Cold as Marble

by Zoe Aarsen

  He turned pink, which was a rare sight, and looked cuter than ever. “It’s the second one I made. The first one didn’t turn out so well, and I wanted it to be perfect.”

  “I really love it,” I insisted. Having something handmade by him was far more precious to me than anything he could have bought for me in a store, even if I knew I wasn’t going to be permitted to bring it with me to Sheridan. “Listen,” I said, not wanting him to go back to school with any lies remaining between us. “I think we’re going to try to play the game again at Violet’s party. I’ve been thinking about it, and there’s just no other way. The next new moon is at the end of January, and Mischa will be here by herself.”

  Trey nodded and looked down at his feet. “I know. I knew when we talked about it the other night that you were going to at least try. Just… be smart. And if anything happens and you need to get in touch with me, you might be able to call my school and say that you’re my aunt Nancy. She’s an Emory, on Walter’s side. They might ask you for a pass code, and I don’t know what it is, but my mom set it, so it’s probably the word ‘turquoise,’ since that’s her favorite color and she uses it as her password for basically everything.”

  “Got it,” I assured him. I leaned over the fence and we kissed again, more desperately this time because we both knew this was probably the last time our lips would touch for a very long time.

  * * *

  Just as we both suspected, our parents did not grant us another chance to say good-bye before Sunday morning, when I heard the Emorys’ automatic garage door rise before I was even out of bed. I threw back the blankets and sprinted into the living room just in time to pull back the curtains, and I saw the back of Mr. Emory’s car slowing down at the corner. Watching the distance grow between Trey and me as the car vanished from view made it feel as if my blood were draining out of my body. My chest was hollow. I didn’t know when I’d ever see him again, or, depending on how things went on New Year’s Eve, if I’d ever see him again.

  And then, just as I heard Maude stirring down the hall in my mom’s bedroom, my scalp began tingling, and I suspected I knew exactly why. I needed to see Trey’s mom’s diary, and I had a perfect opportunity to try to find it while his family was away for the day taking him back to school. As soon as I had the impulse to sneak into Trey’s house, I tried to fight it. He had specifically told me he hadn’t let me check out the diary firsthand because it was probably precious to his mom and she might notice if it were missing. Going inside his house to find it was not only illegal but a violation of his judgment.

  But the tingling wouldn’t stop. I was meant to see that diary; there was something in it of great importance. It wasn’t quite seven o’clock yet, and I could assume since it was a Sunday that Mom would stay in bed another hour or so before getting up. I dressed quickly and pulled on my boots. Seething with self-hatred, I slipped out our back door, descended the stairs from our deck to the grass, unlocked our gate, let myself into Trey’s yard, and found his house’s sliding door unlocked, as I knew it would be.

  The last time I’d been in the Emorys’ kitchen had been the night Trey and I had taken my Ouija board down to the basement to give it an inaugural whirl, but everything was exactly the same as I remembered. The cuckoo clock that Jennie and I used to sit and watch turn hours still hung on the wall next to the fridge. Mrs. Emory still had a Snoopy cookie jar on the counter. I lifted its lid and took a peek inside to see that, yes, it still contained Oreos. Feeling sinister to be moving through someone else’s house when I wasn’t supposed to be there, I didn’t linger.

  Their basement, like ours, smelled like mildew. Everything that the Emorys had outgrown was boxed and stored there. There were utility shelves on which boxes containing everything from old Halloween costumes to previous years’ taxes were stacked. I was sure Trey had said that the diary was in the basement somewhere along with other things his mother had brought home from her parents’ house to store, but he hadn’t mentioned where. I looked over all of the boxes on the shelves and even rifled through a few that weren’t labeled, but none contained items that looked like they’d belonged to Mrs. Emory when she was young.

