Graceful Read online

  I whirl around so fast my neck hurts. There she is, standing beside the birdbath, holding what looks like a cup of lemonade with ice.

  We all stare in shocked silence. Then Leo sticks out his finger and pokes her on the arm.

  “Um, ouch?” she says, rubbing the spot.

  Leo grins. “Yup, she’s real.”

  “How did you get here?” I ask.

  Bailey shakes her head. “Couldn’t tell ya. One minute I was in study hall doodling my name on my sneaker” — she pauses to lift one leg up to show us her name in purple sparkly gel pen — “then the next I was here with you fine folks and this refreshing icy beverage.” She lifts the glass in a toast. “Here’s to freaky magic stuff!”

  “It’s my first time, too,” David admits after she drains her cup. “I was starting to think all Grace could do was make pizza!”

  Tara kicks him in the shin. “And cure your dad!” she says.

  “Well, that, too,” he admits, winking at me.

  We all laugh, and for a second I almost forget why we’re here. But only for a second. I bend down to look over the names of the herbs printed on tiny wooden sticks. I can’t even pronounce half of them. “I wish Angelina had left a book of instructions,” I mutter. Then I look up at the group hopefully.

  They all shake their heads. I knew it was a long shot.

  “Have you ever been inside Angelina’s house?” Bailey asks me. “Maybe she did leave something for you.”

  “Amanda and I are pretty good at climbing in windows,” Leo volunteers.

  I get to my feet. “Knowing Angelina, she’d have a shark with its mouth open waiting under the window.”

  “No crime on my watch,” Ray says. “I’m too pretty to go to jail.”

  Amanda and Tara roll their eyes.

  “What if the key to the store isn’t actually the key to the store?” Bailey asks. “What if you got it wrong and it’s the key to the house?”

  I hesitate. That would explain why I haven’t been able to get into the shop. But then I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Angelina’s letter said the key would ‘open doors to wonders unimagined,’ and that Tara would know where to use it. So it’s got to be the store.”

  “I agree,” Tara says. “I’ve never been inside her house.”

  “We could still try it,” Amanda says, stuffing what looks like a clump of blue flowers into her pocket. “If Angelina ever said exactly what she meant, I’d fall over in shock.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Rory says. “It feels a little weird, though, to go in without permission.”

  Bailey pulls the pouch with the key out of her back pocket and holds it out to me.

  I look at Tara. She shrugs. “Angelina moves in mysterious ways. If there’s something in there that could help you, I think you should do it.”

  I look back to Rory. She hesitates, then nods.

  “Okay, I’ll try.” I take the key from Bailey and slowly climb the porch steps. With each step, I feel the pull of the house getting stronger, as if I’m being tugged by some unseen rope. One more strong yank, and I’m suddenly standing right in front of the door. I turn around to look at the others and see MYSELF, still standing on the second step, frozen with one foot in the air.

  The rest of Team Grace is frozen, too. How can we be frozen in time when we’re already out of time? How can I be both here and there?

  I really should stop asking questions I have no hope of knowing the answers to. I put my hand on the door, and it opens without me even using the key. Instead of the wooden floor and painted walls I would have expected to see in an old house, I find myself in a lush, tropical garden that smells of ripe grapefruit and the sea. A circle of stone benches surrounds the garden. In the distance I can see the beach and can just make out the sound of the surf lapping at the shoreline. It is the most beautiful and relaxing place I have ever been.

  And I have been here before.

  When I lay frozen in bed the week after my birthday, feeling the vortex’s power run through my veins, I wasn’t in the hospital, or in my bedroom. I was HERE. This garden paradise, this is the place that kept me safe, and sane. And I had forgotten all about it.

  The benches are empty, except for one. I should be surprised to see her here, duck-shaped birthmark and all, but somehow I’m not.

  “Are you real?” I ask Angelina.

  She smoothes out the long brown dress she’s wearing. “That depends. Quantum physics tells us reality is actually not real at all. What we think of as solid matter turns out to be invisible waves of energy existing in a field of mathematical possibilities. Once you choose a direction, only then does it become real.”

  “Um, that’s a little beyond my fifth-grade science unit.”

  “Perhaps,” she agrees. “But you will need to know this one day, so don’t forget it.”

  I’ve already half forgotten it now! My bare feet sink a little deeper into the soft, white sand. “Where am I?” I ask. “Are we actually inside your house?”

  She shakes her head. “You are nowhere, and you are everywhere.”

  I cross my arms. “Seriously? That’s the answer you’re going with? First quantum physics and now nowhere and everywhere?”

  She chuckles. “We are in your power center, my feisty little friend, your higher self, if you will. You built this place with your imagination, but you breathed life into it, and now it’s as real as anyplace else. When you’re ready, this is where you will come to focus your power. For now, it waits.”

  “I’m ready,” I tell her. “What’s it waiting for?”

  “For you to get stronger, young Grace. What is the rush to end your childhood? Ask your friend Rory how well that worked for her. The turning of the planet will march you inevitably forward either way. I’ve been alive more than a century and it still doesn’t feel like enough.”

  It’s not like I don’t want to spend my days playing with Bailey, sewing funny outfits, and dancing really badly, but I am part of something much bigger than myself now, and no amount of ignoring that fact is going to change it.

  She taps her foot, waiting for an answer. But I don’t know how much to tell her about wanting to make my parents forget, or about the “big thing” that I want to be prepared for when it comes. Especially when I have no idea what that big thing is.

  Meanwhile, Angelina reaches for a glass beside her. Ice cubes clink against the sides as she sips. Good thing my imaginary power center is polite enough to offer drinks to its guests!

  “You surprise me, Grace,” she says after emptying the glass. “You are already stronger than I thought you would be so soon after draining your power. You have your own secrets, as I had mine. Soon you will begin to see where your gifts are needed. It may happen differently for you than it did for me. Time will tell.”

  “I really am ready,” I repeat.

  “You may or may not be,” she says, sounding a bit bored now. “There are many ways to connect to the source. Each will strengthen your connection to the power in a different way and will help you learn to control it. Experiment. Train yourself. Offer gratitude.”

  Okay, that’s vague, but at least it sounds like a start. “So … um, how exactly am I supposed to do all that?”

  She shakes her head at me. “Doesn’t anyone go to the library anymore?”

  Before I can argue that I was, in fact, just at the library last week to return the summer reading books Rory picked out for me, I am whisked out of the garden until I’m back inside my body, the key still unused in my hand. “Wait!” a voice shouts as I reach one hand out to the porch railing to steady myself. At first I think it’s my voice calling out to Angelina. But Rory is the one shouting. I force myself to focus on being back in the front yard. The others are all moving around like normal again. They must not have noticed anything different while I was gone. Rory runs up the steps and grips my arm.

  “Wait,” she repeats. “I don’t think the answer’s inside. Look.” She faces me toward Angelina’s gard