So Witches We Became

by Jill Baguchinsky

Genres: YA Historical Fiction; YA Romance

Synopsis

★ "Skillfully crafted and sharply descriptive with horrifying imagery to spare... Powerfully angry and vengeance-laden, with terrifying and very human monsters." –School Library Journal, starred review

A queer, feminist spin on Stephen King’s The Mist, this ode to female-rage is a perfect pick for fans of She Is a Haunting, and a reminder that if "boys will be boys", girls will fight back.

For high school senior Nell and her friends, a vacation house on a private Florida island sounds like the makings of a dream spring break. But Nell brings secrets with her—secrets that fuse with the island's tragic history, trapping them all with a curse that surrounds the island in a toxic, vengeful mist and the surrounding waters with an unseen, devouring beast.   

Getting out alive means risking her friendships, her sanity, and even her own life. In order to save herself and her friends, Nell will have to face memories she'd rather leave behind, reveal the horrific truth behind the encounter that changed her life one year ago, and face the shadow that's haunted her since childhood.  

Easier said than done. But when Nell's friends reveal that they each brought secrets of their own, a solution even more dangerous than the curse begins to take shape. Reading like a YA feminist spin on Stephen King’s The Mist, So Witches We Became is a diverse, queer horror about female friendship, the emotional aftermath of surviving assault, and how to find power in the shadows of your past. 

Step into your witchy power or be swallowed by the curse–the choice is yours.

Release date: July 23, 2024

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 352

Sample

TWELVE YEARS AGO

The girl can’t move. Her eyes snap open but her limbs are stiff as stone.

The night-light her father thought would help creates as many shadows in the dark bedroom as it chases away. Those shadows shiver as lightning glints between the slats on the window blinds, chased by a low crash of thunder. The enormous Maglite flashlight, another desperate gift from her father, lies useless under the pillow, inches and miles away at the same time. She can’t turn on a flashlight if she can’t move to grab it.

Her gaze shifts panic-quick to the closet door. It’s closed, thank goodness. Sometimes she forgets to shut it before bed, but tonight she remembered.

But tonight, the thing isn’t in the closet.

Instead, it lurks in the far corner of the room, a shadow that doesn’t quite make sense. It unfolds, limb after spindly limb, soft-edged and indistinct. Watching it is like watching smoke wisp from an extinguished candle—there’s no substance, only movement. What begins as smooth and fluid turns jerky and jittering, a creeping creature that shivers like static on an old television, and all the girl can do is stare. She almost can’t even see it when she looks head-on; its outline is clearer if she peeks from the corner of her eye. That’s changing, though—last night it was a little easier to see than the night before, and tonight it’s darker still, and more solid.

It’s growing stronger.

She wants to open her mouth, wants to scream for her mother, but her mother isn’t here. And besides, what if the shadow unspools itself while her mouth gapes open? What if it reaches a thread-thin arm inside her, right down her throat? The thought makes a gag rise, sticking like gristle on the back of her tongue.

The shadow stares without eyes, its head tilting to the left. Its only facial feature is a gaping maw of a mouth, always open. When it moves toward her, it neither walks nor floats. It almost seems to pulse from place to place, vibrating like a sound wave. It drags one arm—a jagged tendril where a hand should be—against the wall, loud and hard enough to leave a scrape, but the girl knows that when she checks tomorrow, the drywall will be unmarked.

She hears the shadow breathing. It takes in air through that unhinged mouth, stealing the oxygen from the room.

She shoves against the paralysis, fighting invisible bindings like a fish tangled tight in a net. Fear fuels her struggle, and as the thing stretches, as its thread-thin arm drifts closer, closer, almost touching her cheek, she wrenches her jaw open. And for just a shimmer of a second, she forgets.

“MOM!”

Victorious and petrified, she clamps her mouth shut against the reaching tendril. But the shadow is already gone.

For tonight, at least.

Thunder growls once more outside the window as the paralysis fades and the girl sits up in a tangle of bedsheets. She screamed for her mother, but it’s her father who will scurry in and fuss. “Nellie, again?” he’ll say, his exasperation clear even as he gathers her in his arms. “How many times do we have to do this? It was just a dream! Did you use the flashlight?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Honey… you have to try.” He doesn’t understand. He thought the big, heavy Maglite would make her feel safer. Just turn it on and the shadow will disappear. As if anything could be that easy. As if she could ever move enough to do so in the shadow’s presence.

