by Carla Thorne
Deacon put his pizza box on the ottoman. “We’re eating pizza, Ivy. We’re friends.”
“Are we, though? I’ve known you all for a matter of days.”
“Yes. You’re among friends. This is us hanging out after school. And if we happen to discuss the total crap-storm of events we’ve recently been a part of, then, well… Mary’s right. Maybe we should talk about it.”
“I don’t belong here,” I argued. “You all have been tight for years. I’m an outsider.”
Scout dropped on the couch. “Uh… No we haven’t.”
Deacon got back into his pizza box. “I’m only here because my adoptive parents moved to this area. Mary and I got to be friends at the end of last year when we were thrown together on a lab project.”
“Yeah,” Scout said. “And I only moved here a year ago after… I’ve only been with my grandparents for a year. Mary and I pass each other in church once in a while, and we debated once. And that day in the garden was the first time I actually talked to all of you at the same time.”
I was surprised, but managed to speak. “And I only moved here because of my mom and Aunt Connie.” OK, yeah. It was totally weird we would all be strangers one day, and the next we were like a peculiar four-pack stuck together with that plastic thingy holding us all together. “Mary? What about you?”
“I’ve been here my whole life,” she said. “Same house. Same school. It’s all completely boring.”
“Except you picked up a snake.”
“On the same day you talked about Mr. Berry and a car—before the accident.”
“Oh boy,” Scout mumbled.
“Boom,” Deacon said. “She’s got you there.”
I turned to leave. “Don’t worry, I don’t snitch, but I can’t go into all my damage with you guys.”
Scout scrambled to his feet. “Wait. I’ll walk you out, but you don’t have to stand on the street and wait for your ride. Stay and eat.”
I tried to be polite, but I had to get out. “Thanks for the MOP pizza,” I said to him at the top of the stairs. I smiled wide because I couldn’t help it. He grabbed his chest in exaggerated joy and then blushed about it and almost fell over. I laughed. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Hey, Ivy,” Mary said.
I peeked back into the room.
“I really wish you’d stay. You don’t have to tell us anything, but you might be interested in what Deacon has to say.”
Deacon got all alarmed like he had no idea what he was about to say. “What? What do I have to say?”
“Like it or not, we’re all in this together, so we might as well get down to figuring it out.” Mary patted the couch and held up my pizza. “C’mon. I know you want to hear an explanation because you already know about it.”
“What do I know?”
Mary glanced at the panicked Deacon. “Deacon was about to tell us about his hands.”
Chapter 13
Deacon
I couldn’t believe she’d said it out loud.
I hadn’t even said it out loud.
I’d thought about it, worried about it, lost sleep over it, and maybe even cried about it, but I’d never said it out loud.
I blinked in slow motion as Ivy’s backpack slipped from her shoulder.
Scout reached out to grab it before it hit the ground without even looking. Those two sure were in some weird kind of sync. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to hear one of them say gesundheit before the other one sneezed.
But right then I had other surprises to worry about.
“What about his hands?” Scout asked.
Ivy returned to the couch. “They get hot when he’s startled or there’s an emergency.”
“They what?”
“They get hot. They heat up. Right, Deacon?”
I frowned at Ivy and then at my completely cool and normal hands. I rubbed them together. “So, you do want to talk, Ivy, you just don’t want to talk about yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” she rushed to explain. “I’m not trying to out you, but I thought this was the point. Besides, Mary brought it up first, so she already knew.”
“I don’t know,” Scout said with a squeak. “Somebody tell me.”
Mary bit her lip as I glared at her. “I’m sorry too, Deac. I don’t mean to call you out, but this is exactly what we’ve been talking about. It’s too big to ignore. Please…”
I was mad, but also relieved to finally tell someone, even if it was against my will. Still, where did I start? “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“That day, in the garden,” Mary said. “You touched my leg and it felt like your hand was on fire.”
“And in the cafeteria after the accident, same thing,” Ivy added. “Someone bumped into you and you fell forward and touched my hand. I thought I’d have a blister the next day.”
Scout put his hands on his face and pulled downward until his bottom eyelids stretched. “Can someone please tell me what’s going on?”
“I can’t explain it,” I said.
“Try,” Scout said.
“Ivy’s right. When I’m surprised or there’s an emergency, my hands heat up.”
“Like how do you mean heat up?”
“Exactly what I said. They get warm. Like really warm.” I studied my hands again as if it would make a difference how I described it. No one would understand anyway.
Ivy scooted toward me. “Does it hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt me,” I said. “I just feel warmth. But apparently it’s really hot when I touch someone.”
“But you don’t know it.”
“No. In the cafeteria, I had no idea how hot it was. I think it happened that day because we’d dealt with the Berry situation and we were all still coming down from the rush. When you hit me in the arm, I was still in fight mode, I guess. As soon as I realized it was you playin’, they cooled down.”
Mary moved to the ottoman to get a closer look. “And that day in the garden, we were dealing with a possible danger, so the heat flared.”
“Yes! And that was the first time it was that noticeable. That was the hottest they’ve ever been. It was also the first time I realized I… uh…”
“You what?”