  Then I noticed the cedar chest near the sofa, which was used as a coffee table. It had marks all over it from us leaving cups and plates on it without coasters or place mats since we were little. I’d sat on the couch many times without ever thinking too much about the fact that wooden chests, like the box that Trey had made for me, opened with hinged lids. A surge of tingling made me suspect I was on the right track. I knelt down in front of the chest, unfastened the latches, lifted the lid, and found myself looking at what appeared to be every object Trey’s mom had probably ever owned as a young woman. There were folded notes and T-shirts from charitable events that had been held at Willow High School twenty years ago, stuffed animals, photo albums, yearbooks, and then… tucked down along one side of the chest, a leather-bound diary.

  I checked the time on my phone. It would be hours before the Emorys got home, but my mom would probably wander out to our kitchen to make coffee within the next twenty minutes. So I flipped through pages to the year Trey was born, reading passages here and there.…

  October 15

  … ordered a double espresso, which was so sophisticated, and we talked about the implications of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment on foreign markets. I was so flattered that he thought I knew enough about international business to dive into those topics with me, and as we were leaving he asked if I had plans on Friday after class.

  From the entries early in the autumn, I gathered that Michael Simmons had taught one of Mrs. Emory’s introductory business classes. By Christmastime, they were sleeping together and she was head over heels in love with him. She’d gone back to Willow for her holiday break fantasizing about him and the life they’d have together because he’d told her he loved her and hinted that one day he might leave his controlling, superficial wife to be with her. Once she returned to campus at the end of January, she realized she was pregnant and was excited to tell him. Skipping ahead by quite a bit, I found the entry Trey had told me about, in which she described meeting with Michael Simmons’s lawyers at their office in Chicago. He had urged Trey’s mom to end her pregnancy for the reasons Trey had shared with me, but the lawyers informed her that there was also a matter of inheritance.

  The Simmons family was very, very wealthy, and Mr. Simmons’s attorneys’ primary concern was making sure that Mary Jane Svensson understood her illegitimate child would never have a claim to any of that fortune. As a consolation, they were offering her 1,450,000 dollars to terminate her pregnancy and never contact Michael Simmons again. At that point in the diary, the entries became erratic, with Trey’s mom acknowledging that she wasn’t ready to be a parent and that the money would allow her a chance to study abroad, then becoming furious that the child he’d fathered with her was so hateful that he was willing to pay her to erase what he’d done. The name Vanessa began to appear more frequently on subsequent pages, as Trey’s mom aimed her jealousy and fury toward her.

  As I turned a page, a loose sheet of lined paper fell out of the diary, folded in half. When I unfolded it, I thought at first what was written on it was a poem, but then realized it was a spell.

  By the light of the full moon

  Light a black candle

  Dig a hole in the earth

  Pour vinegar into it and allow the earth to absorb the bitterness

  Set a bare-root perennial plant in the hole

  As the plant grows, so will your revenge

  Nourished by bitterness

  With each cycle of the moon, year by year

  As your plant blooms, your enemies will suffer.

  I gasped. What on earth did Trey’s mom know about witchcraft? Although I knew relatively little about the topic, this spell seemed extremely dark, and I wondered if perhaps all along we’d been wrong for assuming Violet’s family was to blame for the curse Violet wielded.…

 
; Maybe someone else had put the curse on her.

  Maybe that someone else had been Trey’s mom?

  I took a picture of the sheet of paper on which the spell was written and texted it to Kirsten, asking for her input on it and telling her where I’d found it. Then I tucked it back into the diary, returned everything to where I’d found it, and ran to my house feeling sick to my stomach.

  Hours later, as I was trying to catch up on math homework from my Willow textbook since I’d already learned the advanced algebra my class was being taught at Sheridan, Kirsten texted me back and asked if it was okay to call.

  “Sorry it took me so long to get back to you,” she apologized. “I went a little too hard on the pinot last night.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, grateful that she’d replied at all.

  “So, what you sent me looks like some dangerous-ass stuff. You didn’t actually cast that spell, did you?”

  “No. I wouldn’t try to cast anything. I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted. I filled her in on the backstory of how Trey’s mom had met Violet’s dad, and she guessed correctly that Mr. Simmons was Trey’s biological father.

