For Better or Cursed

by Kate M. Williams

  “Of course,” Adrian said. “You don’t want to miss it.”

  “I’ve seen it before. Have you?”

  “No way,” he said. “Too scary for me. But not you, you’re fearless.”

  “Oh God, no way,” I said. “I’m afraid of everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Heights,” I said. “I don’t even like standing on a stepladder.” I couldn’t help but notice I’d said I needed to go, but neither of us was moving.

  “So,” he said, leaning toward me and resting one arm on the table, “you love scary movies, but you’re afraid of heights?”

  I nodded. “Two totally different things.”

  “How so?”

  “Heights are real,” I said. “You could slip and fall, or you could be so focused on not going off the edge that your brain gets the wires crossed and makes you jump.”

  “Does that actually happen?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But there’s no reason why it couldn’t.”

  “So how is that different from scary movies?”

  “Horror movies flip the scary paradigm,” I said. “Like, your whole life, everybody is telling you not to be scared. Don’t be scared of the dark, don’t be scared of the roller coaster, don’t be scared of having to sing a solo in front of your entire seventh-grade class. But in horror movies, the message is ‘be scared.’ It’s like terror in a safe space. You can scream your head off, and know that Candyman is staying right there, on the screen.”

  Adrian shook his head and smiled. “Oh man, not for me,” he said. Now I leaned forward. I couldn’t help it. My body did it on its own.

  “You don’t like horror movies?”

  “No way,” he said. “I’m never convinced anything is going to stay on the screen. Like, I still don’t go in the basement, and it’s been years since I saw The Conjuring.”

  I raised my hands. “Want to play hide-and-clap?”

  He pointed a finger in my face. “Esme Pearl, do not, or I will spend the rest of the weekend drinking all the caffeine in this building so that you get none.”

  I held my hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay,” I said. “No clapping. But you should know that the call is coming from inside the house.”

  Adrian shrugged. “Isn’t it always?” he said. “Hey, did you like the song?” he asked, suddenly changing the subject.

  “The song?”

  “The Waitresses? Their Christmas song.”

  “I couldn’t listen to it,” I groaned. “My phone was confiscated last night and I still haven’t gotten it back. I tried to listen to it on Cassandra’s phone, but, well, long story.”

  “That sucks,” Adrian said, then thought for a minute. “Want to hear it now?”

  “Sure,” I said. He pulled his phone out, tapped it a few times, and then placed it on the table. He started to press Play, but then paused, his finger hovering above the screen.

  “Wait,” he said. “Is it weird to just sit here and listen to a song? What if you don’t like it? That would be like standing there while someone watches your favorite video and thinks it isn’t funny….”

  “Just play it,” I said. He hit Play, and the music started. The first few bars were good—a little Christmasy, sure, but kind of post-punk. The beat was strong, and I could imagine dancing to it in my room, bouncing up and down and bobbing my head. Then the lyrics kicked in, and the first words were “bah humbug.” Oh my God, this song was awesome!

  “This is rad!” I said. “Who’s it by, again?”

  “The Waitresses,” he said. “I can’t believe you’ve never heard of them. They’re totally your kind of band. They broke up in 1984.” I looked down at the table and smiled, wondering whether he could see how hard I was blushing right now. From what I’d heard so far, this was 100 percent, totally, my kind of band. I looked back up and Adrian was smiling at me and bobbing his head along with the song. Then he raised his hands and started shrugging his shoulders, moving in a little dad dance equal parts cool, hilarious, and to-die-for adorable. The song was catchy as heck, and before I knew it, I’d kicked in with air drums and was tapping my toes, my smile matching his in width. Then all of a sudden, the music cut out, replaced with a shrill sound that made us both jump.

  “Wanda,” Adrian said, shaking his head when he saw the screen. “And I am not going to answer right now, because we were in the middle of a song.” He hit Silent, and a split second later, before the music could even start back up, his phone dinged with a text. He read it and groaned. “Ugh,” he said. “She got Claude.”

