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I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw her. I let out a sharp breath, and one of the boys prompting for a free night let out a laugh, thought he had something to do with it. He couldn’t have less to do with it if he tried. Him or any of his friends. It was all her. Her, in the middle of the dance floor, getting jeered at and whispered about, not giving a damn for all the world. I’d known her most my life. She’d lived four houses down since we were five, but we’d never been in the same circles. Sadly. People had a lot of problems with her. She was too tall for a girl, too round, wore the wrong clothes and talked to the wrong people. Another thing people didn’t like; the sparks from her fingertips.
Magic is… not, I suppose, mundane. Not common here, but we have it. Most who aren’t around it all the time aren’t really fans. Opinions vary, though. Some say, “They need to rot!” some say, “they’re always welcome here.” and of course there are the holy perfect old women and men who can’t seem to not say “I love them, despite their sin” and think such a statement earns them eternal ally-hood.
People always think they have everything figured out. Adults, mostly. I’d trust them more if their advice went past “hide who you are and everything is fine.”
About twenty seconds later one of the bolder guys tries his hand in the game known as the back of my dress, and I can’t help but spit on his pretty loafers as I push him away. My back turned to a chorus of “C’mon baby” and “What a bitch,” I storm my way up the dance floor. She’s still there, swaying and nodding to the popular tunes coming from the band, chatting with her friends, her awkward fit floral dress she loves more than anything sweeping just above the floor. I butt my way into her conversation, her saying “So, anyway” to a companion, to ask her something I’ve wanted to for years.
“Care for a dance?”
She turns from her friend, blinks a few times. I swear a billion butterflies burst through my stomach out of nowhere. I’m immediately too scared to shut up.
“I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to Lillian, it’s no big d-”
“Call me Lily. And I’d love to, Penelope.”
Starstruck, I mutter, “Penny. Penny is good.”
She says goodbye to her friends as we move somewhere with more room to sway. The song being played is still fast paced, made to jump to, but she puts her arms at my waist, and mine go up around her neck on instinct. We take light steps side to side, swaying somewhat to the beat, and talk. Just talk. For ten minutes, thirty, an hour. The rest of the night at the community hall passed like a blur. As the night draws to an end, she takes my hand and walks me out the door, her jacket hung over my shoulders as protection against the suddenly biting April night air.
We walk each other home. The proximity of our houses and hopes for safety made it the obvious choice at the end of the night. Also, I didn’t want to let go of her hand.
We get to my house, and she climbs the front steps by my side. The lights are all out, mom and pop and little Ryan are probably sleeping soundly. I told them I’d be staying the night with the friends I went to the dance with, but by the time Lily and I could pry our eyes away from each other, Heather and Olivia had long since decided it wouldn’t be worth waiting around for me and left.
“I had a lot of fun tonight, Lily. Thank you for talking to me so much. You have a lot of really cool things to say.” I awkwardly ramble, mentally listing the books and tapes she’d told me about over and over, trying to make sure I wouldn’t forget a single title.“And thank you for walking me home, are you sure you don’t want me to walk with you the extra block? It’s really dark out tonight.”
As I speak, the clouds in the sky part and the moonlight comes through again. Moonshine falls across Lily and me, letting me see every wrinkle and pleat in her long dress as it sways with the breeze. The light also allows me to see the singes on the fabric around where her hands fall. She sees me looking there and takes a handful of the fabric, laughing awkwardly.
“Ah yeah, you know about that, right? God, it seems like everyone does. And everyone talks about it happening. Not me, just... The sparks.” she says, chewing her lip and looking at the ground.
I take her hand from where it grips her dress and turn her palm up. She looks up at me, then we both look at her hand. Deep breath in Penny, deep breath out. “Could you… show me?”
I hear her breath catch in her throat and am immediately worried I said something wrong. Before I can open my mouth to start spilling apologies, she brings her other hand up beneath mine, the warmth of her calming me quickly. Her hand still on top, turned to us, as bare beneath the starlight as I myself feel. We’re both shaking as a small and smouldering spot forms in the center of her hand.