“I realized I had no control over it.”
Scout crawled across the floor and they all sat in front of me like I was a hamster doing tricks in a cage.
I bolted from the couch. “See what I mean? I’m a freak!”
“No,” Mary said. “Come back. We want to help.”
Scout tried to shake off his confusion. “I’m still trying to figure out what you mean.” He motioned for me to come back. “Let me see.”
I sat on the arm of the couch. “Dude, I’m not holdin’ hands with you.”
“I don’t want to hold hands. Put them out here and let us see.” He touched my palms and then turned my hands over to poke the back. “Tell us exactly what happens.”
“It’s all in the palms as far as I know. When I’m threatened or surprised—”
“Or when someone’s in trouble,” Ivy cut in. “Like me and the snake and Mr. Berry and the car.”
“OK, I guess when there’s danger… They heat up.”
They all touched parts of my hands and seemed perplexed and slightly disappointed I couldn’t make fire on demand.
Scout grabbed his phone. “Have you seen your doctor?”
“And tell her what? I have fire paws that get hot and burn people?”
“Uh… Yeah. That’s what doctors are for. You tell them your weird symptoms and they run tests and tell you what to do about it.”
I pushed his phone away. “Don’t bother. There’s nothing medical on there.”
“It has to be physical. It’s a physical reaction to extreme fear or something. What else would it be?”
I stayed quiet. How was I supposed to tell them I was cursed?
“Deac? Hello? Where’d you go?” Mary leaned in. “Scout’s right. You should probably ask someone about thi
s.”
Ivy slipped away to pace a hole in the carpet.
I couldn’t hold it anymore. As long as it stayed on the inside, I could pretend it was anything. I could hide and guess and deny and ignore. Now that it was out in the open, the true magnitude of what I dealt with overwhelmed me. My friends knew. Who would they tell? Hot lava churned inside me and tried to bubble out of my eyes by way of tears. Why was everything so hot? I pinched the bridge of my nose to stop the burning tears. I couldn’t cry in front of them.
I was cursed. I was going to die and go to the hell my great-grandfather talked about in his sermons when I was little. There was no point in anything.
I had no future.
Mary scrubbed her hands up and down my arms. “C’mon, Deac. We’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah, buddy, let’s talk it through,” Scout added.
“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s not physical. It—”
“Leave him alone!” Ivy blasted from where she’d retreated to the window. “If he can’t talk about it, he can’t talk about it. Geez! Has it occurred to anyone there are some things better left alone?”
“No, Ivy, it hasn’t,” Mary clapped back. “Deacon is our friend and he needs our help.”
“Does he need our help? Or does he need us to mind our own business?” She made her way to the floor nearby and dropped to her knees. “Look, I’m on your side, but I know better than anyone there are things that can’t be helped.”
I met Ivy’s gaze. She wasn’t going to confide in us, but she sure confirmed there were things she’d been hiding too.
“What Mr. Parrington said is true, isn’t it?” she asked. “Your hot hands popped Mr. Berry’s shoulder back into place.”
Scout’s eyes widened. “She’s right! You have hot hand magic. You have powers.”
“Don’t call it magic,” Deacon snarled. “I don’t have powers, and I’m no wizard wanna-be. I don’t believe in that.”
But I did believe in demons and evil forces. I knew something controlled my hands. It couldn’t be a good thing. It had to be evil.
“OK,” Scout added. “So, you’re not a warlock or something like that.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” I said and rolled my eyes. “It’s good to know you agree a mortal human freshman in high school is probably not a wizard like in a book or a movie.”
“No, I know that. I’m jus’ sayin’ people dabble. They summon dark spirits and play with magic and stuff.”
“Stop! I know, OK?” I scrambled from my seat as if running for my life. “This isn’t something I chose. It chose me, and I’d give it back if I could. Do you think I asked to be marked by the devil and sentenced to hell for all eternity?”
Raw.
Vacuous.
Silent.
It got so quiet, as if the air had been sucked out of the room so fast our hearing shifted to a high-pitched ring and then slowly came back.
I’d declared my loud and dangerous truth and it scared the crap out of everyone. I know I must have looked like a terrified terrier in a thunderstorm the first time I said it out loud.
I didn’t feel so great either.
It was like when my great-grandfather died from cancer. He was stirring the roux for the big pot of gumbo for Sunday dinner one weekend, and the next he was in bed. By the weekend after that, he was dead. And the only thing that changed was that the doctor said he had cancer. Sure, he hadn’t been feeling great, but he was as alive as he’d ever been until someone said the word cancer.
Then he up and died.
That’s how I felt. Once I’d said the words, I expected the devil to take me at any moment.
And my friends just gawked at me as if I were out of my mind.
Mary stepped toward me. I expected her to.
Scout was smart beyond reason but didn’t always know the right thing to say. Ivy was the newest to the group. She clearly had issues and startled us with her ominous comments, but she wasn’t going to touch my crazy with a ten-foot pole.
But Mary…
Mary always knew what to do.
“Deacon?”
I nodded.
“Come and sit. We’re going to need more information.”
