Jing and Daisy abruptly looked up from their phones. Daisy’s distracted stare split into a grin. Jing looked over her shoulder at me, and something flashed in her eyes. She glanced back at Daisy, then at Yates, and then she quirked her brow. “Go on,” she said. “What kind of creeps are we talking, here?”
“Gives me the shivers. Prickles the hair on my arms, you know?” Yates shook her head. “I don’t like it. It’s weird. This whole room is weird. It was already slasher city. Now it’s, like, begging for Jason Voorhees to pop out and stab us all to death.”
“Fantastic,” said Jing.
Daisy bounced.
I slid my hands in my pockets. “Did I give you the shivers when you met me?”
Yates paused. Tilted her head to the side. “Yeah, I think.”
“Lila Yates, I adore you.” Jing rubbed her hands together. “I think we’re done here, fellas.”
“Agreed.” Daisy flipped her hair over her shoulder and shifted her weight from foot to foot, like she was getting ready to fight someone. “God, I’m so hype I could kill something.”
“And maybe you will,” said Jing. “Save that for Friday, though. We need to be here at eight. They’ll be here at nine. It’s going to be apocalyptic.”
“Dope.” Daisy took a selfie, tucked her phone in her bra, and gave me a crooked glance. “Let’s take Sideways home before her daddy and her daddy get nervous.”
“Let’s,” Jing agreed. She turned away from our masterpiece, took me by the wrist, and led me toward the door.
“I’m going to be out on Friday night.”
I sat across from my fathers, who looked gaunt under the electric chandelier. We were nearly done with dinner. Yellow bones, now stripped of meat, sat in stacks on mismatched china. I played with a saltshaker. Julian was doing a crossword and Boris was supplying the ambiance with some story about his travels abroad.
Julian screwed up his mouth, stuck his pen behind his ear, and looked up from the newspaper. Ink blotted his fingertips. “Out? Didn’t you go out last weekend?”
Boris scoffed, clapping Julian’s shoulder. He waggled his brows at me, flashed me a smile. His hair, more lacquered than usual, caught the light like it was plastic. “Julian, Julian,” he said. He moved his hand from Julian’s shoulder to the nape of his neck, smoothed down a few rebel curls. “Sideways is going to be in college next year. Learning how to balance a social life with schoolwork is important. Wouldn’t you rather her explore things now than in university? Remember what happened when you waited until university, sweetheart. We don’t need that for Little Miss Black Sheep, now do we?”
Julian’s eyes popped out of his head. He opened his mouth, made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, and looked between the two of us beseechingly. “That’s not fair,” he started, then stopped. The pen behind his ear slipped and landed on his dinner plate. The clatter echoed off the walls. Julian sighed, plucked it up, and wiped it on his sleeve. “I’m not saying that you’re not responsible, dear. I’m just concerned. I’m not going to make you talk about last Sunday, not if you don’t want to. I just want you to be safe. Whatever you’re doing, I’m not positive that you’re doing it responsibly.”
“Trust me.” I leaned back in my chair and forced my eyes to stick to the tablecloth. It looked like a slab of Victorian wallpaper, yellowed at the edges and everything. I licked my gums. “This weekend isn’t going to be like the last one. I’ll call you if anything goes wrong.”
“Ah.” Julian did not look convinced. He looked at me for a long moment, unblinking, like there was something specific he was expecting to discover. I don’t think he found it. He looked back down at his crossword, absently outlined the edge of the puzzle with his nail. “Five letter word. Means ‘To influence with allure or magnetism.’”
“Charm,” said Boris.
“Witch.” I leaned back in my chair, rocked it on its hind legs. “Thanks for dinner. I’m going to bed.” I rocked the chair back into place and stood up, pushed it in. Pulled fistfuls of my hair off my face and turned and headed toward my room.
“Goodnight,” Boris called after me.
“You know,” said Julian as I walked away. “Witch fits.”
“Then use it,” said Boris. “How often do you get to throw around a word like witch?”
There were papercuts in the darkness. Together, they read 3:04.
