The Sisters of Nowhere

n i n e t e e n : c r u s h

 It is often difficult to find something that may or may not exist.

The Penny sisters and Wyatt were learning this lesson the difficult way.

After their trip to the library, the excitement of unlocking the secrets of a magical forest was as intense as the summer storms that blew through the small town of Nowhere as June turned into July.

Fliers were hung up in Nowhere, promoting the annual community sock hop.

The peaches in the orchards were all ripe, some of them dropping to the ground before the farmers could harvest them.

But a week passed, then two, and there wasn't even a whisper from Silas or the forest. In fact, there weren't many ghosts in the clearing at all, which was particularly odd given that it was an eclipse year.

Ophelia and Birdie were disappointed as the wind slowly left their sails, but not more than Marigold was.

She'd finally had a taste of excitement and now it was gone. What if Silas never came back? What if the forest had moved?

It was as if it sensed their knowledge. As if it knew that they'd found out its secrets. Maybe that was why all traces of Gwydyr disappeared.

Marigold became increasingly irritable when presented with a puzzle she couldn't solve, no matter what she did.

She had to wait. And Marigold did not like to wait.

So she set to work at all hours of the day trying to fix the one thing she could control--the ASJ-18 motorcycle that Mr. Cerbus had brought into the shop.

She'd been unable to find an engine that would be suitable for it, so she'd decided to piece together her own.

It was tedious work that distracted her from thinking about Gwydyr and Silas. In the silence of the shop, her own thoughts festered and turned bitter without her sisters around to knock some sense into her.

She'd get out of Nowhere. She'd go to college and leave all the ghosts and forests and nothingness behind.

She'd start a new life, make new friends, become something new entirely.

She stop chasing fantasies and grow up.

That was when Ophelia came into the shop.

She looked hesitant, like Marigold was a stranger she was meeting for the first time.

Marigold felt a pang of guilt. Over the past week or so, she had become a stranger.

"Hiya," Ophelia said.

"Ever heard of knocking?" Marigold said, and then regretted it. She always seemed to say what her attitude dictated rather than what she actually felt inside. So she put her wrench aside and wiped the grease from her hands onto her overalls and asked, "Is everything okay?"

Ophelia wrinkled her nose. "Everything except for the smell in this place. It's absolutely wretched."

"It's called hard work," Marigold said. "No wonder you don't recognize it."

Ophelia tossed her dark curls over her shoulder. "Well then, if you don't change your tune, I won't say what I came here for."

Marigold lifted her eyebrows hopefully. "Does it have to do with Gwydyr?"

Ophelia shook her head pityingly. "Er, no, but it does have to do with the annual sock hop."

Marigold deflated, though the sock hop was her favorite event of the year.