SNEAK PEEK - The Girl Who Never Was

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

You’re supposed to go to Salem in October. We always go, a bunch of us from school, but I feel over it this year. How many witches can you see, anyway?

I go, though, because not going doesn’t seem like an option—one of those things I do without really knowing why. I don’t particularly want to go to Salem, but I feel like I need to go.

Salem is crowded despite the fact that it’s a cold and misty day. The sidewalks are so jam packed you can’t walk without stepping on someone’s broomstick. I walk along, picking up dropped coins because you never know when they might come in handy. Mike and Jake are throwing pieces of cotton candy at each other. It’s stupid, because you can’t really effectively throw cotton candy and because it’s causing chaos—people are glaring at us—and I wonder if Mike thinks this is cool and I’m going to be thoroughly smitten with him now. I try to imagine Ben ever throwing cotton candy around. I can’t. It makes me wish Ben were there, but it’s the sort of day Ben avoids like the plague, when he’s dressed in at least one layer more than any normal person would wear and huddles under the meager shelter of the Park Street subway station entrance. I admit I kind of like weather like this. I’ve only started to dislike it because it makes Ben so miserable.

I look at Kelsey. “I’ve had enough,” I tell her.

She looks at her watch. “The next ferry isn’t until—”

“I’m going to go in here,” I say. It’s one of the plethora of witch museums littered all over the town, an old house, well-tended, with a silhouette of a stylized witch in the fanlight over the door. There is a pot of bright bronze chrysanthemums in front of the door, but someone’s knocked it over.

“‘The Salem Which Museum,’” reads Kelsey from the dripping black letters on the sign swinging off the house. “They didn’t even spell witch correctly.”

I’d noticed, but the Salem Which Museum has the great advantage of, well, being only two steps away from me and so conveniently easy to disappear into. “It’s fine. It’ll be something for me to do until they get tired of…” I look at Mike and Jake. “Throwing things,” I finish, because they’ve now moved on to throwing popcorn at each other. At least that works a little better than the cotton candy had. I decide not to think about where they’d gotten the popcorn.

“Are you sure?” Kelsey asks.

I nod. Now that I’ve seized on the idea, I kind of really want to explore this misnamed museum.

“I think I’ll stick with them,” says Kelsey, blushing. The reason for this blush is clear: Kelsey likes Jake. She thinks I haven’t noticed this. It’s silly because Kelsey has always liked Jake. Maybe that’s why Mike thinks I should like him. Maybe he thinks we should all just couple up.

“Okay,” I agree amiably. “I’ll hang out here and meet you guys at the ferry.” I reach for the door, then pause, my hand on the doorknob, and look back at her. “Don’t let Mike come in after me.”

“You got it,” says Kelsey, and then she hurries to catch up with Mike and Jake, who have tired of the popcorn throwing and are looking around for the next thing they can throw. Before they find it—or can spot me—I duck into the museum.

I’m in a tiny room with tiny windows and a short ceiling, typical for a house this age. The house is at least three centuries old, and I feel at home in it immediately. The light is murky, but that’s because there really is no light today, more of a non-light. There’s an open shoebox on an old wooden table right next to me, and there’s an index card taped to it with “Donations Appreciated” written on it in the kind of proper Bostonian cursive that my aunts use. Except that the final flourish is a smiley face, and I think my aunts would die before using a smiley face. There is a single dollar bill in the shoebox and several dusty coins. The coins don’t even look American. Next to the table is a softly ticking grandfather clock. As I walk in, it’s just finishing up chiming nine o’clock. Not the right time. Grandfather clocks never tell the right time in my experience. My aunts’ is the same way.