by Kat Colmer
Cora and I followed him to the door. “Thank you for your time, Professor,” Cora said. “I’m sure we don’t need to read the journals. We won’t bother you again.”
Cora’s elbow to my side jabbed my manners into gear. “Yes, thank you for your time.”
I couldn’t bring myself to echo the rest of Cora’s words; the growing wave of nausea warned me we would be bothering the good professor again.
Chapter Twelve
Cora
I made it to the end of the corridor before Jonas’s silence pushed me to break my own. “Okay, that stuff about the second half of the Old Testament story? Mildly interesting, if you’re into that kind of thing. But you living out an ancient love curse? Anyone who believes that kind of rubbish is missing crucial elements from their periodic table.”
I tossed Jonas a look as we clomped down the stairs. Face drawn, lips pinched, his expression stayed pensive. I stopped. He kept going, eyes trained on the treads of the stairs. Crap.
I took two steps at a time and caught up to him. “Jonas, please tell me you don’t believe any of this rot?”
He glanced up, brows pulled together. “I don’t know what to believe.” He lifted a shaky hand and mussed up already rumpled dark blond hair. “All I know is, after that letter came, two girls I spent time with”—he drew quotation marks in the air—“ran in the opposite direction once they saw the situation in the light of the next day.” At the bottom of the stairs he stopped and turned to look at me. “That has never happened before, Cora. Ever. You can’t tell me that’s not strange.”
My first impulse was to take his ego down a notch and tell him it was about time someone dumped his serial-dating backside. I resisted, because in this case he was right. “Yes, it’s weird. But an ancient love curse? Come on.” Some of my favorite doomsday movies had story lines more believable.
When we stepped outside the building, the melting midday heat rushed to envelop us. We weaved our way along the path leading out of the Quadrangle.
“Look, coming here was your idea.” Jonas threw me a furtive glance. “Maybe you should keep an open mind?”
No, I refused to entertain the idea that any part of this was real. “There’s an open mind and then there’s openly stupid.”
We walked in silence through the sweltering heat, lost in our own confused thoughts, until we reached Dad’s Beetle on the other side of the campus.
I fished around the bottom of my bag for car keys. “Look, I’m open to different explanations where this letter of yours is concerned. As long as they’re rational and make some sort of sense.”
Jonas shoved his hands into the back pockets of his cargo shorts and gave me a tight smile. “That’s just it. As crazy as it sounds, this is the only thing that’s making any sense right now.”
I stared at him. “Jonas, this isn’t one of your fantasy novels. This is reality. There is no ‘one ring to rule them all,’ no Sauron, no Gandalf. And there is definitely no such thing as ancient evil dishing out love curses.”
He looked at me from underneath raised eyebrows. “Trust you to be the scientifically grounded realist.”
I blew a stray hair out of my eyes. “One of us has to be.” I opened the Beetle’s door, the black handle almost too hot to touch from being in the direct sun. I leaned into the oven that was my car and started the engine, switching the air conditioning on. “Can’t have both of us ready to run off with the fairies,” I said when I straightened up again.
“So fairies are real, then?” He smiled, but it was half-hearted.
“Be serious.”
Jonas sighed. “So what now?” Suddenly he looked tired. And a little lost. Something inside me tugged toward him.
I breathed in, felt the heated air hit the back of my skull, and held it there for a moment. “I don’t know,” I said on the exhale. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d let him down somehow. “But there has to be a logical explanation. I just know this can’t be it.” I waited for a nod, some sign of agreement from him. But it never came. Instead, he rubbed the back of his neck and briefly closed those tired eyes of his.
“I’ve got to go,” he said when his lids lifted.
“Work?”
“Yeah. I’m grabbing every extra shift Stefan can give me. With any luck I’ll have enough to upgrade the Mazda before uni starts.”
I nodded. With the way the doors groaned when you opened them, his Mazda could do with an upgrade. “I’ve got another tae kwon do class later today, but I might see you after? Maybe we can do Contagion tonight.” I needed to get his mind off this insane love curse business. The visit with the professor had pushed Jonas over some invisible line.
“Sure.” He was already turning to leave. “You know where I live.” He gave me a hint of a smile.
I chewed on the corner of my bottom lip as I watched him cross the street. Tension gripped his shoulders, hunching him over, dwarfing his height. I pressed two fingers to one of my overheated temples. I’d made a mistake; we shouldn’t have gone to see Professor Daniel Scholler. I should have just left the whole thing alone.
That afternoon, Beth sat cross-legged opposite me on the floor of my bedroom, a ridiculously large assortment of nail polish bottles lined up in front of her. I picked one up: Desert Sunset. Then another: Sparkling Sand. What was wrong with just red and beige?
“She cursed her own kid?” Beth reached for a bottle called Scarlet Sangria.
I put Sparkling Sand back and chose its lighter, less garish cousin Innocent Nude instead. “Yep.”
“Then decided to share the joy and pass the curse down throughout time so her kid could have a chance at love?”
“That about covers it.”
“And it’s only ever the firstborn?”
I nodded.
