Worse than seeing Luna is the idea of seeing Gabi, even though I never see Gabi until the third week of March, at a distance, on the edge of the Campus Center, Burberry scarf and Kånken backpack loaded with books, hurrying across the street to Cutter Ziskind, sucking on a latte, fingerless gloves, alone.
But I know a lot about what Gabi thinks, because I keep going on her “personal LiveJournal” (that I learned the URL of within five days of meeting her), where she writes really candidly, in lowercase text, about her feelings, and I learn that she’s deathly afraid of me, like, the mere idea of me has been giving her mega panic attacks, to the point that she even conceded to visiting one of those soul-retrieval shamanic healers in Northampton, she was so desperate (and every single benzo stopped really working for her years ago because she takes them multiple times a day). She thinks that if she sees me in a dining hall or something, I’m going to fucking kill her, and I start to believe in telepathy.
And the warlocks? Silence, aside from cryptic anons on Tumblr, until one Wednesday night post–econ seminar, when I take off my snow boots, twist the lock, and see blood dripping down my door. I clean it up, my mind numb as I gather the stained paper towels in a brown Whole Foods bag and lug the trash down to the big garbage bins in Chapin’s dining room. Red leaks from the brown paper bag, and I mop the floor with my scarf, which I really should wash anyway. No matter how many times I lather up, my hands are stained.
I take a shower, feeling the whole time like I’m about to face a dagger. The next morning, I compose a text to Charlotte, but don’t send it. I know the warlocks are planning something, I know we’re not safe, but I’m so close to swallowing my bottle of Zoloft whole, like a snake slurping down a nest of eggs, that I don’t care about the mongoose, waiting with claws.
It seems I’ve done everything I could possibly do, gone to the Title IX officer and talked to therapists and taken psychotropic drugs and joined a coven of witches and killed and smashed and hung more rapists than most judges probably ever sentence, I’ve tried so many different ways of feeling okay, and none of them has worked. I’m still as lost as ever, but now my compass is shattered, it’s dark, and all I do is sit on the edge of my bed, feeling some sense of accomplishment because I’m not under the covers, I have shoes on while I’m streaming Netflix and getting through approximately three sentences of the econ paper that’s forty percent of our grade. But he’s still there. On top of my desk, bleeding all over my stack of notes and textbooks. Talking incessantly—through my headphones, inside my mind, it seems—about bringing him back to life, about settling this, about the same old fucking thing he’s said at every possible moment since that time in my hospital room. “We could settle this. This could be over. You have to face me to get rid of me. If you had killed me, if you had closed the door on me, I couldn’t haunt you. You have to kill me yourself. Feel my blood between your fingers. Rip my head from my neck. Slice me up. It’s your only chance. It’s all you can do. You know you want it.”
Every day he says this, every moment I’m awake, I consider it more and more, I wonder if there’s a loophole, some fine line I’m missing, if the ghost is trying to trick me. Of course, he probably wants me to bring him back so he can kill me. I wonder if I’m capable of beating him in a fight. A magic fight.
With the rest of the coven, sure.
I don’t humor him, don’t tell him what I’m thinking (though I suspect he knows, that he’s been inside me all along). I go back and forth. I could try to get the body back—not a guarantee—and I could try to get the coven to work with me. I’d probably have to apologize to Gabi, to her sick face. Maybe that’s worse than just killing myself. I could just kill myself. I could drown in Zoloft, pour the whole bottle into my mouth and suck the pills down like the tapioca at the bottom of a cup of bubble tea. Or I could fucking stick up for myself. I could try. Exert more effort. Because, obviously, I haven’t tried hard enough already.
That’s all I can do. Try harder. Despite the damp, basement-locker-room feeling that Zoloft doesn’t erase, that no amount of ghost talk can unravel. Each day, every cherry-Popsicle dinner, time jogs forward while I sit and stare, my bed my palanquin; eventually I get scared enough to write most of the paper, but doing the bare minimum never feels like enough and never has. The sun rises and falls and I sleep through most of it. Not used to him, but used to feeling like I’m about to die, every day, all the time.
