The Scapegracers
Dedication
Epigraph
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM?
LIKE BLOOD AND WATER
AT THE LATE-NIGHT DOUBLE FEATURE PICTURE SHOW
FEVERLESS FEVER DREAMS
HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS?
WE WHO ARE FIGHTING LOVE GOD
BETWEEN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH RIBS
LET ME TAKE YOU DOWN CUZ I’M GOING TO
GATHERING TONGUES WITH WHICH TO SPEAK
THE HOUSE OF THE SETTING SUN
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
THIS CHAPTER IS UNLUCKY
THINGS THAT SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE
REMEMBER THAT EDUCATION IS GOOD FOR YOU
IF TEENS DON’T HAVE SPIRIT, THEN WHAT’S THAT SMELL?
THE HOUSE HORROR WARNED YOU ABOUT
THE PERILS OF NOT BEING LOVELESS
A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC
PERMISSION TO CROSS THE THRESHOLD
SYMPATHY FOR, WELL, YOU KNOW
ABOUT THAT HOLE IN YOUR HEART
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
About-the-author
Copyright
Pages
Titlepage 1
Dedication 1
Epigraph 1
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM?
LIKE BLOOD AND WATER
AT THE LATE-NIGHT DOUBLE FEATURE PICTURE SHOW
FEVERLESS FEVER DREAMS
HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS?
WE WHO ARE FIGHTING LOVE GOD
BETWEEN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH RIBS
LET ME TAKE YOU DOWN CUZ I’M GOING TO
GATHERING TONGUES WITH WHICH TO SPEAK
THE HOUSE OF THE SETTING SUN
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
THIS CHAPTER IS UNLUCKY
THINGS THAT SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE
REMEMBER THAT EDUCATION IS GOOD FOR YOU
IF TEENS DON’T HAVE SPIRIT, THEN WHAT’S THAT SMELL?
THE HOUSE HORROR WARNED YOU ABOUT
THE PERILS OF NOT BEING LOVELESS
A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC
PERMISSION TO CROSS THE THRESHOLD
SYMPATHY FOR, WELL, YOU KNOW
ABOUT THAT HOLE IN YOUR HEART
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
About-the-author 1
Copyright-page 2
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
Y’all know who you are.
“Magic kills industry.” —Francis Bacon
“Hell is a teenage girl.” —Jennifer’s Body
ONE
BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS
The punch was the color of my first and second knuckles and it tasted like lye. It singed off the surface of my tongue. Between sips, if I angled my wrist just right, I could make my reflection glint off the surface, and warped little me could stare up from the depths of my Solo cup like an overgrown jackdaw. Which, like. Yikes. I made myself look literally anywhere else and ground on a last bit of chalk.
My sigil was enormous, six feet wide, maybe more. I’d drawn the lines on bold and thick, but it was anything but elegant. It looked like an astrolabe that’d been hit by a truck. White lines spiraled, switchbacked, zigzagged back and forth in a cacophonous mess, and all the jaggedy lines only just managed to squeeze themselves inside my gigantic hand-drawn circle. The chalk looked rough against the concrete floor, weathered like a three-day-old game of hopscotch. I could’ve done better, but this was my second cup of jungle juice. So.
Parties are too fucking loud. Like, I understand the bass is heavy and we’re drunk and whatever, but that doesn’t make shrieked lyrics of nasty bubblegum bop any easier on my ears. I pulled my knees to my chest and toyed with the frets in the denim. Soon enough, the unholy trinity would meander over here, and we could start things. My throat itched from the lack of starting things. I soothed the itch with more booze and fought back the urge to retch.
This was the first weekend in October, and the township of Sycamore Gorge doesn’t fuck around where Halloween is concerned. This was the dawn of scare-party season. First weekend was pre-costumes but well within the realm of the macabre, and house parties had to thematically follow suit to garner any interest whatsoever. Three years back, a little ridiculousness with a Ouija board and some rounds of Bloody Mary might’ve sufficed, but that sort of thing reeked of amateur hour now. Jing and Yates and Daisy were the longest-standing monarchs our school had ever seen, and I couldn’t fathom them tarnishing their reputations with a mind-numbing three hours of sitting around in silence, shoving a flimsy plastic planchette back and forth in hopes that Elvis might shimmy in from beyond the veil and tell them what was up. They needed something real to stay relevant, something genuine. Something that couldn’t be purchased at Party City for under twenty bucks.
