The woman driving the car powered her window down. She looked old enough to solidly be called an adult, but other than that, I couldn’t tell her age. Was she in her late twenties? Thirties? It wasn’t cold, but she wore a wool jacket, the long sleeves rolled above her spiky wrists. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. That wasn’t true, though. Something inside of me knew. It just wasn’t the part that made words. “As far as you can take me?”
She gave me a wincing smile, like that answer made sense to her, and she wasn’t happy about it. Something in my brain told me that I was supposed to be afraid of anyone who would stop at the side of the road and pick up a girl hitchhiking in plain sight of the high school, and something else in my brain pounced on that thought and muffled it.
“I’m Jackie,” she said, waiting for my name. When I said I was Danny, she nodded, like knowing that made what we were doing marginally okay.
She pushed a button, and the automatic locks clicked open.
I climbed in. Her car smelled like cigarettes and orange peels, though I couldn’t see any stubbed-out ends or flaking rinds. We drove for at least five silent minutes before she looked at me, a few glances. Maybe she was trying to stay focused on the road. Or she didn’t want to see too deep into whatever my trouble was.
“You shouldn’t get in cars with strangers,” she said. “You know that, right?”
We passed the turnoff for my house, a long, curved section of road just past the tiny regional airport. I must have looked at my neighborhood with a certain kind of need on my face.
“Do you want me to drop you off at home?” Jackie asked.
I thought about my house and the blankets waiting at the foot of my bed, the way I had to take three painkillers at a time to get my legs to stop slashing the sheets. “I want absolutely everything except that.”
“Girl after my own heart,” she said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes from a hidden overhead compartment. When she offered me one, I heard my mom’s voice floating through my head, telling me about the importance of accepting hospitality.
I took the cigarette but refused the lighter, saying that I wanted to save it for later. Jackie nodded like I was wise beyond my years. We crossed the line out of town, and automatic locks inside of me clicked open.
I knew all the rules about not trusting people, and not getting murdered, and I rode with Jackie anyway. Every time I tried to talk, she shook her head, like I was breaking a pact. We traveled a pattern of midwestern squares as the sky choked on gray clouds. The only things along the side of the roads were gas stations and the low bodies of gray box stores and mountains made of people’s trash. We made it to Indiana before Mom called and I picked up and told her the truth.
It didn’t even occur to me to lie.
“What were you thinking?” Mom screamed through tears.
I didn’t have an answer, not yet. That’s what I’d been looking for, and I hadn’t even gotten close.
Jackie dropped me off at the next gas station. It had a little fake restaurant inside, a cluster of dark tables and a smell stuck halfway between cleaning products and lunch meat. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t think I can handle being yelled at by someone else’s parents.”
I had to wait for three hours, sending Mom a picture of myself in the gas station every five minutes.
I’m here.
I’m alive.
Dad called and asked what I’d been thinking, a harsh echo of Mom. He said I’d stuck one foot in my own grave. But even after Mom picked me up and I apologized a thousand times, I kept thinking about that woman’s car, how sour it smelled, and how if we drove long enough, her tires would drink up all the black pavement in the world, and I would unfold myself from the passenger seat and end up somewhere else. The air would be breathable, and the faint scent of oranges would stick to me everywhere I went.
The next day, the Grays, minus Rush, all have third lunch, and Rush is willing to skip class. Imogen has first lunch, they assure me.
We pass the cafeteria because it’s way too nice to sit inside voluntarily, and head for the courtyard. I follow Hawthorn and Lelia as they tramp over endless freshmen and sophomores to get to their favorite spot. The five of us keep our hands linked, even though it’s hard to walk like that. We cut through a circle of popular kids, and red hair causes me to crank my neck, but this girl is too young to be Imogen, and her face isn’t blank. There’s a crease that should be a smile as she listens to other girls talk about their crushes.
Hawthorn tugs the chain of the Grays, and the feeling travels, a pulse that reaches me at the end. “So we have the hours between dawn and school, and the hours between school and when your mom gets home, but only the days you’re not working?”
“And lunch and study halls,” June says.
“No study halls,” I mumble. “I don’t have any in my schedule. Mom was worried they wouldn’t keep track of my attendance.”
“What about nights?” Hawthorn asks, sitting down abruptly. We fall around her, and lunch appears from bags. “Can you at least get weekends?” I shake my head. “Just Saturdays?”
“Only daylight hours,” I say, “at least until I build up some good-daughter points again.” I hate thinking of it that way, but it’s true. Good behavior is currency to parents, and I don’t have any to spend.
“This might become a problem at some point,” Hawthorn says, tapping her lips.
“Why?” I ask.
June unfurls a black lace parasol and Lelia, the pale one, huddles in its circle of shade. Rush has become one with the grass. Hawthorn sits cross-legged, her long legs pulling her skirt into a tray for her lunch. She lines up each item neatly. Thin-skinned plums, carrots that haven’t been babied, some kind of cookie that looks like it’s mostly oats.
“Let’s not worry about that right now,” she says. “Dowsing rod first.”