Shapeless shadows floated around my room, and my furniture lost its edges. Everything flowed into a single, hazy mass. My eyelids were sticky. I rolled over, pressed my face into my pillow, and tried to smother sleep back into me. Fuck waking up at 3:04. I had better things to be doing.
Before reality had yanked me back, I’d been somewhere else. I think it was vaguely the football field. Not our football field, but the one from the movie. The grass wasn’t green like it should’ve been. It was pale, soft, the color of mint chip ice cream. I was laying on the grass. My wrists were zip-tied behind me.
My mind left out the ritual part. There wasn’t a circle of Ghastly girls, either, or at least, not anyone from the movie. There was only one girl. She knelt beside me and pushed my hair out of my eyes. Her nails crisscrossed over my scalp, down the back of my neck. Eyes half-shut. Lips parted.
Damn 3:04 to hell. I wanted to go back to the part where Madeline Kline was murdering me, thanks.
The sheets snaked between my ankles. It was too hot, but not hot enough to kick all my blankets off. If I went without, I might catch hypothermia and wake up without fingers, or something like that. I rolled again, faced away from the alarm clock. I stared at a spot on the wall.
There just so happened to be a mirror on the wall. The mirror reflected 3:05 with excruciating brightness. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice it. It was like a mosquito bite, ugly and red and unignorable.
“Screw off,” I said to nothing. My voice was thick and gluey.
“Oh, don’t mind me. Just stretching. You have school tomorrow morning. Ought to rest up, don’t you think?”
I snapped my jaws shut. My eyes froze on the mirror. My lungs hurtled to a halt.
“Hush. Go back to sleep, baby Scapegracer. Close those heavy eyes. Dream about spell craft and pretty, wicked women. Dream that you are dreaming right now. You’ll wake up in the morning and be ready. All is well.”
My eyelids fell obediently shut. Muscles uncoiled. The bed seemed to swell, swallow me up. The crooked springs turned soft. Everything was easy, everything was smooth. My breathing slowed down.
“Who are you?” I barely moved my lips, barely had the energy required. Something might’ve moved across my foot. My toes felt cold and wet. There was the slightest pressure against my shins, like something had been placed there. That something smelled like ink. “What are you?”
“I’m the devil, dear. I’m what happens when you burn a living spell book. We’ll talk about it later. Sleep well.”
EIGHTEEN
THE PERILS OF NOT BEING LOVELESS
The coffee shop was a hipster catastrophe. The bricks were all painted different shades of pink and blue, and Christmas lights dripped from every available surface. Broken mugs hung from the doorway where another place might’ve hung shrunken heads. Jing and I sat outside. We’d rolled to a stop, and her music was low enough for us to hear each other. It was just the two of us. Yates had gone home separately, and Daisy was busy slicing necks at cheer practice. We sat in front of the shop, half-parked, and Jing reapplied her lipstick in the rearview mirror.
“You look nervous,” she said. “Stop that.”
“I’m not fucking nervous,” I lied. My knees were propped up on the dash. I’d been screwing with the frays in my jeans for a solid five minutes. The fashionable holes were now full-fledged gashes. I looked a mess.
“Bullshit. You’re nervous. Don’t be nervous. You’re hot as hell.”
I snorted.
Jing lowered her lipstick and glowered at me. “I’m serious. Look, riddle me this: do you want to date her, or do you want t
o screw her?”
I blanched. “Fucking hell, Jing.”
“So, both. Good. Dating her shouldn’t be a problem. Just screwing her could go worse. As far as weirdos go, you’re as good as they come. And she agreed to come here, so, clearly, she’s into weirdos. That means you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“If you tell me to be myself, I’m punching you in the nose.”
“I’m fake as hell, Sideways. Why would I tell you that? No, I’m telling you to play it cool. You know how to talk to girls. You’re doing it right now. If she doesn’t like what she sees, so be it. I’ll buy you a Playboy and we can move on with our lives. You’re going to kill it. Understood?”
I flipped her off and huffed a sigh, tucked my hands against my ribs.
And there she fucking was. Madeline Kline, dressed in a snapback and slashed-up shorts, sauntered into the coffee shop with a swish of impossibly black hair. She didn’t look nervous. She looked cool, casual with her braided leather bracelets, her Sharpie-scribbled kicks.
