“Only for a few months,” Ruth-Ann snapped. Her surprise began to turn into anger. Why is Rebecca saying this?
She started to pin a rolled-up strand of Rebecca’s hair. But her hand slipped and the pin jabbed the back of her sister’s neck.
“Ow!” Rebecca screamed and spun toward Ruth-Ann. “You don’t have to attack me. I’m not a pincushion!” She rubbed the back of her neck. “That was vicious, Ruth-Ann. I was just trying to help you.”
Ruth-Ann took a step back. “It—it was an accident,” she stammered. “Really, Rebecca. My hand slipped.”
“I’m your big sister,” Rebecca said, softening her tone. “I know you and I aren’t exactly best pals. But I care about you. And I think you’re heading for trouble with Peter.”
Ruth-Ann stood with her mouth open. She couldn’t shake off the shock of her sister’s words. “Peter and I—”
Rebecca turned back to the mirror, but her eyes remained on Ruth-Ann. “He’s a Victrola salesman,” she said with a sneer. “Where is that going to lead?”
“He—he’s learning how to repair Victrolas as well,” Ruth-Ann said. “Peter is very mechanical. He is fascinated by record players and radio receivers.”
“No one else is,” Rebecca replied. “Do you really think people are going to put those things in their homes and stand around listening to them?”
“Well . . .”
“He’s so immature,” Rebecca said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll bet he reads all those H. G. Wells novels about time machines. Does Peter want to sell time machines, too, Ruth-Ann?”
“Now you’re just being cruel,” Ruth-Ann said, lowering her voice to a whisper. She felt her anger rise in her chest. “I—I don’t know why you’re saying these things.”
“I told you. I care about you.”
“Peter and I have good times together,” Ruth-Ann said. “We laugh a lot. We enjoy being with each other. We understand each other.”
“That’s wonderful,” Rebecca said sarcastically. “But—”
“He works hard,” Ruth-Ann continued. “He wants to be a success. And we do things together when he’s not working. We take long bike rides up on the River Ridge. We have picnics in Shadyside Park . . .”
Rebecca slammed a fist on the dressing table. The box of hairpins jumped. “Ruth-Ann, you need a future. You’re graduating from high school next month. You have no plans. What are you going to do with your life? You need a husband, a man to take care of you. Not a boy who spends all his time trying to hear voices on the radio waves.”
Ruth-Ann realized her hands were balled into tight fists. She uncoiled her hands and took a deep breath. “So is that why you’re so attached to Nelson? You need a man to take care of you?”
“Nelson is Nelson,” Rebecca said. She sighed. “He is okay sometimes. But he can be a bear.”
Ruth-Ann squinted at her sister’s reflection. “A bear? What does that mean?”
Rebecca clawed the air with her hands and uttered a low animal growl. Like a bear growl.
“Would you care to explain?” Ruth-Ann urged.
Rebecca sighed. She waved a hand at the mirror. “Go away, Ruth-Ann. Just scram. I can do my own hair.”
Ruth-Ann gasped. She really thinks she can give me a royal proclamation about Peter. Then send me on my way. Am I supposed to bow and say thank you?
“Nice talking to you, Rebecca,” Ruth-Ann murmured. She spun away from the mirror and, taking long, heavy strides, stormed out of her sister’s room.
The shock of Rebecca’s sudden attack on Peter had Ruth-Ann dizzy and off balance. She bumped the wall as she turned into the hallway, stopped, and shut her eyes, waiting for the dizziness to fade.
Rebecca must have been thinking about this for a long time, Ruth-Ann thought. She was waiting to ambush me. But—why?
Anger battled with her confusion. The one time she thought she was getting close enough to her sister to have a real, honest conversation, Rebecca hit her with a sneak attack.
Ruth-Ann realized she had clenched her teeth. Her jaw started to ache. She took a deep breath. She decided not to go to her room across the hall.
Instead, she took hurried steps to the end of the hallway. She turned at a closed door and grabbed the brass knob. She twisted and pulled, and in a few seconds slipped into the narrow stairway that led up to the attic she had discovered years ago.