Chapter 14
Mary
Shanar…
Deacon shook as I took his hand and led him to the couch. Fear and turmoil rolled off him in such powerful waves I felt it deep in my own bones. Destruction loomed in his head, but it didn’t live in his heart and soul. I knew it didn’t.
What I couldn’t grasp was my own rocking, upside-down equilibrium. I battled Shanar at night. I landed other-worldly blows onto a mass of other-worldly evil and fought for breath and life in the wee small hours. I walked through each day in confidence because I woke up with blood still pumping in my veins. But now that same evil seemed to lurk in the room. It had Deacon in its wicked claws and had dulled him with fear.
The staggering realization made my knees wobbly as I felt for my seat. Shanar was my own personal hell—or so I thought. He lived in my nighttime and in my mind and he tormented me at will. He was my war and my problem, but suddenly he’d come to light in that room and I glimpsed him in the depths of Deacon’s dark eyes and in the air around us.
He wanted in. He wanted it all.
I glanced at their faces. Deacon, Ivy, Scout… And me.
Why now?
Why us?
Why everything?
I tried to fit it together. Everyone and everything had been teetering off-balance for days, though regular life kept rolling along as it always did. Something brewed in the atmosphere around us, and it threatened to strangle me in broad daylight.
Deep breaths in and out… In and out… In and out…
“OK, Deac. Let’s talk this through. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m pretty sure you’re not marked by the devil and you’re not going to hell.”
“I know I am.” He bounced one leg so hard his forgotten plate slid to the floor.
“No… Why would you even think that?”
“You guys don’t know where I came from.”
Scout flicked the plate out of the way. “I thought you were adopted when you were little.”
“Little, yes, but not a baby, and that doesn’t change my genes.”
He paused and it became unbearable. “Tell us!” I said.
“I lived with my great-grandfather in the Louisiana bayou when I was little. He was a Baptist minister in a small church.”
Scout started swiping at his phone like he always did when he had a question. “Baptist? Really? I thought Cajuns were predominately Catholic.”
“Yes, Baptist, and no, I don’t know why. Also, no on the Cajun.”
Scout pursed his lips as he thought. “Creole?”
“Yes. My great-grandfather used the terms Black Creole and Haitian Vodou once in a while when he’d talk about our heritage with his old cronies on the porch, but even he wasn’t sure, and I don’t know all the history.”
“Wow. Do you have any of his books or old pictures? The migration of French, Spanish, Haitian, and African people into Louisiana is some fascinating American history. The language alone could take days to read about and dissect.”
Ivy moved a pillow and slipped in beside me. “Take it easy, Scout. I don’t think he’s in the mood to climb that high in his genealogical tree today.” She turned to Deacon. “But you do know something about your birth mom and dad?”
“Nothin’ on my father, and I rarely saw my mother. She was so young when I was born, my great-grandfather agreed to take care of me so she could finish school. But it didn’t happen that way. I was little, but my great-grandfather said she trusted the wrong man and got into some cult-like magical stuff—like even more bizarre than what people already think goes on in Louisiana.”
My heart fell. “I’m sorry, Deac. You don’t have to share details.”
“Yes, I do, because that’s the point.” He paused to swipe his hands across his pants. “M
y mother is my problem. There was a lot of freaky voodoo stuff goin’ on in the swamp. The reason I didn’t see my mother was because she was deep into some magic and rituals.”
“C’mon, Deac, that sounds scary, but it also sounds like someone was telling you some stories.”
“There was this one day when I was little. I remember I was sick and couldn’t breathe. My great-grandfather left me with the old lady next door while he went to get medicine. My mother came by and clipped a piece of my hair. She said not to tell anyone and that she was gonna find a big healthy tree and bore a hole in it and put my hair inside. She said my hair would take on the living spirit and life’s blood of the tree and make me well.”
“Uhhh… What happened?”
“I got well and never had bronchitis again.”
None of us really knew what to say about that.
“My great-grandfather warned me against it all, but when he died there was no other family there.”
“That’s when you came here?”
“I was brought to Houston because they thought they’d located a distant relative, but that didn’t work out.”
Ivy sniffed beside me as though fighting tears. “But what about your mom?”
“I don’t know for sure. My adoptive parents have been open and honest with me, and I don’t think anyone ever found her.”
“If you ever want to try and investigate,” Scout said and pointed toward his laptop. “The info could be a few keystrokes away.”
“Scout,” Ivy mumbled. “Not the time.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway,” Deacon continued. “All I know is that I don’t know, but the only thing I can imagine is that my mother owed the devil something and now he’s come for me.”
“Wow, Deac, that’s bad and I’m sorry, but I don’t think—”
“No offense, Mary, but it’s too late for sympathy. I’m cursed and it’s a done deal. I’m doomed.”
“How can you be doomed?” Scout asked. “You said yourself you don’t know what really happened. You have two great parents who stepped up for you. This hand thing has to be a physical problem.”
“No, it isn’t, Scout. Stop trying to be logical. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried. You don’t know what goes on with all those charms and potions. My great-grandfather said they bit heads off chickens.”