Jing and Yates and Daisy are a whole lot of things, but they aren’t stupid.
They’d paid me forty.
Fog machines frosted the crowd in a milky, dreamy haze, and bodies twisted together under the strobe lights like a great meaty knot. Torsos flickered and drifted, denim-clad pelvises clattered together, and countless long, glow-stick-spangled arms waved red cups like beacons through the fog. Worn sneakers scuffed the ground. The partygoers all looked a little smudged, a little sickly, like they were either going to keel over or float away any second, and when I let my eyes fall out of focus, the whole bopping crowd blurred together into one churning mass, like a monster’s four-chambered heart. To my right, a straight couple I didn’t recognize dipped their tongues down each other’s throats. To my left, a leggy girl tossed her head back, neck impossibly long like a goose, falsies fluttering up over the whites of her eyes like she had a Hollywood devil inside her. A dudebro slopped punch on her Vans.
Daisy Brink came out of the darkness. She was dressed something like a pleated Creamsicle, and her lip gloss looked so sticky under the seizing LEDs that I nearly forgot for a second why I shouldn’t tangle with girls like her, no matter how tempting the prospect might be. Daisy dropped, sat crisscross, and gnawed on her poison-colored Ring Pop. It stained her incisors blue. She lowered the Ring Pop, waggled her brows, and toyed with the glow-stick choker around her throat. I made myself stare intently at the chalk. Right. No. There’d be no straight girls for me.
Yates and Jing emerged from the same gap of darkness as Daisy and took spots beside her, marking the third and fourth points on the circle. Yates had black-eyed Susans tucked in the curls of her afro and Jing wore an oversized hoodie and not much else. They both had a glossy sheen of boredom around them, heavy eyed and languid. Jing rolled her shoulders and slid her hands out of her pockets, eased her glow-bracelet-bangled wrists to the ground, and traced her bitten-down nails over the chalk lines. “So. Sideways. When do we start this thing?”
I skimmed my tongue over my teeth. I’d drawn out a five-pointed sigil. Hard to tell, because it wasn’t exactly Ye Olde Average Pentagram, but it was still five pointed in an abstract sense. You know, for tradition’s sake, or whatever.
There were four of us.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, so. We need a fifth person for the fifth point. Doesn’t matter who.”
“Couldn’t you have made a four-person spell?” Jing pulled a face and jerked one of her slash-straight eyebrows up into her hairline. “Whatever.” She smacked her lips. Her gaze whipped over my head and her pupils fixed on some lucky sucker behind me. She stabbed one of her fingers at whoever stood behind me, and her mouth curled up at the edges. “Hey. You. You like magic?”
I jerked myself around, craned my neck. My heart hurled itself against my rib cage and stuck there.
She must be new or something. I didn’t know her.
She was lanky, probably taller than me. Long and narrow. There were Band-Aids on her shins. She wore high-waisted shorts and a satiny basketball jacket. The fitted cap she wore cast shadows under her brows, and on top of that cap was a woven glow-stick halo. It shimmered down on her shoulders with a ghostly violet glow. Her hair was velvety black, so black it glinted blueish under the LEDs, and it hung in two raggedy fishtails that swayed around her waist when she moved. They swung back a little when she rocked on her heels, which she did presently, jabbing an inquisitive finger at her chest. Me? She snapped her bubblegum between her teeth and gave us a slow nod. “I sure do.”
“What’s your name?” Jing leaned back, shook her hair out with one hand, and loosened up the other into a lazy come-hither motion. “You should hang with us. This here is Sideways Pike. She’s a real bona fide witch, and she’s gonna show us something special.”
“Dope,” said the stranger. “I’m Madeline.”
“Well then, Madeline.” Jing waved her hand over the blank space on the floor beside her. “Take a seat.”
I was on the other side of that blank space. Jing, me, blank space. Madeline would be sitting next to me. Fuck.
