by Meghan Edge
sensation in my eye, but I don't feel like I could cry. Shouldn't I? Waverly felt so much more once her object was gone. If my scarf was lost in my dreams, why don't I feel more like a person?
“It's okay, Amelia. I'm just going back to the city for a while. I'll be just a phone call away,” I promise, face flushing as I look to Edwin. He's gone. I don't even feel him like I usually do. My sister's face is broken as I climb into the car and start to drive home.
It didn't hurt to die.
I just thought you might be curious, that is. If it hurt.
Amelia was right to be worried about me, but when the other car swerved into my lane, running me off the road, I didn't even feel it. Which is good. Lucky, even, considering the twisted mess they pulled my mangled body out of. Nothing hurt.
There was no pain.
I only saw the wreckage for a moment before I was somewhere else. I never see my family anymore, I'm not allowed. I know I'll never see Edwin again, either, with a new kind of curse resting on my shoulders. I sit at a table in the corner, in the shop where we met, watching the people walk by. Waiting for someone to see me.
You see, sometimes being in love is just trading one curse for another.
Amelia & The Objects in the Mirror
I wonder if I found my sister's object, if it would bring her back. I wonder if it's my place at the guardian, the keeper of the key, if I could help her. Would finding that thin scarf be enough to bring my dead sister back? Grief is an angry little animal, gnawing at my heart, leaving it raw and bloody. I can't cry anymore. My eyes are near-swollen with un-shed tears but I want to be strong for the younger ones. For Waverly, curled up in the arms of her lover. For Marcus and Eileen, both seeking their own mates. They've seen the danger in it.
The problem is, I don't believe that Gabriella loved her ghost-man. I see it now, after she's gone. In a nightmare, I see him, taking her scarf and hiding it where she can't find it, tricking her into swapping curses with him. She sets him free. He doesn't love her, he's not the one that was meant for her, but her loneliness and impatience attracted a dangerous kind of soul and now she's gone.
Eileen does my hair for the funeral. We shouldn't really be having one. There wasn't enough of a body when all was said and done. It was just a mangled, twisted shell. Gabriella wasn't in there anymore, and my parents weren't going to come, anyway, but we were having one because that's what people do when other people die. Appear normal, that's always been our goal.
“Your hair is so soft,” Eileen says. Her voice is wrecked with tears. She smooths the comb through, pulling strands into a complicated braid she learned from a magazine that's propped open on my vanity. I'm watching her hands work through the dark hair. I'm hollow inside. We don't speak for a long time, but when she finishes, I'm looking at the perfect braid.
“Beautiful,” I say, meaning her skill.
“Yes, you are,” she tells me, kissing me on the top of my head. When she leaves to get dressed, I smear on gel eyeliner. Black on black on black. Our clothes are a nightmare shade of dark, shouting out our grief. She's wrong, I'm not beautiful, but I'm trying to be strong. I'm trying to comfort people.
“You know,” Eileen says, coming back into the room. She looks hopeful. She looks like she's thought of some conversation to take our mind off of the overwhelming sadness we're feeling. “You know, when you deny a compliment, you're insulting the intelligence of the person giving it.”
“How so?” I ask her, pursing my lips in skepticism. She grinned. It's been days since I've seen her smile, all of us too lost in sadness to find any sort of joy.
“Maybe not intelligence but it's certainly an insult. Because that person, their perception of you or something you've done, is beautiful. When you say you aren't, you're telling them that their opinion is invalid. That their sight isn't working or their perception is flawed. If someone sees you as beautiful, even if you don't think you are, you should just say thank you,” Eileen explains. I roll my eyes and she reaches over to borrow my peach-gold lipstick. It perfectly compliments her complexion. “It's true! So if you don't want to hurt someone else's feelings by denying their compliment, just say 'thank you'.”
“But I didn't deny it,” I say. “Not to mention that I was talking about your braiding skills, not my own reflection.”
“You might not have said anything, but I could tell,” she says. Eileen smiles at me in the mirror. “You are beautiful, and you're all we have. Besides, don't you know what they say about mirrors?”
