Page 30 of The Rules of Magic

Haylin grinned and said, “We could live there and no one would know.”

It was the grin that always tugged at something inside Franny. He seemed so pure. Wrong and Right were fixed points in Haylin’s mind. When he spoke about the many inequities facing those people who had no say in their own futures, Franny felt the sting of tender admiration stirring inside her. Still, she did not wish to have a heart, for such a thing could be broken. She thought of the women who knocked on the back door at Magnolia Street, desperate for love, crying at the kitchen table, each willing to pay any price to win the attention of some man who didn’t know she was alive. Franny had been convinced it was only a rumor that Aunt Isabelle was given all manner of jewelry as payment until she saw a neighbor take off her cameo necklace and leave it on the kitchen table. And then one day, as she was searching a cabinet for the saltshaker, she found a plastic container that rattled. Inside were a dozen diamond rings.

She thought Jet was a fool to look for love, but here she was with Haylin trying to make sense of her frantic heart. Sooner or later she would figure out the curse. Mysteries could be solved, if one applied logic and patience.

As they sat on a flat rock, with the evening floating down around them, Franny and Hay traded tales they’d heard about the pond, urban legends about snapping turtles so huge they would leap into the air to catch pigeons that were then drowned and devoured, and of pet fish released from their small bowls that had grown enormous, with sharp teeth and wicked dispositions. There was a lady rumored to live in the shrubbery who was said to catch turtles for her supper. She could be spied begging for spare change on the corner near the Starling School.

Don’t think this won’t happen to you, she hissed at all the pretty young girls passing by. Youth is fleeting. It’s nothing but a dream. I’m where you’re going. I’m what you’ll be.

They called her the Pond Lady and ran from her, shrieking, but they couldn’t get her warning out of their minds. Caution, these girls thought. As for Franny, she always gave the Pond Lady a dollar when she saw her, for she had no fear of who she would turn out to be.

When the theater let out, Jet was walking on air. She quickly worked a Believe Me spell before telling her parents that the girls from Starling were having a slumber party in honor of her birthday. Wasn’t that what they had wanted? For her to be popular and accepted?

“Address please,” her father said.

“Ninety-Second and Third,” Jet responded, having already practiced the answers to most of the possible questions she might be asked.

“Let us drop you,” Susanna said, hailing a cab.

“Oh, Mother, they’ll think I’m a baby.”

Jet kissed her parents good-bye, then she slipped into the taxi and leaned forward to ask the driver to take her to Fifty-Ninth Street. Off they went, for there was a plan, one that had nothing to do with the girls at school, who couldn’t have cared less that it was Jet Owens’s birthday. But someone cared desperately, and had already been waiting for her for over an hour at the entrance to the park on Central Park South. They would spend the night together at the Plaza Hotel, the grandest, most romantic hotel in New York, built in 1907, designed as if it were a French château. In the park across the street from the hotel there was the elegant golden equestrian statue of General Sherman and his horse by the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

In addition to selling his great-great-grandfather’s watch, Levi had been saving for this special night, working overtime at the pharmacy, delivering newspapers in the early mornings. Spying Levi from the cab was the best moment of Jet’s life. She was ready to fall in love without looking back. Frankly, she had already fallen. She paid, then ran out to embrace Levi. They kissed and barely noticed the world around them. Horns honked, and they were nearly run over by a bicyclist. Levi laughed and pulled Jet out of harm’s way. He was carrying her birthday present. An old edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain

As Jet was about to open the book, as her heart was lifting and her life just beginning, her parents’ taxi roared up. They’d heard her tell the cabbie the address of the Plaza, and, suspicious, they had followed, up Sixth Avenue, turning onto Fifty-Ninth Street. Susanna opened the window now and called shrilly, using Jet’s rarely used given name. Bridget Owens, you stop right there!

Jet looked up at her mother and panicked. The cab was racing toward them. Before her parents could leap out and drag her away, before they could ruin her life, she took hold of Levi’s arm and cried out, Let’s run. He didn’t even know what they were running from, but he knew he was dedicated to protecting Jet. They headed for the park, and as they did, the parents’ cabdriver was told to step on it and not let them escape. There was an oil slick on the road, beneath the pools of spilled water used for the horses pulling the carriages that took tourists and lovers through the park. It was dark and the city smelled like freshly spaded earth.

