority that tried to get in their way. But in high school they met Courtney, and two had easily become three.

Courtney and her family moved to Brent from Buffalo the summer before senior year. She wore dark clothes and thick eyeliner. She wasn’t afraid to swear or tell people off. She smoked and snuck around with older guys from the community college. She had long, trussed chestnut hair with effortless natural waves. She had a dragon tattoo on her hip that her parents didn’t know about. Alana had heard the whispers around town—that she was bad news, that she was a troubled kid, that she made poor decisions. But she didn’t listen. Courtney was everything Alana wanted to be, and she knew there was more to Courtney that people failed to see. And it all started in English class.

The first day of school when she walked into the classroom, Courtney was already sitting down. Her knee was tucked close to her chest behind the desk, and she was reading a battered copy of Jane Eyre. She was twirling a pen in her hand, occasionally stopping to scribble something down.

Alana took the seat right next to her. “A Charlotte Brontë fan?” she asked. She winced, realizing how lame she sounded.

Courtney peered up at her, dark gray eyes flashing with amusement. “You could say that. This is my fifth time reading it.”

Fifth? “Wow,” Alana replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved a book that much.”

She shrugged. “I pick up something new with each read. Plus, I like the message that it captures.”

Alana swallowed. “What’s the message?”

“That no matter the dark secrets you hide, you’re still worthy of love.”

She frowned. She had yet to read Jane Eyre. The only books she ever read were the ones assigned for class. She wished she had a better understanding of what Courtney meant. But what she did know was that she wanted Courtney as a friend.

Tess and Chris were a little more wary. Alana had been dating Chris for a year at that point. The two of them looked at Alana with skepticism as she approached their lunch table that day with Courtney, who also seemed apprehensive. Eventually Tess warmed up to her. Chris not so much.

“I don’t know what it is about her,” Chris told her one morning in the hallway as Alana collected things from her locker. “Something feels off.”

“Are you saying I’m a bad judge of character?” Alana snapped.

His face hardened. “No. I’m saying be careful, Lana. That’s all.”

If only she’d listened to him.

It was Courtney who taught Alana how to develop a thicker skin. Alana knew she had a fire in her, and Courtney was the one who showed her how to let it out. She pointed out the kinds of things she should be angry about, like how they only ever read male authors in English, or how the age to enlist was eighteen but they weren’t legally allowed to drink until they were twenty-one.

“It’s unfair, don’t you think?” Courtney pointed out to her and Tess after school. They were hiding underneath the bleachers so Courtney could smoke. “We’re considered adults in every other sense of the word, but we’re still not allowed alcohol.” She took a long drag of her cigarette then evaluated her nails, long and pointy and shaded with midnight blue. “You know in Europe the drinking age is eighteen.”

“Maybe that’s what we should do after graduation,” Tess surmised. “Move to Europe, meet some hot men, drink wine like adults.”

“Except Alana,” Courtney teased. “She’s already got a man.”

She remembered the visceral reaction she’d had to that comment, how uncool it sounded to have a boyfriend and not be free to meet hot men in Europe. But her family loved Chris. Dating Chris had become one of her proudest accomplishments. Yet Courtney’s tone of voice made her happiness sound more like a failure.

And so, eager to please her cool new friend, Alana blurted, “We don’t have to move to Europe to drink wine like adults.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I know where we can get some.”

Tess’s brow furrowed at Alana, her unspoken words clear as day. What are you doing?

Courtney perked up. “Oh? You do?”