by Carla Thorne
“Time out,” Ivy said and even made the signal. “This is fascinating to say the least, but how does this all tie in to the snake and all the other stuff that’s been happening?”
“Oh yeah, there’s more.”
“Uh…” Deacon choked and hit his chest with his fist. “What else is there?”
“I’m still fighting Shanar. It’s at night while I’m trying to sleep. Part of me leaves my body and has that same fight from my childhood.”
“What?”
“But you don’t die,” Scout said.
“Nope. I’m very much alive. I’m just fighting an unknown enemy I know would kill me if it could.”
“Why would it want to kill you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because it didn’t succeed when I was three?”
“What about the good thing?” Deacon asked. “The light force that helped you?”
“Ahh… I hear its voice. It tells me it’s not my time to die, so I keep fighting until Shanar goes away.”
Ivy’s cheeks flushed as she squirmed in her seat and moved closer. “What are you thinking this is? What’s the end game? What is happening to us? I know you have an idea.”
“I think the four of us being together has set off a supernatural connection. I think the positive things Ivy hears and sees and the helpful power in Deacon’s hands are from the same place. I think it’s the same place my light and help come from when I fight Shanar. I think there’s danger all around, and I think Shanar is creating problems for us. The more we learn about our abilities and how to listen, the more Shanar is going to rise up against us. We’re in a battle and it’s only going to get worse.”
“It already is,” Ivy said. “Paige is evil and Corey is suicidal. That dark force showed up in the form of a snake and tried to confuse me.”
“Yes. And we’re not in control of everything,” I said. “But we have to figure out how to listen to the signs and what we’re supposed to do to help.”
“Like Mr. Berry,” Deacon said. “We all showed up.”
“Right.” Scout snapped his fingers. “They’re like assignments.”
“That’s it. Assignments. That’s a good word.”
Then we all sat in silence.
Ivy rocked a bit and attacked a nail.
Deacon rubbed his hands together. “Now what do we do?”
“I guess we wait,” I said. “We go about our business and wait. We wait and listen.”
Scout raked his hands through his messy hair. “Holy crap on a cracker, Mary, why am I here?”
“What do you mean? You’re one-fourth of this team. You’ve shown up every time something happens. Even Mr. Parrington thinks we’re some weird gang or something. If he wasn’t so busy trying to figure out the Arrows, he’d sure be trying to figure us out.”
“Uh… Look around.” He pointed to each of us. “Superpowers, superpowers, superpowers.” He pointed back at himself. “I got nothin’. I’m the disposable character. Shanar is going to kill me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re a team.”
“Well, if he comes for me and no magical spell comes to mind to save myself, just know it’s fine. I don’t want to die or anything, but I do miss my family…”
“Stop it!” Deacon snapped. “This is going off the rails. Scout. Dude. It’s nowhere near time for you to join your family. Besides, Shanar doesn’t have that much power.”
“Doesn’t he? Isn’t that what this is all about? He’s so powerful he’s caused all this to happen.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But some other force is so powerful it chose us to stop it. Believe me, I’m still beating it.”
He waved my words away. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t bail on us now, Scout.”
“I’m not bailing, I’m only saying I don’t know how much help I can be in some paranormal battle. I have no obvious abilities.” He tossed a grape in his mouth.
Ivy snatched him by the wrist when he grabbed another. It popped out of his hand and bounced off his Baylor University pillow.
“This conversation’s over.” She yanked him toward her. “You hear me? After all we’ve been through and the thought of what we may be about to go through, I can’t take any more of this kind of talk outta you. Got it? We’re a team. All of us.”
He seemed scared to answer, but eventually squeaked out a yes.
She dropped his arm. “Good. Now. Listen carefully, Scout. It’s you.”
“What’s me?”
“Your superpower.”
“How so?”
“You being you is your superpower.”
Chapter 30
Ivy
Weeks flew by.
Homecoming, supernatural discussions, and Corey’s crisis seemed like a blur in my recent memory as we moved toward Thanksgiving and rehearsed for the holiday show.
I clung to my sanity by a tiny, fragile thread, and had to admit it became a relief to view an occasional voice in my head as a good thing, rather than a dreadful symptom of a severe disorder. Somehow that took the pressure off everywhere else. Did I need to talk to a professional about everything else? Probably. But was I still the puddle of confused goo I was before? No.
We chosen ones passed in the halls and nodded and said little else as a group. We didn’t understand the call, but we would know it when we heard it.
But Corey…
While my thread was thin at best, at least I had one. I worried Corey wasn’t tethered to anything at all. The social media catastrophe became old news—as everyone expected—yet Corey still hovered in Paige and the Arrows’ atmosphere like a lost puppy, begging to be let back in.
I did my best to stay away.
Corey hobbled into the choir room as if she hadn’t slept, and tossed her things on a riser.
I scooted to her side and waited while she pulled music from her bag. “Up all night much?”
