#MY GRANDPARENTS HAD SO MANY CHAIRS IN THE GARAGE FOR GUESTS & SO MANY FOLD UP TABLES

[senoritaimperfecta]

I literally grew up with my grandmother & grandfather from my dad’s side & then my grandmother’s brother lived w us, I had two uncles, an aunt & her 4 kids, & then it was my Parents w me & my two sisters

The most packed it was when I had my other uncles live there w his wife & two kids added

Like swear to god there was ALWAYS chaos & on top of that parties or random get together every week where even more family members would come over….take me back to those days

#MY GRANDPARENTS HAD SO MANY CHAIRS IN THE GARAGE FOR GUESTS & SO MANY FOLD UP TABLES #the yard was pretty big so piñatas & two grills cooking having the music playing was early #my grandmothers sisters family lived in a house next door…wild time man #txt

[doctor-ector]

A/N: Another writing sprint. Unedited. Children’s story-style witches. 

There are few things worse than the frustration of Manhattan rush hour. One of them is navigating above the traffic of downtown Manhattan on a 1980s vacuum cleaner.

“Stay up!” Josie hisses, kicking the bag, which rewards her with a puff of stale dust. She should have known that the junky vacuum that had been hiding in the back of Nana’s guest closet for as long as she could remember was trouble. If she’d been smart, Josie would have shelled out the thirty bucks for a 7-day subway pass while her broom’s in the shop, but that’s two fortune readings and she owes twenty thousand in student loans for a witchcraft degree she doesn’t even use. Instead, she has a vacuum cleaner that doesn’t fly straight and has a nasty habit of –

She screams as Hoover drops beneath her. Her stomach tries to find its way up her throat as twenty stories fall past in an instant. Josie squeezes her eyes shut and tries to accept the embarrassment of dying in a vacuum cleaner crash, but as suddenly as it cut out, Hoover whirs back to life. Horns honk, and she opens her eyes to find herself floating all of one foot above Fifth Avenue. Some douchebag flips her off from his Mercedes, and she spares a second to return the gesture before returning to a more acceptable altitude. Josie usually prefers to stay a good fifty stories above the traffic, enough to avoid collisions with most of New York’s avian inhabitants, but not wanting a repeat of earlier, she speeds along low enough that she could extend her leg and scrape the paint of the bigger trucks below.

Once her hands stop shaking, she grabs for her phone. Not going to make it to the coven meeting, she types out. Hey, at least Hoover is good for something.

You can show up late. Don’t try to weasel your way out. Why had she taught Nana how to use an iPhone? Her cell pings with another message. Go.

She wants to pretend she didn’t see the message, but that never works. Fine.

The rec center’s basement smells like mildew. The organizers have tried to hide it by burning copious amounts of incense, but it’s not working.

“Fumira,” she whispers, waving her fingers in front of her face, and the smoke parts for her. That gets her a few strange looks, which seems odd, considering this is a coven meeting, even if it is the kind of coven that puts up orange and black flyers advertising their meetings on the YMCA community board. Well, Nana did say they welcomed all ability levels. Maybe she can clue them onto that useful little spell.

Josie surveys the area. Seven of the tables are occupied, mostly by witches and warlocks old enough to be her parents or grandparents. She heads for the back corner, where three other women in their twenties sit and laugh over a board game.

“May I sit here?” she asks.

“Of course!” The woman on the far right, a cute redhead with thick glasses and a mess of freckles, scoots her chair over a few inches so Josie can slide in with them. “Sam Jameson,” she introduces herself, and reaches out to shake Josie’s hand.

They. “Josie DeSilva. Nice to meet you.”

The other two women introduce themselves as well. Sam speaks up next. “We’re only one turn in. Want to join in?”

“Sure.” It looks like some kind of trivia game, but not one that Josie’s familiar with. She’s not sure what the H on the back of the cards is for, and the lion, snake, bird, and weasel (which she would later learn was a badger) pieces seem a little random. That’s okay. Josie’s never met a trivia game she didn’t like.

“All right. Are you okay with being Slytherin?” Sam asks.

Josie shrugs. “Sounds good to me.”

“Oh good. Some people –“ she shoots a glare at Aanya, the woman on the far left – “get touchy about the whole Slytherin thing.” Sam draws a card from the deck. “In The Chamber of Secrets, how many students are petrified?”

