Agatha
Penny's driving is absolutely atrocious.
And I don't mean that in a cute way. I don't mean that sometimes she looks at the radio or her phone while she's waiting at a stop like. She doesn't get distracted (too much) by small animals on the sidewalk. She isn't like my mother, who swerves over the line any time she sees an advertisement for last minute Christmas sales.
What I mean, is that we are currently standing knee deep in a snow drift on the side of a dirt road. We are in a part of England that I'm not sure I've ever actually been before, or at the very least I don't recognize anything covered in all this snow.
I should have known as soon as I got on the plane from California that something like this was going to happen. Situations like these are the exact reason my parents were furious when they found out I hadn't brought my want with me to America.
Penny is so distraught over the whole thing that she's gone really quiet, and she can't get her magic focused. She keeps kicking at the road with her hideous purple boots.
I know that my wand is buried deep in one of my suitcases, but they are in the boot of the car. Penny keeps making the snow worse too with her frustrated spells. She keeps saying "Let it Snow" as if it will work.
"Would you try a different spell already?" I try not to shout at her through my chattering teeth, but I feel like this is the perfect time to finally be angry at Penny. "You know you're only making it worse!"
"Well I'm sorry, Agatha!" she rolls her eyes and scrunches her forehead in concentration. I want to tell her that she'll get wrinkles that way, but resist. "I don't know any other snow spells and 'Some Like It Hot' just isn't going to work here."
"Isn't there someone you can call? Your parents or something?" I try to think up more solutions, or someone we could call. "Where are we?" I suddenly remember to ask.
She ignores me though, of course. Instead she's got her cell phone held up to the sky as if that's how signals work. I watch her trudge around for a few seconds before pulling mine out as well. The little icon in the corner of the screen tells me that there's only 11% left in my battery. I shove the phone back in my pocket and shift around, trying to warm my feet.
"Yes!" She's got one foot up on the car and she's dialing a number on her phone that I try to peek at, but don't recognize. "Crowley, I thought that would never work!"
"I'm not sure it has worked." I can't help but mumbling.
The snow piles up inside my boots as I walk a bit down the road. I can see Penny flailing her arms about as she describes our situation to whoever is on the other end of her call. I imagine the sound of a car coming in our direction, but nothing ever appears.
This never would have happened if I was in California for Christmas again. Or even if I had gone to my parent's house; not that I'm very welcome there right now. Even after all this time, my mother and father both expect me to coming running home like a child.
I'm not a child.
"They'll be here soon!" Penny shouts at me even though I'm not quite that far away anymore. "Just be a bit with the storm and such."
"Who was it that you called?" I can't help but ask her, hoping that she'll give me some clue as to where we are going.
"Simon."
I just stare at her for a moment as soon as his name leaves her mouth. In my mind, we've been dancing around any mention of him since we got in the car. But here was Penny, dropping his name into our small tragedy like it didn't hold more weight than all this snow.
Penny had been trying to cast spells for the past thirty minutes to get us out of this snow drift, and yet the sound of Simon's name leaving her mouth in such a familiar way, held more magic than those combined.