“After school?” I ask.
“Ora needs me today,” Hawthorn says, not elaborating.
I wonder how long it will be before I feel like I can ask why. I might have gotten drunk on the sight of the Grays naked in the woods, but there are parts of them I still don’t get to see.
“I can’t make it either,” June says, attacking a sandwich with eager bites. “Babysitting. Do you have any brothers or sisters, Danny? I have six.” She notices that I’m not eating and holds out half of her sandwich.
“Only child,” I say, accepting the offering with a grateful nod and a few wolfish bites. The minifridge in cottage nine is woefully limited. “My parents were never really together, in a romantic sense.”
“Really?” Hawthorn asks, changing the lineup so the carrots come after the oat cookie. “Mine either. My dad is one of Ora’s best and gayest friends. I visit him in Hawaii sometimes. I’m Ora’s only baby. She might believe in herbal remedies for everything else, but let me tell you. When it comes to birth control, it’s seven forms on top of each other.”
June nods so earnestly that I laugh. “I believe in a woman’s right to be good at birth control. Catholic parents. Six siblings.”
“Your parents get so busy, June,” Lelia says, sniffing at a cup of coconut yogurt. She sets it aside and wipes her hands on her skinnier-than-thou black jeans.
“Ahhhh,” June says, capping her ears with her hands. “That’s it. I’m banning all sex talk. Forever.”
“There’s nothing wrong with sex,” Hawthorn announces. “It’s perfectly awesome for people who are into that sort of thing.” She flicks a glance my way, and I realize that she made that little PSA for me. Because when we first met, I told the Grays that kissing is my favorite activity. Hawthorn remembered, and cared enough to make sure I didn’t get accidentally slut shamed.
I’m with four magical Grays, and we’re sitting here talking about sex in broad, buttery daylight. I might not have anyone to date at the moment, but it’s definitely better than the world I lived in before.
And then I look over at Rush, and she�
�s ignoring her dark-green salad dotted with strawberries, looking up at the mountains like she can’t handle us right now, and I wonder what we did wrong.
What invisible line we crossed.
They couldn’t stop kissing. They kissed like it was their calling. They stayed in Imogen’s bedroom for days, begging Imogen’s parents for permission to have night after night of sleepovers.
Imogen’s parents liked Rush best of the Grays. If she had opinions, they never heard about them. She was soft where the rest were loud. But they didn’t know what she was hiding under all that soft. They didn’t know the way their daughter sank her teeth into it, hard enough to leave watery blue marks.
Three nights of sleeping in Imogen’s queen bed before something inspired her parents to force the lock and find them a stitch away from naked. Haven stood in the hallway, her eyes wide wide wide.
There were long, frosty speeches about being too young, setting a bad example.
They met in the woods instead, even when it was raining. Rush pressed Imogen against a tree, the waterlogged bark as deep brown as her eyes. No matter how long they stayed in the drowning woods, the water never touched them. It parted around their bodies, flowed around their tangled feet.
And then, one night when the ground was almost dry and the stars burned cloudless, Rush said she was ready. Really, really ready.
Imogen looked all over Rush’s body. She could feel her magic rising. “I don’t know if we should.”
“You don’t want to be with me?” Rush asked.
“I do,” Imogen said.
“Then be with me.”
“You say that like it’s simple.” Imogen’s hand was stalled on Rush’s thigh. She tried to move it down, but she kept stopping herself, and Rush definitely noticed. They had blown past the point of no return a long time ago. She was going to hurt Rush now, either by doing this or by not doing it.
She looked away from Rush’s skin, scalded by the light of a full moon, and gave the woods a thorough stare.
“Nobody will find us here,” Rush said. “Unless someone’s following us . . .” Prickles broke out on her bare arms.
Imogen felt it on her own skin, a bed of nails.
Iwait for Lelia and Rush at the end of the senior parking lot. They both have study hall last period, and Rush’s car is missing from where she usually parks it, under the stand of eucalyptus trees. I sit in their fractured shade, breathing in their balmy smell, already counting down how long I have before I need to get home.
Two motorcycles slice into the parking lot. The few students left still walking to their cars all turn to watch.
Which, I’m sure, is exactly what Lelia wants.
But what does Rush want?
I stand up, and cat-eyed eucalyptus leaves skitter down from my lap. I must be giving Lelia a look, because she shrugs as she tugs off her helmet. “Sorry. But we’re not going to have many more perfect days like this.” The three of us look around, like we can see fall seeping in at the edges of Tempest.
I take Lelia’s raven feather out from between the pages in my math notebook, where I’ve pressed it for safekeeping. I touch its treacherously soft edge and steal a glance at Rush. She’s got on jeans with a million holes and, under her leather jacket, a lacy sleeveless shirt that turns her soft, round shoulders into a serious temptation. She’s staring at me again, but this time she catches me staring back.
“Are you ready to work on the dowsing rod?” she asks, excited. Breathy, even.