Madeline sat down and sprawled back, pulled one of her thighs toward her chest. She hugged her arms around it and rested her chin on her knee. “So. We’re playing witchcraft?” Her voice was slow, a little raw, and she looked at my seedy sigil like it was a stained-glass window. Something glinted deep in her sockets, but it was gone before I could place it. She sniffed, knotted her eyebrows. “I could fuck with that.”
I opened my jaws and felt myself almost say something awful and significantly gayer than I intended, but I drowned the words before they could slither out. The last of my punch scorched my esophagus and burned off the lining of my stomach. Very gross, very fruit-punch-y. Reality fell a little out of focus. My limbs felt vaguely numb. I licked the grime off my teeth and crunched the Solo cup in my fist, thrust it aside, shook out my wrists and my fingers. Gooseflesh bloomed down the length of my spine.
I felt it now. The world was starting to prickle. Slowly, steadily, the air started to fizzle, and the radio-static air vibrated louder and louder until every follicle on my head stood on end. The feeling seeped from my pores inward, thrummed into my capillaries, my spider veins, the very meat of me, and the feeling went pitter-pat, itched for a strike or a spark. My eyes swiveled up in my skull and my vision swam. I couldn’t see anything but the milky fog and strobe lights crashing above us. The air was pale, bruise-lavender blue. It pulsed like it was alive, and I couldn’t see the ceiling above it. I clawed at either side of me, felt around for hands and found them with a lurch. On my left, that was Madeline. Her fingers were dead cold and calloused, and she took me by my wrist and held me tight. Jing grabbed my right hand. She gave me a little squeeze.
This was it. It was the crackle before a storm. My lungs pinwheeled and my body quaked, and my fake leather jacket was suddenly three sizes too small for me. The sleeves were bindingly tight, tight enough to jeopardize my circulation, and strips of fabric clung to my back like wet papier-mâché. It was suffocatingly hot and there was no chance I could shuck off my jacket now. Once a spell starts, I’m not so good at stopping it. I’d warned the three of them before I got paid.
The space between the five of us felt thicker, and particles science hasn’t named yet went ricocheting infinitely fast in the vacuum between our kneecaps. I couldn’t peel my eyes off the ceiling, but I knew what was in front of me without having to look. There was a presence in this basement. The shapeless, electric something shimmered over the chalk.
“Do you feel that?” The words whistled through the gap between my front teeth before I could stop them. The incantation had been brewing in my throat since this started. Now it fluttered up in my jaws, and I was just keyed up enough to open wide, to let it pour out. “All that power, do you feel that? All that bristling? The Pop Rocks in your skin? That’s it. That’s the magic crawling in. It’s that slow and raw and buzzing thing. If your bones are aching, let them ache. Let all of this sizzle and fester.” The misty air was blooming red spots above our heads—or maybe that was the blood in my temples. Adrenaline rammed through my ribs. My pulse quickened, thickened, turned into something else.
There was an inscription imbedded in my sigil. The incantation. I’d only practiced it a few times, but I knew it like a reflex, like a Hexennacht Hail Mary. It dripped off my tongue without effort or intention, and I didn’t self-edit, didn’t think about how anything looked, anything sounded, anything seemed. The words bled out and I didn’t stop to breathe.
“We’re inviting the liquid night, the molten magic. We’re inviting the star-spiked darkness inside and calling it to this circle. Our hands entwined are a chalice. Flow through us and spill. All this dancing is in triumph and our booze is all libations. We’ve brought you beats and lights and glamour, we brought fresh meat, new blood, and booze, and in return, we want some chaos. We want havoc. Bring us hell.”
A sound tore the crowd down the middle. The sound was thin and itchy, like dead skin tearing, and something wet splashed the back of my hands. I jerked my head down, hissed a breath through my teeth. The glow sticks: all of them had snapped clean in half. Plastic tubes sprang off limbs and clattered to the floor, and dancers’ wrists splattered rat-poison blue and scalding pink liquid from wrists to elbows. Madeline’s glow halo split and fell. Lavender chemicals trickled down her temples like from a candied head wound. Acid green pooled above Daisy’s collarbone. Jing’s forearms splashed phosphorescence on the chalk.
Yates balked. She tore her hands away from Jing and Daisy, yanked them to her chest with a force that propelled her backward, away from the circle. Her eyes stretched wide with terror.
