Consensual Hex

by Amanda Harlowe

  “Does she think the grimoire’s in the frat house?” Luna asks me as we’re getting ready.

  I slip on a pair of Luna’s vintage Calvin Klein jeans, caught in a brief reverie about us sharing an apartment postgrad, swapping clothes like two girlfriends who are miraculously the same size even though we’re just friends who are miraculously the same size. “The frat house is probably a solid guess for a first look.” I slam my hands into the tight front pockets to stop them from trembling.

  “You look great in those,” says Luna. “Keep them if you want.”

  We get off the PVTA in Amherst, pass the elegant French bistro my mom keeps talking about going to when she visits, a banh mi shop identical to the banh mi shop in Northampton, and the art house theater, before skirting by Amherst’s spacecraft-meets-Brunelleschi white domed campus and filing down a dim, unsettlingly idyllic road of dead robber barons’ bright Victorians. We reach the hedges barring the raucous Sigma Beta Zeta fraternity house from the street; Charlotte kicks aside a beer can and coughs into her elbow. A stray cat bolts out from under the hedges, scurrying across the street. Luna frowns, flinches.

  “Everyone got their talismans?” I check.

  We flash our NARS, menstrual cup, scissors; secure them into the deep zippered pockets of our coats.

  Charlotte reaches into her pocket and removes a tiny bottle labeled INVISIBILITY, 50 ML.

  “Is that from last week’s practice?” I ask her.

  “Yeah, remember when you were showing off your levitating skills to Sienna and Luna was on the phone lying to Gabi about where we were? I slipped this into my pocket. Thought we might need it.”

  “I wasn’t lying to Gabi, I told her we were studying,” Luna insists.

  “I wasn’t showing off,” I chime in.

  “Okay, ready or not.” Charlotte unscrews the top of the vial. “Lee, can you look at my poli sci paper tomorrow if you have time? I really need a decent grade on this one.”

  “Haven’t you already turned it in?”

  “I mean, I was going to email Meyer and be like, Professor, I need an extension because I have plans to hex rapists tonight, but as cool as Meyer is I don’t think she’s going to believe in magic without seeing the evidence.” Charlotte sips a minuscule amount of the potion before handing the vial off to Luna.

  Charlotte coughs and grimaces. “Warning: It tastes like shit.”

  Luna shakes her head. “Char, you’re kind of klepto.”

  “Urban Outfitters doesn’t count.”

  Luna takes the potion, then passes it to me. The potion indeed tastes like shit.

  “If we mix this with alcohol, could we die?” Charlotte says, just as her image disintegrates like pixels shattering into hundreds of rainbow pinpricks.

  “It won’t kill you,” Luna assures her, head and hands floating without a neck or limbs.

  Once we’re all invisible, Charlotte and I join arms, hug Luna goodbye (Luna assures us, “I’ll pick up my phone if there’s an emergency, I actually have the ringer on and everything”), and approach the house. The open windows reveal a swath of bodies mashing together in a cloudy film of sweat and spillage from red Solo cups, a vision of a college experience I never wanted to have: constant purging of the contents of your stomach, hazing, a herpes diagnosis at the end of your first semester because abstinence education fails in the real world.

  “Why are they all wearing ski goggles?” I ask Charlotte, eyeing the assortment of faces obscured by neon plastic.

  “It’s an eighties Aspen theme party. You have to dress up to get inside,” says Charlotte.

  “Um, what about when this potion wears off?” I say, pointing my unseen finger to my invisible head.

  Charlotte’s voice: “I got you covered.”

  The garage door shudders and starts to rise. We leap back into the overgrown vines and watch a sparkling blue Rolls-Royce—with a baseball-sized hole in the windshield, cracks circling outward like a multithreaded crater—hobble into the empty left space under a precarious string of mountain bikes, no helmets.

  We duck under the garage doors just as they start to close again.

  The driver exits the car, fists balled, lush mouth directed down in a sneer. “Dammit!” He wears a ragged crew neck AMHERST COLLEGE sweatshirt, maroon, which draws all the color from his sallow, pointed face, a face I can’t believe I ever considered attractive.

  Charlotte reaches for my shoulder—her fingers are short, fine-boned.

  “Tripp, you’ve had weeks to figure this out,” says the passenger, a rotund redhead in LAX sweatpants. “Can’t you get it fixed before your dad finds out?”