Jing gave me a shove. “Showtime, sweetie. Remember not to bite unless she asks.”
Madeline had already found a table. It was tucked in the back, crammed between two wide windows that made the tabletop shimmer holographic. Madeline had pulled her ponytail loose and her hair spilled over her shoulders. She sat with her chair turned backward, straddling it, her arms propped on the back. Tipped it forward so that it rested on two legs. Her hair swept the tabletop. She gave me a cocky little nod, flashed her teeth at me, waved me over. Jerked a thumb at the seat across from her.
My palms tingled. My fingertips twitched. My coffee was hot against my hand, and it matched the way my insides felt. I sat across from her in my preordained spot. Forced myself to look up, and tried at a smile.
If I started nervous laughing, God could just butcher me right then and there. Random lightning strike. Kaboom, death.
“You look killer,” said Madeline. Her gaze was even, unblinking.
Impulse struck. I flipped her off, rolled my eyes.
She laughed. Thank God, she laughed. Her laugh was harsh and low in her throat. It reverberated down my spine.
“So. Sideways. Tell me about magic. Tell me how it works.” She leaned across the table and her hair swished in to frame her face. “Tell me everything.”
I took a sip of coffee that scalded my tongue, sizzled on the way down. Her eye contact didn’t break, which was weird and spooky of her, and it made me want to lean over and plant one on her.
I touched my burn to the roof of my mouth and told Madeline everything. She must’ve done something to me, because she’d busted the floodgate. I opened my mouth and couldn’t shut it again. One thing fell out after another, and soon everything that’d happened to me was spilling all over the table. Madeline didn’t mind. If I slowed down, she urged me on with a nod. She didn’t look away. Didn’t drop her attention. Didn’t even check her phone or drink her macchiato. She let me drift on and on, only reacting when I asked for a reaction. I told her about the Vade Mecvms. I told her about scribbling with chalk. I told her about specters and the color of my soul. I told her how to hex someone. I told her how I’d tried to hex my science teacher when I was twelve. I told her how I’d tried to bless the acne off my back once, and how that had failed because it was too mundane for the universe to bother with. I told her about language and how it snares things, how it makes reality and twists the world around us. I told her about my mother, only briefly. I didn’t tell her much about Jing and Yates and Daisy, but they were present, even if I didn’t mention them by name. They’d wormed their way into my narrative. Yates’ theory of ambiguity came up once or twice. I told her how magic kept me going. About how for a while, it was the only thing keeping me going. About how I used to underline passages in my English books because certain lines crawled off the page, because those lines were magic and they meant something on a cosmic scale. I told her everything, absolutely everything.
I felt like a damn idiot when I was done. How long had I been talking? I wasn’t a big talker, not like this. A cackle ripped out of me, and I hated it as soon as it came. It was a giddy, nasty laugh. Awkward laughter always sounded mean when I did it. I drank my coffee, which was lukewarm now.
Madeline broke her gaze. “I need you to do something for me, Sideways.”
I swallowed my coffee wrong. My lungs seized up and I hacked a cough, lurched over, wheezed into my elbow. My cheeks torched. I set my teeth, wiped my mouth with the back of my wrist, and looked up at her with a blink. “Sure,” I managed. Furrowed my brows. “Anything.”
“I need you to make a sigil for me.” She didn’t blink, didn’t waver. Leaned forward across the table toward me. Reached to brush her fingertips against my sleeve. “Could you do that?”
I nodded too quickly. “Yeah. Yeah I could.” I ducked under the table, clawed at my bookbag, and produced my shabby notebook and a busted pen. I put the pen in my teeth, dropped the notebook on the table, and rifled through it until I found a clean page. Looked up at her with a brow raised.
She didn’t look at the paper. Her eyes stayed on me, deep and dark and endless. She licked her lips. “I need it to mean This is mine.”
“This is mine?” I mumbled the words around my pen. “Could you be more specific?”
“I’ve been in a bad way lately. Need to reclaim some stuff.” She lowered her eyes for a moment, unfocused them. I couldn’t parse what she was thinking. She cocked her head to the side. “I need it to surrender and to take back. Does that make sense? I need to give myself power. Something to get me through the day.”