I felt it like a smack.
The magic snapped back like a rubber band. It struck hard and all at once. I pitched forward, caught my hands on the concrete just in time to keep my head from cracking. My lungs slammed against my sternum and went ragged, and my nerves all twinged at once. My vision speckled like I’d stared at the sun. A jagged, painful pulse reverberated from my limbs to my core, and I heaved in a breath through my teeth, wheezed a cough. There was a whistling in my ears loud enough to rupture my skull. The crowd howled. People yelped and laughed, and someone was screaming, and it all blended into a single thorny cacophony. Voices had no definition. It was loud enough to cleave my brain into bits. I’d have covered my ears with my fists if I could, but I couldn’t seem to pull them off the concrete.
The world looked inverted and garish. I blinked a few times, tried to snap myself out of it, but all I could see were Jing’s teeth and how long and sharp they looked as she laughed. She jumped to her feet and out of sight, and she let out a triumphant cry just loud enough to cut through the ringing. “Fuck all of y’all. That was some magic.”
The room roared in response. Everybody eased up. Grimaces flipped into smiles . . . or most of them did, anyway. An out-of-sight DJ changed tracks, and the crowd sprang to life again. The glow on their splatted throats and arms made their already shadowy torsos look like voidspace. I couldn’t name the song that was playing, but I knew all the words, and so did everybody else, apparently. They all shouted along as they thrashed together, bobbing in the darkness, in the heat. The room sweltered and smelled like brine.
Magic doesn’t do well with being cut off early.
I wanted to throw up.
In the periphery of my vision, Jing shot finger guns my way and seized Daisy by the waist. She hauled her into the dancing throng. Yates scrambled close behind them, ducking between swaying couples in an attempt to match their pace. She didn’t bother making eye contact with me. Amid the waves of bodies, I thought I saw Austin Grass, whom I hated more than any other person who I knew in real life, put his arms around all three of them at once. Didn’t know you girls were into lezzie shit. Nice to have some hot ones around here with that Eas
t High piece, huh?
Usually, I’d be pissed, but fuck. It had worked. It actually worked. It worked with fucking witnesses.
I wiggled my fingertips against the floor, mostly to prove to myself that I still had fingers. My body felt pinched and cotton stuffed. Pins and needles shot down my shins and my body screamed stay down, stay down, but I didn’t. I put my feet underneath me, made myself crouch. My tongue felt thick between my teeth, and my cheeks felt raw. I forced my right hand off the ground and pressed it to my mouth, snagged the corner of my sleeve between my teeth.
Something dead cold and calloused locked around my wrist.
Madeline crouched in front of me. The strobe lights flashed on her eyes and her hair, and her whole body flickered like a phantom’s. If her hand wasn’t so icy, I’d think she was a dream. She wasn’t real enough to be real. Madeline ducked her head, forced herself into my line of sight, and her mouth twisted up into a grin. It was a weary half-grin, but a grin regardless. Teeth and everything. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her. She didn’t let go of my wrist. The way my skin pinched, she must’ve gripped it tighter.
Dull pain bloomed around her fingers, and I cleared my throat, tried to fish my voice out of my stomach. “I can’t hear you,” I said. It sounded like a mouthful of gravel. I tried to smile, but my face hurt too much to do it properly. I landed somewhere around a grimace. The strobe lights felt like rapid-fire ice picks to my temples and looking at her dead-on was tricky. She shimmered too much. I felt like my soul was leaking out of my shoes.
Her mouth moved slower. The syllables were syrupy and distinct. Follow me. She rose to her feet and dragged me up with her, cast a glance over her shoulder as she moved. She pressed her back against the kissing couple, who didn’t notice, and then she turned in slow motion, took a bracing step through the crowd. She led me toward the stairs, and I let myself be leashed along, my feet moving faster than my head. My heart twisted itself to bits in my chest, and I had the notion that it’d be a useless fist of cells by the end of the night, too worn to go on beating, because I was going to have a panic attack if this girl—or, really, any girl—liked me. I wasn’t built for this kind of emotional wear, I swear to God. I was built for skulking under bridges. This was too much.
The Scapegracers Page 1