Poison

by Molly Cochran

  “Hmm?”

  “You know, that I might have, er, special ability.”

  “Special ability?” She laughed. “Is that what they call witchcraft here at Massachusetts Witch-a-Rama?”

  I shook my head. “Just at my school.”

  “Are you kidding? You go to witch school? Is it like Hogwarts?”

  “No. Ainsworth is a regular school. Well, it’s private, and a lot of us board, but the classes are all the standard academic stuff. Where do you go? Liberty?”

  She stuck her finger into her mouth. “Please. The rah-rah isn’t for me.”

  “Are you homeschooled, then?”

  She tossed her long hair. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  I thought there might be more behind that answer, but I didn’t want to pry.

  “What’s your last name?” she asked suddenly.

  “Er . . . Ainsworth,” I said uncertainly. The issue of my name was always difficult to explain. “I grew up with a different name—my father’s—but after moving here, I found out that the women in my family always keep the Ainsworth name.”

  “Like the school you go to.”

  “Right. It was founded by a distant ancestor of mine, Serenity Ainsworth.”

  She made a face. “Imagine being stuck with a name like Serenity,” she said.

  “Well, actually, that’s my name too,” I admitted. “Legally, anyway.”

  Morgan shrieked. “Your name is Serenity?”

  I nodded glumly. “That’s why I go by Katy.”

  “I can see why,” she said, and laughed. “Hey, don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me. So, what’s your talent?”

  I supposed it wouldn’t be any big deal to tell her. “Telekinesis,” I said with a shrug. Admittedly it wasn’t a very big talent. “And psychometry.”

  “Psy what tree?”

  “I can read objects. Like their history, or the people who owned them. No big deal,” I added. “Not like shape-shifting.”

  “Are you kidding? Your magic is with objects. You’re the Mistress of Real Things!”

  I laughed, although what she’d said made me feel a lot better about my gift. The Mistress of Real Things. Yes, I liked that.

  “But you can’t practice psycho-whatsis at school, right?”

  “God, no. We can’t even talk about witchcraft there. It’s not allowed. Of course, the witches all know who the Muffies are—”

  “Muffies?”

  “Cowen.” I explained about Muffies, which led to my telling her about what had happened in Summer’s dorm room and why I was looking into Ouija boards. “All four of them just sort of keeled over,” I said. “And the only thing even a little bit strange about the room was that they were playing with a Ouija board. Plus they might have been stoned.”

  She gave a dismissive wave.

  “So what do you think?” I asked.

  Morgan gave me a thoughtful look. “Did you really make them stink?” she asked.

  I blushed. “Come on, Morgan.”

  She lay down on the couch, holding her sides. “And they turned your fries into fingers?”

  “That’s the point. They were Muffies. They shouldn’t have been able to do anything like that. That’s why I think the Ouija board had something to do with it.”

  She was still laughing as she got up and retrieved one of the boards we’d been looking at in the back of the store. “Well, okay. If you think it’ll help, take one.” She tossed it at me.

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “I really just wanted to know if Summer had—”

  “Go ahead.”

  “No, I couldn’t accept it. Really.”

  “So buy it,” Morgan said.

  “Huh?” Of all the wonderful things in the store, a Ouija board was about the last thing I would choose to spend money on.

  “Let’s see it, Katy. Cash on the barrelhead.” She crashed her fist onto the coffee table.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, counting out fifteen dollars and eighty cents, which left me with four dollars. Fool, thy name is Katy.

  “Huh! I knew I’d get your money sooner or later.” Morgan gloated, pretending that my bills were some kind of vast fortune. “There’s a sucker born every minute, I say.”

  “Yeah. Great,” I said.

  “Oh, now you’re mad.” She handed my money back. “I was just kidding.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said, trying to be polite. “I’ll take the board.”

  “Don’t be dumb. I can palm it off onto someone else. Take the money.” She waved the bills at me. “I’ll give you the free gift anyway.” She reached behind the cash register. “Grand opening special.”

