by Melissa Grey
“Yeah,” Javi agreed. “Me too.”
“But what I really want to know,” Noah said, leaning over the table, “is who sent us those notes?”
* * *
They had no idea who sent the notes. They racked their brains, demolished a second round of shakes that Javi was beginning to deeply regret, and still, they hadn’t the faintest idea of who would send them the letters.
The bigger question also remained unanswered.
Why?
By the time the waitress hustled them out of Lucky’s, claiming they needed the table, they were no closer to the answers than when they’d sat down. Javi walked Noah to the bus stop, where they were forced to go their separate ways.
As Noah’s bus pulled up, Javi grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Wait a second.” Javi tapped on his smartwatch, pulling up Noah’s rating page. He tapped the little plus sign next to Noah’s name.
Almost immediately, Noah’s own watch vibrated. He smiled when he looked down at the notification of a positive peer-to-peer rating.
“What’s this for?” Noah asked.
Javi pushed Noah toward his bus. If he didn’t get on soon, it would leave without him. “I like you. That’s what it’s for.”
Javi skipped away from Noah, so he would have the last word. There was nothing more satisfying than that.
He was walking toward his own bus stop, when a buzz against his wrist not two minutes later made him stop in his tracks.
A peer-to-peer rating notification from one Noah Rainier. A positive one.
Javi smiled the entire ride home.
Headmaster Wood’s lecture echoed in Tamsin’s mind, even with the weirdness of the tarot card crowding out most of her other thoughts. She’d been so distracted by both events, she’d nearly brushed her teeth with zit cream that morning. That she had actually woken up early enough to get to school on time—before the morning assembly, even—might have also contributed to her wandering thoughts. But it was morning, and school was in session, and she was actually, seriously, legitimately considering attending her classes. Most of them anyway.
Her smartwatch buzzed as she reached her locker. It felt like it had been buzzing all morning. She bit back a curse, glancing down at her wrist.
Her rating had slid again. Precipitously. And for no reason Tamsin could discern. She was trying to be good. Honestly. But the number kept falling and falling, the device buzzing on her nightstand even in the middle of the night. And she had no idea why.
Tamsin had barely opened her locker before it was slammed shut again. She yanked her hand out of the way before it could meet an unfortunate end.
“What the—?”
“Why did you put this in my notebook?”
Tamsin turned to see a very angry Hana waving a folded note in her face. A torn sticker marked the place where it had been held closed. Her hair was mussed in a way that seemed unusual for the normally so put together Hana Sakamoto. Her ponytail was slightly askew. Shadows smudged the skin under her eyes, making her look more tired than a seventeen-year-old had any right to look. She had a heavy duffel bag slung over her shoulder, in addition to her backpack. Skates, most likely.
“You look terrible,” Tamsin said. “Also, hi. Also, why are you angrily wielding a piece of paper at me?”
Hana waved the note with renewed fervor. “You put this creepy note in my notebook!”
“What are you talking about?”
“This!” Hana thrust the note into Tamsin’s face, a hair’s breadth away from her nose. “I’m talking about this.”
Tamsin placed a hand on Hana’s wrist and gently—but insistently—pushed the other girl’s arm down. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The bell rang. They both jumped. Tamsin hadn’t even noticed the halls around them emptying. The moments just before the bell were usually a cacophony of frenzied footsteps, as students rushed to their classes, lest their ratings reflect their tardiness.
“Ugh,” Tamsin said. “Class.”
Hana frowned. “I thought you didn’t go to class.”
Tamsin shrugged. Her book bag was a lot heavier now that she was putting actual books in it. “I’m turning over a new leaf.”
And just like that, the indignant steam that had powered Hana up to that point vacated her body. She deflated, in slow motion. “So … you didn’t put this in my notebook?”
“No,” Tamsin said. “I told you, I didn’t read your diary.”
“It’s not a diary,” Hana said defensively.
“Okay, whatever, I didn’t read your not-a-diary.”
A vibration against her wrist summoned a swear to Tamsin’s lips. Hana’s device must have buzzed as well because she glared down at her wrist with what looked like betrayal.
Hana swore, then slapped a hand to her mouth as Tamsin’s eyebrows arched in pleased disbelief.
“The ice princess curses,” said Tamsin. “Who knew?”
“I don’t,” Hana protested.
“But you just did, and not gonna lie, it made me like you a little bit more.”
“Wait, did you not like me very much before?”
“Aren’t we losing track of what this oddly aggressive conversation was all about?”
Hana glanced down at the paper in her hand and then at her watch. Tamsin assumed the display showed what her own would. A point lost for lateness.
“Listen,” Tamsin said, “we’ve already been docked for not showing up on time. We’re already screwed, and I want to know what this weirdness is that you’re accusing me of, so why don’t we just skip?”
Old habits were hard to break. Tamsin would be sure to tell Wood that the next time he called her into his office.
“Skip?”
“Yes, skip.”
“Skip where?”
Students found roving the halls of Maplethorpe when they were supposed to be in class were routinely rounded up and sent wherever they were supposed to be. But not Tamsin.
“I know a place.” She liked the way it sounded mysterious when she said it like that.
Hana paused, sagging under the weight of her bags. The whirlwind of energy she’d brought to Tamsin’s locker dispersed into the ether.
“What about turning over a new leaf?” Hana asked.