In my desperation, I try emailing Sienna, but all I get back is an automatic reply saying she’s away at a conference.
I try calling her, but she doesn’t pick up.
“I told you,” Tripp insists, dangling his severed head over the quilt at the foot of my bed, the one passed down from some great-aunt I never got to meet. “I told you she hates you. And why wouldn’t she? You’re trouble. You’re bad. You’re a disgrace to witches everywhere. You don’t even have the balls to fucking settle this.”
I take an extra Ativan, shutter the blinds, use a pair of twice-worn underwear as a sleep mask; I haven’t done laundry in five weeks.
On Tuesday, always a bad day (the French acknowledge this, mardi, Mars day, the planet of war and collisions and violent death and venereal disease), we get an email from the school stating that Professor Sienna Weiss, chair of the History Department, was involved in a fatal car accident in the early hours of the morning and has since passed.
I read through the email several times, trying to talk myself out of it, but there’s nothing else that can be done.
“Stop fucking gloating,” I tell the ghost. “I know you’re responsible. I mean, your followers are responsible.”
“You’d be surprised by the amount of influence I still have,” Tripp remarks.
Before taking the PVTA to Amherst, I stop by the Campus Center for a smoothie, figuring that Gabi won’t be awake this early and I should eat a fruit or vegetable or some kind of protein. I order a green smoothie, which tastes awful, and I end up throwing most of it away once I get outside.
I walk down the shallow architectural steps leading up to the Campus Center, catching a whiff of smoke from the congregation of European exchange students huddled at the edge of the green. Some guy in a sweatshirt, a straight girl’s boyfriend or prospie’s brother, passes on my left; I swerve to examine him.
There’s no one, just the preblizzard wind rattling the hinges.
I take out my phone to check the PVTA times.
“Watch out!”
I look up, squinting as the sun reflects off the mounds of cleared snow. The male voice reverberates and my knees buckle and I slip, bouncing down several steps, the impact so hard that the rip in my jeans splits and tiny rocks puncture my skin.
Out of the tight corner of my eye are two big-shouldered guys in Amherst sweatshirts, the tall, lanky one wearing women’s mustard-yellow platform shoes over white athletic socks. They sprint for the PVTA station, too fast for my bleary vision to catch.
At the bottom of the steps is some kind of crystal boomerang, obsidian.
A hand on my shoulder.
“Lee?”
I look up to see Luna, tingling capillaries crackling across her cheeks, cigarette cloud bringing out the tears in her eyes.
She helps me, slings my arm over her shoulder.
“I can walk,” I insist.
“Weak combat magic, that’s all,” Luna says. “Let me help you get back to Chapin.”
She keeps her arm around me. I fidget, hoping she’ll let me go, but I’m glad to have her touch.
“I feel so stupid,” I confess as we walk through Chapin’s foyer and up the stairs.
Luna brings me to my room but doesn’t step inside. “Are you hurt?” She probes my knee, frowning.
“I’m fine.” There’s blood, but it doesn’t hurt yet.
The next day, pus starts to leak from the scratched mess of my knee, the bits of gravel that I never picked out. I call Luna, then hang up before she can answer.
Five minutes later she knocks on my
door.
“I have rubbing alcohol,” she says. “Come on.”
We go to the bathroom and pull back the shower curtains. I sit on the clinical white edge of the accessibility seat in the largest stall, and Luna gets on her knees.
“Thank you,” I say.
“It’s fine,” says Luna. “I mean, you shouldn’t have put a bandage on this without cleaning it, but we’ll make it better.”
I grip the moist edge of the seat. She tears the Band-Aid off and digs into the wound, extracting the gravel and rubbing away the bits of crust.
“Fu-uck,” I say, the stinging unbearable.
“If you keep moaning like that people are going to think we’re having sex,” says Luna.
“Stop,” I murmur, tears in my eyes. “Stop, please.”
Luna takes the cotton pad away and rolls her bubbling San Pellegrino eyes. “It’s only going to get worse if you leave it.”