  I almost gasped. It was gorgeous, a ring with a blue oval stone the size of a dime that seemed to glow from within. And it wasn’t just about how it looked. It may have been my imagination, but as soon as the ring was on my finger, I felt suffused with a feeling of well-being, as if all my jangled nerves had been instantly coated with honey. “Are you kidding?” I asked. “This is a free gift?”

  “Cool, huh?” She laughed. “It almost looks real, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s not real?”

  “Five bucks retail.”

  “Wow.” I tried to take it off to look inside. “It’s so . . . Ow.” I felt a jolt like an electrical spark when it left my finger. “It almost hurts to take it off,” I said, laughing.

  “So don’t. It suits you, anyway.”

  The stone had changed. When it was off my finger, it didn’t glow at all. I put it back on. The stone came to life again. “Amazing,” I said.

  “It’s some new resin or something. The band’s a metal alloy, but it has real weight.”

  “It looks like gold.”

  “No lie. My aunt gets them from this company in California. Isn’t it fabulous?”

  I nodded, feeling that same sense of contentment coursing through me again. “Fabulous,” I whispered.

  Then I saw a clock in the display case, and gasped out loud. “Is that the time?” I threw on my coat. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  “Oh, you have a job?”

  “In a restaurant called Hattie’s Kitchen. I’m a cook.”

  Morgan put her hands on her hips. “Well, aren’t you enterprising,” she said.

  “What I am is late.” I raced for the door.

  “Will you come back?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “When are you here?”

  “I’m always here.” She cut her eyes toward the ceiling. “I live upstairs.”

  “Don’t you get . . . ”

  She shook her head. Her eyes didn’t meet mine. She knew I was going to say “lonely,” and she didn’t want to go there. I don’t know how I knew that; I just did. Maybe it was from being lonely myself. Anyway, nobody who’s lonely wants other people to know it, so I let it drop. Besides, I was in a hurry. “Maybe we can hang out together sometime,” I said, stepping outside.

  “Sounds good.”

  The door jingled behind me. I jogged to Hattie’s feeling—for a while anyway—as if all were right with the world.

  CHAPTER

  •

  ELEVEN

  I just had time to get to work in time for the dinner shift. I didn’t like to make it just under the wire like that, because there was always a lot of prep work to get out of the way before the place got crowded, especially on a Saturday. I was hoping to have at least a few minutes alone in the kitchen, but when I arrived, the place was already humming, humid and redolent with the aroma of something that reminded me a little of beef stew, only better.

  “That smells great,” I said to the room in general.

  “Thank you,” answered a voice that sounded sort of like a cross between Justin Bieber’s and Dracula’s. I blinked as he stepped out from behind the pantry door. It was the same guy I’d met in front of Morgan’s store. “Oh, hello again,” he said with a smile. He wiped his hands on his snow-white apron and walked over to me, as graceful as a cat.

  His s
trange outfit had been replaced by a pair of jeans and Peter’s Foo Fighters T-shirt, so I guessed that Hattie had hired him. “So, are you a work-study student too?” I asked, taking a clean apron off a peg on the wall.

  “A what?”

  “Katy!” Hattie bounded into the kitchen with Peter’s little brother, Eric, in her arms. “Have you met Bryce?”

  “Biii,” Eric cooed.

  “Bryce de Crewe,” the red-haired boy elaborated.

  “I’m Katy,” I said. “Whatever you’re cooking smells good.”

  Bryce de Crewe grinned proudly. “’Tis an easy task with instant fire,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” Hattie said. “What we’re making’s almost finished, so we won’t need you.”

  “Are you kidding?” Saturday night was our busiest service.

  “No. Take the night off. Bryce and I will manage.”

  “What about Peter?” I asked, wondering if I still had a job.

  “He’s off too,” Hattie said. “Bryce and I can handle the dinner service.”

  “But it’s Saturday,” I said. I didn’t see how two people could prepare all the food, especially since nothing seemed to have been started except for a pot of broth.

  “It’s a limited menu,” Hattie said.