Tomorrow there will be another conversation with the therapist the girl has been seeing for her recurrent night terrors. She’ll be asked to draw more pictures of the shadow, to describe it, to practice visualizations and reframings and meditations meant to diffuse its terrible hold. The therapist will repeat to her father that the sleep paralysis, the hallucinations, the panic attacks, all of it is just a manifestation of Nellie’s anxiety over her parents’ recent separation and her mother’s abrupt departure. She’ll even try to blame some of it on the late-spring storms that have begun coasting through at night as Florida’s rainy season settles in.

Nellie will insist, once again, that she’s not afraid of storms or thunder or lightning. She’ll speak up, but no one will listen.

The shadow is just a phase, the therapist will say. It’s Nellie’s brain working things out, and someday soon it will fade away into nothing. She keeps saying that, keeps making the same prediction, but it never seems to come true.

And tomorrow night, Nellie knows, the shadow will be back.



SATURDAY, APRIL 18

Is that a ukulele?” Harry asks.

I glance at the uke case in my left hand. “Yeah.”

He carries a few of my other bags down the driveway for me. “Cool. I know you’re in chorus—”

“Used to be,” I remind him, trying to keep my words from forming sharp points. Chorus is a delicate topic for me.

“Okay, used to be—but I didn’t know you played an instrument, too.” He hefts my suitcase into the hatchback of his green SUV, tucking it next to his and Harper’s luggage, and a thick lock of slightly sweaty chestnut hair falls over his forehead. He shakes his head to keep it out of his eyes. “Going to give us a little concert this week?”

“What? I wasn’t… I mean, maybe. I don’t…” I stumble over my refusal, regretting that I didn’t stow the case in a tote or a duffel bag to keep it from drawing attention. “No,” I manage finally.

Harry tilts a brow. There’s a question on his tongue, so close to escaping that I can almost hear it already, and my thoughts spin, searching for a believable excuse, wondering why I didn’t think to come up with one before. But after a pause he lets it go and nods toward his SUV. “Is that everything? Ready?”

“Yeah.” I get in back and stash the case by my feet while he folds his lanky form into the driver’s seat. I’ve known Harry for years, for as long as his younger sister, Harper, and I have been friends, and he’s always been just a little too tall for his own good, like he’s never quite grown into himself.

If we—Harper, Dia, and I—have to have a chaperone this week, though, Harry should be a bearable one. He’s only a year older than us, and he used to tattle on Harper and me for all kinds of things—doing messy art projects in Harper’s carpeted bedroom, racing our bikes through Winter Park’s congested downtown, giving my Barbies edgy haircuts and experimental surgery—but he got a lot more tolerable three years ago, after we caught him sneaking vodka from his stepfather’s liquor cabinet. We struck a compromise: Harry laid off his tattling, at least somewhat, and we kept our own mouths shut in return. It’s not like either of us cares if he drinks—Harper sneaks booze all the time—but having something to hold over his head made things easier for us.

Plus, years of taking care of his sister while their then-single mother worked multiple jobs had forced him to learn how to cook once they tired of peanut butter and boxed macaroni and cheese. I can whip up some decent meals, too, but I can’t begin to match what he’s taught himself from YouTube tutorials. A week with Harry looking out for us means a week of his cooking, and I’m definitely looking forward to that. Harper told me he’s already planned several menus, which is just… so Harry.

“Seat belt?” he asks, watching me in the rearview mirror. There’s the chaperone. I nod, holding back a snort-laugh. I didn’t even get a lecture from my father about behaving myself while I’m away. He knows we won’t have many opportunities for trouble with Harry around.

Harry checks his blind spots twice before backing out of my driveway. “We’ll get Dia first, then swing by the office for Harper.”

“Did she really get roped into working this morning?”

“You know how Charlie is,” he says, referencing their stepfather. “There’s always time for just a little more work.”

Harper and Harry’s mother was practically a hippie back before she met Charlie, and I’ve never understood how the two of them clicked—how does a laid-back single mom end up with an uptight, type A entrepreneur? Charlie shoved his way into their family and took it over, and now Harper gets to be the weekend receptionist at Charles Warner Incorporated whether she wants to or not.

We pick up Dia on the way. She’s on her front porch, waving from beneath a floppy hat, her spring tan glowing against her white eyelet sundress. Dia likes to brag that, because she’s Cuban, she never burns. By the end of our trip she’ll be gloriously bronze while I’ll turn neon pink despite my SPF slathering. Her embroidery tote sits next to her suitcase; I’m not surprised that she’s taking her favorite hobby along for the week.

“Nell!” She envelops me in a hug, then gives Harry the same treatment, turning his cheeks pink. She’s had a crush on him since the day they met. I wish she’d chill, especially since Harry just broke up with his boyfriend two weeks ago. That’s not the issue—Harry’s bi, so theoretically, he and Dia could work—but I don’t want her throwing herself at him all week and ending up in rebound territory.