Ruth-Ann was careful to close the door behind her. The stairway didn’t lead to the attic everyone used. The stairs to that attic—cluttered with old furniture and clothing, cartons and crates of the discarded and forgotten—were at the other end of the house.
This narrow stairway, steep and creaky, climbed to a separate room, a windowless room that sunshine could never invade, a room that only Ruth-Ann used, that only Ruth-Ann knew about.
A room of secrets.
Her heart was racing when she reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the warm darkness of the tiny space. Her hand found the kerosene candlelighter where she had left it and, a few seconds later, three flickering flames at the tops of long, slender candles lit the room.
Ruth-Ann waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The candle flames danced and sent shadows pulsing over the low ceiling. The air was warm and dry and smelled of sharp spices, the spices Ruth-Ann used to cast her spells.
It was time to cast another.
Four
The little attic room was bare, except for the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls. The shelves sagged, loaded down with ancient, dust-covered volumes, the covers worn and faded. One book was open on the wood floor, resting between a circle of ten black candles.
Ruth-Ann’s anger had faded now, replaced by the excitement this room always brought. The excitement of delving into mysteries, dark mysteries that went beyond science, beyond human understanding.
Ruth-Ann’s secret was her ability to cast spells, and part of the excitement came from knowing that only she was capable of performing this magic. The books of sorcery, of evil chants and curses and strange powers, must have been in her family for generations.
Did her parents even know this tiny attic room existed? They had inherited the house after her grandparents died, and yet this room remained untouched. Did they ever explore up here? Did they know the powers the Fears could possess if they used the instructions in these old books?
Ruth-Ann had discovered the room by accident one afternoon when she was seven years old. An intense game of hide-and-seek led to her running to the end of the hall. She could hear her friends’ approaching footsteps and knew she had only seconds to hide.
The narrow door caught her eye. Seconds later, she was up in the hidden attic, gasping for breath, holding on to the wall, leaning over the stairway and listening for her pursuers.
They didn’t come. She heard shouts and more running footsteps. But no one tried the door. No one found her. She began to breathe easy. This was her secret place, she realized. Her secret hiding place from the world.
Years later, she had the curiosity to pull out some of the old books on the shelves, dust them off, and read what they offered.
The history of her family was up here. Did her parents even know any of it? Did they know about the Fears’ archenemies, the Goode Family? Ruth-Ann had never heard anyone mention the Goodes.
The two families had hated each other since the early days of this country. Since Colonial days. Since the burning of witches and lives ruled by all kinds of dark superstitions.
Ruth-Ann read of the hatred, of the curses the two families cast on each other, of the murders that were carried out, all in the name of the ancient family rivalry.
The stories made her feel cold all over. The history of my family is so strange and so evil, she thought. And that was before she began to comb through the spell books, before she learned of the sorcery that her family had learned, powers that even she could master with enough practice and study.
She read the spells. She memorized some of them. She practiced a
few harmless ones just to see if they would work. She made rabbits dance in a circle in her backyard. She made squirrels chase a dog down the street.
She didn’t try a serious spell until her sixteenth birthday.
The day was lonely with few friends. Ruth-Ann spent the day envying Rebecca with her easy grace and all her many admirers. Rebecca, so popular. So bubbling and happy. The princess who seldom allowed Ruth-Ann to even stand in her shadow.
Yes, it was envy that propelled Ruth-Ann. Envy that drove her to the ancient spell books and the black candles and the rituals she needed to get what she wanted.
It was only then that Ruth-Ann decided she needed a boyfriend. And she knew how to get one. It was 1922, after all, and everything was modern. Everyone was modern. Including the girls.
She picked Peter Goodman. She had been attracted to him at school. All the girls talked and giggled and whispered about their “crushes.” Maybe Ruth-Ann had a crush on Peter.
She didn’t know if he liked her or not. It didn’t really matter. Ruth-Ann’s summoning spell was powerful and inescapable. Once she had chosen Peter, he was hers. And she knew the sorcery to keep him as long as she wanted.
