The Magnolia League - By Katie Crouch Page 0,68

of my purple tie-dyed underwear—a lone relic from arts-and-crafts day at the RC.

“Crap,” I mutter, standing and pulling up my jeans.

“Dude,” Dex says later at Waffle House. In a solemn commitment to cementing our friendship, Dexter has been taking me to “Awful Waffle” once a week. Our download time on Thursdays has now become a sacred tradition. “Okay, I wasn’t gonna ask you this, because I didn’t want you to think I was one of those metro a-holes who sit around obsessing about hair. But, okay, it’s been three weeks or whatever, and it’s like you’re in a silence pact about it. So, gotta know: How’d you undread the bird’s nest?”

“Oh, you know. Conditioner. A brush.”

“I thought you had to shave that shit.”

“What do you think?” I reply, carefully not answering.

“Good call,” he says. “It’s not like I’m the fashion police or anything, but that look you were rolling with was pretty heinous.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I say. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”

“Are you kidding? A man must never say anything about a woman’s hair. Even an asshat like me knows that. Now, what leftovers do you have for Dex?” He looks at my plate expectantly.

“I ate it all,” I say, my face growing warm.

“Seriously?” he cries. “The whole thing? You ordered two smothered-and-chunked hash browns. A.L., you got a bun in the oven?”

“Not possible. Unless you’re a true believer in immaculate conception.”

“We Jews don’t buy into such nonsense. That Virgin Mary, she definitely had a guy on the side.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve just been really hungry lately.”

“Hmm.” He looks at me suspiciously. “Maybe you should go to the doctor or something. You’re looking a little scrawny. You might have a tapeworm.”

I’m completely tempted to tell him. It would be so great to get a sane outsider’s perspective on this hoodoo pact. But Dex would think I was crazy.

“I’ll eat more,” I say, standing up. “Promise. Listen, I’ve got to—”

“Hey, loser,” Madison says, literally blowing through the door. She seems to have her own personal wind tunnel; menus scatter onto the floor. The humble diners of Waffle House crane their necks to stare at her beauty. “Saw your tacky van in the lot.”

“Looking for me?” Dex says. “A crush. How flattering.”

Oddly, Madison reddens a bit. Did Dex actually manage to insult her?

“Not likely, Mr. Doughboy. Alex, I need you. We have only a few hours of daylight left for—”

“For what? Warding off the vampires?”

“Vampires are so over, Dexter. Everyone knows that. Coming, Alex?”

“It’s cool,” I say. “I’ll bike.”

“Okay. Ta, loser,” she says, waggling her fingers at Dex.

“I’ll call you later,” I say, rising.

“Beware, friend,” Dex says. “These Magnolias are toxic stuff.”

I shoot him an apologetic look as I head out the door. I should just make Madison wait while Dex polishes off his hash browns, but the truth is we’re finishing the last step of a three-day spell for Hayes. It’s my first time as a participant (as opposed to a guinea pig/victim), so I’m pretty psyched about it. I pedal hard out of suburbia’s blazing strip malls and into downtown’s leafy maze, making a quick stop at my grandmother’s house to throw on some smaller jeans. After a trip to the kitchen to speed-feed three pieces of meat lover’s pizza, I ride over to Hayes’s house on Pulaski Square and park my bike inside the gate of the large, perfectly manicured garden.

From the pretty brick courtyard, I can hear Hayes’s voice floating through the open window. I can’t hear what she’s saying exactly, but she sounds tense. She saw Jason talking to some hot band nerd by the girls’ locker room the other day, and now she’s convinced that he has a wandering eye. Personally, I think she’s being totally insane. How could anyone as gorgeous and nice as Hayes ever doubt that her boyfriend is into her? But no one asked me.

“Dried cat semen?” I hear her shriek as I enter. “How the hell am I supposed to get that?”

Right. That’s the thing about a lot of these spells. They all have a million steps and call for some really random stuff. Potions have to be mixed at a certain time of day; pastes have to be applied while staring and concentrating on some old picture; the steam of teas must be waved in the direction of a certain country. Often the spells involve bodily fluids—sweat, spit, even menstrual blood. And they never, ever make sense. My grandmother is always half burying old cans of lye in