  “What?” I said.

  “That stupid crab. The Beanie Baby,” he said. “She won it, and she needs me to come help her figure out how she’s going to pay for it.”

  Jeez. I almost shook my head in disbelief—Wanda had given us this entire speech about staying focused and had confiscated my phone in front of everyone to prove the point, all the while she was using hers to obsessively collect tiny stuffed animals. Whatever Christmas magic the Waitresses had conjured was gone. Adrian stood up, and I followed.

  “I’m sorry you have to deal with this,” I said, as we walked toward the door. Adrian tossed his cup in the recycling bin, and I put my glass in an empty bus bin. “But who knows? Maybe this crab is really cool?”

  “Ha,” he said. “Trust me, it’s not.” Then, right before we reached the door, Adrian turned and looked at me again. “This was cool, though,” he said, “hanging out with you and talking. Maybe we could do it again some time.”

  I nodded. “Over coffee,” I said. “And more songs.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Over iced coffee.”

  Then, in the hall, we went our separate ways.

  When I got back to the auditorium, the movie was still playing and Cassandra had woken up. “Where were you?” she hissed as I slid back into my seat. “I can’t follow this plot at all.”

  “I went to the bathroom,” I said.

  “So what is happening here?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” I answered, thinking she was talking about Better Watch Out.

  “I thought you’d seen it before.”

  “I have,” I said. “But I’m not talking about the movie!” My leaving the auditorium had done the opposite of what I had hoped—I hadn’t cleared my brain. Instead, everything Adrian had said just made things even muddier. “Listen, we have to keep Amirah out of our room,” I said. “We have to get her to switch and stay in someone else’s.”

  “Easy,” Cassandra said.

  “Easy?” I asked. “How is that easy? You’ve met Amirah!”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You go upstairs, hide Janis and Pig, and I’ll take care of Amirah.” I had about a million questions, but the credits were starting to roll, which meant Amirah was going to head upstairs any minute. Also, there was a part of me that was relieved to delegate one task on my mental to-do list to Cassandra, especially if she considered it NBD.

  I made it to the elevator before Amirah did, and the fourth-floor hallway was still empty when I ran down it to our room. When I got there, Janis and Pig were curled up on my bed, watching Vanderpump Rules.

  “We’re hungry,” Janis said.

  “Get in the closet,” I said. “Now.”

  “Is there food in the closet?” Janis asked, but still, she got up and started moving, and Pig followed. I ran over to the closet and threw the door open. Fortunately, Amirah kept her clothes on the floor instead of on hangers, so I wasn’t worried about her looking in there if she wanted to gather up some of her stuff. Janis and Pig were taking their sweet time, and I just managed to get the door shut behind them when there was a knock on the room door.

  I looked through the peephole and exhaled, relieved. It was just Cassandra.

  “Get in bed,” she said, as soon as I opened
the door, “and act like you’re in pain.” I did as she said, pulling the covers up to my chin, and she sat on Amirah’s bed. Two seconds later, Amirah’s key beeped the lock and she walked in.

  “I’m just going to grab some stuff,” she said. “I won’t be long. Thanks again for switching with me,” she said to Cassandra. “I appreciate it.” Then, turning to me, she put a look on her face that appeared to be her version of resting pity face. “How are you feeling, Esme?” she asked, keeping her distance. “It sounds really…gross.”

  I groaned and Cassandra nodded. “WebMD says it’s only contagious for the first three hours,” she told Amirah. “So I’m screwed, but there’s still hope for you.” Amirah grimaced as she grabbed clothes off the floor and stuffed them in a Gucci tote, then she gave a little wave as she headed back out the door.

  As soon as the door clicked shut, I sat up and looked at Cassandra. “What did you tell them?”

  “I told everyone we thought you were coming down with a case of aspartamevirus.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I made it up,” she said. “But trust me, be glad you don’t really have it. It’s awful.”