Two weeks after Rebecca’s birthday party, Ruth-Ann decided she wanted him now.
To defy Rebecca, yes. Rebecca and her unwanted advice to say good-bye to Peter.
Rebecca had no clue as to who had the real power in the family. Ruth-Ann planned to keep it that way. How wonderful to perform miracles behind a cloak of shadows. How pleasing to control people without their knowledge, to manipulate them with just candlelight and words and songs.
And now she wanted Peter to arrive. She wanted her boyfriend, the only boyfriend she had ever had. “I want you here now, Peter,” she murmured, lighting the ten black candles one by one.
She stood in the center of the circle, in the pale white glow of the candlelight, and began to remove her clothes. She pulled off the frilly blouse and tossed it against the wall. Her skirt came off next, and then the petticoats. Her undergarments flew against the wall.
And Ruth-Ann stood naked in the shadowy light from the darting, swaying flames all around her. She raised her arms like bird wings, as if flying free. And she began to dance.
A delicate dance at first, on tiptoe, with her hands swaying slow and high above her head. She shook out her short hair and kept her hands high, her bare feet tapping the warm wooden floor. And she began to sing. A soft, tender song of words in a strange language, a song from the book at her feet.
Ruth-Ann sang and did her slow, sinuous dance, her body warm from the candlelight, her skin shadowy in the darting flames and the wisps of black smoke from the points of the flames. The wisps of her dark magic.
She sang the words in a whispery voice. Her skin tingling, so free and light without clothes that she felt she could fly.
And when the spell was cast, she dressed quickly. She snuffed out the candles, and shook out her hair one more time. Then she hurried downstairs, peeking into the hall, making sure no one could see where she was coming from.
She had to wait only a few minutes.
When the front doorbell rang, her mother started to the door. But Ruth-Ann stopped her halfway. “Don’t bother, Mum,” she said. “It’s for me.”
Five
A week later, Ruth-Ann and Peter sat close together on the brown leather couch in the sitting room. Her mother had been in the chair across from them, knitting a scarf. When she got up to leave, Ruth-Ann leaned her cheek toward Peter for a kiss.
Peter didn’t seem to take the hint. He kept talking about the article he had read in a science magazine. The article said that the wireless would replace all the pianos in living rooms across the nation.
“People will listen to music from far away,” Peter said. “They will no longer have to make their own.” He smiled at her. “That could be very bad for the people who print sheet music,” he said.
Ruth-Ann rolled her eyes. “What makes you think people will want to listen to all the scratchy whistling and static?”
“They’ll fix all that,” Peter said. “The article said it will sound like an orchestra is right in your living room.”
Again, Ruth-Ann brought her face an inch from his. “What do I have to do to get a kiss?”
He gave her a peck on the cheek. Disappointed, she blew on his glasses, steaming up both sides.
He uttered an uncomfortable laugh and drew away from her.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded. He was definitely acting nervous today. Chattering on about a magazine article . . . refusing to kiss her . . .
Peter shrugged.
She playfully flipped his necktie over the shoulder of his sports jacket. “Aren’t you feeling well?”
A burst of laughter from the kitchen interrupted Peter’s reply.
“Who’s in there?” he asked.
“Rebecca and three of her friends,” Ruth-Ann replied. “They’re teaching each other how to make Apple Brown Betty.”
Peter jumped to his feet. “Apple Brown Betty? Hot diggety. Can we see how they are doing?”
Ruth-Ann squinted at him. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? You hate talking with Rebecca and her friends. You said they were shallow, remember?”
“That’s before there was Apple Brown Betty involved,” he replied. He grabbed her hands and tugged her up from the couch. “Besides, you’re always telling me to be more social.”
“Not with Rebecca and her crowd,” Ruth-Ann muttered.
Ever since Rebecca’s attack on Peter, the two sisters barely spoke. They were like two icebergs passing in the ocean. Ruth-Ann didn’t think she could ever forgive her sister for that outburst.
