The Scapegracers

by Hannah Abigail Clarke

  God, did I not pay for it? I hadn’t stopped to slap down money.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  If the server came over and I hadn’t paid, would they come looking for us? And find us here, on the stairs behind the clearly marked NOT YOU sign? We’d be thrown out. Not only thrown out, but likely forbidden to return.

  The stair opened onto what I assumed was the second floor. Jing wasn’t waiting there. I climbed faster, and in the process, I let my gaze fall downward.

  Between the steps, I could make out the checkerboard tiles below. Miles away, surely. I was in the sky without a net.

  I stopped mid-step.

  A cold chill shot down my body. I couldn’t make myself move, couldn’t make myself look away. If someone was coming up after us, they’d snag me without a hitch.

  There were a set of feet in my line of sight. They were feet in fuchsia heels. Slowly, agonizingly, I made myself look up at who they were attached to. Daisy stood there with one hip popped. One of her eyebrows was arched above the other, and she looked rather smug, smiling at me with all her dimples. She placed a hand on my shoulder. For a fraction of a second, I thought she was going to push me back. She didn’t. Her grip was cast-iron, and the pressure of her fingers on me reminded me that I needed to breathe.

  “You aren’t gonna puke, are you?” She poked my cheek with her free hand. It hurt, but not enough to piss me off. The sensation was grounding, and strangely comforting. It felt like something a friend would do, not that Daisy and I were friends—or were we? Admiration had to be mutual for friendship. I was coming to really like Daisy Brink, but she was impossible to read.

  “No,” I said. I wiggled my jaw and tried to summon up words to speak with. “I think I forgot to pay. If they see the unpaid tab, they might come poking around for us. I don’t know.”

  “Nah. You didn’t forget. You’ve already paid. They’re not going to come after us,” she said. She blew a bubble of sky-colored gum and snapped it in my face. “Stop freaking out. We have trespassing to do.”

  “I didn’t pay,” I insisted. Her gum smelled vaguely of raspberries, but it was hard to tell with the mysterious blue flavors. It didn’t smell like imminent demise, though, so I appreciated it.

  “Yes, you did. Your tab is paid. You left a damn good tip, too, if I say so myself.” She rolled her eyes. Daisy’s hand slid off my shoulder and knotted in the fabric of my shirt, and she gave it a tug, propelling me forward. “Come on, Sideways. Move your gay ass. I wanna see this witchy shit.”

  I moved forward, lured by her knuckles against my sternum. She walked up the staircase backward, which was terrifying, and made me somehow doubt Daisy’s initial hesitation at the bottom of the stairs. She was a powerful type of fearless. A dangerous type. Anyone who walks in reverse up a spiral staircase while chewing gum and dragging another person isn’t the type of person that one should take for granted.

  Wait.

  “Did you . . .?”

  She scoffed, pulled me harder. “I swear to God, don’t mention it. I’ll push you if you thank me. Now. Do you want gum? I lifted it from the gas station. Tastes like victory.”

  “Yeah, I’ll take a piece,” I replied, and I fought the urge to hug her or punch her or both. “Don’t do it again, alright? Next time is my turn.”

  “I don’t take turns. I just do whatever I want and either people play along, or I sacrifice them to the bleacher gods.” She twisted her gum into wispy strands with her tongue.

  “What the fuck are bleacher gods?” The door was in sight, thank the bleacher gods, and the two of us strolled off the stairs and onto a hardwood landing. Daisy and Yates were waiting there, blowing bubbles, and looking bored.

  Daisy pulled a box of gum from her blouse and tossed it toward me. I caught it onehanded, fumbled for a piece. She cracked her knuckles. “The bleacher gods are the mighty monsters that live under the football field. You know how we’ve never lost a home game, not in, like, two decades? It’s because we feed the gods. I like to feed them fuckboys. I push them off the bleachers, and we score.”

  I was fairly certain we’d lost the last homecoming game, but I grinned like a jackal, nonetheless.

  “It’s locked,” said Jing. She said this like she was announcing the weather: No big deal. Nothing of importance. “So. Who’s going to do the honors, eh? Daze, it’s you or me.”

