Trial by Fire (Worldwalker 1)

“Is that you, Lillian?” Only Samantha, Lily’s mom, called her by her full name.

“Yeah, it’s me. Where are you?” Lily wandered toward her mother’s voice, confused. It sounded like she was out in the garage.

“Ah, Mom. Look at this mess,” Lily exclaimed when she saw what her mother was up to out there.

Samantha sat at her old potter’s wheel, her curly red hair sticking out wildly, throwing clay in her pajamas and robe. She was in the spot where Lily’s dad parked his car, but she hadn’t put a tarp down underneath her. The floor was covered in drippings that were already beginning to harden. They’d have to be chipped off, but that was only half the problem. In the parking spot next to that, her mom’s old Jeep Grand Cherokee was splattered with clay. Lily dug her hands into her hair, surveying the disaster.

“There she is—no bumps or bruises! I almost came to get you at school,” Samantha said in chipper way. She only garbled her words a little, and that concerned Lily. The meds made her slur, and the slightly clearer speech could mean that she hadn’t taken all of them today. “But when I didn’t get the phone call from your principal, I knew that my Lillian wasn’t the one that trashy girl had attacked in the hallway. See? That’s how I knew the difference between what happened here and what happened elsewhere.”

Lily tried and failed to work out her mom’s logic.

“And then I saw my wheel!” Samantha continued happily. “And I wondered, why did I ever stop throwing pots?”

Lily looked at the watered-down lump of poorly mixed clay in her mother’s shaky hands and couldn’t think of a way to say the phrase you lost your mind and the meds destroyed your talent so it didn’t sound cruel.

It hadn’t escaped Lily’s notice that before she’d gone to Spanish, Miranda had looked like she’d wanted to attack her but had settled for Tristan instead. Yet, according to her mother, the fight had happened. Elsewhere. The new medication obviously wasn’t strong enough. If her mother was underdosed, things could get ugly. She’d need help.

“Hey, Mom? Aren’t you cold?” she asked brightly. Samantha nodded, like it had just occurred to her that she was. “Why don’t you go inside, and I’ll finish up out here for you.”

“Thank you, dear,” Samantha said placidly. She slid out of her dirty Crocs and took off her ruined robe, handing it to Lily.

“I’m going to take you upstairs, tuck you in, and then make a few phone calls, okay?” Lily said carefully. When her mom got confused like this Lily knew the best way to keep her calm was to be as clear as possible.

“Yes, call your sister and tell her exactly what happened,” Samantha said. Her face s

uddenly got serious and she grasped Lily’s hands with her clay-covered ones. “There isn’t a Juliet who doesn’t love you,” she said desperately. “Remember that.”

“Sure, Mom,” Lily said, smiling brightly as she pried her fingers free. “Let’s get cleaned up, okay?”

Samantha nodded and shuffled inside. Lily pulled out her cell phone and called her dad, just in case he decided to answer. When she was shunted to voicemail after two rings, Lily didn’t even bother to leave a message. He was obviously avoiding the call and probably wouldn’t check his inbox for hours. She speed-dialed her big sister, Juliet, instead.

“What’s wrong?” came Juliet’s immediate response.

“Mom’s having a bad day,” Lily said, not at all surprised that her sister already knew something was out of place. The two sisters often joked that their phones were so used to making emergency calls that they had somehow learned how to ring more urgently when there was trouble. Lily walked over to the refrigerator and checked her mom’s meds.

“Did she get loose again?” Juliet asked.

“No,” Lily replied thankfully as she counted her mom’s pills. “She just decided to make a few pots. But she neglected to take the car out of the garage first.”

“Fantastic.” Juliet paused. She and Lily started laughing at the same time. “How bad is it?”

“Oh, it’s pretty impressive, Jules.” Lily finished counting the pills. “I just checked, and she took all her meds today, so we’ll have to talk to the doctors about her dosage again. I can clean up the mess myself, but I’m worried about leaving her alone tonight. And I have this thing.”

“A date?” Juliet practically screamed with excitement.

“Sort of.” Lily felt her cheeks heat with a blush. “Tristan’s taking me to a party.”

“A party.” Juliet sighed heavily. “Lily, are you sure about that? With all the hair products and perfume that the girls will be wearing, and the alcohol and smoke?”

“Can you come or not?” Lily asked quietly. “It would mean a lot to me.”

Juliet paused. “We’ll talk about the party when I get there,” she said, and ended the call.

Lily decided to start on the Jeep first. Her dad’s spot could wait. It wasn’t like he’d be coming home that night anyway.

Technically, Lily’s parents weren’t divorced, but her father had pretty much abandoned the family about the time her mother started wandering around sleepy Salem, screaming at everyone to shut up. James had hung in there for a few years. Lily was in eighth grade when her allergy symptoms started escalating exponentially and, as luck would have it, at around the same time Samantha began accosting people at the grocery store. She’d started walking right up to people, telling them she knew about the affair they were having, the bankruptcy they were hiding, or the Adderall they were stealing from their kids to lose weight.

Sometimes she was right, and sometimes she wasn’t. When she was wrong, she simply said that another “version” of the person she’d accused had done what she’d said. Samantha caused a lot of trouble for some good people, but she’d downright humiliated anyone with the last name Proctor. In a small community like Salem, having a crazy mother was not something that was easily overlooked. By the time Juliet went to college two years ago, it seemed like all of Salem had turned on the Proctor family and wanted to run them out of town.