“And then what?”
His forehead wrinkles. “They died shortly after.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
* * *
I’m on Display
I scan the lunchroom tables. Alice, Mary, and Susannah are at their usual place near the window. I so wish I had asked them to go to the hanging spot in homeroom. And if I don’t do it now, school will be over, and tomorrow’s Wednesday—Remembrance Day. I just need to do this, even if Alice embarrasses me in front of everyone.
As I close in on their table, people’s heads turn in my direction. I’ve never seen anyone approach them during lunch. It’s like walking up to the throne without an invitation. I stop at the edge of their round table. This is much worse than in the garden. I’m on display here.
“Take a seat, Samantha,” says Susannah.
I look at Alice. “Stop standing there like an idiot,” she says.
Usually someone calling me an idiot would not inspire feelings of relief. But in this case, it does. I pull out a chair and sit down. “I really don’t know how to say this, other than to just say it. We need to go back to the hanging location.”
“That’s your big announcement?” Alice exudes confidence. “We know. We’ll go after the witches and warlocks party tonight.”
“I wasn’t invited to the party.” Why did I say that?
They all pause. Then Susannah says, “Come to the party, and we’ll go together after.”
“Okay, but this is on you,” Alice warns Susannah.
I’m not sure if I should say thanks for the invitation or ask Alice what the risk is. Is it because Lizzie hates me? Alice definitely isn’t my biggest fan, either. Also, why were they keeping yesterday a secret from Lizzie and John? Whatever. This is about my dad, not about being friends.
Alice breaks the momentary silence. “Are you done? Or did you have any other brilliant ideas?”
“I think other descendants might have seen those blurred faces we saw in the woods. In previous years where a lotta people died, I mean.”
Mary shifts uncomfortably. “You’re just full of good news.”
“You think or you know?” asks Alice.
“I know.”
“How could you know that, Samantha?” Susannah asks.
“I can’t explain that. But there’s something you should know about it. The descendants who saw those blurred faces—”
“I don’t know whether to be embarrassed for you or disgusted by you,” says Lizzie’s voice behind me. Oh, crap. What is she doing in the freshman-sophomore lunch period?
Alice gives me a look that says It’s your own fault, for trying to sit with us. I stand and face Lizzie, but she looks past me to the Descendants. There are about twenty juniors in the lunchroom, including Jaxon.
“This better be a joke,” Lizzie says to the girls.
“Well if it is, the punch line sucks,” says Alice.
Lizzie looks unsure. I’m confused, too. Was that directed at Lizzie or me? I try to exit the group, but Lizzie grabs my arm and her nails dig into my skin.
“I can break you if I want to,” she says before she lets go, her brown and green eyes issuing a warning.
Jaxon watches me from a table across the room, and I decide to just walk away from her. I really don’t wanna cause a scene in the middle of the cafeteria when half the school is watching.
“What was that?” Jaxon asks as I walk toward him. He pulls an impressively large lunch out of a bag.
I take the seat next to him. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”
“Didn’t look like nothing.”
“I was just talking to the Descendants, and Lizzie got mad.” I try to act casual about it.
“No one talks to them at lunch. Believe me, I’ve seen people try. They’re just met with blank stares until they feel so self-conscious they walk away.”
“I believe that.”
“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” Jaxon offers me a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich.
“You sure?” I ask.
“I have two.”
I laugh and take the sandwich. “What’re you doing in my lunch period?”
“Teacher was sick and the sub never showed. You weren’t handing out pastries again, were you?” He grins. Does he not know they came from his mother’s bakery? Maybe Vivian didn’t bring it up to Mrs. Meriwether after all. That’s a relief.
I smile and bite the delicious sandwich. “Do you know something about a witches and warlocks party tonight?”
“Yup.”
“Is that all you’re gonna say?”
“Depends. Is that all you’re gonna say about the Descendants?”
I shake my head at him, amused. But in reality, I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to lie, but I can’t tell him the truth. If I do, I might compromise the civility I have going with the Descendants and then they won’t go back to the hanging location with me. “Susannah left her notebook in homeroom, and I was just returning it.” Weak, but not the worst.
“Kinda looked like you were sitting at their table. Like you were friends with them.”
“Come on. No way.” I was sitting there. I was being friendly with them. But that doesn’t mean we’re friends. Right?
He’s not convinced, but lets it go. “Costume party. Alice’s house. Descendants throw it every year right before Remembrance Day. It’s a tradition.”
Costume party? Hosted by Descendants? Not my idea of a good time. But if I don’t go, they might not wait for me to go back to the hanging location. “Are you going?”
“I look very good in a warlock costume. Wouldn’t seem right to deprive people of that.”
“Yeah, the school might never forgive you.”
Jaxon gives me a choice of pastries from a small box tied with string. I wonder if I can somehow convince Mrs. Meriwether to pack my lunches.
“I’ll pick you up at nine, nine-thirty?” asks Jaxon.
“Uh, yeah. Sure. Do I have to wear a costume?”
