Family Magic by Patti Larsen Page A

the five minutes it took to get to the field before practice.
I was always early and I didn’t want to break my perfect record as
the first one there.
    I was lacing up my cleats when the first of
my teammates started to arrive.
    I didn’t really have any friends on the team,
not because I wasn’t nice to the girls, but because I ‘felt’
different. To normals, the witch in me came across as some sort of
weird aura marking me from ordinary as much as a banner across my
forehead. So as much as I was a great soccer player and an asset to
the team, it meant even though I was welcome on the field, I wasn’t
invited into their lives outside of the game.
    Story of my life.
    Coach Matters pulled up in his beat-up truck,
followed closely by the rest of the team. No more feeling sorry for
myself. At least, not about my lack of friends. I had tougher
things to worry about. Like handling the ball, running until I
couldn’t feel my legs and loving every second of it so much I never
wanted it to end.
    I adored my coach, as much as I could adore a
man who worked us so hard I wanted to throw up on a regular basis.
Andrew Matters was the perfect trainer, compact himself with a bit
of a limp from years and years playing the game he now taught. I
loved how tough he could be on us and ignored the complaints of the
other players. The harder I worked my body, the more normal I felt.
Somehow, soccer shut down my worries about magic and set me
free.
    Plus, I was addicted to the rush, the smell
of fresh cut grass, the impact of hurtling bodies that only turned
to pain hours later. I lived so much in the moment on the field.
I’m not sure what it was about soccer in particular, especially
considering I sucked at all other sports I tried. Maybe it was just
the one normal thing I was good at. And I was really good at
it. So much so the coach pushed me way harder than the rest of the
girls and they knew it. No wonder I wasn’t popular.
    But, on the field, I didn’t care about
popular, probably the only place I didn’t. On the field all that
mattered was the ball, the grass and getting it in the net.
    I packed up reluctantly at the end of
practice, dragging my butt, wishing I had anywhere to go but home.
I longed for friends to hang out with, to be normal and not the
girl who lived the life of a cloistered nun. None of the other
girls offered, as usual, going their own ways in their little packs
of twos and threes. I tried to insert myself when I first arrived
but took the hint pretty quickly. Their clubhouse was closed to new
members. So, I made the return trip a lot slower going than
coming.
    I was almost home when I noticed with horror
the hunched, skinny old woman across the street. My stomach
clenched into immediate anxiety. I almost dropped my backpack in my
haste to get to her before something awful happened. Even from
thirty feet away, I recognized her hair, white and wild. In
daylight, Gram’s paper-thin skin almost glowed with the veins
underneath. She stumbled to a halt in front of a mailbox, dressed
only in a thin, flowered nightgown brushing her bare toes. She
proceeded to have a heated conversation with it, gesturing wildly.
I rolled my eyes as I reached her, waving at a passing car whose
driver watched with concern.
    I gently touched her arm. She glanced up,
pale blue eyes almost white they were so washed of color. Her lips
pulled back into a grimace. She clutched at me, thin hands
surprisingly strong.
    “He won’t apologize,” Gram gestured at the
innocent mailbox.
    “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it,
Gram,” I said softly to her, wishing I at least had a normal
grandmother, not the disabled witch clinging to me, offended by a
box on a stick.
    “He said some horrible things, Miriam,” she
whispered. “Horrible.”
    “It’s Syd, Gram,” I sighed and tried to pull
her away. “Let’s go home, okay? Mom will be worried about you.”
    “Lewd things,” she hissed, eyes flashing,
“vulgar and