  “Excuse me,” came a voice from the closet. “How long are we supposed to stay in here?”

  “You can come out now,” I said, opening the door to let Janis and Pig out. “So, you’re hungry?”

  Janis shifted from foot to foot. “Well, Pig definitely is,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a dog’s stomach growl like that before.”

  “And you?”

  Janis shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind a nibble.”

  “But you’ll survive without one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, good, because we don’t have any nibbles.” I looked at Cassandra. “But Pig needs to eat. What are we going to do about dog food?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Cassandra said. “I just exposed myself to a very serious fake illness for you.”

  Pig whined and licked my hand, then looked at me with those Hershey’s Kiss eyes. I leaned down to nuzzle her face. Where was I going to find dog food in a hotel where you weren’t even supposed to have a dog? I wished there were a spell to conjure kibble.

  Then it hit me. Meat. When Cassandra and I had first discovered her mother’s spell book, we’d tried all of the spells, even the ones that didn’t seem like they would ever be useful. Like kreaskinesis—the power to manipulate meat. Cassandra had tried to make herself a hamburger, but she basically just succeeded in destroying the kitchen so badly that I had to use a different spell to clean it up.

  Purina wasn’t in my repertoire, but a raw chicken might be, and Pig could definitely eat that. Dad and I had tried to put her on a raw-food diet at one point to see if it did anything about the farts, but we’d given up when it only seemed to make them worse. And sure, we weren’t supposed to be casting any spells, even in our rooms, but I also wasn’t supposed to have my dog here, or my best friend, so if you’re already breaking two rules, why not break them all?

  Amirah might be a total slob, but I felt like she would have a reasonable objection to me splattering the room with raw meat. Plus, that might actually give me whatever illness Cassandra had just made up. So I figured the bathtub was the safest place for a relatively untested spell. “Give me a minute,” I told Janis and Cassandra, then I motioned to Pig to follow me into the bathroom.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Cassandra called.

  In the bathroom, I told Pig to sit, and then closed the door to make a little more room. I closed my eyes so that I could concentrate and held out one hand as I thought, “Raw chicken.” Almost immediately I felt a current run through my body, which told me the spell had worked. Then I heard something that made my eyes snap open.

  There was a chicken in the bathtub all right, and it was most definitely raw. So raw it was still covered in feathers, and alive. It scratched and pecked at the bottom of the tub and Pig started to whimper. Not because she wanted to eat it, of course, but because she was scared of it. She backed up until she had wedged herself between the sink and the toilet.

  “It’s okay, girlie,” I said, calmly. “Don’t be scared.” Sure, I was calm-talking to my dog, but inside I was freaking out. Then the chicken started to flap its wings, and with a squawk, took off, flying up to sit on the sink, sending Pig scrambling to get away from it. Crap! I thought these things weren’t supposed to be able to fly!

  I was looking at the chicken, and it was looking at me, and as though it had read my mind and wanted to prove me wrong, it took off again, this time forcing me to duck as it launched itself off the sink to fly up to the shower curtain rod.

  From outside the door, I heard Cassandra’s voice ring out loud and clear. “Oh, hi, Amirah!” Crap. Crap, crap, crap. Two seconds later, there was a knock on the bathroom door.

  “Who’s in the bathroom?” It was Amirah’s voice. Who the frick did she think was in the bathroom? And why was she back?

  I coughed as the chicken flew over to perch on the sink again. I shouted, “It’s me, just a minute!”

  “I forgot my toothbrush,” she said.

  I flushed the toilet. “It might have germs on it!” I yelled.

  “That toothbrush was three hundred dollars. I need it,” she called back. “And it has a disinfect mode, so it will be fine.”

  A three-hundred-dollar toothbrush? What? How? Was it solid gold? I looked around, thinking I could crack the door and hand it to her, but I didn’t see a toothbrush.

  “I don’t see a toothbrush!” I yelled, and flushed the toilet again.

