“No, you can’t!” Selma crowed, loud enough to draw stares. “Because you’re stupid!”
“Won’t you shut up?” the girl in the hat snapped. She stood and shoved Selma back a step, then turned to me and held out her hand.
I just stared at it.
But Selma wasn’t done.
“My father says you mud stompers still believe in magic too,” she sneered.
I looked at her, not with anger. With pity. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to grow up with a father like that.
“Well, your father’s a prick,” the girl in the hat shot back.
“I don’t believe in magic!” I blurted before I could stop myself. “I don’t.”
It wasn’t a lie. Ihaddecided that I didn’t believe anymore.
Selma’s expression twisted.
“Well then,” she said, “you won’t care if I do this.”
Before I could stop her, she yanked the crown off my head and ran toward the fire. I scrambled after her.
“Give it back!” I shouted. But my voice came out quiet, trembling.
She looked back, and for a second I thought maybe she’d stop, have a change of heart.
But she didn’t.
And with a flick of her wrist, she tossed my crown into the flames.
I dropped to my knees, the tears coming before I could stop them.
“It’s just flowers,” Selma huffed. “You’re such a baby.”
Then she stuck out her tongue at the girl with the hat and stomped off.
“I’m sorry about them,” the girl with the hat said softly, kneeling beside me. Her hair glowed in the firelight, strawberry blonde and wild.
“They can be really mean sometimes,” she said.
But Selma had been right. Iwasa mud-stomper. I couldn’t read or write, and I spent most days helping my parents on the farm, seeding and plowing and harvesting crops. I always had dirt under my nails, but I’d never felt ashamed of it before. Not until I saw the way they looked at me.
“You do believe in magic, don’t you? I can tell. I wish I did too,” the girl with strawberry hair said, but I could barely hear her over the brutal hammering of my heart.
”What was the flower wreath for?” she asked.
”It’s an offering. To the gods,” I said, trying desperately to steady my voice. “We do it every year, me and my mother. I don’t know what happens when you give the gods two offerings. What am I gonna do next year? I have nothing to give them now.”
She shifted closer. “I could help you make a new one.”
“You could?”
She nodded, then leaned in a little, like she was about to share a secret.
“I know where there are really beautiful flowers,” she whispered. “But…I’m not allowed to go there.”
My stomach tightened. “Where is it?”
