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(She) can thread a needle with a well-turned phrase. — Don Hewitt
Cemeteries had never really creeped me out, possibly because my parents had nailed it into my head over and over that they were the safest place to go. Hallowed ground, and all of that. Even sitting here talking to a ghost didn’t really change anything.
As usual, I’d picked Billy’s gravestone to lean against. Hard to believe that he’d come back from the dead nearly 26 years ago, especially since the grass has grown over everything so completely. But I felt a certain kinship with him, knowing what I did now.
“So why a needle again?” Travis wondered quietly from next to me. He wasn’t really watching Isabella and said needle, but as always, he was aware of his surroundings.
“Narrow control means wide impact,” I whispered in response.
Isabella, sitting in the middle of the path, shot me a grateful smile. She’d been working with Elizabeth on telekinesis for a while and was pretty great at it, but it took concentration to thread a needle with no hands.
Travis passed me the Starbucks cup he’d been doodling on for the last six minutes. The cup used to hold his Pumpkin Spice Latte, but now served as a canvas. For once there didn’t seem to be a pun involved, it was just a remarkably good picture of Isabella’s focused face.
I beamed at him and gingerly held it up to take a picture on my phone. I was trying to be more chill about phone photography vs film. It was a work in progress, and this seemed a noteworthy thing to capture digitally.
The thread slid through the eye of the needle and Isabella shrieked in delight. The needle immediately fell into the grass, but it was still threaded when she picked it out and waved it at us. “Got it!” she cheered.
“Witch, please,” Travis said. “We knew you would.”
She made a show of throwing it at him, though it remained pinched between her fingers. “You’re the worst.”
I got up to give her a hug. “I’m so proud of you!”
“You should be commended,” Elizabeth said. Even now, almost a year since the first time we’d seen her, it was still strange to hear a ghost speak. She never looked very solid, whereas her voice felt so present.
Isabella still had an arm around my waist as she turned to smile at her ancestor. “I felt like I’ve come so far, and it’s all thanks to you.” She paused, smiling at me and Travis, too. “All of you,” she clarified.
I kissed her cheek. “Any time.” I meant it, too. We were seniors this year, but we were already plotting our next four years. Hopefully we would both be in the same college, or at least two colleges close to each other. And, of course, close to Salem. As long as this place had such a high concentration of magic and an evil spell book on the loose, we’d need to be nearby.
Isabella smiled like she knew what I meant.