Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman [7]
“I’m sure,” the girl said, in her calm beautiful voice, and the aunts must have been satisfied, because they gave her the heart of a dove, set on one of their best saucers, the kind with the blue willows and the river of tears.
Sally and Gillian sat on the back stairs in the dark, their knees touching, their feet dirty and bare. They were shivering, but still they grinned at each other and whispered right along with the aunts a charm they knew well enough to recite in their sleep: “My lover’s heart will feel this pin, and his devotion I will win. There’ll be no way for him to rest nor sleep, until he comes to me to speak. Only when he loves me best will he find peace, and with peace, rest.” Gillian made little stabbing motions, which is what the girl was to do to the dove’s heart when she repeated these words for seven nights in a row before she went to bed.
“It will never work,” Sally whispered afterward, as they felt their way along in the dark, up the stairs and along the hall to their rooms.
“It might work,” Gillian whispered back. “Even though she’s not pretty, it’s still within the realm of possibility.”
Sally drew herself up; she was older and taller and always knew best. “We’ll just see about that.”
For nearly two weeks, Sally and Gillian watched the lovesick girl. Like hired detectives, they sat for hours at the counter in the drugstore and spent all their pocket money on Cokes and french fries so they could keep an eye on her. They trailed after when she went home to the apartment she shared with another girl, who worked at the dry cleaner’s. The more they followed her schedule, the more Sally began to feel they were invading the girl’s privacy, but the sisters continued to believe they were doing important research, although now and then Gillian was confused as to what their goal really was.
“It’s simple,” Sally told her. “We need to prove that the aunts have no powers whatsoever.”
“If the aunts are full of baloney”—Gillian grinned—“then we’ll be just like everyone else.”
Sally nodded. She could not begin to express how deeply she felt about this matter, since being like everyone else was her personal heart’s desire. At night Sally dreamed of ranch houses and white picket fences, and when she woke in the morning and looked out to see the black metal spikes that surrounded them, tears formed in her eyes. Other girls, she knew, washed with bars of Ivory and sweet-scented Camay, while she and Gillian were forced to use the black soap the aunts made twice a year, on the back burner of their stove. Other girls had mothers and fathers who didn’t give a hoot about desire and fate. In no other house on their street or in their town was there a drawer crammed with cameos, given in payment for desires fulfilled.
All Sally could hope for was that perhaps her life was not quite as abnormal as it appeared. If the love charm didn’t work for the girl from the drugstore, then perhaps the aunts were only pretending their powers. So the sisters waited and prayed that nothing would happen. And when it seemed certain that nothing would, the principal of their school, Mr. Halliwell, parked his station wagon outside the drugstore girl’s apartment, just as the light was fading. He casually walked inside, but Sally noticed that he made sure to look over his shoulder; his eyes were bleary, as though he hadn’t slept