  “Esme, are you okay?” Amirah asked, a note of concern creeping into her voice. “Do we need to call someone? It sounds like you’re about to break the toilet!”

  “I’m feeling better,” I said. “I’m just using the bathroom!” It wasn’t a total lie. “Are you sure your three-hundred-dollar toothbrush is in here?”

  “I’m sure,” she snapped. And then I saw it. It was right under the mirror, obscured because the chicken was sitting on it. I coughed again and shooed the chicken away. The toothbrush was solid white and looked pretty regular to me. I ran it under the faucet, and then cracked the door an inch and held it out.

  “Thank you,” Amirah said, and I shut the door. I heard nothing as I counted to five, and when I opened the door again, she was gone. Cassandra was sitting on one bed, flipping through the remnants of the Vogue Brasil, and Janis was crouched on the floor, between the bed and the wall, under a comforter, her eyes wide as bagels.

  “I hid…but still…did she just…?” Janis asked, pointing at the wall where Amirah must have disappeared. “I mean…I saw…no door?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And she has a three-hundred-dollar toothbrush that disinfects itself.” Then the chicken launched itself at the bathroom door, which I managed to shut just in time to keep it in the bathroom.

  “What’s going on in there?” Cassandra asked. I really didn’t feel like dealing with her right now.

  “Like I said,” I snapped, “nothing. I’m just getting ready for bed!” But my heart was pounding as I opened the bathroom door and ducked back in before the chicken could come out. I had somehow managed to double our hotel room’s illicit animal count and broken one of the Summit’s biggest rules in the process. I tried to think. Another one of the first spells Cassandra and I had tried and never really mastered was for bird manipulation, but I wasn’t sure how that was applicable in the current situation. What did I want to manipulate this chicken into doing? I didn’t think I could manipulate it into not existing.

  What I knew about chickens amounted to nuggets. Except birds needed nests, right? I grabbed one end of the toilet paper and pulled until I’d gotten almost all of it off the roll. Then I opened up the cabinet under the sink and threw the toilet paper in there in a pile. I looked back at the chi
cken. I’d figure out a long-term plan later, but right now I wanted it to go into the cabinet and be quiet. I held out one hand. “Avekinesis,” I said. The chicken’s onyx eyes were shifty, and I knew it was a formidable opponent. It stared at me and I stared at it and I held my breath. Then, finally, like it knew it was doing me a favor, it took off from behind the sink, and with a couple of wing flaps, landed on the floor. Then, taking its sweet time, it waddled over, jumped up into the cabinet, and started pecking at the toilet paper. I closed the cabinet door and exhaled. One problem postponed.

  With the chicken out of sight, Pig seemed to relax a little and started to inch away from the toilet. “Okay, Piggy,” I said. “I’m going to try this again.” I held my hand out and closed my eyes. This time, I imagined a steak, fully cooked, because the last thing I wanted to do was to conjure a cow. Suddenly, the smell of charred meat singed my nostrils. I opened my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. It was burned as hell, but it was a steak all right and it was definitely not moving.

  “Bon appétit,” I said to Pig, who wasted no time in devouring the steak. As soon as she had scarfed down the last bite, I pulled open the cabinet door to check on the chicken. It was still shredding the toilet paper, but it was doing so quietly and it didn’t seem to mind being in a dark box. Then I opened the bathroom door and Pig and I went back into the room.

  “Whatever you do,” I said, “stay out from under the sink, okay?”

  Cassandra didn’t even look up. “Sure,” she said.

  “I’m done with questions for tonight,” Janis said, pulling the covers up over her. “But won’t Pig also have to pee?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But she can hold it for a long time. She probably hasn’t had much water today.”

  “I gave her a La Croix,” Janis said.

  “You did what?”

  “I found a case under the bed,” she said. “I was drinking one, and she was giving me those eyes. You know those eyes?” I did know those eyes. They made you think that Pig had never eaten in her entire life. Still, what did a dog care about La Croix?