In Memoriam

by Michael Beaulieu

  “I’m sorry,” Shar says. “I’m not in love with her. Not romantically. And I don’t think about her when we’re together. We don’t need anyone else.”

  “You never think about her during sex?”

  She squares her shoulders. “No, not really.”

  Not really? Fuck. “I’d feel better right now if you’d just said no.”

  “No, that’s what I meant.”

  “Just be honest with me. If we can’t be honest with each other anymore what’s the fucking point?”

  Shar looks frightened now. “OK, once or twice I’ve imagined her with us. Don’t tell me you haven’t.”

  Do random, fleeting thoughts count? I suppose they do. Fuck. “OK, yes, I have. Very briefly. But not in, like, a year. And I wouldn’t have hurt your feelings by sulking about her not being with us.”

  “I’m not sulking.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s clear you’d be happier if she was with us.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I love you. Only you. And our sex is mind-blowing. We don’t need her. We’re perfect the way we are. Promise.”

  I hold out my pinky. “Pinky swear?”

  She wraps her pinky around mine. “Pinky swear.”

  Without releasing each other’s pinkies, we lean in for a kiss and start making out. Kissing each other desperately, that’s how we’re making up. Just as we start to slowly pull away from each other, January approaches the table clapping.

  “Sorry if I stirred shit up,” she says as she sits back down. “But I’m pleased to see you were able to work past it.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” I say.

  “So do I have your blessing to kiss Em?”

  Shar shakes her head. “You can do whatever you want, but I think she really, really loves Jim. She might kiss you back, but then she’d regret it because of him. And think about Pete. How upset he’d be if he caught you kissing her.”

  January shakes her head. “I know, I know... Why do I have a feeling this crush is going to be the end of me?”

  Shar starts cracking her knuckles. “Well, if you’re feeling that uncomfortable when you think about the consequences then it’s probably an itch you shouldn’t scratch.”

  I grin, proud of my girl. “She has a very good point.”

  “Indeed,” January says and sighs.

  Why do I get the feeling she isn’t going to take our advice? Not that we could blame her. After all, we started off encouraging her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EMMA

  I’m heading for the parking lot and I’m not very happy. Why? Because what the hell can I write about the frog episode? Am I supposed to lie and say some burnout opened his backpack and I saw the frogs come leaping out? No, nobody would believe that because everyone knows the frogs came directly out of the jar the teacher was dishing them out from – not a backpack – and they were not moving at that point. People had started to pin them down just before Shar revived them. Actually, I’m afraid I might have helped her resurrect them. I guess I was edging her on. I think I said it would be cool if the frogs came to life. Not quite a spell or a prayer, but apparently when you’ve got this much magick you don’t need those to do things? I wonder if Shar prayed for the frogs to come back? That would be pretty bold of her, since she’s the one of us who still clings to Catholicism, albeit by a thread, and I’m pretty sure the church has a policy about children playing with dead things. Of course, Lia and I also pray to Saints and I say some other Catholic prayers, too, but not because they’re Catholic prayers, just because they’re prayers and they’re a tradition. I look at the church as the dirty bath water. You remove the baby from the bath water, but the bath water goes down the drain. It’s the baby you cherish. Screw the church.

  Getting back to the frog business, I guess I’ll just ponder all of the obvious theories then write about why the theories are flawed. Ms. Rose didn’t say that I needed to find out what happened, just that she wanted me to write about it from the perspective of someone who was actually in the room. I wonder if she just wants a dry, matter-of-fact style story or if she’d appreciate a humourous slant? I think I’ll go with humorous because it’s easy enough to nix the humor if she doesn’t go for it. Or maybe I’ll do two versions ahead of time, one with the wit and one with just the noose. OK, that was word salad. I meant to say one with just the news. N-E-W-S. [I’m getting pretty fucking dumb. If I hadn’t encouraged Shar I wouldn’t have to write about the frog debacle now.] Then again, she might’ve still had me write three separate things if she hadn’t come up with the frog idea.

