The Witch of Belladonna Bay Read Free Page A

family, and they’re supposed to love me and think I’m beautiful.
    But Jamie? He ain’t got no other reason to tell me I’m pretty. He’s just my friend, plain and simple. And gone or not, he’s still my Little Prince.
    The night his mama, Charlotte, got killed, and he went missin’, I’d seen him right before supper.
    â€œWhy don’t you stay, Jamie? Minerva’s fryin’ up them catfish we caught.” Minerva always acts like the help. She does all the cookin’ and housekeepin’.
    â€œWhy don’t you go on and hire someone else, Minny?” I sometimes asked her. She says, “Pay good money to a stranger to do something I like to do? Fiddlesticks.”
    (Yankees get all strange about things like that, wantin’ what they don’t want, and never even seein’ that they don’t want it.)
    Anyway, that night Jamie said no to eatin’ the catfish (which was downright odd).
    â€œNah, I gotta get back to Mama,” he said. He could be such a mama’s boy sometimes.
    â€œYour mama sure is needy these days. She okay?” I asked. I wasn’t a stranger to the drama over at their house. Lottie (that’s his mama’s nickname), she was nice to me. But she’d been actin’ funny before she was killed. She’d cut her pretty, dark hair short. Real short, like a boy. She called it a “pixie” cut, but she didn’t look like a pixie. She looked kinda lost and alone. Haunted.
    So, me and Jamie were sittin’ on the side porch of the Big House and the sun was just lazily dancing across his face. I could just tell he was tossin’ thoughts around in his head. “Spill them beans, Jamie Masters, or I’ll make mincemeat outta ya!”
    That made him laugh. I knew it would. “You couldn’t even hurt me. You’d be like a no-see-um all bitin’ at me, and I’d just swat you back into the air.”
    â€œWell, see? You don’t want to do that. So why not just tell me? I ain’t got nothin’ but time and money.” I sat back in one of the old wicker chairs, letting Jackson’s favorite phrase come rolling off my tongue.
    â€œDamn, girl, can’t I have any secrets?” he asked.
    â€˜Nope. Not from me.”
    He leaned against the railing and looked away, but I knew he’d tell me.
    â€œShe’s altogether torn up over that daddy of yours,” he said.
    I didn’t want to hear any more ’cause I didn’t like my daddy mixed up with Charlotte. I didn’t know why … then. Couldn’t use my strange ways to see into his mind.
    They do that, you know. My ways get all wonky when I’m learnin’ something important that has to do with me. If I’m too close, the sight plays tricks on me. Ain’t that the way. I’m never able to see things that are too close. Sometimes I wonder what good it is to have ’em at all if they can’t help me figure out the things that need figurin’.
    â€œSee, I knew you didn’t want to hear about this,” said Jamie, watching my face closely.
    I got up from the chair and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “ No. You are right. I do not want to hear about your mama whining over my daddy. Just run on home and tell her to find herself another man. She’s pretty enough, I guess.”
    â€œByrd, it ain’t like that! She wants to end it with him .”
    That hit me hard. My daddy was always teetering on the edge of a great big sadness that could, and would, eat him up whole. I didn’t like his relationship with Lottie, but it kept him happy enough. In fact, they’d been friends for their whole entire lives before they started lovin’ on each other.
    â€œUh-uh,” I said.
    â€œScout’s honor! And you know what? I think it’s good. Come on, Byrd, you and me ain’t liked it from the git-go.”
    â€œAll right then, if you’re so happy