Waiting for Magic by Susan Squires

here.”
    “I … like it here,” Jane said softly. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
    “Well, I can.” Kee sounded sulky, even to herself. “I want to see the world.”
    “I know it’s hard for all of you.” Jane cleared her throat. “Maybe Devin won’t want to leave, and maybe he shouldn’t. Hurting him would hurt the family. The Clan would like that.”
    “You mean Dev wouldn’t be safe away from the Breakers either?” Kee hadn’t thought about that. Sad for Devin. But then he couldn’t go. She was just selfish enough to find satisfaction in that.
    “Maybe not,” Jane agreed.
    But he was leaving her behind. Kee was the one waiting, perhaps in vain, for magic to happen. Devin might be here physically, but his heart would soon be engaged elsewhere. Or maybe there’d be a surfer girl moving in to the Breakers.
    Jane stood up. “Get some sleep, Keelan. This will all look better in the morning.”
    “Maybe,” Kee said, following her lead.
    But it wouldn’t.
    *****
    Devin stared out at the curtains of rain flapping in the wind off the beach. Water cascaded down the panes of glass in the French doors. When rooms were redistributed after Tris first left for the apartment over his shop downtown, Brina made sure Devin got to move out from his room with Lanyon into a room of his own. It was still in the boy’s wing the family called “the Bay of Pigs.” But it overlooked the sea. He stood, now, wearing only his cotton pajama bottoms, staring out across the terrace and the bare branches of the jacaranda trees tossing in the wind to the whitecaps on the black of the Pacific. His room was dark. He didn’t want the family to know he was still awake. He couldn’t answer any questions right now. Not even his own.
    His thoughts were wild, his emotions snarled into a knot in his belly. It felt like the bad days after his parents had died, when he had no control over the blackness that reached out at unexpected moments to engulf him, when he couldn’t speak about it to anyone.
    He didn’t remember the plane crashing. He’d been seven. He flashed on the disinfectant smell of the hospital and the drawn face of the doctor who’d told him his parents were dead. Those first days had been a groggy mess, needles and noise at all hours. He’d found out later they’d taken out his spleen, sealed up the broken vessels that caused the internal bleeding and cast his broken pelvis. They couldn’t do much about broken ribs. All he’d known at first was pain and the fear of being left alone in the world.
    Then the brusque social services lady had told him he’d have to go to an orphanage until he got well, because no one would want him when he was sick and bound to be a lot of trouble and expense. She’d had lipstick that ran into the wrinkles in her upper lip and made her mouth look like a bright red spider. He hadn’t cried. He’d been past crying at that point. And he hadn’t cried in the orphanage, either. No matter what happened. He hadn’t spoken at all.
    But his life had changed the day Brina Tremaine had walked into the orphanage. She hadn’t tried to make him speak like all the others. She’d just told him that he had a distant family, quite a large one, and that it was time to come home.
    One very long flight later on a plane that belonged to his new family, and New Zealand was behind him. He had to admit he’d put the Tremaines through some grief. Didn’t speak. Didn’t like to be touched. But slowly he’d settled in because they accepted him just the way he was. Brina even got him surfing lessons because she saw how much he loved the water. One day it had just seemed like more trouble than it was worth not to talk. He’d been handing Tris tools as he worked on a motorcycle, and, well, it was just easier to talk when he wanted to know if he had the right tool. So he did. Tris looked a little shocked, but gave him a grin and growled, “So there you are. You’ve got a Kiwi accent.” And