The Graces

by Laure Eve

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said suddenly.

  I waited, wary.

  ‘Do you believe in the curse?’

  She gazed at me intently. I opened my mouth and then shut it, caught by surprise.

  River 2.0 did not. River 2.0 was normal, and sensible, and recognised that those kinds of things were beguiling but childish fantasy. It was easy to let yourself get all hysterical, to get swept up in the drama of it – but in the end it caused only trouble and hurt.

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about coincidence recently,’ I said at last. ‘I mean. Marcus, he’s unstable. Maybe he just couldn’t handle being shut out.’

  Summer tilted her head. ‘The spells we did,’ she said. ‘The things that happened. You think it was all just coincidence?’

  ‘Well, none of it worked, did it? I mean, we never saw any real evidence of it.’

  ‘Wolf,’ she said quietly. ‘He drowned?’

  ‘Of course he drowned,’ I said irritably. ‘I was there. He was drunk and he was standing too close to the water and he drowned.’ Was she here to pick a fight with me about that again? I’d managed to not think about Wolf for a while now, and I couldn’t bear reopening that wound.

  For the longest time, she said nothing.

  ‘Are you telling me now that you don’t believe?’ I prodded. ‘Because you certainly always acted like you did.’

  She was staring into her mug.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t have any answers,’ she said. ‘I never have. It depends who you ask. Ask Fen … you know what he’d say.’ Her mouth pulled into a wry twist. ‘Ask Thalia … you know she believes. It’s part of why she’s so bloody tragic about everything.’

  ‘And you’re, what? Piggy in the middle?’

  ‘Haven’t really made up my mind about it all,’ she said, leaning back, her gaze resting on my face. ‘Not yet.’

  I felt scrutinised.

  ‘What are you here for, Summer?’

  She shrugged, evasive. ‘We were best friends. Not that long ago, you might recall.’

  The word ‘best’ made my insides lurch.

  ‘Not any more,’ I said evenly.

  ‘Come on, you didn’t give me a chance. We were still all screwed up over Wolf. Fen was falling apart. Thalia had been falling apart for a while. We just needed time.’

  ‘Your mother came in here, into this kitchen, and categorically told me to stay away from you. Like I’m some horrible influence or something. Like I walked in and screwed up your life, instead of it happening the other way around.’

  ‘You did,’ she said.

  I gaped at her. ‘Me? I did? You have no idea the effect you all have on people, do you?’

  ‘What do you want me to say? If I say yes, you can call me arrogant. You can accuse me of playing up to it. If I say no, you’ll call me blind and stupid. Maybe even a liar. Either way I don’t win!’

  ‘Well, this has been fun,’ I said, pushing my chair back. ‘But I have a life I have to get back to, and I’m sure you do, too. So thanks for dropping by.’

  ‘What?’ She looked genuinely panicked, enough to stop me. ‘I’m not going yet. I can’t. We need to talk.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘Yes, there is!’

  ‘So say it!’

  Summer stared at me, wide-eyed. Then she collapsed back in her chair. Her boot slammed against the table leg, slopping hot chocolate over the mug rims.

  ‘God!’ she exclaimed. ‘You never made it easy, did you?’

  I was mystified. ‘Made what easy?’

  ‘Telling you I missed you. Telling you that you were my best friend. I don’t have best friends. They’re my best friends. But then you came along, and I realised how much I needed that. You changed us. You changed everything.’

  She paused, staring at the hot chocolate puddle seeping around the bottom of her mug.

  ‘I seriously have not had a chance to come back home again until now. It’s been miserable. I’ve been all alone, okay? And you didn’t try to see me. I’d fantasise in class about how maybe you’d find out the school’s address and you’d sneak into the grounds one night and find my window and throw stones at it like you did before. I honestly thought you would. But you never did.’

  She was inscrutable, rocking back on her chair. Then suddenly it slammed down again, changeable as the wind. The Summer I remembered. Her coyness fell off and she looked me directly in the eye.