In the SUV, she tosses her hat back with the luggage and runs her hands over her auburn ponytail.

“No hat hair,” I reassure her softly, and she grins.

“How’s school going?” she asks Harry on the way to Charles Warner Inc. “I keep hoping I’ll see you around campus on Thursdays.” She never misses a chance to remind Harry that, thanks to her dual-enrollment status, she’s technically a University of Central Florida student, just like him.

“Fine. Stats is kicking my ass.”

She leans forward. “Maybe I could help you study sometime.”

“Um…” Harry’s ears turn as pink as his cheeks.

“Wasn’t your spring break last month?” I ask, jumping to his rescue. “Are you off this week?”

He shakes his head. “My World War I presentation for European History is on Monday, and I’ve got a stats exam on Thursday, so I’ll need to drive back for those. The three of you are going to have to behave yourselves while I’m gone.”

“Okay, Dad.” I chuckle.

He catches my eye in the rearview again. “You aren’t the one I’m worried about, Nell.”

“I could go with you to campus on Thursday,” Dia presses.

“We’re here!” Harry says a little too loudly, pulling into a spot at the business complex that houses Charlie’s main office. “I’ll run in and get Harper.”

“No need.” I point to the building’s glass door as Harper strides out, her expression less than happy.

“You’re late,” she says, jumping in up front next to Harry.

“You were scheduled until noon. It’s 12:05.”

“That was five minutes too many with Charlie.” She twists around and plasters on a smile, and it’s dazzling even though I know her well enough to tell that it’s fake. Harper is like a living photo filter, the kind that gives the illusion of poreless skin and long, sooty eyelashes—only the lashes that frame her enormous brown eyes are 100 percent real, and her lips are a rosy flushed pink with no need for gloss, and her deep brown hair is somehow always perfect, with shiny tendrils framing her face even when she twists it into a clip for work. “Hey, babes! Can you believe that dickwad made me work all morning?”

Harper is no fan of her stepfather, and neither am I, but I can’t bring myself to complain about the person paying for this extravagant trip. Or for Harry’s car, or the family’s house, which is a hell of an upgrade from where Harry and Harper grew up. “At least you escaped,” I say as Harry gets back on the road, pointing us toward I-4.

Harper hums in agreement, settling back in her seat, then wiggling to pull out her phone when it chimes with an incoming message.

“Gavin?” Dia guesses as Harper’s manicured nails dance over her screen, typing a reply.

“Of course.” Harper laughs a little. “I’m not sure the poor boy’s going to survive the week without me.”

Gavin.

Back in February, when Harper first proposed the spring break trip, I had one question. “Will Gavin be there?” We were eating lunch on Winter Park West High’s senior patio. Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw her fingers clench her water bottle just a little tighter when I said his name.

“Mom and Charlie would kill me,” she responded after a beat. “And you know Harry would rat me out. So what do you think? You, me, Dia. Nice house. Private island. Our own beach.”

“And Harry.”

“We’ll ignore him.”

“Dia won’t.”

Harper laughed. “I thought she was going to explode when I mentioned he’d be there. I kept expecting little hearts to start spinning around her head like in a cartoon.”

“You already asked her?”

“Yeah, last night. I knew she’d be at UCF today.”

I tried not to let it bother me that my two closest friends had been planning this trip without me.

“So you’re coming, right? Mom already convinced Charlie to pay for the whole week as a graduation present.”

“Just us and Harry,” I said. “No Gavin.”

“Jesus Christ, Nell.” Harper’s expression hardened. “Look, I know you hate my boyfriend for whatever reason, but—”

“I don’t hate him,” I lied. “And yes, of course I’ll go.” How could I not? In the fall, Harper, Dia, and I would all head in different directions. I couldn’t even fathom that yet. If we didn’t do this now, when would we? Besides, Harper and I needed some quality best friend time, especially after the past year, when our bond had grown increasingly brittle.

I wanted to make her promise about Gavin, but I held back.

Now, as we head northeast away from Winter Park, I picture a week spent lounging on the beach. Reading on the porch while the breeze off the Atlantic teases through my hair. Exploring the hidden corners of St. Felicitas with my two best friends.

A week hours away from Gavin.



Charlie might be a pain in Harper’s ass, but his money pays for a hell of a lot. Like a week on a private barrier island just off the Atlantic coast. An entire island.

We drive through downtown St. Felicitas, which is all palm trees and tourist-packed sidewalks and Spanish-inspired architecture with curved archways and colorful tiled roofs. “We should spend some time in town while we’re here,” Harry says. “There’s so much history.”