  “It wasn’t a problem until I found out my dad is going to visit. And I don’t have my credit card anymore,” says Tripp, leaning against his car in a sour position of despair. “My dad took it away after spring break last year.”

  The redhead pries open the trunk and withdraws a lacrosse stick. “I don’t know how to help you, man.”

  He reaches farther into the trunk, his words muffled until he reemerges with a pair of hideous mustard-yellow platform shoes.

  I plant my hands over my mouth.

  “I didn’t ask for your help,” Tripp snaps. “I just told you to stay quiet.”

  The redhead inches toward the makeshift steps up to the house. Tripp follows, reaching into his pocket and removing a red-white-and-blue fidget spinner.

  The redhead turns. “Bro, I’m not the one with the vendetta, or whatever.”

  Tripp claps him on the back, jovial. “What are you talking about?”

  “That girl. You shouldn’t go after her. It’s too risky. Think of that detective who came to our house and Alpha’s, asking about Clara Dale. I know you’ve got methods of keeping out of trouble, but—”

  Tripp raises his hand, squeezing the fidget spinner. The redhead crumples to his knees, jaw clenched, as if held down by a massive pair of unseen hands.

  “Never say that name,” Tripp snaps.

  Charlotte squeezes my jean-clad knee, which is starting to come into focus. I resist the urge to sneeze, my hand jostling one of the bikes hanging on the wall.

  Tripp spins. “Sean? What was that?”

  Tripp lets Sean go. Sean raises his lacrosse stick. The fidget spinner flies out of Tripp’s hand and starts circling the garage like a drone.

  Tripp prowls toward me. I clamber out of the way, cloistering myself in the sliver of space between the trunk and the garage door.

  He scans the area and sighs. “Weird.”

  The fidget spinner flies back to his hand.

  Tripp seizes the platform shoes, joins Sean, and slams the door. His voice trails off into the house: “And you’re being fucking paranoid, you know—”

  The warlocks gone, Charlotte and I leap out from our hiding spots and rub our emerging calves, shoulders, lips, and noses.

  “Just take the grimoire,” I say. “Sienna told me as long as we take the grimoire away, anything else they’ve imbued with power will die, in magical terms.”

  “Thanks for knowing everything,” Charlotte mutters, with an eighth grade sort of eye roll. “What a shit invisibility potion. How much of this stuff would you have to take to, like, rob a bank?”

  “It was only enough potion for practice,” I say, trying to keep my voice from trembling. “Sienna doesn’t want us to rob a bank.”

  “Shame,” says Charlotte, tugging at her now-visible denim jacket.

  She reaches into the front pocket of her backpack, pulls out two winter hats, a pack of metallic Sharpies, a can of spray paint, and a knife. “Lee, if you put your hair up no one will recognize you,” she says, handing me a pom-pom hat with the Yankees logo.

  I stare at the hat. “You know I’m from Boston, right?”

  “Exactly. Oh, I have ski goggles too. Which double as a disguise.”

  We place our ski goggles over our eyes. My world turns a faint slime yellow.

  Charlotte takes the Sharpies and spray paint, slipping the knife in
to her boot.

  “Just in case,” she says.

  “Wait, let’s get a handle on what we’re actually doing,” I say. “I’m searching for the grimoire, Luna’s our backup, then there’s the curse and general intimidation—”

  Charlotte indicates her jeans pocket; she’s got another potion, but I can’t see the inscription. “I’ll take care of that,” she promises.

  We enter the house, the pulsating mass of bodies gyrating half-conscious like a group of rotting corpses animated by strings. I wade through empty pizza boxes and rolling beer cans, sticking to the periphery of the crowd. Someone hands me a drink; I don’t dare taste it. All I see are blockish heads fitted with ski masks and hideous neon goggles. Long hair, blond and brown, brushes the bottoms of crop tops peeking out from Canada Goose puffer jackets. The Sigma boys almost universally chose Barney-purple windbreakers.

  “Hey!”

  I turn. A thick-necked upperclassman in a hockey jersey, red goggles, is staring at me. He’s not one of the warlocks, at least the ones we identified from Facebook. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  I step toward him. “What?”

  He leans back in his chair. “Lean down, I can’t hear you.”

  I crane down to hear him better.