  Daisy bounced on her toes. “Me. God. Totally me. Dibs.”

  “Be my guest.” Jing stepped aside, and Daisy dropped to her knees before the door. She reached into her hair and pulled out two pins, which she straightened and artfully plunged into the slit below the knob. She fiddled them around with her ear pressed against the lock.

  Yates winked at me.

  Within moments, Daisy jerked herself upright and wiggled the knob, and the door sprung open with a satisfactory click. She turned toward us, ecstatic, and took a bow.

  I clapped despite myself.

  Jing stood close to me and brushed the curls off my cheek. “She’s the family delinquent,” she breathed. “We love her dearly for it.”

  Yates peeked around the door on tiptoe and looked back at us with a nod. “I think we’re alone,” she said. She danced through the crack, and Daisy, Jing, and I all rushed in behind her. The door shut without our prompting.

  The archives were dripping with ghosts. White sheets covered chairs, tables, tall cylindrical somethings, boxes the size of cars. The darkness stretched back forever, and the ghosts around us were the only points of reference. There must be a handful of windows somewhere in the blackness, because I could make out the raw edges of cases and racks, but nothing was distinct.

  Yates moved for the light switches, but Jing stopped her with a flick of her wrist. “Phone lights,” she said, and she pulled out her cell as an example. Yates nodded, pulled out her own phone, and added a twin point of light. Daisy followed suit.

  I took out my phone, and the first thing on the screen was the effervescent Madeline Kline. She must’ve taken a selfie for her contact. Her likeness had a lopsided smile. I turned on the flashlight and pointed it into the black.

  “If we split up, we can cover more ground,” said Jing.

  “Screw that. This place gives me the creeps. Besides, that’s how people die in horror flicks,” said Yates.

  “We’re less horror flick and more Scooby-Doo. Besides. Remember Ghastly? The witches in the sisterhood split up, and they were fine,” said Daisy.

  “No, they were killed by that stupid jock,” said Yates.

  “We’re alone up here. There’s no one to kill us. And if an axe murderer does show up, Sideways can take him. We split up, and whoever finds the books first texts the rest of us where they are. Yates will stay by the door and tell us if someone’s coming. If anyone shows, we hide. There are ten thousand white sheets in here. Hide under one of the covered tables or something, you’ll be fine,” said Jing. She said it like a punctuation mark. There was to be no discussion. “I’ll take the left flank, Daisy’ll take the right. Sideways moves down the middle. Are we clear?”

  “Clear as crystal,” said Daisy.

  “Good.” Jing nodded at us and pivoted on her heel. She strode off toward the left. Daisy snorted, ducked to the right. Yates retreated and tucked herself beside the door.

  I was alone. I started forward.

  They must make their floral skull trophies themselves. On either side of me, shelves upon shelves of dry bones lined my path. There were some whole skeletons, wired together and posed in lifelike positions, as well as some in pieces. I spotted several half-finished rib cages wired to a few stray vertebrae, lacking arms and hips. Above each display piece in progress was a strip of masking tape with words like Raven and Grey fox and Jackalope written in fine-point Sharpie. One slot, which was mostly bare aside from a skinny white stick, was labeled Possibly human. Beside the corpse bits was a fish tank. I shone my light over it with morbid curiosity and recoiled as soon as the light hit the contents. Long black beetles scurried o
ver a meatless shoulder blade. I turned my phone back to the path and picked up my pace. My heart was in my teeth.

  The books on my back were like magnets. They rushed me forward, lurched at the slightest hesitation. The rest of the set were close, they were so damn close. I walked past the bones and into a sea of rectangles wrapped in corrugated carboard. They were large, flat, stacked with obvious care. The paper was marked with masking tape like the bones had been, mostly with names and dates. I didn’t pay much mind. Then, passing by a particularly large rectangle, the name on the label caught my eye. Simeon Solomon, it said, without a date. I caught myself, made myself look a little closer. Simeon Solomon? Boris had a thing about him. Made us all drive three hours to see a traveling art exhibit with literally only three of his paintings in it once. What the fuck was up with this place? Why wasn’t this on display downstairs?