“Oh God,” Harper mutters.

He ignores her. “We can tour the old fort. Or the lighthouse. It’s supposed to be haunted. That should be right up Nell’s alley.”

A year ago, when I was still writing horror, it would’ve been. Still, I speak my agreement, trying to sound enthusiastic. “That could be fun!”

“Ooh, look at all the bars,” Harper says as we pass places with names like Dolly’s Tavern and the Crow’s Nest Lounge.

“Nope.” Harry turns right, heading out onto the A1A. “And by the way, Harper, don’t be surprised when you can’t find that whiskey you hid in your beach bag. I put it back in the liquor cabinet.”

Harper turns toward him, fire sparking in her narrowed eyes. “You went through my stuff?”

“The bottle was leaking. I could smell it. It got on your towel.”

“You couldn’t just let us bring one stupid bottle.” Harper flops back against the seat and crosses her arms. “And now I’ll have a smelly whiskey towel all week. Great.”

“The rental has a laundry room,” I say, “and I brought some detergent.”

Dia giggles. “Of course you did.”

“You probably brought an entire convenience store.” Harper grins over her shoulder at me.

The mood in the SUV lightens at my expense. “Yeah, yeah. Wait until you need a bandage. Or some ibuprofen. Or you lose a button. Or, you know, your towel stinks like whiskey. Then we’ll see who’s laughing.”

“It’s smart to be prepared,” Harry says.

“What about tampons?” Harper crows to make her brother uncomfortable. It works. His ears go red again.

I roll my eyes. “Of course.”

Harry jerks his thumb toward his sister. “Got any big enough to plug up this one’s mouth?”

Dia pats my hand. “We really do appreciate how you think ahead,” she says, but her eyes still glitter with constrained laughter.

We skirt south along the coast for a few miles, passing vacation homes with towels drying on porch railings and rented bicycles leaning against front steps. Finally the GPS directs us left toward a gate, beyond which a small, flat bridge passes over a narrow inlet. Harry rolls down his window and enters a code on a keypad, and the gate swings open. We pull through and cross the bridge, passing a carved wooden sign: STRAIGHT SHOT.

“How heteronormative,” I say, and Harry snorts.

It’s a fitting name, though, for this sliver of island, a straight north-to-south shot of perhaps two miles of sand with an unpaved road and plenty of pines, palm trees, and beach grass. I could probably walk from west to east—from the bay on one side of the island to the Atlantic on the other—in under ten minutes. I’m surprised it hasn’t been built up like other Florida islands. I’m even more surprised that it hasn’t been swept away by a hurricane. I’ve never understood why people build on barrier islands—they literally are barriers, patches of elevated sand built by the ebb and flow of the tide to shield the mainland from the brunt of ocean-borne weather.

Not that we need to worry about that this week. Hurricane season won’t start until June.

The bridge is on the south end of Straight Shot, and the vacation house sits about a quarter mile from the island’s northernmost tip. It’s two stories tall, freshly painted, with a wide porch that stretches all the way around and a detached garage. There are generous growths of pine trees to either side of the house, a matched set of forest-patch bookends probably left in place to anchor the sand during storms.

“This is amazing,” Dia breathes, staring out the window of the SUV. “And it’s all for us. Harper, your stepdad is so great.”

Harper looks down, concentrating on her phone like she didn’t hear Dia, or like she’s pretending she didn’t.

The weather is already almost summer warm, but the breeze off the ocean cools us as we lug our things up the front steps. On the porch, a large metal planter overflows with various herbs, each identified by a handmade marker stabbed into the rich soil. “These will be great to cook with,” Harry says almost reverently, pausing to inspect the plants. They’re lush and thriving; when he plucks a mint leaf and rubs it between his fingers, I can smell it from yards away. The scent of mint always turns my stomach a little, so I breathe through my mouth until it fades.

The interior of the house is bright and beachy—whitewashed shiplap walls with just the right amount of trendy distressing, an enormous blue-and-white-striped sectional couch and decorative driftwood in the living room, gauzy drapes over the windows. Tiny succulents in miniature terra-cotta pots and planters line the sills of the east-facing windows. An index card leans against one planter, with Please don’t water! written in neat script beside a smiley face. The handwriting matches that on the herb markers outside.

A hand-painted sign over the wide kitchen doorway reads THE ISLAND OF NO STORMS. I doubt the veracity of that claim—this is Florida, after all—but the sentiment is nice.

Dia and I claim rooms on the second floor. I try not to make too much of a show of my uke case, tucking it beside my bed instead of leaving it out in the open with the rest of my luggage. I’m still unpacking when I hear Harper yelling downstairs.