  As I approach Jim’s car, I see that Juliana, Lia, Shar and January have already left. I thought they’d wait to say bye to me, but they did know I’m going to see Jim’s apartment this afternoon, and he’s here waiting for me, so I guess there wasn’t really a reason for them to stick around. Except, well, me. [How can they be so fucking selfish and leave without saying goodbye? I’d never do that to them!] No, if I knew they had plans I wouldn’t stick around just to say bye to them either. I mean, if we went somewhere together like to the mall I wouldn’t just leave, but I can understand them taking off after school. Everyone just wants to get the hell away from here as soon as the last bell rings. Me included.

  Unfortunately, I can kiss my Thursday afternoons goodbye if I end up making the paper. And who knows how many days a week they meet during lunch. I’ll definitely feel like I’m missing out if everyone is at lunch without me. [Maybe I should just forget about writing the fucking article and ditch the damn Green Pages before I make a serious commitment? It would be pretty awkward writing for it with that fangirl Wendy staring at me the whole time anyway. I should recommend my psychiatrist to her because she certainly seems to have O.C.D.]

  “You don’t look happy to see me,” Jim says as I reach him and he puts his hands on my sides, pulling me close.

  “It’s not you,” I say. “I just volunteered for the school paper and I’m, like, starting to resent it already.”

  “I think you mean regret.”

  “That, too. But I’m resenting it as well. Preemptively, due to the fact that it would keep me after school every Thursday and suck up only Goddess knows how many lunches.”

  “In that case, I resent it, too,” he says and our lips finally meet. Tongues swish around in our mouths like goldfish engaged in a mating dance. Maybe not the greatest visual, but I find goldfish to be the prettiest and most elegant fish there are and the way they tend to swim around in couples is adorable. Oh, what the hell am I thinking? See, when I make out with Jim, my brain turns into mush, just as my knees get weak and even shaky sometimes. Like they are a little right now. Guess love will do that to a girl.

  “So, I’m finally going to see your new place,” I say. “Not that I got to see the last one.”

  “Dude, it’s not my fault I couldn’t go back there. You think I wanted to find a new apartment? I had to sneak into my old one in the middle of the night to get my clothes and records because the cops were staking the place out for a week after my body went missing from he morgue. You’d think they knew I was still alive.”

  I wonder if they really considered that as a possibility. They told The Lowell Gazette someone probably stole the body to desecrate it. “You think there’s some special division of the F.B.I. that deals with witches?”

  His forehead wrinkles and he frowns. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Why?”

  “Well, Krystal and Priscilla are both witches and we made quite a mess when we rescued them. You’d think someone would be looking into that.”

  “I suppose. But, why are you bringing this up now? Do you want to get in trouble?”

  I take a step back. “Of course, not. Why would I want to get in trouble?”

  He laughs then he smirks at me. “Well, you did volunteer for the school paper.”

  I take a step forward and tickle his sides, which gets him laughing hard tout de suite.

  “Enough!” he yells. “Mercy!”

  I continue t
ickling him. “The operative word is uncle.” His face is getting deep red from laughing so hard. Must be getting his blood flowing, which isn’t a bad thing.

  “Uncle!” he cries out. “Uncle!”

  I stop tickling and step over to the car, getting in the passenger side. He gets in the driver’s side and immediately sticks his tongue out at me, which he probably wouldn’t be doing if I didn’t do it to him all the time.

  “Don’t show me that thing unless you’re prepared to use it,” I say with an evil grin. At least sex will take my mind off of every other damn thing that’s bouncing around in it.

  We pull up at Jim’s apartment building and it’s nothing like what I’d expected. For some reason, I kept picturing it above a convenience store or beauty parlor, but it’s actually one of four apartments this huge, three story house with peeling white paint has been converted into.

  “My place is upstairs,” Jim says as we get out of the car. “On the second floor.”

  “The people on the third floor must be jealous,” I say with a smirk as I follow him towards the building. “What are your neighbors like?”

  “They’re OK, I guess. They’re not noisy except when the woman below me is doing Just Dance with the volume wicked high.”