I stand and start to shove my fat feet into the black pumps that matched my dress. The key was gleaming against the soft night-colored fabric. “No?”
“They always, always lie.” Eileen sails out of the room like she did something very clever, but I'm caught at her words. It reminds me of cars and accidents, actually, and of Gabby's untimely passing. Objects in the mirror are closer-uglier-fatter-plainer than they truly are.
The Selkie and the Internet
or
Marcus's Story
I like to kiss.
You could say that I love to kiss. I enjoy the slick wet slide of tongues moving and the sweet heat of a liplock. I don't even really care if it's boys or girls- I do prefer the girls but I like to kiss anyone. My object makes kissing easy. People of all shapes take my hat from my head, trying it on, never realizing how completely I belong to them while they hold it. Unlike my siblings, I am careless with my object, because when someone else has it, I can feel something.
And then my sister Gabriella dies and I stop letting people take my hat away.
Fate doesn't like being played with. Her death teaches me this.
I find her website by accident. There are no pictures of her, just writing, but you get the sense that the blog author is a female. She could be a guy for all I knew but I linger, reading post after post, until I see.
Her brother had died.
That is a pain I understand. With our stunted emotions, kept hidden by our skins, we kept our family close by. Gabriella is an ache in my heart that I know my siblings share.
So I leave a comment with my IM name. I'm sorry. If you need a friend, I am always around.
I fall asleep thinking about my own sister, my hat hooked safely on my bed post. I wonder if it was worth it, the way Gabriella died. I wonder what she would tell me about love.
The girls at school take my hat off to wear it to class. Or did, until I started being protective of it. And now that Gabriella is dead, it's a matter of survival. I need to protect my heart until the curse is broken, until I find the right person. My person. It's hard because I know it can be done. Look at Waverly. She did it. But none of the people, male or female, in this town fit the bill. I know none of the people I've met IRL are my people.
I consider moving.
But Gabby moved a lot and look at what happened to her.
write2beluvd: Hi.
The message pops up in my window.
magichatmarcus: Hi!
magichatmarcus: How are you?
There is a pause, and I see the little pencil scribbling away as she responds.
write2beluvd: It gets easier every day. how bout you?
magichatmarcus: Same.
write2beluvd: your comment meant a lot to me. my bro and I were close and I miss him.
magichatmarcus: I can relate. I just lost my sister. I feel ya
write2beloved: Yeah, I can tell that you do.
I'm elated. Excited. As I talk to her/it/him, I feel less upset. Somehow knowing that this stranger was also mourning the loss of someone, someone close to them, somehow that made everything better. Maybe misery loves company, or maybe it's just knowing that someone can truly sympathize with my pain. Either way, I fall asleep that night with my hat hanging above my head and the chat window still open on my laptop.
I'm still smiling when I see my friend Reenie at school. She always takes my hat before AP English and we make out in the janitor's closet at lunch. Her long brown hair and goth make
-up always make her look dead in the shadows. Today, though. Today I put my hand up to prevent her from grabbing my object. My heart object. I don't know why, but I don't need her hollow kisses.
“You look chipper as a fucking squirrel,” she sulks, leaning her long black-clothed body against my locker. “What got into you?”
“Made a new friend,” I tell her. “Online. She just lost her brother, so she gets what I'm going through with Gabby.”
“How do you even know? For all you know, she might not even be a real person,” Reenie snaps at me, and I don't understand her anger. It seems out of place to me. Reenie has a point. For all I knew, write2beluvd was someone just playing a part. But...
I just don't care.
When I get home, she's there, logged in and waiting. It's kind of nice to have someone to come home to.
We talk for two weeks. Solid. Quickly, the need to speak to her all the time grows into something I absolutely must do. I start taking pictures of things to show her. The way a barista writes my name on a cardboard cup of coffee. The jacket I scored at a yard sale. The food I'm eating (although that is mostly to prove I am eating, as I hadn't been – grief'll do that do you). I feel like I could be starting to live again. I find that I want to feel things once more. I want to unlock myself and let write2beloved see everything inside me.
My sister Amelia becomes worried.
“You're spending a lot of time online lately,” she scolds me. “Get out more. Meet some people.”
There is no escaping this