  My bag felt increasingly heavy.

  I quickened my pace.

  These ghosts were shaped like people.

  It was undeniable. The white sheets rippled over heads and spilled past shoulders. They were motionless and taller than me, all lined up like servants meeting their master. The stillness unnerved me. I took a step back, convinced myself to breathe slowly. Statues. They had to be statues. Tall, broad statues.

  I gnawed on my tongue and reached for a fistful of sheet. The fabric was cool to the touch, softer than I expected it to be. I gave it a yank.

  The fabric came tumbling down.

  It wasn’t a statue beneath the sheet. It was a suit of fucking armor. Gleaming, quicksilver armor. It looked like it’d just waltzed out of Avalon. Its eyes were like coin slots, and it was muzzled with a strip of metal that jutted up like a beak. A ridge ran down the chest plate. The shoulder plates were rounded, iced with tiny floral insignias. Between its clasped hands, the suit held an elaborate broadsword, the blade of which was the same color as bubblegum foil.

  Alright. Kinda rad.

  “You scared the life out of me,” I mumbled in the armor’s direction. Curious, I tested the sword’s edge with my finger. It slipped through my skin like I was made of butter. I pulled away, curled my lip. “You don’t have to be a dick about it.” I re-covered the suit with the sheet and stuck my bleeding finger in my mouth.

  I took a few strides farther down the path.

  It hit me like a train. I pitched forward, braced myself against a shrouded metal chest to stay upright. My mind spiraled. My phone flew out of my hand and onto the floor, where it skidded toward another suit of armor. I fell to my knees, which made all my little cuts scream, but this was good pain. It was pain I recognized like an old friend. My phone buzzed, which meant I’d received a text, but I already knew what it was about. I felt it in my gut. Someone’d found the books. This thing I was feeling, it was magic, no doubt. I saw spots and pawed for my phone, snatched it up.

  The message was from Jing.

  Found it first, bitch. Second row from the left, toward the back.

  My mouth twisted up. I heaved myself to my feet, made myself stand despite the magic malaise. God, spell craft felt good in my bones. I didn’t usually feel it until I was working on some ritual. What were the other volumes like? Maybe they hadn’t sold them because the pure concentration of magic between each page was too much to sell. The sort of power that shouldn’t be put on a market. It made my mouth water. My vision wobbled, but I blinked through the blurriness and ran. I broke forward past endless shelves and stacks. The pathway narrowed and the unfinished exhibits loomed higher and higher, but I didn’t let up. My insides felt tight. My phone light strobed as I ran, bouncing over nameless shapes, making them look alive.

  I hit the end of the aisle. It opened into a wider path, one that branched off into other aisles filled with other bubble-wrapped unknowns. This place could be the behemoth mother of Rothschild & Pike, what with all the rarities and weirdness. Even in the back of the room, there were still enough bundled treasures to fill a modest museum. I held my breath, wrapped my arms around my stomach, and counted off rows until I reached the one Jing had texted about.

  Something girl shaped shifted in the dark.

  I paused, panting, and the shape stood up. Jing. Her phone’s light swiveled in my direction. I winced, shielded my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “What the fuck are you waiting for?” Jing waved me over, returning her light to a shelf. “I haven’t opened them yet. You’re welcome.”

  My hands shook. I took a step, then another, and then I couldn’t stop myself and sprinted to Jing’s side. I stood so close that our arms brushed. Her light was aimed at a spot just above our heads, and I raised my phone to join it. Together, we lit up the entire shelf, bleached it of all its color. I threw back my head and wanted to cry.

  There were seventeen volumes. Seventeen sublime volumes in dark leather, each more heartbreaking than the last. Something like love or hunger struck my chest. I thrust my phone at Jing, who caught it with a feline swipe of her hand, and I reached up with both hands to touch the books. It was like praising holy relics. I laid my hands across the spines, which shot a chill down my spine. My palms were hot, throbbing against the leather, and I plucked one of them from its place and brought it close. I held it against my stomach, wrapped my arms around it so tightly that they might’ve fallen off, and let my throat grow tight and itchy. Jing be damned—I didn’t care if she saw. She didn’t know what they were to me, and she didn’t have to. I fit my fingers on the snake emblem like I was pressing frets on a guitar and marveled at how neatly its corners fit against my body. It was like it used to be a part of me, some dark extra organ, and I was holding it close to its origin. My chest was where it was made. I felt my pulse in the binding. God, how was I going to let it go?