She’d spent hours trying to figure out what caused it. But she still hadn’t thought of a good reason behind her sister’s attack.
Rebecca was pretending she cares about me. But she was only being vicious.
And now here was Peter, eager to join Rebecca in the kitchen. This was not like him at all. “I can bake things, too,” Ruth-Ann said. “Why don’t we wait till they’re finished and—”
But he was already at the kitchen door, greeting everyone.
If I told him what Rebecca said about him last week, Peter would forget about that Apple Brown Betty.
And then she thought, Do I have to cast a spell to get him to act normally again? Do I have to cast a spell to get him to kiss me?
A few seconds later, the girls were all gathered around the counter, and Peter was slicing apples, and measuring out the cinnamon, laughing and chatting, suddenly at ease and the life of the party.
Rebecca’s best friend, Lily Wayne, was there with a long white apron over her flowery yellow dress. And Jonny Penderman was teasing her, poking her with a spatula, making her squeal each time.
Peter grinned at Jonny and pointed. “Jonny, how did you get flour on your nose?”
Jonny grinned back. “It was easy.” He reached across the counter and poked his finger deep into the bag of flour. Then he rubbed his finger on Peter’s nose, leaving a nice white smear.
“Hey—!” Peter uttered a cry. He picked up the flour bag, and pulled his arm back as if to heave it at Jonny. Jonny ducked. But Rebecca slid her hand over Peter’s bicep and held his arm down.
“Sorry, boys. No flour fights today,” Rebecca said. “It’s the maid’s day off.”
Jonny and Peter both sighed in disappointment. Then Peter dabbed a spot of flour onto Rebecca’s nose. She laughed and backed away. “Just slice apples, okay, Tiger? The dough is almost ready.”
Ruth-Ann didn’t know what to think. She watched Peter and his new personality from a corner of the kitchen, feeling confused, searching for some secret in Peter’s eyes. What on earth is happening here?
A week later, the mystery was solved.
Saturday night, Ruth-Ann, in a short blue-and-white pleated skirt and white silk top with a frilly lace collar and cuffs, paced the living room. She gripped a velvety blue cloche cap between her hands.
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“Are you going out?” her father asked. He tapped the bowl of his pipe against his open palm.
“Yes. I expect so,” Ruth-Ann answered, frowning, squeezing the cap. “Peter and I planned to go see some film shorts at the Vitogram, but he’s late.”
A few more taps of the pipe. He raised the stem to his mouth and made sucking sounds. “What are you going to see?”
“Oh, those people Peter likes. Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. He laughs till he gets hiccups.”
Mr. Fear pulled the gold watch from his waist and read the dial. “It isn’t like Peter to be late.”
Ruth-Ann rolled her eyes. “It’s strange. I haven’t seen him all week. I feel as if he’s avoiding me.”
“Probably busy at the Victrola store.”
“Maybe.” Ruth-Ann sighed and gazed at the grandfather clock in the corner. “Something must be wrong. He’s nearly half an hour behind.” She scowled at her father. “We have to get one of those telephones, Dad. Everyone is getting them.”
Mr. Fear had a cloth pouch raised over his pipe and was carefully emptying tobacco into the bowl. “You know my feelings—”
Ruth-Ann groaned, pumping her fists at her sides. “You think everything is a fad. Telephones . . . the Victrola. Dad, you said that automobiles were a fad!”
Her father laughed. “You know that isn’t true, Ruth-Ann. I have come a long way in my thinking. When I was a boy, no one had electricity. That’s the honest truth. And—”
“Oh, poor you. Please don’t start that again. We all know how you had to light candles to read your homework at night and how the iceman brought big blocks of ice to keep the refrigerator cold.”
She squeezed the cap in her hands. “If we had a telephone, Dad, I could call Peter and see why he isn’t here.”
Mr. Fear tamped the tobacco down with his thumb. “If I had a rocket ship, I could fly to the moon.”
“You’re not funny!” Ruth-Ann snapped, louder than she had intended. “I’m sorry—” She started to apologize, but the front doorbell chimed. “Oh. There he is.”