Just across from the Plaza Hotel the taxi skidded out of control. Birds in the trees took flight and filled the ember sky. Levi leapt in front of Jet as the taxi came barreling onto the sidewalk. Time slowed so that she could see his eyes dilate when he realized what was happening. It was so very slow they might have been caught in a glass jar. She could hear his thoughts. Not yet. Not this. And then time sped up, it rolled up right under their feet and caught them off balance. The air was alive and pushed against Jet like a wave, but it was Levi who was pushing her out of the way. She lay on the cold ground as glass shattered and fell over her, like a hard rain. There was no other sound, no birds, no traffic, nothing but the sound of her heart thudding against her chest. There was nothing else beyond this moment when she heard the taxi hit Levi, the sound of the world cracking in two. And then she heard his voice, and he said only one word, and that last word was her name.

At Turtle Pond, Franny had slipped off her sneakers and was letting her pale feet dangle over the edge of the rocks. The night was perfect and she worried about perfect things, for there were often flaws seen only under a microscope, with a very clear eye. She felt a chill go through her, as if the wind had blown directly through her chest. All at once, there were tears in her eyes.

“I’ll swim here if you will,” Haylin announced, already stripping off his shirt. He always wanted to prove himself to Franny, yet he never exuded the same confidence. Hay had recognized that she had a strange sort of courage. She didn’t even seem to notice when she was in danger. Perhaps that was why he was driven by the need to be brave and why he stood on the very edge of the rock, his heart thudding, his emotions at a fever pitch. If courage was what she wanted, that was what he’d give her. “Seriously,” he said. “Let’s swim.”

Franny shook her head no. She felt nerves again, right in the pit of her stomach, as if the world was about to spin out of control. Another time she might have been thrilled by Haylin’s proposed leap into the muddy abyss. But she knew the warning. She must use caution. Plus, swimming with him was out of the question; she would only float and he would wonder why and there was no way for her to explain the reason.

The water was murky, filled with mysterious, mossy items. Still, Haylin didn’t back down. He pulled off his boots and unzipped his jeans, then took everything off. She’d never seen him naked. He was like a statue, perfect.

Haylin inhaled, then leapt into the pond. The turtles splashed away as he disappeared into the blackness of the surface. Water rose up and slapped against the rocks, then spilled onto the path. Though the pond was filled from a tap, trash left to sink to its depths made the water appear ominous and unclean, likely chock-full of strange debris and unknown pathogens. Franny’s heart was hitting against her chest. Haylin would probably need a tetanus shot.

He didn’t rise. Franny thought of bees, and ashes, and broken glass. But Haylin hadn’t been inside their house when the deathwatch beetle appeared, so surely he’d be safe. And yet there was a circle forming around the spot where he had disappeared. No air bubbles, no Haylin. Franny wanted to leap in after him, but she knew from the time spent in Leech Lake it was impossible. She would only float to the surface. Because she couldn’t be drowned, she couldn’t follow him into the depths to save him. She was frantic, her pulse pounding, fearing that the curse was happening right now.

When Hay suddenly reappeared, he broke the surface like some sort of enormous fish. He was sputtering for air, turning blue. He struggled for breath, then met her eyes. Franny sat frozen on the rock; a kind of terror had immobilized her. Caution.

Hay shook his head. “Jesus, Franny,” he said.

She’d never seen anyone look as sad or disappointed. He swam to the rocks with two strokes of his long arms and hoisted himself out. His hair was slicked back. His penis looked blue from the cold. Franny had a small shiver of what she thought was fear, but it was really something else entirely, what she didn’t want to feel for him and already did.

Hay reached for his clothes and pulled them on even though he was soaking wet. “There’s a shopping cart down there. My leg got stuck. I almost couldn’t surface. In case you care.”

“Haylin.” Franny spoke with emotion. “Of course I do.”

“There’s something wrong between us, Franny.” Hay cast his large, wet feet into his boots without bothering with socks. Then he came to her and put his hands on her shoulders; he was shaking from the frigid water and from raw emotion. “Were you going to let me drown? Seriously. Tell me the truth. You’re keeping something from me. What are we to each other, Franny?”