  She went on to explain that casting any kind of spell for revenge or putting hardship on someone else was strictly prohibited in witchcraft. Casting a spell for your own selfish purposes like that would bring the rule of three into effect, which essentially meant that three times the hardship you had inflicted on someone else would be reflected back at you.

  “But do you think the spell that Trey’s mom cast for revenge might have somehow backfired in a way that makes Violet have to sacrifice another person every month?” I asked. It seemed like the spells were related somehow, especially in the language around the revenge growing with each cycle of the moon. However, it didn’t really make sense that Violet having to reap sacrifices somehow counted as a form of revenge that benefited Trey’s mother. It was a terrible obligation that Violet had to fulfill, but it was also a malevolent form of power.

  Even Kirsten was stumped. “I’ll have to do some research. Honestly, this seems to me kind of like spell interaction.”

  I asked her to elaborate on what that meant.

  “Like a spell that someone casts that doesn’t mix well with a spell that someone else cast. Maybe your boyfriend’s mom put a spell on her lover’s wife, not realizing that there may have already been a spell on the lover’s wife.”

  Two spells. That seemed unlikely. “What are the odds that two people who knew Violet’s mom both cast spells?” I wondered aloud doubtfully.

  Kirsten laughed. “Oh, you’d be surprised. Enough people are interested in casting spells for us to comfortably be able to pay rent on our storefront in Wicker Park. People turn to witchcraft when they’re desperate for something. And a lot of people feel that way.”

  As we hung up the phone, it occurred to me that after having three stillborn daughters, Vanessa Simmons might have felt desperate too.

  CHAPTER 12

  HAVE FUN TONIGHT,” MOM TOLD me as I unfastened my seat belt. She was dropping me off at Cheryl’s house, where I’d told her I was spending the night on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t feel great about lying to my mom or to Cheryl, but sleeping over at the Guthrieses’ seemed like the most credible and benign way to escape from my house the night of Violet’s party.

  I climbed out of the car with my overnight bag and said, “We will.”

  “And don’t stay up too late. I’ll be here at eight sharp. We need to be on the road by nine thirty to make it up to Sheridan by noon,” she reminded me.

  “I know, I know,” I grumbled. The long drive back up to my boarding school was the least of my concerns that evening. Little did my mom know that with all I intended to accomplish that night, there was a very good chance I’d never be going back to Sheridan. I’d even taken a long, nostalgic look around my bedroom before leaving the house, wondering if I’d ever set foot in it again. “Get home safely,” I told her. If it wouldn’t have put my mom on red alert about my activities, I would have also warned her about using electrical appliances, knives, and walking with scissors that night, out of my concern for her. But I left my precautions at driving and waved wistfully as she backed out of the Guthrieses’ driveway, with my heart twisting into a knot, hoping that this wouldn’t be the last time I’d see her.

  Cheryl greeted me at the front door beaming from ear to ear. “Yay! I’m so glad you’re here!” she said as I stepped inside her house, which always smelled like potpourri. “We’re going to have so much fun tonight!”

  I felt like the most sinister person in the world as we microwaved popcorn and settled into her living room to watch movies rented from iTunes with her mom, dad, and younger brother. I’d called Cheryl on Friday to express regret that we hadn’t had a chance to hang out at any other point during the break, which had been my way of gently manipulating her into extending an invitation to me to spend the holiday at her house. The entire time I sat quietly with her family, I could hear my phone buzzing with incoming texts from Mischa and Henry, making anxiety build like a Jenga tower in my chest.

  I hadn’t filled Cheryl in on my full agenda for the night when I’d excitedly accepted her invitation. But after we ordered pizza and watched a second movie, I knew I had to act quickly if I was going to make it outside to meet Mischa at ten fifteen, when she was scheduled to pick me up. When I’d left my house with mom, Mischa was still leaning toward avoiding the party. It was only through my persistent reminders that her seven-day candle had reached its seventh day, and she could no longer assume she was safe, that she’d agreed to drive over to Cheryl’s to fetch me. Her predicament that night was a classic case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. She was either going to have to summon the courage to venture over to Violet’s with me, or risk choking at any given moment.