“What? Oh. Yeah… Not all night, but not much sleep.”
“You sick or something?”
“No, it’s just stuff. You know. Chores, homework…”
I calmed the flicker of rage inside me. “Ah, yes, the famous freshman grunt work you so willingly continue to do for Paige. Can you not see what she and the Arrows are doing to you?”
“I’m not having this discussion with you again, Ivy. It’s all under control.”
“Yeah, you look like it’s under control. Can you even sing today? You sound like a wad of sandpaper is stuck in your throat.”
“It’s allergies. My mom is making me clean out my closet and get rid of a bunch of junk I don’t use. We stirred up some dust. You know I had clothes in there from sixth grade?”
“I have a unicorn hoodie from kindergarten in my closet. It’s too cute to throw away, but that’s beside the point. You can’t get sick. The holiday show is the first weekend in December. Paige needs to lay off and you need to take care of yourself.”
“Sure, Grandma, are you done yet? Let’s do this before the accompanist leaves. I have to help someone… You know what? I don’t have to explain this to you.”
And there it was.
We were great friends and had a blast working on that holiday show. We’d also turned into a version of the snarky and bickering old ladies from a TV show my mom watched late at night on the classics channel.
I made my case about Paige and the Arrows.
Corey continued to defend them.
I complained to Scout every night how deep and lost she was in her obsession to be dominated by Paige’s apparent evil control.
He told me I was doing my best and my best was all I could do.
So, I kept doing my best.
“Girls!” The director hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s hear it.”
It wasn’t our best run-through of the highly coveted Mary, Did You Know? duet we’d earned, but we made it through. The sweet Corey smile I preferred—as opposed to the fighting, Paige-defensive snarl she dished out—warmed my heart. When she sang, even
with a sandpaper-scraped throat, she came alive. She lit up and blossomed as joy-filled notes came from her soul. But when she talked about her quest to remain an Arrow, the image of that limp and dangling flower always flashed in my mind like a neon warning sign.
Why couldn’t she walk away?
“Good job, girls. Corey, drink some tea with honey and keep yourself on vocal rest. I hear a strain in your vocal folds. No wild family karaoke over the Thanksgiving break, OK?”
She laughed. “Definitely no karaoke.”
“Oh! And tell your mom yes, we can restart the private voice lessons after the Christmas break.”
I grabbed my bag as we headed out. “I didn’t know you took actual voice lessons.”
“Yeah, my mom wants me to learn to treat my instrument properly. She’s a singer. I’ve even thought about studying music in college. You can imagine how my dad feels about that.”
“No matter what you do, you have a great voice.”
“Thanks.”
“But why’d you quit your lessons anyway?”
She shook her head and looked at the ground. “Busy, that’s all.”
“Oh.” I totally didn’t want to start another Paige fight, but dang I was tired of it all. “Sorry to hear Paige kept you from furthering your music career.”
I admit that was a little harsh.
“For your information, everything will be fine after Thanksgiving. Paige and I have come to an agreement about when I can officially rejoin the Arrows as a member in good standing.”
“I know I’m going to be sorry I asked, but when and how is that happening?”
She paused at the front double doors. “We’re having lunch on Black Friday, then we’re going to her salon. Claudia is going to update my style.”
I squeezed the bar on the door and leaned in to the warm glass. “By update, do you mean cut?”
“Probably.”
“No… Wait a minute. You said except for an inch or so trim here and there you’ve never cut your hair. That’s why it’s halfway down your butt!”
“Right.”
“And you also said you didn’t intend to cut your hair until you graduated from Stonehaven and then you’d update your style as you went off to college and started the next phase of your life. I recall you were pretty serious about that.”
She shrugged. “It’s only hair, Ivy.”
“Not to you it isn’t. Don’t you see what’s happening here? Paige has been threatening your actual physical body since the minute you met. It’s the same as someone wanting to cut off your finger in exchange for a back-stage pass or something.”
“That’s not the same at all.” She wiggled her fingers in my face. “Fingers don’t grow back. Hair does.”
“But it’s your hair and your choice. She has no right to ask this of you! What kind of person tears down another and asks them to change their appearance for the sake of a club?”
But I knew it wasn’t about the club. It was about control and manipulation, and I might as well have been banging my head against the massive trunk of a big ol’ Texas pine tree.
The corner of her upper lip curled into a slight snarl. “Last year the boys’ soccer team shaved their heads in solidarity as they headed into the big match with their crosstown rival.”
“That’s different.”
Bang, bang, bang… My forehead actually hurt from that imaginary tree trunk. Or a stress headache. Who could tell anymore?
I took a deep breath. “Have a great Thanksgiving, Corey. And I beg you to think long and hard and talk to your counselor or your parents or somebody before you let Paige or Claudia get within an inch of your beautiful hair. It’s yours and you’ve worked too hard and too long to maintain it.”
“I know what I’m doing, Ivy.”