She wants to help me find my magic, maybe she even wants me as one of the Grays. But it’s all about getting her girlfriend back.
“Let’s go downtown,” I say, feeling a vague pull in that direction. “We should check out the wood shop. They might have something I can use for the dowsing rod.”
We walk down the line of shops, a dark parade, leather and raven feathers, and I want the entire town to see us. I feel like I am telling Tempest where I belong. Not stuck in Coffee Gods with Courtney. Not in the high school, boxed into another set of classes. Not even in the cottage with Mom.
Lelia walks the white line of the highway, and I weave back and forth over it. A truck snakes into view and I jump back at the last second. Lelia laughs, rough and loud. Rush trails behind us, singing. A song that pulls from the deep greens of the mountains and grabs the sharp rays of sun and adds them to the percussion of our tramping feet. I don’t know if she’s singing because the day is so beautiful or if it makes the day so beautiful.
I wonder if that’s what magic is. Being so bound up with things that you can’t tell where they end and you start.
We open the door to the wood shop and the bells ring, a sharp cluster of sound. I stop. “Do that again,” I say, and Lelia flaps the door like a wing.
The bells ring. It takes Rush a second, but then she’s with me. Face turned up, eyes closed, taking in the sound. “Not quite the same,” she says, and hums the notes that she did the other day.
I run out of the wood shop, down the single row of stores, opening doors, flinging them wide. Looking up into the crevices of doorways for bells and measuring their notes against memory.
I run up the last porch, pounding three steps. This storefront is the old-fashioned kind that stands out much larger than the actual store behind it. It’s lined with wooden plaques that have been hand-marred by a knife. Postcards. Gifts. Wood carvings. Bone carvings. I pull the heavy wooden door.
Notes drift down like snow. Three notes, cold and cutting. I know that discord. The way they tangle.
“That’s it!” Rush says, running up behind me.
“That’s it,” I say, a pitch darker and a second behind.
The bones don’t remember who they used to be when they were all together. When they were glued with muscle and sunk deep under flesh. Now they are kept together by a wisp of spirit. It follows the bones like a shadow.
It doesn’t know where else to go.
“I hate this place,” says a voice as hard as the rain that came with death, washing everything clean.
“Why?” Another voice. From another place. It has a different way of threading words.
“It’s a tourist shop.” The first voice again. “There are tchotchkes here. And some of them are distinctly racist.”
The bones don’t belong here in the stale, mealy air. They were brought wrapped up in something soft and left in a darkened corner. The person who carried them stayed silent. The cold silence of guilt. The frantic silence of trying to forget.
It was raining, raining.
At least it’s dry in here.
“What are these?” the second voice asks, drawing close. There are soft hands. Searching fingers. Someone picks up the bones, one at a time. It feels wrong. Bones are not meant to be touched. They are meant to be buried. First in bodies. Then in dark earth. Or they can be burned, and then the spirit that clings to them like ragged skin will learn to fly.
“Those are not animal bones,” the first one whispers. “Not even a little bit.”
“Humans are animals,” says a third voice, softer than the first two.
“Imogen, Sebastian, now this,” says the first. “Do you think Imogen’s in danger? More danger?”
The name Imogen means something. It feels like grabbing at the past and coming up with empty hands.
“We need to take these,” says the third voice. It trembles, balanced on the edge of some great sadness, trying not to fall.
“We can’t exactly carry them up to the cashier,” the first says. All three voices are becoming clear. Each one distinct to the spirit that keeps watch over its bones. “What if the police get involved? We’re the weirdos of Tempest, California, and we’ve already found one dead body this week. I’m not interested in playing witch hunt.”
“So we take them,” says the second one. “Nobody will miss them, not in this place.”
The bones are picked up again, carried with fear and reverence, tucked under clothes and pressed close, not to be seen. They are only pie
ces of the story, broken and brittle.
The bones don’t remember who they used to be.
It takes longer than anyone alive will admit, to grow into who they are, to feel it deeper than skin, to know.
It is easier than they believe to forget.
As we walk out of the shop, the bones make a sound that knocks against my nerves. Like dice that we rolled, dice that won’t stop chattering and settle down long enough to tell us if we won or lost. We have the better part of a skeleton stuffed in our bags, in our pockets, under our clothes, next to our skin. Lelia put the skull in her messenger bag. We scramble all the way back to the high-school parking lot, where Rush and Lelia swing their legs over their motorcycles. I’m left standing in an empty parking space like an idiot.
“We need Hawthorn,” Lelia says. “And possibly her mom.”
“What does her mom have to do with anything?” I ask.
“Ora’s an old-school witchy type. Plus she’s got an entire coven at her back. She’ll know what to do.”
“June first,” Rush says.
“Obviously,” Lelia shoots back. She palms her helmet. And then she shouts at me. “Come on!”
“I’m going to come with you . . . how?” I ask, my mind stuck.
Rush slides forward on her seat. That slight shift of her body is an invitation to come closer.
“I don’t have a helmet,” I say.
“We have a dead body,” Lelia whisper-shouts.
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