  “Limited to soup?”

  “That’s right,” Hattie said, sounding dangerously annoyed. “Have you got a problem with that?”

  “No . . . Just asking,” I said.

  “It’s a special project that the two of us have to attend to.” That was, I knew, the closest thing to an explanation that I was going to get.

  “Uh, sure,” I said. “No problem. I’ll just . . . go.” Hattie was already bustling, putting Eric in his extra large high chair and taking down some infrequently used ingredients from a special pantry at the far end of the kitchen.

  Then it occurred to me. “You’re making a potion,” I said.

  “Get!” Hattie shouted, waving a wooden spoon at me. “Go on, get!” she shouted. I skittered backward as Eric burst into peals of laughter.

  Bryce looked alarmed, as if he believed Hattie was going to beat me with her spoon. I knew that wouldn’t happen, but something was bothering her. Something she wasn’t about to tell me.

  “You’re working brunch tomorrow,” she called as I headed out the double doors.

  • • •

  No one was home at my great-grandmother’s house. Gram and Aunt Agnes were consulting with florists or bakers or something, getting ready for my aunt Agnes’s wedding. She was thirty-eight years old and “not the marrying kind,” so getting married was a pretty big deal. Actually, it was more like the biggest deal in the history of the world as far as those two were concerned.

  Normally Agnes was a very sensible person. She was the chair of the Ethnobotany Department at Stanford University, to which she commuted via astral projection, although I doubted the chancellor knew that. Gram was a Therapeutic Touch practitioner in the Alternative Healing section of Whitfield Hospital. Neither of them was what you’d ever think of as flaky. But this wedding thing had turned them both into lunatics. They’d spent so much time on preparations that Jonathan—Agnes’s fiancé, who was a carpenter—had taken on extra work just to fill up all his free time, since Agnes was hardly ever available.

  It was the same with me. Coming to Gram’s house used to mean baking cookies together and tending the garden and watching movies at night. Now it meant heating up a frozen dinner by myself and pondering how many bags of dog poop had accumulated outside my dorm room that day.

  With a sigh I opened my laptop and clicked on e-mail. There was something from my father. For a moment—a very brief moment—I entertained the idea that it might be a personal note. Hi, Katy. Hope you’re enjoying your new term at school. Can’t wait to see you during break!

  But no. It was a lengthy article about the monodic madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo (1566–1613). I guessed he thought that was something I needed to know. Thanks, Dad. Try not to be so sentimental next time.

  Well, at least there was Peter. Whatever awful thing might happen, Peter could always make it better.

  I called him on his cell. He’d spent the afternoon with his great-uncle, and he’d been nervous about that. Most people don’t have to prepare to visit their relatives, but this was a special case. Aside from all the complicated family issues that had come up in the years since Peter’s parents had died, there were other problems. For one thing, Peter’s great-uncle Jeremiah was the richest man in Whitfield, and maybe all of Massachusetts. It couldn’t have been that easy for a guy who’d never shopped anywhere besides Wal-Mart to hang out with an old man who owned a Learjet and lived in a mansion that was bigger than most hotels.

  But that meeting had been hours ago. I should have heard from Peter before now. “Are you okay?” I asked when he answered the phone.

  “Uh, yeah,” he said. He sounded weird, so I asked him if he could talk. “Sure,” he said. “It’s just that I’m in a . . . a car.”

  “Whose car?”

  “Jeremiah’s, I guess.” He whispered, “Katy, it’s a limo.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To New York.”

  “What?”

  “He said I needed clothes. So I’m going for a fitting. At Armani.”

  I choked. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No. Not unless he was kidding me.”

  “Maybe you can get a tux for Winter Frolic,” I said, reminding him about the big midyear school dance.

  “I do have to get a tux. It’s on the list.”

  “He gave you a list of clothes to order?”

  “Right. Then he gave me fifty dollars for coffee and told me to go with the driver. Oh, God. I think we’re here.”

  “Peter—”

  “I’ll call you later, okay?” He broke the connection.

