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therefore the window glass should have been a mirror to Gil, Lucy felt their eyes meet, felt a flash of something.
    The wind blew then. The trees said ssh.
    Everyone was watching Olivia, as though looking for a cue of what to do next. Someone lowered the lights. She picked up a small remote from the mantle and music started. Lucy could feel its rhythmic beating through the windows, like the house had turned into a heart. Olivia began to dance, hips swaying, arms raised up over her head. The tall girl joined in, and then Gil did too. Everyone watched them and one by one began to dance until the entire room was a pulsing mass of arms and legs.
    Lucy put her hand on her heart and pressed where it hurt the most. She felt something happening, there inside her chest: a sliver of space was opening up, and the thinnest beam of light was peeking through.
    Lucy walked through the creaking gate.
    She followed the slate path in the silver light, down under the dangling branches of the weeping willows. She made her way across a small clearing, and down more stairs. And she felt a strange calmness come over her, as though what had been moving very fast in her was slowing down now. The moon seemed brighter then; she could feel it shining through her clothes and skin, making its way toward her heart, and sinking in through the cracks.
    It was then that she heard the howling. A wounded animal cry, growing louder as she went. And then she saw the source of it: Ethan Sloane, hunched over, on the steps, sobbing into the sleeve of his jacket.
    Lucy felt a pang in her chest for him, wished she could say something to him. But, of course, she couldn’t.
    She hopped off the stairs, into the grass beside them. She ran, her hair catching wind and flying out behind her. And she didn’t stop running until she reached the road.
    Back down at the truck, there was Tristan, seat back, feet propped against the dash, playing his harmonica. Lucy stood behind the fence, and closed her eyes for a moment and listened to those notes, bending. These were not ragged cries, but a mournful wail, the jagged edges smoothed into something beautiful.
    Had Lucy heard this just twenty minutes before, she would have had the strange sensation she always did when listening to music that perfectly matched her mood—as though the thin wall that separated her body from the world around her had dissolved, as though she was just a sound wave vibrating in the air, weightless and part of everything. The merging power of music, it was why she loved it so much. It was why music felt like magic.
    Tristan stopped playing and squinted into the dark. “Lu?”
    Lucy unhooked the gate and walked out.
    “You survived,” he said. “I thought maybe the poppy seeds got you.” Tristan put his harmonica back in his mouth and played a blues prompt:
    Ba duuum ba dum
    This was Lucy’s cue to improvise some ridiculous blues ditty like the “I’m Out of Gum Blues,” the “Where’re My Shoes Blues,” the “My Friend Tristan Won’t Stop Bluesing Blues.” Since Tristan was the only person Lucy wasn’t scared to sing in front of, she was happy to do it any chance she got.
    Tristan played it again: ba duuuum ba dum. He held one hand out toward her.
    But she couldn’t. Not now. Lucy shook her head as she got back in the truck.
    Tristan dropped his harmonica in the cup holder. “Everything go okay up there?”
    “It was . . .” Lucy stopped. “Weird.”
    “How so?” He started to drive.
    “Tristy.” Her voice sounded strange, like she was hearing herself from very far away. “Do you believe in magic?”
    Tristan smiled. “Well, of course .” He took a lollipop out of the cup holder. He held it between his thumb and forefinger, then waved his other hand in front of it. “Poof!” He wiggled his fingers. The lollipop was gone. Then he waved his hand one more time and the lollipop was back. “TA-DA!”
    It was the same trick he’d been doing for years. Usually Lucy loved it, if