“I’m not going to leave it,” I protest, “I’m just taking a break because it feels like minor surgery when you do it.”
“You left it overnight,” Luna says, incredulous, her hand sweeping forward to sting my knee again.
I bite my lip, my fingers. Luna starts to talk, but I can’t seem to hear her. I close my eyes—I can’t look at her excavating the round bits of sidewalk from my cheesecloth flesh, skinless and mired in pus.
I crack an eye open. “Are you almost done?”
“Not yet,” she snaps.
She unwraps a new Band-Aid, presses down, ensures the adhesive sticks to my skin. “You’ll want to clean this again, tomorrow or the next day.”
I look at the shine on her lips, her folded legs, the strand of hair stuck to her lashes, and I remember what it’s like to feel, to have a body and not a young adult wasteland of arms, legs, and dead dreams, and when she starts to get up, starts to leave, I put my hand on her, start to cry.
She doesn’t move. “What is it?”
I know what I really want to say, but I stop myself. “Luna, I need to tell you something about Sienna’s murder.”
Luna frowns. “Lee, I think it was actually a freak accident. I called her sister to give my condolences. There was nothing suspicious.”
“Not Sienna.” I shut my eyes. “Well, yes Sienna, but I really need you to listen to me and not judge me and not call me fucking crazy. I can’t have anyone else call me crazy.” I take a deep breath. “Luna, I think Sienna’s death had a supernatural component. Not the warlocks. Another…entity. I think.”
“You think what?”
And even now, after everything, I can’t tell her. “I mean, I think we should go to the wake. Tomorrow night. To make sure.”
“Fine. I’ll ask the rest of the coven and text you.”
I clear my throat. “Wait.”
“What?”
“I miss you.”
Luna takes my hand away, slowly, with the ease and gentleness of an angel. “Lee, what happened between us—it’s over.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” I say, swallowing sobs. “We could try again.”
“No, we can’t. We can’t be together,” she says.
“Why?”
“It didn’t work out—”
“Because Gabi’s better and more attractive and smarter and just overall a more worthy human being than I’ll ever be?”
“No—”
“Because you were duping me all along? Because I was foolish enough to think someone could be attracted to me—”
“Lee, when we were together, I really felt—”
“I know, I’m ugly and I’m bad in bed and I couldn’t possibly compare to the unparalleled Gabrielle Avery—”
“Lee, you’re beautiful, it’s just—”
“You hate me, you hate me like everyone always hated me and I should just douse my face in antifreeze, it couldn’t possibly look any worse—”
“You could stick your head in an oven, also,” the ghost suggests.
“Lee,” Luna says, her own voice breaking, her face in her hands. “What we had was real. But I can’t be with you.”
I wipe my snot with a sleeve and sneeze. “Why not?”
Luna averts her gaze. “Because of what you did to Gabi? Because sleeping together once isn’t the same as dating—”
“You’re going to take Gabi’s word for it?”
“I believe women when they say someone attacked them, yes.”
Silence ricochets off the white tile, splattered with layers of shampoo and St. Ives apricot scrub.
I gulp. “She hurt you—”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
I scoff. “I was defending you. I was avenging you. I was trying to show you how much I care—”
She shakes her head in frustration. “By putting persuasive potion in bubble tea? By the way you treated Gabi like shit from the beginning? By always escalating everything, the fucking Hanged Man idea, and the hotel—” She stops, stunned, as if her tongue has been seized by metal clamps.
“Please, go on. You haven’t even made it past December.”
She slams her eyes shut. “I can’t. I won’t.”
“You don’t get it.”
She laughs, and tears leak down her cheeks. “Yeah. I guess I don’t.”
“I saved us. I defended us.”
Luna stands, grabbing the bottle and bandages. “I do not need to be saved.”
“No, I guess not.” I don’t want to go there, but looking up at her, I can’t help it, I’m a slave to my worst mind. “You certainly know how to use a knife.”
Luna turns around, uncaps the rubbing alcohol, and pours the whole bottle onto my knee.