  For a long time I just sat with the phone in my hand, trying to wrap my head around things. I mean, it was great that Peter’s coldhearted but rich relative was finally paying attention to him, but it was a lot to take in. The day before, my boyfriend had been an orphan who’d lived above a restaurant. Today he was being chauffeured to Armani for a fitting.

  The two of us had enjoyed our mutually low status as kitchen workers because we’d had each other and Hattie, who had taken me under her wing after I’d been dumped into a boarding school because my father had been too busy with his love life to put up with me. But now that Peter’s Uncle Moneybags had surfaced, all that might have been changing.

  Don’t get me wrong. I was glad that something might finally be going Peter’s way. It was just that, as selfish as it was, I missed him then, that night, when I had no friends and no work and nobody in the house except the ten thousandth generation of Whitfield mice to keep me company.

  My life was going through a black hole or something, what with my soiled reputation at school. I didn’t feel welcome there. My family was doing wedding things. My dad—well, that was the same as ever, his idea of a warm relationship being an e-mail forward. My job at Hattie’s Kitchen had always allowed me to take my mind off my problems, but it looked as if I might have been replaced there, too.

  And now Peter, who would be wearing an Armani tux to Winter Frolic while I graced his arm in a gown from the consignment store, was too busy to talk to me.

  Did that suck or what?

  CHAPTER

  •

  TWELVE

  I made a sandwich and took it to my room upstairs. My French textbook was open to a review of irregular verbs, in preparation for a test on Monday.

  Great. I’d be spending Saturday night studying for a verb test two full days in the future. Just call me Miss Party. In a dramatic (and, okay, childish) gesture, I threw the French book against the wall. On its way it knocked over the box where I’d stashed the debris from Summer’s room.

  With a sigh I crawled under my desk, where the various “clues”—all having proven to be worthless—were
strewn, and tossed them one by one into the wastebasket—the bra ad, the sewing needle, the T.G.I. Friday’s coupon, the sex-crazed Yalie’s phone number. From my jeans pocket I took the receipt for the Ouija board and tossed that in too. While I was retrieving my French book, I spotted the two broken pieces of plastic that Peter had found. They had fallen behind the desk, and I had to reach for them with a back scratcher. When I finally got hold of them, I hit my head while extricating myself, and cursed through clenched teeth while the jagged pieces of plastic dug into my palm.

  “Calm down,” I said out loud, forcing myself to lean against the bed. I knew that I was having a klutzdown—a meltdown of klutziness, not unfamiliar to me—and that if I stood up at that moment, I was sure to stub my toe, spill coffee on my books, and probably poke myself in the eye. “Breathe,” I commanded myself, closing my eyes. “In, out, in, out . . . ”

  In my mind’s eye I saw a beautiful meadow filled with wildflowers. The sky was a soft, cloudless blue, and the air was suffused with the scent of violets. “Yes, yes,” I whispered. “Good thoughts . . . ”

  Into the picture I’d created walked a man of late middle age.

  Huh?

  • • •

  A dark-haired young girl, eight or nine years old, held his hand and skipped alongside him. At a spot in the meadow where a profusion of daisies grew, the girl stopped, picked an armful of flowers, and offered them to . . . her father. Yes, of course he was her father, despite his advancing years.

  The longer I held on to the image, the more certain I became, although I still had no idea why I was having this vision in the first place.

  The little girl loved him more than life itself. His visits, though infrequent, were filled with surprises and affection. And magic. Oh, the magic! The girl tossed the daisies over her head and—whoosh!—they changed in midair into butterflies. Shrieks of laughter. The man applauded appreciatively.

  What was this? I wondered. A dream? Had I fallen asleep? Or was my subconscious telling me something about my relationship with my psychologically distant father? If so, why was this man so much older than my dad, who was thirty-eight, looked like Hugh Jackman, and was cowen to the core? Why was the little girl doing magic? Before I’d come to Whitfield, I’d never mentioned a word about my abilities to anyone.