  ‘So. Are we going to be best friends again?’ She flung her arms wide dramatically. ‘Despite the world trying to keep us apart?’

  The grin threatened to crack my face in half unless I let it surface, so I did. I had all sorts of good reasons for not doing this. For moving on with my life and leaving them in the murky past, a past I would take out only occasionally, like an old photo album buried in a box somewhere in the back of the attic.

  There were reasons. Just right now, I couldn’t remember what they were.

  ‘Would you tell your parents we were hanging out again?’ I said to her.

  She tilted her head. ‘You’re going to have to give me more time on that one.’

  I snorted.

  ‘Would you tell your mother?’ she said, soft and knowing.

  I took a deep breath. ‘You’re going to have to give me more time on that one.’

  She grinned. She seemed so relieved, like I’d suddenly made everything right again. We stared at each other, both feeling exactly the same thing, connected, and glad for it. It was a very simple, powerful feeling, to be wanted.

  Summer raised her hands. Her silver rings winked in the light. ‘We need to do it better this time, though. No more secrets. We tell each other everything, otherwise it won’t work. It’s what you said we should do, isn’t it? You got all high and mighty about it. Well, you were right.’

  I was taken aback that she remembered. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Deal?’

  ‘Deal,’ I said.

  Deal? Really? You’re going to tell her? Everything?

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘Sorry about the mess.’ She indicated the spilled chocolate.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, sinking into disappointment and trying not to let it show.

  She stood, shrugging on her jacket. ‘Do you want to know what you’re doing tomorrow?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Having breakfast with me.’

  ‘I am? Maybe I’m busy. Maybe I’m working.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘I know things.’ She glanced at me slyly. ‘So? I mean, if you can get past your mum.’

  A golden warmth spread through me. ‘She’s on a late shift – if you come by at nine, she won’t even be back yet. I’ll leave her a note.’

  ‘Cool. I’ll be here just before nine, then.’

  ‘Really? I figured you’d tell me it was an inhuman hour or something. Since when do you even know what nine looks like on a Saturday?’

  ‘Oh, boarding school has totally screwed me up. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning over eggs.’ She gave me a serious look. ‘And I’ll tell you a secret. And you tell me one. And that’s how we’ll start it. We’ll just do it, like ripping off a plaster. Secrets and eggs.’

  ‘Secrets and eggs,’ I echoed.

  She winked at me, punching her hand lightly into my shoulder as she brushed past.

  I heard the front door slam closed.

  Tomorrow. Secrets and eggs.

  It took a few minutes for the nerves to start kicking in.

  This wasn’t going to work. How could it? From now until forever, there would always be Wolf between us, his ghost curled around our necks like a cat, weighing us down.

  What was I doing?

  What was I doing?

  CHAPTER 31

  She was true to her word – the doorbell buzzed just before nine.

  ‘Are you even allowed to drive?’ I said as I slid into the passenger seat of her
borrowed car.

  ‘Nope,’ Summer replied cheerfully. She had her long black coat on with the oversized buttons and lined knee boots. A red knitted hat capped her raven hair.

  ‘Are you taking lessons?’

  ‘Sally’s been teaching me the last few weeks.’

  I guessed this was the friend at school whose car we now sat in. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Esther was never into the idea of us all learning to drive. She always said we didn’t need to go anywhere by ourselves that wasn’t in this town, until we were actually leaving home for good.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She pulled out slowly and we headed into town, towards the seafront. She looked like she’d been driving for years. I didn’t think she ever bothered with anything she wasn’t immediately good at.

  ‘So,’ she said casually. ‘What did you tell your mother about where you are right now?’

  I glanced at her. She’d never been so worried about my mother before. Was she as nervous as me?

  ‘It’s okay,’ I tried to reassure her. ‘I left her a note saying I picked up an extra shift at the café. She won’t expect to see me until this evening, when she wakes up.’