Dazed with wonder, I bring the pile of our hands closer to my face. I’m filled with so much awe, I try to put my thumb in the center of her hand, right in the smoke. Neither of us thinks about it, and she doesn’t try to stop me, only snapping out of the moment when my finger is already pressed to the center of her burning palm. As she tries to pull her hand away to save me from a scar, the ends of my fingers turn a frosty blue and feel stiff, shocking us both. As the contact continues, the apparent ice on my fingers melts and the fire in Lily's hand is extinguished. Our skin returns to normal.
I don’t think about our hands much more as Lily kisses me. Pressed against my front door, fierce for a few seconds before we turn soft and slow, holding each other close in the nippy evening air, each pulling away as little as possible every few seconds to mumble a quick “Is this okay?” before returning to the others lips. I climb the stairs to my room alone some time later, her jacket still sitting neat on my shoulders, a buzz I’d never felt before settling low in my stomach. I sit at my desk for hours afterwards, small piles of snow filling my hands.
As June hits and school ends, a lot begins to happen. Lily and I graduate and move in together with a guise of financial practicality. What goes on between us behind our own door is a matter that belongs to us, the rest of the world be damned. As we age, we learn more and more about our special little talents. I hear from a coworker, whos sister would grow scales under pressure and can now conjure them as a lovely little party trick, about friendly groups of young men and women who meet to discuss their struggles and experiences with having a differentiator. Lily and I are part of a group like this now, still discovering things about ourselves and our powers every day. Once you realize your most general differentiator, it’s easy to accept the rest. Lily has all but mastered cooking without lifting a thing but her finger. I’d never had a green thumb on my own, but with a couple of sweet morning rituals learned from another member of the group, our garden is teeming with fresh fruits and vegetables and flowers galore.
While I no longer feel shame about my powers, at least no more than tamed and sorted traumas can cause, I still do choose to put myself aside from that part of my identity while around others. I found work as a librarian once me and Lily moved away from our old lives at ages 20, no longer able to stand those who raised us seeing us as the enemy. Pictures burnt and ties severed, I cried for a week while Lily used rage and coffee to pack our small apartment in our hometown. I barely left our new bedroom for two weeks, only crawling out of bed to pee and cry in the mirror. I couldn’t stop thinking of words of disgust flying from important mouths; Olivia ‘asked’ me to stop coming to the book club we’d started when we were nine; my third grade teacher, next door neighbor, and babysitter for many years says to my mother she never would have let me play with her children growing up if she’d known; Ryan. I can barely stand to think of him even now without tears welling in my eyes. Fourteen when me and Lily were eighteen, finding things out about ourselves, he held the smoking gun. He never meant to tell mom and pop. He saw me and Lily one day, hand in hand and lips against lips, pressed against the wall out back of the Piggly Wiggly. He confronted us and ran, I chased him, trying not to feel the pierce of him yelling at me to get away, stop following me fag, witch, ‘not her’. My father arrived home that day to hear Ryan yelling these things to me. I was living four houses down and avoiding the outdoors within the week. Lily’s parents, town middlemen, were perfectly fine with us being us. All the assurance in the world would never make me forget my brothers face that day.
While I still prefer a public life of docility where my powers are concerned, Lily has never been one to remove herself from a situation. She works with a local blacksmith. Her powers come in handy to heat and melt. I can’t stand her coming home with burnt hands and a bruised face. She never lost her flair for the dramatic. Since she doesn’t feel effect from the interactions, she believes she should have as many of them as possible. Our main tension point, I want to stay here. I love the life and place we’ve built slightly removed from this town. She thinks it’s her single-handed duty to educate or fight homophobic anti-magics. Anytime she returns with a wound and blackened hands, I place her calloused fingers in warm water and cover whatever cut or ailment she has with bandages and kisses and scoldings.
