Of Sorcery and Snow by Shelby Bach Read Free Book Online Page A

After School giving you drugs?”
    This was so far from what I thought she was going to say that I didn’t respond. My mouth just gaped open.
    â€œAmy suggested that once. She thinks EAS is a cult—did you know that?” Mom asked, but she didn’t give me time to answer. “And last spring, when you ran off to Lena, I almost believed her. Then I thought, No. It makes Rory so happy. But a grown man couldn’t bend those shelves the way you just did. So I have to think . . . steroids.”
    The human mind is a tricky thing: someone can be faced withmagic, and instead of believing what they see, they’ll think of some “logical” explanation that fits what they know about the world.
    I could tell Mom that my strength came from the plain silver band on my finger, but she would probably still go with her drugs idea.
    â€œRory, you need to tell me the truth,” she said.
    The truth. In the two years I’d been attending EAS, I’d never once tried telling my family the truth, even if it meant getting grounded. “I’m not taking drugs, I promise.”
    â€œSo if I check your room, I won’t find anything?” Mom said.
    â€œYou can if you want . . . ,” I replied, kind of hurt. I didn’t mind her checking my stuff—all the inventions Lena has given me were disguised as regular things—but she usually just trusted my word.
    â€œI know. I’m sorry. I do trust you. I shouldn’t just accuse you with crazy things, but . . .” She pressed a hand against her mouth. Her hands were shaking too.
    â€œIt’ll be okay,” I said, but my voice cracked.
    And, like a mask fell over her face, she donned a smile. “Okay. Let’s pause this conversation and reconvene in the kitchen. Today calls for tea.”
    Mom only calls for tea breaks in stressful situations. She brewed it the same way she’d driven us home, distant and focused: filling the kettle and putting it on the stove, lining up all of her favorite mugs on the counter, and pulling out three different kinds of tea—mint for me, lemon for Amy, and chamomile for herself.
    Moving around the kitchen, she shot me the same looks as she had in the weeks after I came back from Atlantis, like she didn’t know what to do with me, but she was afraid I would vanish again if she let me out of her sight.
    I definitely didn’t break the silence. I didn’t know what I was going to say.
    Finally the door squeaked open, and Amy let herself in, looking a little harassed. She took in the sight of Mom’s tea freak-out. “No trouble from the storekeepers,” she said.
    Mom nodded, then turned to me. I braced myself for the third degree. “Listen, Rory,” she said. “What if we stayed in San Francisco? Got a house and everything?”
    Well, that came out of nowhere.
    â€œI’ll get the folder,” Amy said and left the room, which kind of upped my confusion.
    â€œTwo more productions have approached me recently, asking me to commit to other plays here,” Mom explained. “I think this stage acting could be the next phase of my career. I would still do movies, but only in the summer, when school was out and you could come with me.”
    I guess it made sense, Mom wanting to moving here: She had college friends in the Bay Area. The dean of students at my school had been her freshman-year roommate, and the theater director who had first convinced her to try out the San Fran stage had been in most of Mom’s drama classes.
    â€œThis way, you could spend all four years at the same high school and make some friends.” Mom looked at me expectantly. She thought I would jump at the chance to stop moving around, to have a real life instead of just being the new girl all the time.
    Two years ago, I would have.
    Now, when I daydreamed about living in one place, I always pictured moving to EAS, like Lena and Chase.