  Summer seemed satisfied. It was a short ride, and neither of us talked much. We parked and went to Blue Juice, a cute little place right on the front. It was probably too early to run into anyone from school in here, but I was still jumping in my skin. I wanted them to see us and I didn’t want them to see us. Summer seemed to be in the latter zone, as she chose a booth at the back, hidden from the whole place except the table right next to us, and it was pretty empty right now.

  I didn’t know the waitress, but she might have been a couple of years older than Thalia. She stared at Summer like she had grown two heads. She didn’t write down my order, even though I said it twice. Summer was blank on the outside, but inside I could tell she was shrinking, squirming.

  ‘Hello?’ I said to the waitress. ‘Maybe stop staring at her and do your job?’

  The waitress gave me a dirty look. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I want scrambled eggs on toast and black ginger-nut coffee. She wants poached eggs on spinach and green tea with honey. Maybe you should write it down?’

  ‘I can remember it fine,’ she said. ‘Everyone round here has a great memory, actually.’

  She threw Summer a hard stare and then walked off.

  ‘Wow,’ I tried to joke. ‘What was all that about?’

  She shrugged, sullen.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘The tide is turning,’ she said, mysteriously. ‘It does, every so often.’

  I frowned. ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘It means that some of the more gullible people in this stupid town think we killed Wolf.’ She laughed, sharp.

  ‘What?’ I said, astonished. I wasn’t exactly in with the crowd at school any more, but I hadn’t heard anything like that. I wondered if my mother had. I wondered if she just hadn’t been telling me. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  Summer looked away, fiddling with the corner of the menu.

  I watched her. ‘Do you want to go?’

  ‘No, it’s fine. It’ll be the same everywhere. They’ll get over it eventually.’

  I cleared my throat, trying to think of things to say.

  ‘Hey,’ she said suddenly. ‘I just realised, I’ve never once asked you what your favourite colour is.’

  I searched, caught off guard. ‘That midnight blue, purple velvet kind of colour. Yours?’

  ‘Burgundy. Like wine. Like old blood.’ She grinned. It was a very Summer colour.

  We went on like that for a while, trading favourite things, and it started to feel better, but everything was still drenched in expectation. Jokes were funnier and words more carefully chosen. Too much had happened, and it crouched between us, an ugly, patient toad waiting for a mistake.

  The waitress came back with our food, and despite her venom-tinged silence, our breakfasts looked and smelled amazing. I picked up my fork and opened my mouth to say something stupid about eggs and balls, but Summer was looking away from me, smiling, and I glanced round right into Fenrin’s chest.

  The world froze.

  ‘Hey,’ she was saying. ‘You’re disgustingly late. As always.’

  ‘Oh, stop your moaning, you had a good substitute.’ He winked at me.

  For a long, long moment, I had absolutely no idea what to do.

  Fenrin slid into the booth next to Summer and nudged her. ‘She doesn’t look happy to see me.’

  ‘It’s been a while,’ she said.

  ‘It really has.’ He flashed me a beautiful smile, and I felt my whole body quail.

  He looked lovely again, like nothing had ever happened to him. He wore a thick fisherman’s sweater over a loose shirt, and his blond hair was tousled by the wind. I could see the top of his turret shell necklace poking just above the V of his collar.

  I had not let myself think about him because all that was over, over, filled with pain and shame. And yet now here he was, as if no time had passed at all.

  ‘What … are you doing here?’ I managed.

  ‘Sorry, I invited him—’

  ‘Sorry, it’s my fault—’

  Summer and Fenrin both talked at once, looked at each other and laughed awkwardly.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Fenrin said again. ‘I said not to tell you I was coming. I thought maybe you wouldn’t show if you knew I was here.’

  I tried to relax my grip on the fork. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’

  ‘The last time we saw each other,’ he said, ‘I didn’t handle things very well. I’m sorry. It was not a good time for me.’ He spoke carefully, and I wondered if it was to conceal the pain underneath, like speaking carefully, as if he’d rehearsed it, was the only way it would come out.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘I messed up, anyway. I mean … I’m sorry, too. I should have … I should have told you everything.’