“You won’t be let in without it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
* * *
You Bit Everyone
Line dancing, costume parties, and public speaking are at the top of my slow-death-through-embarrassment list. My clothes are spread out on every available piece of furniture in my room. I so wish I didn’t have to go to this thing.
“Sam! Door!” yells Vivian from downstairs.
I glance at my cell phone. It’s 8:17 p.m. Could Jaxon be that early? I scoop up some clothes and shove them back into Abigail’s armoire in a messy pile. “Coming!”
I make it down the first couple of stairs before I stop dead in my tracks. Vivian’s talking to Susannah in the foyer.
“Hey,” I say, and they look up.
“I didn’t know you girls were going to a theme party,” Vivian says in a friendly tone as I make my way down the rest of the stairs.
That’s because we haven’t spoken a word to each other since last night. I shrug.
“I might have something in my closet for you,” Vivian says. This is a perfect example of our current relationship. Fight, and then ignore the fact that the fight ever happened.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Let me know if you change your mind,” she says, and clicks down the hall.
Susannah is wearing a flattering black Victorian dress with a full skirt and a high neck. Her hair is fashioned in an elaborate version of her usual bun.
“Whoa. You look awesome.” There’s no way I’m going to be able to match that.
“Thanks.” She smiles.
“I was just getting ready. You want to come up?” She obviously came for some specific reason, and I don’t want Vivian overhearing whatever that reason is. She already thinks I’m unstable; all I need is for her to hear I’m inadvertently practicing witchcraft.
“Sure. This is a beautiful old house. I always wondered what it looked like inside.”
We walk up the stairs together. “I spent
about three days getting lost in it.”
“I can imagine.” She takes note of the dimly lit sconces in the hallway.
“Here we are,” I say, opening the door to my room.
“It’s like stepping back in time.” She repeats my exact thoughts when I saw this place.
“So what’s up? I know you didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood.”
“No, I didn’t.” She looks down at the antique silk purse at her side and pulls out an envelope. “This is a letter from your grandmother to mine. I found it when I was helping my mother go through some old boxes this summer. It talks about the mysterious deaths.”
“So you did know about them?” I was right in the garden. There was definitely something they knew and didn’t tell me.
“Sort of. To be honest, I thought your grandmother was, well, unbalanced. It was my grandmother’s response that worried me. It was shoved into the same envelope. She never sent it.”
“Okay,” I say, unsure.
“Samantha, how did you know other descendants saw blurred faces?”
“Is that what that letter says? The one from your grandmother?”
“Yes. I showed it to Alice, and she agreed that there might be something to it. Then you come into school saying that other descendants saw blurred faces.”
I’m beginning to see why Alice is so suspicious of me. The information I have would seem weird to me, too, if I were in her position.
“My grandmother never sent the letter. So how’d you find out?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I know we haven’t given you any reason to trust us, with writing on your locker and the hair pulling and all the rumors—”
“And the rock,” I say.
“Rock?”
“The rock you guys threw through my window that said DIE on it?”
She scrunches her delicate features. “I don’t know anything about that. That’s horrible.”
Maybe Lizzie and John did it and she didn’t know? “Yeah, well. You can see why I’m not exactly jumping at the chance to trust you.”
“I get that. What can I do to change your mind?”
“I don’t know. I guess to start you can tell me why Lizzie’s been following me around.”
She glances toward my window, which doesn’t lessen my suspicions or comfort me one bit. “It’s complicated.”
“Does it have anything to do with why you didn’t invite her or John that day you met me in the garden?”
She touches the lace around her collar. “Yes.”
I wait, but she doesn’t continue. “Susannah, if you won’t even tell me why Lizzie’s doing all these awful things to me or why you guys are hiding the fact that you’re hanging out with me, how am I ever supposed to change my mind about trusting you?” This comes out more forcefully than I intend. But really, I feel like I’m being attacked from all sides here. And if Lizzie has some master plan, I wanna know what it is.
She nods. “You’re right. We shouldn’t hide it. That’s wrong.”
We stand in awkward silence for a few seconds, but she doesn’t explain further. “Okay, then I guess we can just go to the hanging location tonight and then go our separate ways.” Saying this out loud hurts. I didn’t realize how much I was hoping things might be different.
She grips her thin fingers together. “My little sister has cancer, Samantha. She was in and out of hospitals a lot last year. For a while we thought she was getting better. Just recently, though, they found more malignant cells. Now you understand why I’m so worried about this pattern of deaths. We both have so much to lose.”
The weight of her words takes me by surprise. “I’m so sorry.” That’s why Jaxon approached her about my dad. He thought she would be sympathetic.
“I don’t expect you to trust me right away, especially with everything that’s happened. Just, please, think about it. We can’t go our separate ways, because then…”
She doesn’t need to finish for me to understand the fear at the end of that sentence. I know it all too well. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”
She nods. “I’ll let you get ready. I can show myself out.” She walks out my bedroom door, and part of me wants to tell her that everything’s going to be okay. But the truth is that I have no idea if it is.