  An invisible hand seizes the zipper on my hoodie and yanks it down to expose my chest.

  The warlock sniggers; I take my drink and slosh it across his face.

  He blinks, droplets of amber-gold beer hanging off his goggles. I toss the red Solo cup at his broad chest and bolt through the crowd, pushing past grinding couples and swaying stoners, tangles of frat boys breaking apart chopsticks for sake bombs, red-goggled warlocks lifting girls’ skirts with the wave of a hand, until I see Charlotte, holding a Solo cup with murky punch.

  “Don’t drink that!” I reach for the drink, and Charlotte swerves at the same time so the punch spills all over her On the Banks of Plum Creek white crochet blouse.

  “Sorry! Sorry.” I drop the cup.

  “S’fine,” says Charlotte. She reaches for her phone, checks the time. “I was going to shotgun a beer out back with these kids I just met. Wanna join us?”

  I frown. “We have a task here.”

  Charlotte rolls her eyes. “Who made you the mom?”

  “Luna’s the mom. I just want to find the grimoire and get out of here.”

  “Luna’s the cool mom who provides a basement where you can drop acid so you don’t do it on the beach at night. You’re just no fucking fun.”

  I reach for the tiny backpack slung over her shoulder, where she has the spray paint. “I’ll do this,” I tell her. “Where’s the other potion?”

  Charlotte flinches away from me. “Nah, I love vandalism.”

  “Fine. Get to it.”

  Charlotte disappears into the crowd, and I start looking for the grimoire, even though I have no expectation of retrieving it in only one night, just getting a sense of where it might be among the empty beer cans and lopsided floorboards.

  Parties like this make me feel like I’m drowning in the mistakes of alternative selves from parallel universes; my stomach curdles and my chest is tight and the bass is giving me the sort of sinus headache you might get from having your skull crushed, nose shattered, and ears torn off by one hundred pairs of Ugg- and Sperry-clad feet, soles eroded by sand, yacht floors, and privileged disregard. Beer cans ricochet across the room; warlocks ski down the stairs, avoiding skull-splitting death via timely levitating somersaults; one girl even has her bra and shirt removed with magic, but she’s so wasted she just keeps dancing, and her friend has to guide her arms into a borrowed cardigan.

  I’m close to leaving, taking an Uber home, calling Luna and telling her I’m not fit to be a witch, to be brave, to do anything that involves large crowds of the sort of kids who used to kick me into thorns and puddles and keep me up at night with rewound fantasies of their cruel brains splattered on the gym floor. Maybe there’s no such thing as justice and maybe we’re better off erasing all our memories of John Digby Whitaker III and redirecting our girl gang efforts to massive wealth acquisition, but then I see Gabi, arms slung around the shoulders of one of the long-brown-hair girls in Lululemon and heavy contour.

  They kiss, sloppily, then Gabi sees me.

  “Lee,” says Gabi, meeting me at the punch. “You won’t tell her, right? Promise?”

  “You mean, I won’t tell Luna? Your girlfriend?”

  “Yeah. I’ll talk to her later. It’s hard to explain.”

  “It’s complex, sure.”

  “Thanks.” Gabi relaxes. “Everybody makes mistakes.”

  “Everybody has those days,” I reply, but Gabi doesn’t get it.

  We stare at each other, having nothing to say.

  I clear my throat. “She loves you.”

  Gabi frowns. “She called me.”

  “Luna?”

  “Yeah, she told me all about what Sienna’s having you do with the grimoire. So I came over to help the coven.”

  My stomach curls into a knot. “She told you?”

  “Yeah, I’m meeting with Sienna next week so she can catch me up. Honestly, I’m pretty pissed none of you told me until now. I mean, the warlocks attacked me, not any of you—”

  I’m about to pick up my phone and call Luna when we hear a shout, a cry for help.

  Three of the frat brothers race up the stairs—stalked by a floating bottle of vodka.

  Charlotte races to us, zipping the can of spray paint into her backpack as she runs.

  “I’m done. And I stole a dirty sock, for scrying,” Charlotte assures us, and Gabi has no time to explain her presence before there’s a crash upstairs.

