February. My tournament had been on the public calendar for eight years. Anyone could look it up in three seconds. She’d signed knowing exactly what she was overwriting, and she’d waited until yesterday to tell me.
“You should move your tournament. The Sunday after—you’ll catch the leftover crowd, double the foot traffic. You should be thanking me, honestly.”
I did not breathe. My fingers buzzed and I clamped my fists so tight my nails cut into my palms. I would not cry.
“Elliot’s release is timed to the full moon,” I said. “The hatchlings come up that weekend. The moon doesn’t move, Mamá.”
“Sit down.” She patted the seat beside her again. “Please.”
I sat down and the porch swing rocked.
“There are other full moons, corazón. Why must everything be a fight with you?”
“Because the tournament is my ceremony.”
I’m not going to cry.
“It’s what sets up my magic for the whole year. It’s not just about the volleyball, or the fundraiser. It’s about the magic. My magic.”
My mother tilted her head slightly.
“What?”
“The energy, the crowd, the community?—”
I paused, unsure if I was going to be able to be this vulnerable with a woman who had never struggled with her magic.
“I need that, all of it. I need the ceremony I’ve built around the tournament to bolster my magic for the year and?—”
She reached out, surprising me as she grabbed my hand.
“Mija, what magic?”
She might as well have slapped me, and my heart stopped.
I tried to speak, but an unmistakable sob came out instead.
“Corazón, don’t do this.” She let out a sigh. The long-suffering one.
“You have your hum. Your little way with the animals. It’s sweet. I’ve never said it isn’t sweet. But a ceremony—mija, I do ceremonies. I know what they cost. Let’s not borrow words.”
“It’s the ceremony I have.” My voice cracked.
“I heard you the first time.”
She said it lightly, like she hadn’t just driven a knife into my heart, with her face open and her hands over mine and her whole bearing communicatingI am being patient with you,my child, who just can’t get anything right.
Suddenly I was sixteen again.
The invitational in Myrtle Beach, the one where the scouts had come. I had played the best game of my life—had dug a ball from the sand that no one should have been able to reach, sent it over clean, and we had won. I had stood there with sand on my knees and salt in my eyes and turned to find my mother in the stands.
She had been there. She was looking at me with the same face she wore now. It was waiting, as if she expected me to realize something I should have already figured out.
I had held the ball, breathing hard, certain that this was the thing that would finally be enough. That this was the version of me she had been waiting for.
She had smiled.
She had looked back down at her phone.