Beth shook her bottle of Scarlet Sangria like a little bloodred bell. “And here I thought there weren’t any benefits to being born eleven minutes after Jonas.” She quirked an eyebrow. “So what’s your take on all of this?”
I couldn’t believe she needed to ask. “It’s total rot! The professor said as much, but the visit left Jonas all worked up.” Hopefully it was nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction. Rejection was a foreign concept to the guy, so this curse business offered him an easy way to save face, but in the long run he was too smart to abandon the limits of scientific possibility in favor of love curses and ancient evils.
I followed Beth’s example and rang my nail polish bell. Hers came to a sudden standstill.
“You’re not putting that on, are you?” Beth pointed an accusing finger at the bottle of polish in my hand.
I pointed my own finger back at her. “You only said I had to paint my nails. You didn’t say anything about which color.” I gripped the bottle tighter in my other hand. I didn’t trust her not to make a grab for it and force a different shade on me, one she decided was more suitable in her infinite makeover wisdom.
She didn’t, though. She just shook her head. “Jeez, Cora. Take a risk for once in your life. That’s so faint it’s not even a color.”
I refused to feel guilty for dampening her fun but hated the way her lips thinned in disappointment. On the positive side, there was no sign of sequins or boob up-thrusting underwear. Yet.
I turned the light beige polish around in my palm. “You know I don’t like wearing this stuff.” The gunk was impractical. It chipped and became untidy.
“I’m not asking you to get a tattoo. You can take it off after tomorrow night.”
I sighed, my resolve slipping. “Then you choose.”
She thrust the bottle of Scarlet Sangria at me, and I suppressed a groan.
“Okay, if I have to wear that, then you’re coming to the TKD class with me tonight.” If I had to step out of my comfort zone, then so did she. Only fair.
Beth narrowed her eyes at me. “That’s bribery.”
After some huffing and eye rolling, she finally agreed. “One class. That’s all. I can’t believe I’m letting you drag me back there.”
I took the red polish bottle from her. “You make it sound like it’s a form of torture.”
“It is!”
“Oh, come on. I don’t remember you hating it that much.” I hadn’t minded my parents signing me up for the classes along with the twins.
“It was hell,” she said, picking up a metallic blue bottle. “Almost two years of it was twenty months too long.”
“Not that you were counting.”
Beth ignored me and carried on. “All that grunting and sweating and the wrong kind of body contact.” She shuddered and pulled a face. “I only did it to please Aunt Helena. I don’t get why you and Jonas like it so much.”
I unscrewed the bottle of bloodred goo and began defacing my toenails. “It helps with focus. It’s about control of your body, your mind.” It appealed to my sense of discipline and order. And when the tension between Mom and Dad had built to a point where any mention of the Outback Clinic had Mom locking herself in her bedroom and Dad slamming the door to his study, the classes were an acceptable outlet for my frustration. God knows I’d needed to kick something.
“Why did Jonas stop?” I leaned back and inspected my now glossy look-at-me toes. Ridiculous, like five little piggies slaughtered at market. I sighed, bent my other knee, and got to work on the second foot.
“He was swimming most mornings and had work at the café. Guess when senior year rolled along something had to give.” Beth shrugged. “Besides, you were gone, and you were the only reason he went anyway.”
I paused mid brushstroke. I was? “Why do you say that?”
Beth replaced the cap on her bottle and wriggled her metallic blue-tipped toes. “Because he told me. Said it was the only time he could have you to himself. Apparently I monopolize you.” She wiped a smudge of metallic blue from one toe, totally unapologetic for her apparent hogging of my time. “Personally, I think he enjoys you kicking the crap out of him. Other than me, you’re the only girl who won’t put up with any of his bullshit, and even though he won’t admit it, I think he respects that.”
He does? I’d always thought my frankness irritated him.
Beth glanced at my paintwork and gave a nod of approval. “Nice. And I’ve got the perfect dress to match. It’ll knock Markus’s economic socks off.”
I shook my head. “For the last time, it’s not a date!”
Beth shrugged. “I don’t care what it is. I’ll take any opportunity to glam your boring cartoon-T-shirt-wearing butt up, so suffer in your workout jocks, girlfriend.”
I sighed and examined my feet. They didn’t look half bad…in a run-in-with-a-guillotine kind of way.
What would Jonas think of all the paintwork when he saw it? What do you care anyway? But that was just it.
For some stupid reason, suddenly I cared.
Chapter Thirteen
Jonas
“From memory, it’s a green box,” Aunt Helena said. It was Tuesday night, after my shift, and we were in the attic, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling shelves that housed the unused documents her legal offices had no room to store. The skin on my forehead pulled trampoline tight as I took in the sea of green in front of me. This could take a while. Didn’t matter. I needed answers, and instinct told me I’d find them in one of these storage boxes.
“I really should label these better.” Aunt Helena pulled a box half off the shelf and peered inside. “What made you finally decide to go through your parents’ things?”