“Harry, that’s not fair! You don’t just get to claim the master.”

I go downstairs and see Harry in the doorway of another bedroom, his arms crossed. “Mom and Charlie said it was fine. A trade-off for babysitting all week.”

“A trade-off for keeping us from having any fun, you mean. We should at least flip a coin or something.”

“Nope. Mine.”

Harper’s voice goes shrill. “Let me have it or I’m telling Mom about the vodka!”

“Then I’ll tell her about the whiskey!”

I step between them, faking a bright laugh to help de-escalate. “Okay, you two. Enough.” It’s like I’m six years old again, listening to them bicker over a toy, so I do what I learned to do back then when Harper gets like this. I take her by the arm and lead her away. “Come on, let’s take a look out back.”

Harper glares from Harry to me, but she lets herself be led.

The backyard is huge, with a gradual slope down toward the bay. A raised deck with a sparkling blue pool and a built-in grill hugs the rear of the house. Beyond that, chairs nestle around a firepit, and the manicured lawn gives way to beach grass and thick clumps of sea oats farther down. A path cuts through the beach grass, leading to a long dock that stretches over the marshy shallows out into the bay. The dock ends at a covered platform on high stilts. The bay itself sits wide and deep beyond the shore, with sunlight glinting bright and sharp off lapping waves.

As I knew she would, Harper has already forgotten the argument. “We should get Harry to rent us a boat this week,” she says, taking off across the backyard. Dia joins us outside, and we follow Harper beyond the lawn and along the sandy path. Harper sets off down the narrow dock, its wooden boards bleached pale by sun and salt. The platform at the end sits at least six feet above the bay, even now when the tide is high. A ramp leads down to a floating lower platform for boats and Sea-Doos and swimmers. I see other docks across the bay, several with people fishing or lounging. The sharp grumble of a motorboat engine revs to life not too far off.

Harper scampers down the ramp and sits on the edge of the floating platform, slipping off her sandals and dangling her feet in the water. “Gavin would love this,” she says. “He’d already have a fishing rod out.”

“Is the water warm?” I call down, ignoring the mention of her boyfriend.

“Could be warmer, but I’d jump in.” She touches the hem of her T-shirt like she’s thinking about yanking it over her head and splashing into the bay in her shorts and bra.

That’s when I hear the music. It floats out over the water from the direction of the island, like a half-forgotten dream—a delicate tinkling, dancing sound. It might be a melody, but trying to make it out is like deciphering a murmur from another room, so familiar but so faint. “Do you two hear that? What is it?”

“Hear what?” Dia says.

Harper cocks her head back toward the house. “It sounds like a music box.”

Dia listens and perks up. “I think that’s an ice-cream truck! One of those old ones that plays music.” She turns, staring back down the dock.

I pause. “How did an ice-cream truck get on the island?” The sound definitely carries from the direction of the house, not from across the bay.

“Who knows? Maybe Harry didn’t close the gate right. Let’s see if we can catch it!” Harper steps back into her shoes, races up the ramp, and takes off down the narrow dock, running more confidently in her sandals than I can in sneakers. Dia follows at a jog, yelling something about Creamsicles, while I lag behind, uneasy for reasons I can’t define. I can still hear the tinkling music—it gets louder as we get closer to land—but I can’t place the song. It tickles the edges of my brain with notes that are oddly toneless, a familiar tune played in a creeping minor key.

A memory flutters, something about strawberry ice cream, pink and sweet with chunks of red fruit. I slow to a walk. It’s a hot afternoon, and we’re on vacation, and ice cream should be perfect right now, but the thought of it makes my stomach churn and I can’t figure out why.

Harper reaches the shore. She sprints across the yard and disappears around the side of the house.

The music stops.

Dia pauses on the sandy path, waiting for me. By the time I reach her, Harper reappears in the yard.

“Did you catch it?” Dia asks. “Did you tell it to wait for us?”

“There’s no truck,” Harper says, her voice flat with bewilderment.

“But I can hear it,” Dia says.

I shake my head. “The music stopped a few seconds ago.” I’m almost shivery, despite the warmth of the day. The memory of strawberry ghosts on the tip of my tongue like something I misplaced.

Harper’s brow furrows, casting a shadow over her eyes. “It sounded close, right? It couldn’t have disappeared that fast. I would’ve seen it driving away.” The three of us stare at one another, and I see some of my uncertainty mirrored in their faces. Then Harper pivots and runs into the house.

We follow her to the master bedroom, where Harry is unpacking. He looks up, wincing as if he’s expecting Round Two in the Battle of the Master Bedroom to commence.

“Did you hear it?” Harper asks.

“What?”

“The ice-crea. . .