  “That sounds really annoying.”

  He smirks at me and I roll my eyes at him. Then he gets squeamish. For some reason it freaks him out when I roll my eyes. Totally grosses him out. Right now he looks like a little girl who just took her first bite of mud pie. “Seriously, please don’t do that. I had trouble with my eyes when I was younger and it just grates on my nerves like someone filing their nails.”

  “I can’t stand the sound of people filing their nails either,” I say. “I have a metal nail file that I use because it doesn’t make that awful sound. Well, not as bad anyway.”

  It takes him a minute to fish his keys out of his pocket and unlock the door. Then we’re faced with a long staircase. At least it’s inside the building, though. It’d be a hell of a lot worse if you had an outdoor staircase in the winter – like all those apartments in Montreal – and kept having to shovel each step to scrape the ice off before you could step onto it. I’m not sure how you’d even do that without falling face first straight down the entire staircase. I’m sure Jim has excellent balance though. Me? Not so much. Perfect balance is far from being one of my strong suits. I’m pretty clumsy. [And I’m getting clumsier all the time.]

  As we’re walking up the stairs, which are creaking less than I expected, I find myself hoping that Jim doesn’t end up giving half his power to Pete permanently, that he just lets the binding spell wear off then Pete can’t do magick and I can offer him half of mine. Lia and Shar would be opposed to it at first, but if I tell them about all these crazy thoughts I’m having I think they’ll understand. I wonder if their thinking has been distorted like mine. [My thinking isn’t distorted. It’s crystal fucking clear. I just have a dark side inside me. Of course, everyone does. I just feel like humoring mine more lately.] But so far I’ve been good. Mostly anyway. I just don’t like having this much power. Feeling all of this energy coursing through you at all times is frustrating. [It would be so easy to get away with murder with this juice. Walk by someone, put a death hex on them. Then they go home and get bit by a black widow during the night. Considering that Lia, Shar and I almost made a guy’s head explode, I don’t think it’s such a stretch.] It’s hard not to do things like that sometimes. Of course, I’m not saying that I’m constantly tempted to do harm to anyone. [It’s just that it would be too easy to exterminate people if I chose to.] I wonder if Lia and Shar are feeling like this, too? I can’t imagine it would sit well with Shar, who never wants to hurt a fly. [But I could totally see Lia hitting up the mall and using people’s heads for bowling balls in the food court.] No, why would she do that? What would I do if I crossed the line? Stupid, Emma, you shouldn’t even be thinking about shit like this. Especially not right now. Not when it’s sexy time.

  Stepping into Jim’s apartment feels weird. Like I’m invading his privacy or something. We enter via the kitchen area, which smells faintly of bleach. There’s a large spice rack on the counter and a metal wine bottle holder similar to the one Juliana has. Currently, it’s holding three bottles. As for the stove and the refrigerator, they look pretty new. I sniff near the snow white fridge to see if it’s giving off that weird old refrigerator smell my grandmother’s refrigerator had when we were kids, but it doesn’t smell at all. Other things on the counter? A toaster, a small microwave, an electric can opener and a blender. He also has several bottles of vodka, rum, tequila and whiskey on top of the refrigerator. The bottles are about three quarters full, so it would seem he’s been drinking but not a whole lot. Nothing for me to worry about.

  “Are you done your analysis of my kitchen yet?” he asks me, tugging my arm and pulling me into the spacious living room, which is just around the corner and it’s almost twice as spacious as I thought it would be. Reminds me of Lia’s living room a bit. I guess the big difference is that Lia’s has two bedrooms and Jim’s only has the one. Still, he’s lucky he can afford a one bedroom. Most people our age couldn’t even afford a studio. I’m totally jealous of his trust fund, but if I had to choose between my parents and money I would choose my parents every time. I know he would, too. It’s one of the things that makes me love him. I hate that he had to witness their murder suicide.

