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Laurel's mother asked if I would pack up the altar and I said yes because I had to. I offered to help with the messy process of cleaning out the apartment because 1 showed up at the hospital against her wishes, because I was not going to be at the funeral, because of paperwork I had promised to sign months ago but never did. I don't know how to refuse a woman whose daughter just died.
I don't believe in magic, though I wish I did. It seems to offer some level of control over the random tragedies and slights of life. Perhaps that's what attracts me to people who practice it, what attracted Laurel to it. She talked about it rarely, but after six years of friendship I learned her beliefs, slowly, in bits and pieces. Her practices were earth-based- think new and full moons, think minerals from deep inside the ground. I learned not to touch stones that belonged to others and to always cleanse new ones from the store. To do this, leave the stone in direct sunlight, moonlight, or wash it under natural running water, not a faucet. Once a stone is clean, it is spell-ready. A spell for loneliness: Wear rose quartz against the skin-preferably by a pulse point. A spell for financial insecurity: Keep malachite around the home.
I want to believe in magic because it seems self-explanatory, light and water for cleansing, pink for love, green for money. Like if I could figure out the proper color signifier or what I needed to add or subtract from my life, I could make my own spell for grief.
I'd lived with Laurel before, not in the apartment I was cleaning with her mother, but in her old house. The places felt similar, though, the uncomfortable faux-leather sleeper couch, strategically placed crystals, and dim lamps the same, everything neat but covered with dust.
One lamp kept flickering while Laurel's mother and I were cleaning out the kitchen, which was filled more with medicine and e-cigarette supplies than actual food.
"Do you believe in spirits?" she asked.
She was staring at the lamp.
A pause. "Sometimes."
She fussed around the flickering lamp, picking up pieces of paper and stones and setting...