Rogelia's House of Magic Read online

  “I promise I will this time.” Fern flipped open the book to the table of contents. “Wow, there’s even a spell in here to boost your confidence.” When Fern smiled again, Marina was caught like a fish on a hook.

  The woman returned to the counter. “Well?” she asked.

  Marina gave her both the chart and the Magik for Teens spell book. “We’ll take the book, too.”

  Two

  Xochitl Garcia lay asleep on a small bed in a tiny room next to the only other piece of furniture—a secondhand lime green dresser. In her dream, the bright blue sky shone down upon her and her twin sister, Graciela. They strolled along the cobbled streets of their hometown, Santa Anita, a little village outside of Guadalajara, Mexico. Both girls were long-legged with waist-length raven black hair, dark complexions, and thick eyelashes trimming coal black almond-shaped eyes. The only difference in their appearance was the mole on Xochitl’s right cheek.

  Actually, the dream was more of a memory, a memory of a terrible evening that Xochitl would never forget. Only a few short months ago, Xochitl and Graciela, along with their nana, Rogelia, left Guadalajara to join their father, Sebastian, in California. Driven by Xochitl’s irresistible desire to attend an American college, her father had secured work as a floor manager at an electronics plant in California, similar to his employment at a maquiladora in Mexico. Sebastian Garcia left at the first of the year to investigate the area; the girls and their nana followed. Mamá would come with the younger siblings, Tano, José, Amelia, and Pepito, in a few more months. Xochitl had been eager to review the right college-track programs at the Orange County high schools. But things rarely work out exactly as planned.

  In her dream memory, Xochitl recalled a wrinkled old woman sitting in front of a blanket that displayed colorfully woven cotton bracelets. “Buy one of my wishing bracelets,” she said. With a mischievous sparkle in her eyes, the crone held one up for inspection. “Whatever you wish for will come true when the bracelet falls off.”

  “Just like magic.” Graciela winked.

  Xochitl laughed at her sister’s enthusiasm. Graciela loved anything mysterious.

  Graciela’s long black hair fell over her face as she leaned down to pay the woman for two bright bracelets. Afterward, she asked Xochitl to put out her hand and tied a green and yellow bracelet around Xochitl’s wrist. “For a safe journey,” she said.

  Xochitl tied a pink and blue bracelet around Graciela’s wrist. “For a chance to go to an American college.”

  The dream fast-forwarded to the Tijuana airport, where Xochitl, Graciela, and Nana Rogelia got inside a delivery truck from her father’s company. Most often the truck was used to transport electronic parts from the factory in Santa Ana to the factories in Mexico, but tonight it would be taking Xochitl into a whole new world.

  “This will only take a couple of hours,” Nana promised Xochitl and Graciela, “and then we’ll be with your papá.”

  Xochitl felt excited but nervous to be going. Finally she was following her dream to go to an American college. Graciela gripped her hand reassuringly. Although she was only ten minutes older, Graciela always acted like the big sister.

  In the next flash—she saw the bright lights of an oncoming van swerving into their lane. The driver of the company truck turned sharply to the left and ran over thousands of pebbles on the far left side of the road that bordered a small cliff. The driver tried to regain his position in his lane, but another fast-approaching car zoomed straight for them. He swerved back to the left and hit a bump in the road. Everyone screamed. The truck teetered on its right wheels, fell on its left side, rolled over, and plummeted into the ditch.

  Cold fear shot through Xochitl like a bullet. She sat bolt upright in bed, dripping with sweat. Startled, she looked around the sparsely decorated room. The dream faded and reality came flooding back. She grasped the wishing bracelet on her left wrist just to make sure it was still there.

  Xochitl fell back onto her bed, rolled on her tummy, and buried her face deep in her pillow. Outside her house in the Wilshire Square barrio, she could hear children laughing, women gossiping about whoever wasn’t within earshot, and a Mexican novela blaring from someone’s television. She tried to let the noise drown out her thoughts of the accident, but it was impossible.