  Surprisingly, Jim has two Poang chairs from IKEA, one on each side of the futon, which he probably bought there as well. Across from the futon is a large, flat screen TV. A screensaver that looks like a salt water aquarium is on right now and it looks so real. It must be a 3-D TV because even without the glasses it looks like the fish are swimming towards you. Like they’ve escaped the tank and are mysteriously swishing through the air.

  “Bienvenue,” Jim says. I think that’s about all the French he knows. You’d think the Lord and Lady would’ve sent me someone fluent, but he is pretty good with Spanish, which is still a romance language. And he’s exceptional with his tongue.

  “Merci,” I say.

  Jim comes up behind me and wraps his arms around me. I go to turn around, but he holds me tightly and starts kissing my neck, even licking it a little. Even sucking on it a bit.

  “You’re not a vampire, are you?” I ask.

  “No. What? Why would you think that?” he snaps.

  “Because you were tasting my neck like you wanted to take a bite.”

  “Oh. That.” He starts laughing nervously. I’m not sure why that freaked him out, but he’s immortal and vampires are immortal and he’s probably just afraid that I’ll see him like a vampire.

  I poke him in the chest with my fingers lightly. “Why did you react like that? Have past girlfriends accused you of being a blood sucker?”

  “Only this one time after I gave this girl a big hickey on the neck,” he says.

  I can’t tell if he’s being serious. And he can’t tell if I’m taking him seriously. This lasts about ten seconds then we both start laughing our asses off.

  “In the mood for wine?” he asks once we’re quiet again.

  “Sure,” I say. “Who bought for you?”

  “One of the I.D.s Pete gave me says I’m 21,” he says as he opens a cabinet. “Red or white?”

  “Whichever you prefer.” I’d pick the one with the most alcohol in it, but I think they’re about the same.

  “What if I prefer what you prefer?” He gives me this odd half-smile, teasing.

  He smirks. “That would make you my slave. Which might be nice in fifteen minutes, but not now. Make a decision.”

  “But I asked you first.”

  “Just decide already,” I insist. Then I look away to show him I’m not changing my mind.

  “Red, then,” he says and proceeds to open a bottle.

  “So, is this Two Buck Chuck?”

  “Does it look like Two Buck Chuck?”

  I read the bottle. It says Three Virgins.
For real. “No. But Two Buck Chuck doesn’t say Two Buck Chuck on the label.” I remember that much from Lia’s.

  “Well, this is Three Virgins, like it says. Two Buck Chuck is actually called Charles Shaw.”

  He pours two glasses, filling them almost halfway. That’s more than they usually pour you at restaurants, but I’m not about to complain.

  “Smells nice,” I say as I take a glass from him and take a whiff. “I detect notes of blackberry, chocolate and currant.”

  “How do you know so much about wine?” he says, inspecting the back of the wine bottle.

  “I just have an enhanced sense of smell since, you know, the shitstorm.”

  “So, all that power isn’t without its benefits?”

  “Guess not,” I say and take a big gulp of my wine. I just want it to fill my stomach and rush to my head already. I like that feeling. Makes me feel like my brain is swirling around like one of those huge, twisty lollipops that look like soft serve ice cream. Oh my Goddess, vanilla soft serve would be so awesome right now. I could smear it all over him.

  Jim and I sip our wine a few times, looking each other in the eyes. It’s obvious that he wants me. That he wants to be inside of me. He craves it like I crave Paris. [Guess that means I love Paris more than him.] Of course, I hunger for sex, too. Find me a sixteen year old girl who doesn’t.

  After several minutes of staring into each other’s souls while getting buzzed off the wine, we put our glasses down on the dark brown coffee table. A second later we’re embracing each other, tongues tickling each other ever so gently. You know that feeling. That sensation you experience when someone has just started tickling you and it feels so fucking good. You actually want them to keep doing it, but a moment later you’re screaming at them to stop. Well, right now making out feels like that amazing feeling you get before you cry out. My lips are even starting to tingle.

  We continue kissing as he puts his hands under my shirt and slides them up, pushing my shirt up over my navel as he cups my breasts. I want my bra off now so my breasts can feel the friction of his skin.