  He was silent. I stared into my eggs as hard as I could.

  ‘Well, now we’re all very sorry for being complete asses to one another,’ said Summer brightly, ‘let’s eat before our food gets cold.’

  I tried to laugh, and stabbed at a yolk.

  Fenrin grabbed the menu tucked behind the salt shaker. ‘What’s good here?’ he said. His voice was nearly as cheerily forced as Summer’s.

  And so, in a slow, halting way, it went. Fenrin ordered waffles drenched in wildflower honey, and I kept my eyes down when he ate. I’d never been able to watch him eat without craving him. He and Summer laughed and flicked each other and joked, but there was something to it, an edge I’d never noticed before, and I thought maybe it was new. But then, I couldn’t expect everything to be exactly the same between us after all that had happened.

  ‘So what are you guys up to this weekend?’ I asked them, after we’d all finished eating.

  ‘Taking advantage of the fact that our parents are away and running riot over the house,’ said Fenrin, pouring himself some coffee from the pot we were sharing. ‘You should come round.’

  ‘You should come and visit us,’ Summer said, at exactly the same time.

  I laughed. ‘Guys, you have to stop doing that. It’s weird.’

  ‘God, stop copying me,’ Fenrin said, shooting Summer an evil look. She stuck her tongue out at him, but he missed it as he turned back to me. ‘So?’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘So are you coming round? We could watch films or something, like we used to.’

  My chest tightened like a vice.

  ‘Probably not,’ I said slowly. ‘I have loads of school work to do this weekend.’

  ‘School work?’ Summer rolled her eyes. ‘There are more important things in life. Like this horror film I found about dead serial killers resurrected as ghost clowns.’ She waggled her eyebrows excitedly.

  ‘Christ alive, Summer,’ Fenrin said, ‘we want her to come round and hang with us, not promise to giv
e her nightmares.’

  I smiled weakly. ‘Seriously, I don’t think I can this weekend.’ An awkward silence fell. I should have said yes – I

  had no idea when I’d be able to see them again. And yet I still couldn’t quite face it. Go back to that house with no Wolf in it. That house, drenched in memories. Fenrin seemed sanguine, but I got the distinct impression that I’d made Summer angry.

  I excused myself and went to the toilet, as much to figure out what to do as anything else. I stared at myself in the mirror, trying to see what they saw. How much did my features betray of me, the real me, the coal-black and coal-bright me?

  How long was I going to keep this up for?

  When I got back to the table, they were muttering together, but Summer was smiling a little, and my nerves eased.

  ‘Poured you some more coffee,’ said Fenrin, indicating my mug, and I took it gratefully, as it gave me something to focus on. Summer launched into a long-winded anecdote about a girl at her new school she was sure was the daughter of a famous rock star trying to go incognito, and the tension eased as the conversation changed. They talked about how strict the school was, the beautiful grounds, the tennis courts, the swimming pool, the French teacher, who, according to Fenrin, defied all cultural expectations, since he was the worst dresser he’d ever seen.

  They talked about new lessons, and new friends, and trying to fit in at the same time as trying to stand out, which was a problem I’d thought only lesser mortals like me grappled with. They asked me about the café, and I talked for a while about the cakes there and about Delia, who was full of stories but told them much better than I did.

  We did not talk about Wolf. We did not talk about magic, and we did not reminisce about the things we had done, because all of them, I supposed, contained things we’d rather forget. Had it really gone so wrong for us that this was all we could be now?

  They had come to me. I hadn’t tried to go back to them. That had to count for something.

  They really were funny, though. I was giggling about something stupid; I couldn’t stop giggling. We’d moved on to our childhoods, and I was trying to tell them about the toys I used to have, and how for a while when I was really small, I would insist on getting only boxes of coloured paper clips as my birthday and Christmas presents because I wanted to make necklaces from them, but I didn’t think the story was coming out the way it should have been. I felt like my jaw might be made of chewing gum – when I opened my mouth to speak it stretched out in rubbery strings.