“Remember everything I said, OK? I mean everything. Like from before. If you hit a low point…”
“I remember, but don’t worry. I’m fine. See you after Thanksgiving.”
Chapter 31
Mary
I think my parents were getting a bit sick of seeing Gavin.
By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, my mom’s question wasn’t if he’d be coming around to join us, but when would he be coming to join us?
I narrowed it down to dessert and after-dinner family time, football, and board games.
He offered to come along if we decided to do any early Black Friday shopping at the stores that opened on Thanksgiving Day, and that’s when he and my mom parted ways on the sacredness of the holiday. She would never darken the door of a store that opened on Thursday night, and she told him so. I believe she also mentioned he should be ashamed for asking. She was never shy about protecting family time or actual Black Friday shopping with me.
I laughed when she gave him the mom glare and acted like she was going to squirt whipped cream on his face for giving her what she called Black Friday Sass.
And later, I’m sure I turned multiple shades of red—and I know I nearly fainted—when we stood together in the refrigerator door and stole the last of the maraschino cherries off the top of the leftover ambrosia salad. Gavin held one over my mouth by the stem and coaxed my lips open. I took the fruit and ended up with his lips on mine as he kissed me and sucked the juice off my bottom lip.
I may have blacked out for a moment.
I wasn’t a prude. I knew half my school had already experimented with sex, alcohol, and drugs.
But I hadn’t. And I wasn’t ready.
Still, it was hard to calm the gymnastics routine some of my body parts were doing to try and get my attention.
I slammed the door shut, barely missing his nose. That was more about not wanting my dad to wake up from his turkey-nap in the next room and send Gavin’s head rolling across the kitchen floor.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said.
“Sure. Grab a hoodie.”
“I will. It’s nice to have an actual cool Thanksgiving for a change.” I pulled my soccer sweatshirt from the hook in the laundry room. “We’re walkin’ off pie,” I called out.
“Take your phone,” my mom called back.
Like I’d forget my phone.
Gavin twined his fingers in mine as the sun faded into early nightfall. The cherry kiss was still in the front of my mind, but so was the feel of his soft, warm hand as he guided me toward the toddler playground at the end of our street. We wandered across the bark-chipped ground and sat on swings too small for us. We looked at the sky and took nighttime selfies to make a couple’s Thanksgiving post. And that’s when it sunk in, we really had become a couple since homecoming. We saw no one else romantically, spent one night out together every weekend, and talked every day.
I remember seeing his breath in the cool air that night as he thought only of my warmth and pulled my hood up over my head. He was so handsome… Too handsome. And too charming, and too sweet, and too protective.
Gavin was my first love.
“Do you ever think about the future?” he asked.
“In what way? Like college?” I turned in the swing until the chain would twist no more. I let myself go in a dizzying twirl.
“Yeah, that and beyond.”
“I don’t think I’ve thought that far ahead, Gavin. I just had my four-year plan meeting with my counselor. Why?”
“No reason.” He grabbed the chains to steady me. “Just thinking about us.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, like a long time from now. Seems we’ve always been together.”
“Well, yeah… We were practically raised together. Our parents are good friends and I think they’ll always be.” I took one more twirl. “Remember that party at your house when we drank that beer your dad left on the counter? We thought we were big stuff.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Do you think our kids will do that kind of thing someday?”
“Absolutely.” I laid my head back for the spin. “Should we end on similar paths like our parents did and end up close enough geographically, I am sure our
kids will return every gray hair we have given ours.”
“No, I mean… Never mind.”
Wait. What? It sounded as though Gavin meant our kids—as in kids we’d actually have together someday.
There was no doubt I was starry-eyed, goofy-in-love with Gavin, and I sure was enjoying the time and attention he gave me. There’d been small, corny gifts and a flower or two stuck to my locker, but forever?
I tried to push through the awkward moment. “Look, Gavin, who can tell the future? I’m trying to get through this semester.”
“Forget I said anything.” A touch of irritation laced his words as he turned away.
Or was that anger?
“C’mon, Gavin, what’s wrong?”
His smile came back, slow at first, then full Gavin Bagliano charm. “Nothing’s wrong.”
He took my hand and pulled me off the swing. We laughed when the child-sized seat stuck to my backside.
I snorted. “I guess I won’t have that second piece of pie.”
He pulled me in for a quick kiss. “That’d be a shame,” he said. “Because you should always have exactly what you want.”
We walked home against the nip of the cool fall night.
His words continued to poke at my gut.
Did Gavin really think we were… forever?
Chapter 32
Ivy
Corey didn’t show up for school the Monday after Thanksgiving break.
I freaked on several levels.
The holiday show was the following Saturday. Hello? Practice? I worried her scratchy throat had turned into full-blown strep or something, but I wouldn’t know because of her lack of contact over the break. She was supposed to see a movie with me and Scout on Saturday, and bailed at the last minute. That was also the day after the great mysterious haircut she refused to discuss or send a snap of.