  We bolt after the noise and arrive upstairs just as a set of NHL-sized brothers wielding lacrosse sticks—muddy Titleist golf balls whizzing around their heads—narrowly prevent Sean, the redhead, from vomiting over the banister (he vomits into a bucket instead). One of the bedroom doors swings open, the doorway soon filled by the upperclassman who unzipped my jacket (his eyes Pepto-Bismol pink, oozing yellow discharge, his blond head shedding like a pine), and John Digby Whitaker III, otherwise known as Tripp, his slim face breaking out in fierce red hives.

  Tripp flings a tiny vial in our direction. It lands at my feet (FOR ENEMIES, 100 ML).

  “Enchanted lax sticks? Seriously?” Charlotte says, breaking the silence.

  Tripp grins, looking straight at me. “Heidi, right?”

  I lunge forward, seize a lacrosse stick, and knock it over Tripp’s head.

  He cries out. One massive hockey player steps toward me, hands outstretched, but Charlotte slips between us, sticking her fingers in her mouth.

  She whistles, then yells: “FIRE!”

  All the warlocks, minus Tripp, and most of the party downstairs, stop what they’re doing, glancing around with disoriented stares. The partygoers start to exit en masse.

  I take the lax stick and run, Charlotte and Gabi behind me.

  “Don’t you bitches come back here again!” Tripp shouts, scratching at his face.

  “We’re witches, you bastards,” Charlotte screams back, seizing me by the hand and drawing me into the crowd, which feels like a mass grave, teeming with bones and birds and plague germs, Charlotte’s fingers standing in for salvation, the kind that always shows up in movies right before the protagonist dies but in real life doesn’t come until your eyes have been chewed up and swallowed by vultures.

  The law of mutually assured destruction prevents Gabi from flipping her shit about not being included in the hunt for the grimoire, because if she freaks out at me, blames me, points her sanitized finger solely in my direction like I know she wants to, I’ll tell Luna about Gabi acting out every teenage lesbian’s fantasy about straight girls, “who are just like pasta, straight till you get ’em wet” (Charlotte, after gin, recounting a Quad party conquest, where there were also a lot of high femmes, so it was impossible to tell who were the straight girls, especially when you consider the bi
sexuals).

  Gabi may overestimate the significance of her insights about Sappho, but she isn’t stupid. In tiny actions she makes us even, stacking rocky little sugar cubes one by one until she forms a pyramid that rivals the tower I built to hold her secrets, a tower I could fling her from, live and burning, with the phrase that one time at Amherst. The worst moments are when Charlotte is too busy getting stoned to come slurp ramen or hoard crappy naan on Indian nights at Comstock, so I’m alone with Gabi and Luna. After an hour of Gabi just not being able to hear me over the din, we wrap up in pea coats and plow through the total dark of early November seven o’clock. New England autumn is immortal only in eighties schoolboy films with heavy homoerotic subtext, or songs about leaves and lost love—in reality, it was eighty degrees most days until last week, when the thermometer plunged and my mom FedExed me a box of wool and the L.A. girl down the hall rejoiced, because soon there would be icicles, and she’d never seen one. This is the single week when the retirement of summer is vibrant orange and smoky and nostalgic, before the world adopts the frozen color of a hospital ward.

  It goes like this: Gabi holds Luna’s hand, whispers in her ear, kisses her cheek, all the while making it impossible for me to walk next to them, so I follow them like a jester, a true third wheel, Gabi always unable to hear me, always out of earshot, until Sienna’s formal lecture when Gabi makes a point of viciously deconstructing my painstakingly rehearsed comment about witchcraft, Calvinist predestination, and Beyoncé. Sienna looks up from her notes and agrees.

  “I just think it’s a stretch, Leisl,” Sienna tells me when I confront her after class. “And Beyoncé as a subject of academic inquiry is so overdone.”

  At magic practice that night, my mind is brimming with revenge. So when we’re practicing making potions and Charlotte comes up with a bad batch, takes the whole cauldron and goes to pour it down the drain, I stop her, insist that she’s a great potion maker and I’m sure her current concoction will turn me invisible, no reason to waste all that effort. And when Gabi is too busy engaging in obnoxious PDA with Luna to notice me switching her cauldron with the fishy brew I just acquired from Charlotte, and when Gabi tastes it and vomits, I can’t say there isn’t a part of me that doesn’t enjoy watching her retch, her face drawn, chest heaving, glazed eyes reflecting an atrocity.