  Xochitl jumped off the bed and wandered out of her bedroom to the living room. She didn’t want to remember. It was too painful. It felt like the accident had happened yesterday, and then again, it felt like it could have happened a lifetime ago. She twisted the bracelet back and forth.

  Xochitl paced in front of the shrine dedicated to La Virgen de Guadalupe, known as Our Lady of Guadalupe in English, that her father had placed prominently in the living room. She paused to glance up at the statue of the Madonna with her loving, downcast eyes. But when she received no comfort from La Virgen de Guadalupe, she bolted out the front door, hopped onto a decrepit, rusty bike that her dad had bought her at a garage sale, and pedaled as fast as her legs could carry her.

  Xochitl’s raven black hair whipped in the wind behind her, beating her back like a flail. She lifted her dark brown face to the late-morning sun, hoping the warm rays could pierce the coldness she felt inside. Faster and faster Xochitl rode, her breathing short and shallow. She had no idea where she was going. Wherever she ended up, Xochitl hoped that when she got there, she wouldn’t be able to recall her frantic search through the creosote for her sister. She wanted to will the images away.

  She could still hear her own screaming when the side door burst open on impact and Graciela fell out. In her mind’s eye she saw herself landing hard on her hands and knees, her skin breaking on contact with the rocky cliff and oozing blood. Clutching her legs close to her body, she rolled across thousands of shardlike stones. Scrambling over the desert floor, ripping long gashes in her knees, she found Graciela with her eyes wide open, staring unseeing into the dark nighttime sky.

  Clutching the handlebars of her bike, Xochitl looked around as if waking up from a nightmare. She was now on a high bank of the Santa Ana River. Being here was like being in Mexico. A familiar land scorched by the sun—occasionally spotted with succulents, creeping jimsonweed, and cordgrass. Still, it was a little freaky that every time she got on a bike and rode without thinking, she ended up at this river.

  As Xochitl wiped her watery eyes, she thought bitterly how if she had stayed in Mexico, Graciela might still be alive. Xochitl got off the bike, propped it up on its kickstand, and marched through tall cattails down to the river’s edge. Yellow-bellied American goldfinches chirped happily in the fields of anise. A turkey vulture circled above her head with its sleek black body and ugly red face. Xochitl reached down and brushed the top of a mugwort bush. She could name most of the healing plants here—yerba buena, mountain misery, white sage—from the lessons Nana had given her and Graciela back home. She touched the tip of an aloe branch. After the accident Nana had mended Xochitl’s wounds with this plant’s sticky goo. But Nana couldn’t do anything to save Graciela’s life.

  As the most trusted curandera in the entire state of Jalisco, Nana had treated every disease imaginable with her crazy singing and the plants she grew in her garden. Xochitl had seen people carried in on a stretcher walk out on their own after only an hour with Nana. The townsfolk called on Nana for problems of the soul and heart as well as the body. Graciela and Xochitl had been her best students, learning how to respect the life force in all things, trust in the miraculous, and believe in the power of tuning in to silence. But ever since Nana had failed to save Graciela, Xochitl didn’t believe in Nana’s miracles anymore.

  The wind sent ripples over the river. The water was low, really low. It was barely ankle deep, and yet it was as wide as a football field. Nana said there was a dam in the San Bernardino Mountains, and this river once caused murderous floods almost every year. The river god told her this truth. Even in dry riverbeds, the river spirits still lived there. Despite her doubts about magic and mystery, Xochitl wanted to belie
ve that the spirit of the river—the spirit of everyone or everything, for that matter—lived on after its form on earth disappeared.

  If that was so, could she speak with Graciela right here, right now? Xochitl wondered. She had seen Nana speak with their dead relatives on Dia de los Muertos. Even during séances for people she barely knew, Nana had answered questions with information that was totally impossible for her to have known. Xochitl had seen it all. She had just never participated. And although she wasn’t sure she was up to the task of speaking to someone who had died, she was desperate to talk with her sister.

