Enchanted Lounge
Copyright© 2026 by Danielle Stories
Chapter 5: Cedar Hollow’s Circus
The morning of the third day dawned with a perky, cheerful cruelty that only a small town in late spring could muster. The sun shone through the high basement window like a spotlight, illuminating the dust in the air and the two of us lying in our separate, miserable beds.
I woke to the taste of watermelon Bubblicious gum.
Not the memory of it. The actual, sticky-sweet, slightly artificial flavor coated my tongue. I sat up, disoriented, wiping my mouth. Across the room, Lila-Beth was still asleep, but her lips moved slightly, chewing on nothing. A dream habit. Her dream habit. Now it was in my mouth.
The connection was pirating my senses.
“Stop that,” I mumbled, my voice thick with sleep.
She stirred, her eyes fluttering open. “Stop what?”
“Chewing your dream gum. I can taste it.”
She blinked, then her face flushed a shade of pink that made her glow pulse. “Oh. Sorry.” She fell silent, but the bond hummed with her embarrassment, a fizzy, staticky feeling in my own chest. “I guess the ... sharing ... is getting stronger.”
That was the word for it. Sharing. It was no longer just a tether or a shared hum. It was a slow, relentless merger. Our subconscious minds were holding conversations without our permission.
Breakfast was a tense, silent affair at the kitchen island. A bowl of cereal sat between us. We had to eat close, our elbows brushing. Pudding watched us with mournful eyes from a safe distance under the table.
My mother moved around the kitchen with the careful, brittle calm of someone defusing a bomb. She didn’t look at us directly. She placed a plate of toast in front of me with a soft click.
I picked up a slice. Burnt into the golden-brown surface, in perfect, looping cursive that was unmistakably Miriam’s, was a message:
WHEN TWIN HEARTS BEAT AS ONE UNDER THE BLOOD MOON
THE CURSE WILL BREAK ... OR BECOME YOUR GREATEST BLESSING
CHOOSE WISELY, GIRLS.
I stared at it. Lila-Beth, leaning over from her stool, read it too. Our glows, which had been a calm morning pulse, brightened and began to swirl faster, pink and gold light dancing over the Formica countertop.
My mother saw it. She let out a small, defeated sigh, picked up the toast, and tossed it into the trash without a word. She didn’t ask. She just started scrubbing the already-clean counter with a ferocity it didn’t deserve.
Lila-Beth leaned closer to me, her voice a low whisper only I could hear. “Your mom needs to adjust the toaster settings.”
But her joke fell flat. The message hung in the air between us, heavier than the smell of burnt bread.
Or become your greatest blessing.
The choice wasn’t just about breaking the curse anymore. It was about what we would choose to keep.
The attempt to return to school was a masterclass in bureaucratic absurdity.
The “Special Accommodations” arrived in the form of Principal Hendricks himself, standing on our front porch looking like a man about to walk the plank. He held a manila folder against his chest like a shield.
“We’ve ... ah ... devised a solution.” He stammered, his eyes fixed on a point approximately six inches above our heads. “A modified educational approach.”
The “solution” was a farce.
The Special Desk: A single, wide, bench-like seat had been placed in the back of each classroom. It was clearly two desks welded together, sanded roughly, and stained a sickly orange that matched nothing. Tammy Jo’s cronies had christened it “the love throne” before the first period even started. Sitting there, side-by-side, our hips and shoulders pressed together out of necessity, was an exercise in concentrated agony. Every glance, every snicker, was a needle.
The Modified Dress Code: The administration, in consultation with “experts” (which we later learned was just Holloway, whom they’d called in desperation), agreed we could “wear” glow-in-the-dark body paint to “simulate clothing and reduce disruption.” The art teacher, Ms. Fennel, had been tasked with applying it. The paint was cold, goopy, and smelled like chemicals and regret. It also evaporated within ten minutes of application, fading from opaque to transparent to gone, leaving behind only a faint, glittery residue that made us look like we’d been rolling in craft-store debris.
The Escorts: Two exasperated hall monitors, s Mr. Driscoll (mostly deaf) and Mrs. Gable (mostly blind), assigned to walk ten feet ahead of us between classes. Their sole job was to bellow, “NAKED GIRLS COMING THROUGH!” in a flat monotone before we rounded any corner, giving people time to “avert their eyes or prepare themselves.” It was less about privacy and more about crowd control.
But the real torture, the deep, humming core of it all, l wasn’t the logistics. It was the connection. And it was deepening with a vengeance.
In English, when Mr. Garrity read a particularly funny line from Shakespeare, Lila-Beth let out a soft, snorting laugh. The moment she did, a wave of warm amusement washed through me, and my toes curled uncontrollably in my sandals. I jerked, knocking my knee against the “love throne.”
She shot me a look. “What?”
“You laughed.”
“So?”
“So I felt it. On my feet.”
Her eyes widened, and a fresh wave of her embarrassment, hot and prickling, flushed through my own skin. We were leaning into each other.
In Algebra II, I hit a wall of frustration over a quadratic equation. My skin grew hot, my shoulders tensed. A moment later, I felt Lila-Beth’s skin flush the same shade of pink next to me, and she let out a tiny, shaky breath.
“Would you relax?” she hissed under her breath. “You’re making me anxious.”
“I’m not doing anything!”
“Your panic is loud!”
The Incident in the Cafeteria was the turning point.
We were trying to navigate the lunch line, a surreal parade of averted gazes and stifled giggles. Tammy Jo Harkness stood with her squad by the condiment station, holding court. As we passed, she “accidentally” let her tray slip.
A flood of spaghetti sauce and meatballs slid across the linoleum directly toward our feet.
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