“Remember these are based off the book, not the movie,” Aanya adds.

With her words, everything clicks. Josie hears her heart pounding in her ears as she rises. “I can’t do this.” She hurries towards the exit. How dare they?

“Hey, Josie, wait up!” Sam shouts, but she doesn’t. She can’t even think here, with the mildew and the incense and the people who dare to call themselves witches while playing Harry Potter trivia games. Josie refuses to tolerate that kind of disrespect, that sick parody of her religion. Who cares if it’s popular, or it gets people interested in the magical arts? She lets the basement door slam behind her.

The chilly October air stings at her face, and it won’t be fun to ride home in, but that’s really just the cherry on top of this fantastic night.

“Josie!” Sam catches up to her just as she’s mounting the broom. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

She searches Sam’s face for a moment, and the woman looks so honestly confused that she steps off. “Harry Potter.”

Sam frowns. “Not a fan?”

“To put it lightly.”

“I’m really sorry about that. I thought you’d know what you were getting yourself into. I should’ve asked.”

Josie shakes her head. “It’s not a big deal.”

“No, it really is. I offended you.”

“You apologized.”

Sam has a nice smile, the kind that’s wide and bright and shows a lot of teeth without being too toothy. “Want to come back inside? We could play another game, if you’d like, or just sit and talk. It’s nice to have younger members.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.” She wills her vacuum up, and it sputters for a moment before deflating.

Sam frowns at Hoover, then turns to Josie. “Need a ride home?”

She gives Hoover an experimental kick, but it’s no use. “If it’s not too much of a problem.”

“It’s not,” Sam reassures her. “Just give me a sec to tell the others where I’m headed.”

She’s sitting on the couch in a beat-up Salem University tee and the ugliest sweatpants in Queens when the doorbell rings. “One second!” Josie shouts, and she hides the family-size bag of potato chips she’s been snacking on behind the couch before answering.

“Hi!” Sam says the instant she opens the door.

“Hello again.”

The other woman shifts uncomfortably. “I just happened to be in the area and thought I’d say hi.”

“Mission accomplished.” Sam giggles at that. “Want to come in?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

As she lets Sam in, Josie realizes just how disgusting her and Nana’s apartment is. A half-folded basket of her robes sits in the middle of their living room, and her cauldron’s bubbles on top of the space heater, potion ingredients spread in a semicircle around it. “Sorry about the mess. Things have been kind of busy.” Not really, but she needs an excuse.

“Don’t worry about it.” Sam walks over towards the cauldron. “You brew potions at home?”

“Yeah. I don’t have a good workshop space right now.”

“That’s so neat! My grandmother used to do that – she made all her own medicines and had a cold remedy that could’ve made her rich - but Mom and I have tried a few times, and all we ever end up with is gross-looking water.”

“Do you have her ingredient list?”

Sam nods. “Not with me, but I can send it to you.”

“I’d like that.”

The conversation hangs for a moment. “So,” Sam says, “I was wondering if you would like to give the coven another try sometime. We meet the second Tuesday of every month.”

“No thanks.” Nana thought it would be good for her to get out and meet other witches in a non-professional atmosphere, make friends with some of the other artists in the area. One event was enough to prove that wrong.

Sam chews on her lower lip when she thinks. Josie wonders if she realizes she’s doing it. “I was also wondering if you might want to get coffee sometime.” More lip-chewing. “Or cocoa, or tea, or something harder if that’s more your style.”

Josie smiles. “I like coffee. I know a really great place downtown, if you’re free.”

“I am, but are you sure you don’t want to try somewhere closer? It’ll be crazy trying to get down there.”

“Have you ever ridden on a broomstick?”

“No, but I’d like to.”

Josie can already feel Sam’s arms wrapped around her waist, Sam’s cheek against her shoulder as they flew high above the city. “Then what are we waiting for?” She motions towards the garage (or broom closet, as most people would call it), and Sam follows. “Trust me, the best views of the skyline are from a broomstick. At night, it’s gorgeous.”

“You’re planning on keeping me until night?”

“If you’ll let me, yeah.”

Sam smiles, and Josie’s stomach does a little flip. “Sounds good to me.”

#mine #my writing