  First Xochitl closed her eyes and concentrated on the memory of her sister’s round, dark brown face with its slightly upturned nose. Next she tried to hear Graciela’s giddy voice in the wind that blew gently against her skin. The Santa Ana River carried the sea air from the Pacific Ocean a few miles west. The sweet desert smell mixed with a faint salty scent, reminding her of family vacations to Puerto Vallarta and late-night walks on the beach with Graciela. Xochitl opened her eyes and looked around expectantly for any sign from her sister.

  Xochitl chanted Graciela’s name over and over again in her mind, the only part of the séance she remembered. But the minutes dragged on, and Graciela did not appear.

  Xochitl shook herself free of the trance, frustrated, and instantly the wind stopped blowing, as if on command. Xochitl was so disappointed that Graciela hadn’t responded to her that she prayed La Llorona the Weeping Woman would come. La Llorona, a legendary ghost woman, cries for her lost children along rivers and is rumored to steal other children. At fifteen, Xochitl probably didn’t count as a child anymore. Maybe La Llorona would take her anyway. But where did she want to go? Where was home? This strange land they had moved to, or Mexico, where her choices were so limited?

  Just then, Xochitl heard the laughter of two boys riding bikes along the river trail. She closed her eyes and thought of being as light as a feather in her sister’s old, soft down pillow. She could feel her body becoming paper thin, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that her hands and feet were slowly fading away. By the time the boys whizzed past, Xochitl had become invisible and they didn’t see her at all.

  Both Xochitl and Graciela had learned this trick from their nana. While Xochitl would use her invisibility to retreat deep into herself when she was afraid or overwhelmed, Graciela had used it to play pranks on unsuspecting neighbors and deserving enemies. Although the twins had looked the same, their personalities had been quite different. Graciela had been the only one who could coax Xochitl out of her cocoon of shyness.

  Xochitl waited until the boys had turned a bend that followed the winding Santa Ana River. She then concentrated on the density of her bones and the feel of the warm sun on her skin and watched her body materialize. She hopped on her bike. As she pedaled for the Peralta house, where Nana would be staying, Xochitl began to wonder. If Graciela would not speak to her from beyond, how would she ever find a place of happiness again?

  Three

  The night after Fern and Marina bought Magik for Teens, the full moon sent bluish light over the pool in the backyard of Marina’s house. Fern admired the long, mysterious shadows the moonlight created and thought it was an ideal time to cast their first spell. Fern’s parents were throwing another party at their house. Their Colombian parties were likely to last until the sun rose, and her mom and dad did not want her to attend. They seemed to have the idea that Fern might try some of the sangría, because she usually did. So Fern was spending the night at Marina’s house.

  Marina and Fern sat on the floor of Marina’s bedroom, hunched over the spell book. Fern had studied it all day and had become completely enraptured by the connection magic had with nature. As a self-proclaimed environmentalist, this was a definite plus, in her opinion. Each of the four directions—north, south, east, and west—was associated with a color and an element, such as fire or air. Who knew?

  The book said magic was strongest when you practiced the spell or ritual in a sacred space by honoring the four directions. Fern insisted they scour Marina’s house for materials to represent the directions and their elements. They found long multicolored birthday candles and some Play-Doh, last used by Marina’s five-year-old sister Samantha. They plastered the Play-Doh to the candles’ bottoms to create bases for the candles to stand straight. Fern set the four multicolored candles within a circle of popcorn kernels, since corn is considered sacred.

  The ceremonial circle contrasted with Marina’s professionally decorated room, which featured a white four-poster bed, cotton-candy pink walls, nasty olive green and pink wall-paper, and heavy forest green curtains that were peppered with tiny pink flowers and tied back with ivory lace. Marina’s mother did not let her daughter put so much as a tiny picture on her walls.

  Fern was extremely grateful that her mother wasn’t so strict. Fern had plastered a Colombian flag to her bedroom wall and painted a mural of a waterfall, a rain forest canopy, flowers of every color, and tons of animals, inspired by her recent trip to Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, where she had met all of her father’s five siblings: Uncle Jacinto, the priest, whose vocation made her paternal grandmother Fuego happy beyond words; the twin bachelors, Mateo and Mario; Carlos, the barista; and her impetuous, sometimes secretive aunt Ibis.