At least twice a week, children from town will bike to my and Lily’s small home set about a mile into the forest. We’re away from people enough to avoid any consistency in taunts from out wonderful peers. We’re never quite sure if it’s safe to go about our business in town, shopping for groceries, going to work, getting a breath of populated air, but the disconnect from our society makes it easier. You know, we don’t get any invites to culdesac picnics labeled ‘to you and your sister’ or paint on our front door reading ‘to hell with you all’. Anymore. The children love to help me weed the garden and pick the best of the crops while Lily makes supper and tea. We make sure to load the bags and pockets of the children who visit often, small and bruised, with extra apples and pastries. As a few of such children take a much deserved nap in our garden, Lily and I sip from warm mugs at our kitchen table.
“I wish we could just take them all.” she sighs. The stove is running overtime, four pots mixing themselves at once and two pans jammed in the oven.
I look out the window to the two girls and two boys nestled under our trees. They’re all the kind of child who makes you hate adults as you are one; smart and sweet, always willing to help, hardworking when they do, and they still have to escape here every few days. They've each told us stories about their parents and guardians that make Lily's hands burn and mine frost with anger. The girls are sisters with a drunk of a father and a mother who can’t be bothered to come home from a ‘friend’’s house most nights. One boy is the sweetest and smartest child you would ever lay eyes on, but if he’d bring home a report card with anything less than an A, it was straight to his room without dinner for the rest of the week. And the final boy, the son of a
schoolteacher and a pastor, was like us. Lillian and me. He was thirteen and shot electric bolts from his fingertips whenever his surroundings became too much. He visited more than any other child.
“I wish we could too, Lily. But how would that look? We’re already the dyke witches who lure children into the forest with promises of healthy dinners and love. If we kept one even, we’d get run out of town with pitchforks and torches.” As I speak, my tea freezes in my cup. I hand the mug to Lily, who melts it just as fast. Angry magic hands do wonders.
“I know Penny, I know. But… God! I just want… I want them all safe and loved and happy. Is that too fucking much to ask for children these days? For them to feel good once in a while?” she puts her own mug down just in time to stop it from boiling over.
I put my frozen hand over her burning one. “They do feel good Lil, when they’re here. We help them as much as we can for now and we’ll help them more when we can. But we’re doing our best. I swear.”
She looks at me, furious tears sliding down her face. I do my best to wipe them away with the sleeve of my shirt, trying not to singe her face with cold.
The children wake up one by one, staggering into the house for food. Lily pours each of them a heaping plate of corn and potatoes, a bowl of soup and places a muffin to the side of each plate. As we eat, the children each talk about their days at school and trips to get here. Charlie, the smart boy, told us about a frog he’d tried to catch for us. He was absolutely certain it would’ve loved the garden. He’d try to get it again tomorrow. Rose, the older girl, tries to get her sister Helen to eat properly, stop making such a mess. She doesn't succeed, and the entire table gets a chuckle out of Helen turning her muffin into a crown. John is having one of his better days. He says his father has stopped trying to keep him from coming to visit Lillian and me, he now ‘just’ calls down the street to him as he bikes away; ‘if those voodoo fags kill you, it’s not on my conscious!’. Lily and I try not to cause a hurricane as he repeats this line.
Rose and Helen leave as soon as we finish eating, having to get home before dark. Charlie leaves soon after to complete his homework. John stays to help clean. Lily and I could have our dishes washed and put away in a few minutes by ourselves, but he enjoys it, and we let him create a mountain of bubbles in the kitchen sink. Eventually, all of the plates are stacked in the cupboard. The mugs return to our shelf, an array of cups with scars in their glaze, courtesy of our commonalities. The three of us play a game of cards, the tea kettle boiling and pouring itself for us whenever we need it. John asks Lily to teach him how to do that, and she agrees, someday soon when we have the time. We put away the cards and the kettle as John leaves, and Lily decides to put a record on. She sifts through the crate of options we have, settling on one with a smile. I expect a soft waltz or sleepy blues mix, but the music starts loud and fast. I’m hit with the memory of a crowded community hall, a long floral dress, a jacket on a warm night. Her. Her arms slide around my waist as I smile and sway against her, the love of my life, who whispers softly in my ear.
“Care for a dance?”