Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman Page A

about the way Gillian held on to her hand when they first followed the aunts through the back door of the old house on Magnolia Street. Gillian’s fingers were sticky from gumballs and cold with fear. She refused to let go; even when Sally threatened to pinch her, she just held on tighter.
    “Let’s take him around the back,” Sally says.
    They drag him over to where the lilacs grow, and they make certain not to disturb any of the roots, the way the aunts taught them. By now the birds nesting in the bushes are all asleep. The beetles are curled up in the leaves of the quince and the forsythia. As the sisters work, the sound of their shovels has an easy rhythm, like a baby clapping hands or tears falling. There is only one truly bad moment. No matter how hard Sally tries, she cannot close Jimmy’s eyes. She’s heard this happens when a dead man wishes to see who’s next to follow. Because of this, Sally insists that Gillian look away while she begins to shovel the dirt over him. At least this way only one of them will have him staring up at her every night in her dreams.
    When they’ve finished, and returned the shovels to the garage, and there’s nothing but freshly turned earth beneath the lilacs, Gillian has to sit down on the back patio and put her head between her legs so she won’t pass out. He knew exactly how to hit a woman, so that the marks hardly showed. He knew how to kiss her, too, so that her heart began to race and she’d start to think forgiveness with every breath. It’s amazing the places that love will carry you. It’s astounding to discover just how far you’re willing to go.
    On some nights it’s best to stop thinking about the past, and all that’s been won and lost. On nights like this, just getting into bed, crawling between the clean white sheets, is a great relief. It’s only a June night like any other, except for the heat, and the green light in the sky, and the moon. And yet, what happens to the lilacs while everyone sleeps is extraordinary. In May there were a few droopy buds, but now the lilacs bloom again, out of season and overnight, in a single exquisite rush, bearing flowers so fragrant the air itself turns purple and sweet. Before long bees will grow dizzy. Birds won’t remember to continue north. For weeks people will find themselves drawn to the sidewalk in front of Sally Owens’s house, pulled out of their own kitchens and dining rooms by the scent of lilacs, reminded of desire and real love and a thousand other things they’d long ago forgotten, and sometimes now wish they’d forgotten still.
     
    ON the morning of Kylie Owens’s thirteenth birthday, the sky is endlessly sweet and blue, but long before the sun rises, before alarm clocks go off, Kylie is already awake. She has been for hours. She is so tall that she could easily pass for eighteen if she borrowed her sister’s clothes and her mom’s mocha lipstick and her aunt Gillian’s red cowboy boots. Kylie knows she shouldn’t rush things, she has her whole life ahead of her; all the same, she’s been traveling to this exact moment at warp speed for the duration of her existence, she’s been completely focused on it, as if this one morning in July were the center of the universe. Certainly she’s going to be a much better teenager than she ever was a child; she’s half believed this all her life, and now her aunt has read her tarot cards for her and they predict great good fortune. After all, the star was her destiny card, and that symbol ensures success in every enterprise.
    Kylie’s aunt Gillian has been sharing her bedroom for the past two weeks, which is how Kylie knows that Gillian sleeps like a little girl, hidden under a heavy quilt even though the temperature has been in the nineties ever since she arrived, as if she’s brought some of the Southwest she loves so well along with her in the trunk of her car. They’ve fixed the place the way two roommates would, everything right down the middle,