Instinctively, I let my gaze fall on the pictures of my dad, resting on my trunk. “I’m gonna figure this out, Dad. I’m doing everything I can. I’m falling down seven times, and standing up eight.” Which means I now need to go to this party so that I can figure out what those blurred faces were all about. Even if all I want to do is camp out in the hospital.
I check my cell. It’s 8:39. I swing open my armoire and examine the mess inside. On top of the pile is a neatly folded black lace dress. What’s this doing here? I carefully pull it out, and it swishes to the floor. It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Elijah?” No response. “Thank you. Thank you so much.” I wait, but there’s no answer.
I pull off my ripped jeans and shirt. Did he do this because he wants to make sure I go to the hanging location with the girls? Or was he just being nice?
I examine myself in my vanity mirror and feel self-conscious. I slip on a pair of lace-up boots and shove my wallet into one of them. Somehow that detail makes me feel more like myself.
“That’s a beautiful dress. I don’t remember it,” says Vivian from my doorway.
I turn around, but don’t answer.
“Looks like an antique,” she continues.
“Maybe.” I pull out my jacket and put it on my bed, avoiding eye contact.
“You can’t wear a leather jacket with that dress. Especially a fake leather jacket. It won’t look right.”
I want to yell at her to get out of my room, but I’m afraid she won’t let me go out if I do.
“Sam, take my black cape. It’ll match perfectly. Consider it a peace offering.”
That’s the closest Vivian ever gets to an apology. “Can we go see my dad tomorrow?”
She sighs. “Don’t you think I want to see him, too? I was just worried about you last night. We can definitely visit him tomorrow.”
Some of the tension leaves my chest. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s see that cape.”
She smiles, and clicks toward her room at the opposite end of the house. I follow as she talks about clothing eras and how the cape’s from such and such a time period. She goes straight into her bedroom and then to her closet.
I have no idea what she means by all of it. I’m just relieved that I’ll see my dad. I punctuate her fashion talk with a “Great” occasionally. On her dresser, I spot the corner of a medical bill. Note to self: come back when she’s not home.
“Here,” she says, and hands me a heavy silk cape. It’s actually quite beautiful.
She always dressed me up as a kid, like I was her personal doll. Funny thing is, I used to like it. The attention made me feel special.
Vivian sat down on my bed and placed a shiny black box in front of me.
“What is it?” I asked, sitting up against my pillows.
“The only way to find out is to open it.”
Vivian used the same tone of voice with me as she did with adults. She never treated me any differently because of my age. I liked her for that.
I lifted the lid and pulled aside the tissue paper. Inside was a cream dress with intricate beading patterns. “Whoa. It looks like yours.”
“It’s exactly like mine. I had it made. You know why?”
I could not believe that I was holding a replica of my very favorite thing in Vivian’s wardrobe. And that was saying a lot, considering the size of her closet. “For my fifth-grade graduation?”
She nodded. “A twenties-style dress will match your short hair perfectly. And when everyone is admiring your bold fashion choices, you can give those girls who chopped your hair off the finger.”
I laughed.
I put on the cape and she inspects me. “Hmmm,” she says
to herself, and digs through a jewelry box. She slips a silver necklace over my head. It has a pendant made of silver loops entwined to form a knot. “Much better.”
She straightens the cape on my shoulders, and I suddenly feel the heavy awfulness of the fights we’ve been having lately. Maybe I’ve made the wrong decision, keeping what’s happening in Salem from her. If Elijah was right, and my dad is in serious danger, doesn’t she deserve to know? At least some piece of it?
“V, do you remember when you had that twenties dress made for me?”
She smiles. She always likes it when I call her V. I haven’t done it in months. “Back when you had the brains to follow my fashion sense.”
I laugh. “Yeah. I was really scared to go to my graduation that year and face everyone. That dress made it a lot better.”
“It didn’t hurt that one of those punks fell on her way up to the stage, either.”
I grin. “Nope. That didn’t hurt one bit. Anyway, thanks for all this.”
She tilts her head slightly. “You’re welcome.”
The tension in the air is thinner, at least for the moment. I can’t help but think how nice it is. “I was just thinking that maybe we could spend a little time together, like we used to. I know I’ve been weird lately…and difficult. I’ve just been overwhelmed.”
The grandfather clock chimes downstairs. It’s 9:00. Jaxon will be here any minute.
Vivian’s expression softens. “You want to talk about it?”
“Yeah, I think maybe I do. I have to leave in a minute, but could we talk tomorrow?”
“Dinner. I’ll make it a good one, after we visit your father.”
“Deal,” I say. If we were the hugging types, we probably would right now. Instead, I smile and she nods and I walk quickly down the hallway toward my room.
I examine myself in my vanity mirror. I’m too dressed up to be a witch. Green face paint would help. Wait, I’ll make a wart. At least that gives me something witchy. I draw a dot in the middle of my cheek with my eyeliner. Better.
“Sam, Jaxon’s here!” Vivian yells.
I turn my light off and head into the hall. I stop at the top of the stairs and look down at Jaxon. He smiles. I take the steps cautiously, to not step on my dress. Reaching the bottom, I turn to face him.
How to Hang a Witch Page 13