The raw flesh hisses on contact, and I scream, as if someone is going to come and help me.
The ghost just laughs.
Luna screws the cap back on, and with a low “Fuck you, Leisl,” walks out of the bathroom.
The ghost emits a low whistle, then a gloating chuckle. “What is it about bathrooms?”
I ignore him, wishing with my whole body that Luna will turn around, swaddle me in her arms, kiss me, and want me so much that all of my mistakes evaporate like stray dew under the naked sun.
I sit there, moaning, sobbing, not strong enough to help myself, full of excuses and hate and exhaustion. Not even the lone sophomore pushing past me to grab her shower caddy bothers to ask me if I’m okay.
Sienna’s wake is at a local funeral home, off a commercial stretch of postindustrial New England where people probably sell heroin in the off-hours. Apparently Sienna’s mother was a passionate Catholic convert, and the rest of the family followed suit (I heard Sienna’s sister, who was previously complaining about the lack of gluten-free Holy Eucharist options at the church where they’re holding the funeral, explain to an aunt that Sienna’s spiritual convictions were unknown), so the wake is the traditional open-casket, praying-on-each-bead-of-the-rosary deal. I stumble in my job-interview heels, wondering if I should have researched what witches typically do for funerals, if that kind of information is even written down.
I greet several professors I know and a couple of Sienna’s older thesis students before joining the line, giving my condolences to Sienna’s family, and kneeling before the casket. After an Our Father and a Hail Mary, I rise, willing myself not to look inside the casket, but I can’t help it. Sienna lies embalmed, hands over her chest, her many rings going with her to the grave. I still suspect the warlocks, or the ghost, but even I’ll admit that Sienna’s corpse doesn’t have any obvious markers of foul play.
“I would agree,” the ghost says in my ear. “She looks pretty damn peaceful for a dead person. Maybe you’re just a crazy paranoid bitch—sorry, witch—after all?”
I find Luna and Charlotte by the light assortment of cheese, crackers, and beverages; Charlotte sips a Diet Coke and complains about the lack of alcohol.
“You should come to an Irish wake,” I tell her.
Sienna’s death keeps us talking, without us having to talk about ourselves.
We collectively white-out Sienna’s faults, her spurning of the coven, the limitations she placed on our magic; Luna in particular is red-eyed and somber, saying she aspires to be just like Sienna when she’s teaching English, “Equally intimidating and inspiring, with great shoes.”
Luna is still convinced Sienna’s death was really an accident.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. A death is just a death,” says Charlotte unhelpfully.
Luna starts talking about ancient Greek funeral customs, and it’s almost like old times, until Gabi emerges from the bathroom, posture rigid in a too-small black velvet dress and pointed stilettos. Her pantyhose are ripped down the calf.
Luna and Charlotte surround Gabi and follow her to the door. Gabi takes Luna’s hand and, as if to mock me, to say, She’s mine, I won, pauses in the doorway to kiss Luna openly on the lips, then checks her phone, lights a cigarette with magic before sliding her phone back into a metallic clutch that still has the tags on it.
I lunge forward, seize Gabi by the wrist.
“You do realize, now that she’s dead, there will be no renewal at the full moon,” I say. And my magic is gone forever, I don’t say.
Rather than punching my already knotted gut, Gabi tugs her hand away from me, sniggers, and lights Luna’s cigarette with a snap of her fingers.
The only person who meets my gaze is Charlotte, though she doesn’t say anything either.
It takes all of my willpower to hang back, drink my Sprite, make pleasant conversation with the youngish history professor bemoaning that Sienna didn’t finish her last project, on representations of the Goddess in the early Middle Ages during the transition from paganism to Christianity. Between carbonated sips and interjections of “Interesting,” I think of Luna’s ruby nails, her laugh, her smudged eyeliner, the shape of her dress, even when Professor Whatshername starts sharing the grisly details of Sienna’s death, how it was a hit-and-run, some large SUV slammed into the driver’s door and Sienna suffered massive head trauma and the ambulance didn’t get there in time.
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