  I followed Cheryl down the hall to her bedroom when she announced she was going to change into pajamas and closed the door so that I could ask her for a favor without her parents overhearing.

  “Cheryl, I’m the worst. Really, the worst person of all time. But I have to ask a huge favor of you,” I said.

  Her face fell a little bit, and my stomach ached. I could tell how much this night had meant to her, and now of course there was a hitch because I was a terrible, selfish, untrustworthy person. Worst of all, I wasn’t even going to be honest with her about why I was sneaking out of her house. If she knew I was headed over to Violet’s party, she might tell her parents out of genuine concern for my well-being. Instead, I aimed to appeal to her sense of romanticism. “I haven’t had a chance to see Trey this whole week, and I have to go back to my boarding school tomorrow.” She didn’t know that Trey was already up north, spending New Year’s Eve in his dorm room, lights out at ten o’clock, or that he’d be distraught knowing exactly what I was up to at that moment.

  Something shifted in her eyes, something I hoped was a form of empathy, so I kept going. “We’ve been kind of hoping to, you know, be alone for at least a few hours during this break, and our parents have been totally against it.”

  “So, I don’t understand,” she said, the hurt evident in her voice. “You want to leave?”

  “Just for two or three hours,” I said, trying to make it sound less terrible than I knew it was. “I’ll be back before two in the morning. I swear. There’s no way we can spend the whole night together because his parents will be home at one, and then I’ll come straight back here.”

  She looked conflicted, and even though I had anticipated that she wouldn’t be pleased about any of this, she was reacting more emotionally than I’d been expecting. “You could get me in a lot of trouble, McKenna. If you’re not back by morning, or if my parents catch you sneaking back in, they’re not like your mom. They’ll call the police and report you missing, or—I don’t even know what they’ll do.”

  I chose to overlook her comment suggesting that my mom was a lenient parent. “I won’t. I swear, Cheryl, I won’t. This is just my last chance to
see him probably until July, and maybe not even then because I’ll be in Florida for the summer and there’s no guarantee he’ll be released from his school when he turns eighteen.”

  She sat down on her bed, shoulders slumped, and surprised me by asking, “Are you sure you aren’t just going to Violet’s party and lying to me? I mean, I’m not an idiot. I know why you wanted to come with us to visit Tracy in the hospital.”

  If there’s a worse feeling than being caught in a lie, I couldn’t have named it that night, the way Cheryl was looking at me. It was already ten o’clock. There wasn’t much point in insisting that I was going run off and be with Trey. I could tell that she wasn’t going to believe me. “I never told you everything about Olivia and Candace,” I said solemnly. “Everything that Candace said at school about the game that we played at Olivia’s house and how Violet predicted their deaths? It was true. I know it sounds crazy. But it was all true.”

  Cheryl nodded, never taking her eyes off me. “And what about Tracy? Did she predict a death for Tracy?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know. I think so, because I heard she was reading people’s tarot cards at school. But I don’t know for sure.”

  Surprising me completely, Cheryl seemed more certain than I was. “Because Tracy got so much better after we went to see her on Thursday that she was sent home on Saturday, and I overheard my aunt Joyce telling my mom that Tracy was asking her doctors if there was any chance she was going to have a heart attack. Like, if the meningitis was going to increase the odds of her having a heart attack while she was still in high school. Why would a seventeen-year-old think they’re going to have a heart attack?”

  I didn’t know how to respond. If I didn’t make it to Violet’s party that night and force her into playing Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble, then someone—quite possibly Tracy, despite her miraculous recovery—was going to die before the end of January. “Okay. I’m going to Violet’s party,” I admitted, deciding to risk everything because I was desperate for Cheryl to cooperate. “Mischa Portnoy is picking me up in fifteen minutes outside. We have a plan to go inside Violet’s house, be there for about fifteen minutes, and then leave. That’s it. We’re not going there to start a fight, or steal anything, just to finish what Violet started and hopefully save Mischa’s life. And Tracy’s.”