Her curiosity was understandable. The subject of my parents, especially my father’s accident, had been a strict no-go-zone for the past six years. Beth had rummaged through the box with Aunt Helena shortly after we moved here. Not me. Hell, no. The first time I asked about anything to do with my parents was a couple of months ago when I decided to surprise Beth with the pendant made from Mom’s engagement ring. Even then I refused to go anywhere near their stuff, just asked Aunt Helena to dig the ring out for me.
I watched my aunt open another box and tried for a reply that wouldn’t arouse her concern or suspicion. “Guess it’s about time.”
She smiled, a mostly relieved but partly sad expression. Probably thinking I was finally going to face my demons.
“This is it.” She pulled a box off the shelf and passed it to me. It wasn’t heavy, but its contents weighed me down nonetheless.
“Thanks.” I stared at the faded green cardboard lid, suddenly not so sure I wanted to do this.
Aunt Helena brushed dust from her hands. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” Since subtlety wasn’t one of her strong suits, she stood there and eyed me for any signs I might crack.
I forced a smile and waited. After a few uncomfortable seconds she turned to head downstairs. But being Aunt Helena, she couldn’t help look over her shoulder when she reached the attic door. “I’ll be in my study if you need me.”
I nodded and with one last assessing glance, she was gone.
Three heartbeats later I followed her downstairs—before the weight in my hands became too much to bear.
Back in my room, I dumped the document box on my bed, then plugged my phone into the speaker dock and selected a playlist guaranteed to rattle the glass in my bedroom window. I needed to make sure the music drowned out anything unwelcome in my head during this process.
I lifted unsteady hands into my hair, and fisted stiff fingers in the strands to stop their shaking. You can do this. You can do this. When the tremors against my skull subsided, I took a breath, lifted the dust-covered green lid and peered inside the box.
A motley collection of papers and photographs was the first thing I found. I grabbed a pile of photos and thumbed through them. All were of Beth and me as babies, toddlers, then preschoolers. Two pale blond locks of hair dangled loosely from the back of one picture, the tape holding them in place yellowed and peeling with age.
I reached inside the box again and retrieved a wad of my parents’ old birthday and wedding anniversary cards. After opening a few, I scanned them but avoided reading the intimate messages. It was too much like eavesdropping on a private conversation, one I didn’t want reminders of.
The next pile was of Mom and Dad: as a young couple, on their wedding day, the day Beth and I were born. In some shots they were smiling, while others showed them pensive. But in all of the images they were touching, like the thought of being disconnected from one another was unbearable. As though nothing on earth was strong enough to sever their bond. Nothing and no one. Not even—
I bit the inside of my cheek and concentrated on the screaming guitar riff blaring across the room, willing it to hold the maelstrom of unwelcome emotions building inside at bay.
No use. Anger churned in my gut and burned its way up my windpipe. The look in my father’s eyes as he gazed at Mom sparked it. Memory of the confusion and helplessness of my twelve-year-old self fueled it.
When something clawed at my eyes, making them sting, I flung the photos across my bed. Then started—Leo stood in the doorway.
I jumped off the bed and turned the music down. “Shit, next time knock or something.”
“I did. You didn’t hear me.” Leo took in the scene, must have registered something not quite right in my expression. “Your aunt let me in, but I can… Look, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned to leave and I realized I didn’t want him to go. Could be this might be easier with someone else diffusing the situation.
“Leo.” He stopped, turned around. “Don’t be an idiot.” I waved him back into the room. He regarded me for a moment, then stepped back in through the door.
His gaze fell on the open box and the photos strewn over my comforter. “This is your parents’ stuff, right?”
I nodded and sat back down near the head of the bed.
He slid his hands into his jeans pockets and edged several steps closer. “You never talk about them.” It wasn’t a question, but curiosity was pasted all over his face.
“No, I don’t.”
Leo reached across to the chair at my desk and sat down facing me. Long seconds passed in awkward silence. The compulsion to fill it with meaningless words was strong. After a year of friendship, Leo deserved better.
“Mom died in a car accident.” But he already knew that. The entire neighborhood had known within a week of us moving here that Caroline and Peter Leander had died in a car crash. What they didn’t know was that my father hadn’t been in the car with his wife.
I swallowed past the serrated dryness in my throat. “Four months later Dad wrapped his station wagon around a tree, not far from where the SUV had pulverized Mom’s Honda.”
I had to give Leo credit; his double take was hardly noticeable as the implication of my words sank in. “That’s… Shit, I’m sorry, Jonas.”
I yanked the green box closer, took out a wad of documents held together with a bull clip. “Aunt Helena thought we should stick to a one-accident story.” Fewer questions, she’d said. Suited me fine.
I flipped through the papers in my hand: birth records, university transcripts, certificate of marriage. Leo sat on the other end of the bed. He picked up one of the photos and examined it.
“He must have loved her very much.”
A fist of emotion grabbed me by the jugular. It squeezed—hard—until the pressure of it forced the ugly truth out with my next breath. “Yeah, so fucking much he left his two kids with no parents.”
I’d never said it out loud before. Thought it a thousand times but never actually said it. Not to Beth, or Aunt Helena. Or the counsellor we saw once a week for a whole year after.
Leo stared at me. I made no conscious decision to keep talking. The words just spilled out, like they were desperate for release.