“Like for self-esteem?” I pulled my pen out of my mouth, twirled it around my fingers. She didn’t react. I bit my tongue, swallowed my extra questions. Vagueness be damned. “Surrender and take back.” I drew a few lines, swooping, swirling lines—an S for surrender, an arrowhead for taking things back. Vague as it was, the lines came easy. I glanced up at her for confirmation, and she nodded, clenched her jaw.
I set my coffee cup on top of the sigil and traced a circle around it.
“I feel like it needs something,” Madeline said.
I frowned. “Yeah?”
She tapped her index finger on the middle of the glyph. “Can you put an X here? A big one.”
“Like crosshairs?” I looked at the sigil crooked, tried to imagine an X over top of my lines. That might change the vibe a bit, adding an X. Make it more strident than it might’ve otherwise been.
Madeline was quiet for a moment, before nodding, crossing her arms. “Yeah.”
I drew the X and she was satisfied. Extended her right hand, placed it beside my notebook. “Could you draw it on me?”
There was a rustling under my sleeve. A cold, wet writhing that shaped letters in its wake. I hadn’t even realized that I’d brought Mr. Scratch with me, and the feel of him squirming against me made my stomach flip. I yanked my arms under the table and pulled my sleeve up, tried not to be obvious as I did so.
Do not do not do not draw it on her absolutely do not do that please don’t do that Sideways do not!
“And who the fuck asked you?”
Madeline blinked.
“Sorry.” I felt my face turn red. My insides burned and I shoved my sleeve down over my arm, tried to scrub away the message with a twist of my wrist. “Sure. Yeah. I’ll draw it on you, whatever you want.”
The inkbody under my sleeve went ballistic.
I shook my pen, scribbled a bit on the edge of the page, and pressed the ballpoint to Madeline’s skin. I had no idea why Mr. Scratch was being so weird, but I frankly didn’t care and would do basically anything that Madeline wanted, because holy fuck! A girl wanted me to do magic for her. A really hot and funny girl. Anything thing she wanted, literally anything. Fuck it. The lines looked bluish across her knuckles. I tried pressing lightly, tried not to bite the ballpoint into her skin, but when I’d nearly finished she gave me a look and I went over the lines again, pressed them harder, carved t
hem out.
It looked almost pretty.
Madeline wiggled her fingers. Made a fist. Something fell over her expression and she looked up at me unsmiling, her brows drawn together in a V. “That’s good. Thank you.”
“Anytime,” I said. I stuck my tongue in my cheek. “The incantation’s a little vague, but if you focus on it, I think it’ll work. Some of the best incantations are improvised. It should be fine.”
Sleeve was going absolutely wild.
“Stellar.” She withdrew her hand, hid it under the table. Didn’t look at me for a moment. I felt her gaze float vaguely near my collarbone. Her mascara clumped like spider’s legs. “I appreciate that. I really do.”
Then there was silence. How do you follow making a sigil together? The hair on my arms prickled and I wasn’t sure if it was the hints of magic or the proximity to Madeline that did it to me. Knocked the breath out of me, whatever it was. My head buzzed. First dates were supposed to be shallow, were they not? Small-talk babble about stuff we vaguely cared about, not a life story paired with impromptu glyph making. Assuming this was a date. Assuming she was interested.
I nibbled the inside of my bottom lip. Formulated something coherent. “So, are you doing anything tomorrow night?”
Madeline’s gaze flickered up. Shot holes through my head. “Nah, why?”
“My friends and I are having another Halloween party.” Felt confident when I said it out loud. The Scapegracers, they were my friends. Not a single damn doubt in my head. If our clique had a name, it was official, wasn’t it? Right, right. I jammed my tongue against my hard palate. “It’s gonna be pretty dope. We’re doing more magic. Better magic. I’d like you to be there.”
“You’re doing magic at another party. Well, damn.” She whistled through her teeth and rocked back in her chair. Her expression phased into something else, something identical but darker. Her eyes glossed up. When she spoke again, there was strain in her voice. “You know what? I think I have to be there. Got no choice.”
The Scapegracers Page 25