The Flower Bowl Spell by Olivia Boler

Especially ‘Yellow Submarine.’”
    Romola laughs. “Yellow submarine
sandwich?”
    I fast-forward the CD until I find the song.
I sing along under my breath. When it ends, Cleo demands to hear it
again. I put the song on repeat and we cycle through it a few times
more. Soon they’re singing it too.
    ****
    The girls both doze off, and I’m alone with
my thoughts. I worry about Auntie Tess and my protection spell. I
mull over Viveka and her mysterious disappearance. And when those
thoughts go nowhere, I turn to fretting over my job, my boyfriend,
Tyson, the fairies.
    When I was a child, whenever I was bad, I
would wait for a different manifestation of disapproval: creatures
like a staring doe on the hillside or a raccoon in our garbage cans
scolding me. Sometimes it took on the form of my contraband—a
packet of shoplifted chewing gum grew sticky legs and arms, climbed
out of my pocket, and walked back into the corner store from whence
it came while shaking its tiny fist at me. It made me wonder if
there really might be something like the Devil—an almost
all-powerful dude of mischief trying to get as many souls in
trouble as possible. But I’m too keen on the idea of self-direction
to buy into anything like pure evil.
    If there is a pattern to my little friends’
visits, I have yet to crack the code. They show up during good
times and bad, when I’m hurting and when I’m overjoyed. I have
never called for them, and I thought that when I declared my
intentions to banish magick I had banished them as well. I wished
them gone and I assumed they got that. But I have to admit they are
beyond my ken. I should have known you can’t banish things over
which you are powerless.
    In college, I watched the girls and boys who
longed to be witches, for whatever reason—a break from their
Christian upbringings, a get-back-to-nature effort—form their own
hopeful little occult club. I went to one of their meetings,
sneaking into the back of the lecture hall they occupied, using my
invisibility. They were just like my mother and Tess and the coven:
more kitchen than magick, more lonely than believer. What they
didn’t know, what no one who forms these communities can know, is
that they just aren’t quite ready yet, but they get so close—off by
mere degrees—that they truly think they’ve reached perfection. And
the thing is, you can’t. You just can’t. Nothing is ever perfect,
and it never will be, and that’s why we’re here, trying to reach
perfection. Once we do, we can get off this crazy planet and go
home, be One. And who knows if that will ever happen? I find
it comforting to have a purpose, even if it’s futile.
    I’ve sometimes marveled that my mother
decided to play witch and drag Auntie Tess into it around the time
I discovered my abilities, and that I discovered them in exactly
the way I should, that something close to perfect happened. A
miracle? But we witches don’t believe in miracles. What if my
mother had been trying on Catholicism or atheism? What would I have
done with what I am?
    ****
    We’ve been on the road for a few hours now
and are approaching San Luis Obispo. My father taught here for a
year, and my mother and I spent weekends with him before they
decided to give up on trying to even appear interested in anything
but themselves. It’s a pretty town, and the girls are hungry. I
don’t think they’d ever actually complain, but since they woke up
they’ve been sipping juice boxes and trying to determine whose
tummy is growling the loudest.
    My cell phone rings, and I push randomly at
buttons while keeping my eyes on the road.
    “Oh, you picked up,” says a surprised and
slightly disappointed voice on the other end. Tyson. Ty.
    “Yeah. Is everything okay?”
    “Are you—Sorry, what?” His voice crackles
over the line, some of his words swallowed up in the hills.
    “I’m driving,” I say loudly. “We’re going to
stop for lunch in San Luis Obispo.”
    “That’s where I am now.