  “I don’t know how you can stand sleeping in here,” Fern said, bewildered. “It’s like a hotel room.”

  “I know, it sucks,” Marina agreed. “But what am I supposed to do? The last time I pinned up a poster of Orlando Bloom, my mom ripped it down. ’Member?”

  “Legolas or Will Turner,” Fern sighed dreamily. “I’d take him with or without the ears.”

  “You’re boy-crazed,” Marina joked.

  “And proud of it,” Fern laughed.

  In addition to being an environmentalist, Fern was a romantic. She believed in passionate Romeo-and-Juliet affairs, in which nothing ever came between two people’s love for each other. So far she hadn’t found anyone worthy of her total devotion, so she contented herself with tons of fantasy crushes on hot celebrities. She was a free spirit, which to her mattered more than being stuck to someone boring or dull.

  Fern returned her attention to their candles and smiled. “Okay, let’s get this started.”

  “Are you sure this is safe?” Marina said warily. “My mom will kill me if I get wax on anything.”

  “Relax, girl. I’m a natural at this.”

  “Just don’t burn the house down, all right?”

  “Where is your faith?” Fern asked. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re a heathen.”

  Marina rolled her eyes and pouted. “Whatever.”

  Fern struck the match and the smell of sulfur filled the room. She held the flaming match to the wick of the yellow candle, which stood closest to the window and the moon’s ascent into the eastern sky. She ignited a red candle in the south, a blue candle in the west, and a green candle on the northern point. She shook the match, extinguishing the flame, which had come close to her fingertips.

  She struck another match and watched the flame dance with deep appreciation before she held it to an incense stick propped in a ceramic fairy incense holder. Smoke swirled in spirals, emanating the deep, earthy scent of sandalwood.

  “There are seventy-five spells here. How are we supposed to choose?” Marina said in a hesitant voice.

  “You worry too much.” Fern ran her fingers along the flowery images in the book. “Something will come to us,” she said confidently. The grandfather clock down the hall rang out ten times.

  “Be quiet,” Marina whispered. “I don’t want anyone to hear us.”

  Fern tore her eyes from the book and stared at the closed bedroom door to be sure it was shut. The back of the door was covered with a Nickelback poster, a couple of collages on eight-by-ten-inch poster paper, first-place soccer merit awards, academic certificates, and to-do lists—the only mark of personal expression in Marina’s bedroom, with the exception of her Roxy sweatshirts, designe
r jeans, and an assortment of Abercrombie T-shirts littering the floor.

  Fern looked out the window. The moonlight glowed tenderly on her face. She watched the clouds and the trees swaying softly. “Did you know today, Monday, is named for the moon, like moonday?”

  “I had no idea,” Marina said.

  “We’re getting close to the summer solstice.”

  “What’s that?” Marina asked. She plucked the pencil from Fern’s reddish brown mane and used the eraser to flip through the book.

  “First day of summer is the longest day of the year. It’s June twenty-first this year,” Fern answered.

  Marina pointed to the book with the pencil, her multicolored, iridescent bangle bracelets clinking together. “The book says to cast spells of self-empowerment for this day.”

  “Great, so let’s cast a spell for a magical power!” Fern clapped her hands in glee.

  “I don’t know.” Marina twisted a strand of her silken brown hair around her forefinger. A sure sign of anxiety.

  “Come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?” Fern consulted the book, scanning it for instructions. “Look, we’ll make a god’s eye. All we need is yarn, glue, scissors, and Popsicle sticks. How can anything go wrong when we’re following the rules?”

  “Well, okay. My mom should have all that in Samantha’s craft drawer,” Marina agreed.

  “Good, and we’ll get some snacks while we’re at it,” Fern said. Whatever Marina might say negatively about her mother, she usually kept the pantry chock-full of food. Fern hopped up to her knees and pulled up the sleeves of her over-shirt, which featured an Alphonse Mucha–style girl holding a sign that read PEACE, LOVE, AND ROCK’N’ ROLL. She placed her hands palms down about a foot over the candles.

  “What are you doing?” Marina asked.