Among Others

Waiting for the bus back to school, I was thinking about magic. I wanted the bus to come, and I wasn’t exactly sure when it was due. If I reached magic into that, imagined the bus just coming round the corner, it isn’t as if I’d be materialising a bus out of nowhere. The bus is somewhere on its round. There are two buses an hour, say, and for the bus to be coming right when I wanted it, it must have started off on its route at a precise time earlier, and people will have caught it and got on and off at particular times, and got to where they’re going at different times. For the bus to be where I want it, I’d have to change all that, the times they got up, even, and maybe the whole timetable back to whenever it was written, so that people caught the bus at different times every day for months, so that I didn’t have to wait today. Goodness knows what difference that would make in the world, and that’s just for a bus. I don’t know how the fairies even dare. I don’t know how anyone could know enough.

Magic can’t do everything. Glory couldn’t help Gramma’s cancer, though he wanted to and we wanted him to. It may reach back into time, but it can’t make Mor alive again. I remember when she died and Auntie Teg told me and I thought, She knows, and I know, and other people are telling other people and more and more people know and it spreads out like ripples on a pond and there’s no undoing it without undoing everything. It’s not like falling out of a tree and nobody seeing but the fairies.

Wednesday 28th November 1979

Gill sneaked into the dorm last night to bring me her scientist book. She sat on my bed, and as we were talking she put her arm behind me, as if casually, but I could see how carefully she was doing it, and that she was looking at me all the time. I jumped up and said she ought to go, but Sharon gave me a very strange look afterwards and I think she saw. Could I have done something to encourage Gill? Or anyway, to make her think I might be interested in her in that way? It’s very awkward, as she’s one of the very few people who are actually talking to me. I think I need to talk to her, but not in the dorm! And I’m afraid to say I want to talk to her privately in case she takes that for more encouragement, which would be hurtful when it turned out not to be.

In I Capture the Castle, which isn’t what I expected it to be at all, there’s a bit where the heroine is in love with one man and a different man is in love with her, and she thinks she’ll make do with him, maybe, but she also knows it won’t work and it’s pointless and she doesn’t want to hurt him. The way she feels about it and not wanting to hurt him is a bit like I feel about Gill and this. I honestly don’t think it would be any different if it was a boy who was my friend. I’ll say this to Gill when I get the chance. Maybe Saturday, or tomorrow after chem?

One of the stones was knocked off the windowsill, but I put it back. This is only a temporary fix, but it’s holding for now. No more visitations.

Thursday 29th November 1979

Terrible dreams. I really do need to do something about this. I can’t go on this way. I’ll do it tonight if it’s not raining.

Why aren’t I like other people?

I look at Deirdre and her life is completely unruffled. Or does it just seem that way to me? She came up to me at break and drew me aside and said, “Shagger said that she saw Gill coming on to you,” and she looked at me entirely trustingly.

“Shagger may have seen that, but I’m not interested in Gill and I mean to tell her so,” I said.

“It’s wrong,” Deirdre said, utterly sure.

“I don’t think it’s wrong if both people want it, but in this case, I don’t.”

Deirdre looked confused and backed away, but later she offered me a Polo mint to show there were no hard feelings. I should buy her a bun for Sunday.

No chance to talk to Gill after chem. I think she may have been avoiding me. Maybe we don’t need to have a conversation after all.

Friday 30th November 1979

I got up in the deep heart of night and did magic. I climbed down the elm into the grounds, found the circle I’d made last time, and put it back together. The moon was making fitful appearances through the clouds. I didn’t make a fire this time.