  I sat down, and Jing sat beside me. I placed the volume on my lap. Its weight on my thighs was delicious. I stroked the edges of each page, took a deep breath, and opened it wide.

  VOLUME V

  Wasn’t the next one, but who gave a fuck? I bit my tongue, turned the page.

  My still-bleeding thumb swiped across the paper, and the red smear soaked into the blank page and disappeared. The cut on my thumb zipped itself up.

  Ink bloomed across the page where I’d touched it. The letters floated up from the whiteness and arranged themselves in neat rows, drifting ever so slightly, like they were suspended in liquid.

  Hello, Sideways. This is not your book. It is someone else’s book. We only reveal our pages to those we’ve been given to, I’m afraid. Also, do not touch blades. They are designed for splitting skin, as you’ve observed, and the results are both messy and painful. We’ve fixed that for you.

  Hello, Jing. Reading over people’s shoulders is generally considered rude, but we are not judgmental. We would highly advise reading the first two volumes in their entirety. The contents might be to your liking. We feel like you might have an aptitude for it, based on your ability to read this alone.

  We thank you both for your time and apologize for any inconvenience.

  Best,

  Volume V

  The words sank back into the pulp, and the page was blank again.

  I stared at the blankness and waited. I didn’t breathe. My tongue was a dry, shriveled thing between my gluey teeth. I didn’t move. I didn’t blink. I waited for words to come back and spell something different. Congratulations, Sideways—you passed! That was a test of your tricky patience. But the page stayed blank. It was spilled milk. I stared until my eyes watered, or maybe they watered on their own.

  I closed the book, rose to my feet, and gently nudged it back in its place between two adjacent volumes. It was like I’d never taken it in the first place. All the books in a neat little row looked unassuming and undisturbed, much happier without my meddling fingers poking between their pages.

  Undeterred, I pulled the one on the end. Volume three, that was. Didn’t bother sitting down, just undid the latch, pushed up the cover with my thumb, looked down at the first page.

  Hell
o, Sideways.

  Reading in chronological order won’t change our answer.

  Our apologies. Take care.

  I put the book back unceremoniously. It made a hollow little clacking sound as the cover struck the shelf. The sound zapped through my capillaries like a lightning strike, and every single nerve in my body lit up at once. The books didn’t want me. Why would they? They were not mine. They would never be mine. They belonged to someone else, and why the fuck would they want to be mine when they could belong to literally anyone else on the planet?

  I took a breath, gnashed my teeth, and turned on my heel. Behind us were rows of antique vases, all blue glass and porcelain. I seized one by its skinny neck and dashed it against the floor. It exploded outward like a giant white raindrop. White powder and jigsaw shards skidded in every direction, and the sound echoed off the walls and ricocheted around in my skull. It sounded like everything crashing at once, the whole world and myself and everything I’d ever wanted. My heart bashed itself against my sternum, and now my whole body ached, and my lip trembled, and my hands rolled up into fists.

  Hands on my shoulders. Hands on my back. Cold hands, moving deftly as they pulled tassels of hair off my face. Straightening my jacket across my shoulders. Tracing down between my scapula. Resting there, at my core, while I remembered how my body worked well enough to sob. Jing didn’t say a word when the crying started. If she watched, she didn’t gawk enough for me to notice. I felt her nails press through the leather of my jacket, felt them etch little figure eights into the fabric. They danced back and forth, and I choked a little, twisted my mouth into ugly shapes.

  The rumble of adolescent magic was still raw inside me. Maybe that was the crying? Crying always turned my insides sour. Probably that. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and heaved another sob, but my eyes couldn’t give any more, and my throat ached too much to make a sound. Everything in me was curdled. I wanted to curl up tight and die.