Two years, I thought, my arm getting tired and my pulse quickening as I worked. Crap, no wonder my mom quit making her own charms.

"Since you called to say you were coming," my mom said, unaware it was my drink of choice at school as I struggled to fit in with the older students. "She is trying to be so grown up."

This last was almost sighed, and I frowned.

"I didn't like her in those college classes," she continued, unaware that I could hear her. "I suppose it's my own fault for letting her jump ahead like that. Making her sit at home while she was ill and watch TV all day wasn't going to happen, and if she knew the work, what harm was there in letting her skip a semester here or there?"

Brow furrowed, I puffed a strand of hair out of my face and frowned. I had been in and out of the hospital so often the first four years of public school that I was basically home-schooled. Good idea on paper, but when you come back after being absent for three months and make the mistake of showing how much you know, the playground becomes a torture field.

Robbie made a rude noise. "I think it's good for her."

"Oh, I never said it wasn't," my mom was quick to say. "I didn't like her with all those damned older men is all."

I sighed, used to my mom's mouth. It was worse than mine, which sucked when she caught me swearing.

"Men?" Robbie's voice had a laugh in it. "They're not that much older than her. Rachel can take care of herself. She's a good girl. Besides, she's still living at home, right?"

I blew a strand of my hair out of the mix, feeling a tug when one caught under the pestle. My arm was hurting, and I wondered if I could stop yet. The leaves were a gritty green haze at the bottom. The TV went loud when a commercial came on, and I almost missed my mother chiding him. "You think I'd let her live in the dorms? She gets more tired than she lets on. She still isn't altogether well yet. She's just better at hiding it."