“Tomorrow’s a new day.” Tamsin took Hana by the arm, steering the other girl to the stairwell nearest her locker. There was a fire exit a flight down, with a disabled smoke alarm that no one had bothered to fix since the last time Tamsin had disabled it. She was beginning to think the facilities staff was slowly but surely being ground down under the heel of her stubbornness.
It was strange, bringing someone to the place she’d begun to think of as her secret lair, as childish a notion as it was. She saw people there, but they weren’t friends. They were clients. And none of them seemed to want to be there. They went to Tamsin for a reason, and once she’d served her purpose, they departed as quickly as their feet could carry them out of the darkened building and into the sunlit lawns, far away from the Witch of Maplethorpe.
But Hana wasn’t here for an exchange of funds and services. She was here on invitation. And that was something Tamsin had never extended to anyone. Ever.
As they slipped past the shoddy locks that provided only superficial discouragement from potential intruders, Tamsin glanced at Hana. The other girl had never been to this building. She wasn’t one of Tamsin’s regulars, had never gone to her for a reading. They’d never even exchanged words before that day in the shop. Yet here they were, sharing something truly bizarre, as if they’d been friends for years. It was a strange feeling, but Tamsin found she didn’t quite hate it.
Hana looked around at the dilapidated furnishings and the cobwebs dangling in the corners. Motes of dust danced in the slanting sunlight. “This is nice,” she said.
“It’s not, but thanks for saying so.” Tamsin made her way to the stairs, motioning for Hana to follow. “Come on. There’s a room upstairs where I do tar
ot readings that’s almost cozy.”
She clomped up the steps, her heavy boots pounding out little clouds of dust. When she got to the landing, she turned just in time to see Hana sway, her weight carrying her back. Hana’s hand groped for a banister, but there wasn’t one. It had fallen off years before, left to rot with the rest of the building.
Tamsin grabbed Hana’s jacket and yanked her forward onto the landing.
Hana collided with Tamsin, her body sagging forward. She righted herself quickly, but Tamsin kept a steadying hand on the other girl’s arms.
“Sorry,” Hana said, looking down, to the side, anywhere but at Tamsin. “Just got a little dizzy.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” Tamsin guided her to the room at the far end of the hall. There were at least cushions there, to break any more unexpected falls.
When they arrived, Hana sank onto one of them, folding on herself with enough grace to make it look more intentional than it probably was.
Tamsin watched her move. Her breath seemed labored, more than it ought to be, considering the girl was some kind of world-class athlete. Walking up a flight of stairs shouldn’t take the wind out of her like that. Tamsin wasn’t even breathing heavily and she didn’t believe in exercise.
“Are you okay?” Tamsin asked, though it was obvious the other girl wasn’t. But it felt polite to phrase it as a question instead of an accusation.
“Yeah,” Hana lied smoothly, like she’d grown accustomed to doing it. “I’m fine.”
Tamsin lowered herself onto a cushion next to Hana, the tarot card and the strange note pushed to the far corners of her mind. She looked at Hana, really looked at her.
Hana was small and thin, which wasn’t entirely surprising given the sport in which she participated, but it wasn’t a lithe sort of thin. The wrists that poked out of Hana’s puffer jacket were bony, with skin so thin and pale stretched over them that Tamsin could see the fine tracery of veins under it in alarming detail. The collarbone Tamsin spied between the open throat of Hana’s jacket was equally worrisome. She was all harsh lines and flat planes. Her muscles seemed to tremble with the exertion of holding her skeleton together.
Hana was not fine.
“So, the other day in the shop,” Tamsin said, not sure if it was the right thing to say, but knowing she had to say something, “that wasn’t the first dizzy spell you’ve had, was it?”
Hana’s skeletal hands retreated into the safety of her sleeves, her fingers poking out just enough to pick at the cuffs. “No.” She shook her head to get the bangs off her face and abruptly stilled, like the motion was too much for her brain to handle. “But it’s not a big deal. It’s just a thing that happens sometimes.”
“You know it shouldn’t, right?” Tamsin felt their conversation hovering on a precipice. Of what, she wasn’t sure. But she was beginning to suspect.
Hana didn’t answer. Instead, she thrust her hands into her pockets, pulling out the note she’d waved in front of Tamsin’s face so menacingly just a few minutes prior.
“How about this super-weird note, huh?”
“Hana.”
Only then did Hana look up, into Tamsin’s eyes. The rest of her was still, but her eyes had the wild look of a caged animal. Something trapped that didn’t know how to escape.
“What?”
“Have you eaten anything today?”
The question sat, heavy in the air between them. They both knew the answer, but it wasn’t about the right answer. It was how they handled the lie they both knew was coming.
“Yeah. After practice.”
Tamsin nodded. Pushing wouldn’t do any good. The harder she pushed, the further Hana would retreat into the cocoon of her own suffering. Tamsin was surprised by the realization that she didn’t want Hana to retreat from her.
“Okay,” Tamsin said, even though it wasn’t. Another lie, but a necessary one, in that moment. “Okay, just checking.”
Hana pushed the note toward Tamsin. “If you didn’t put this in my notebook, I don’t know who did. Nobody touches that book but me.”
Tamsin folded up the half-formed conversation about Hana’s eating habits and set it aside. They could deal with it when they were both better equipped. When their friendship felt less like a possibility and more of a certainty.
Friendship.
Not a thing Tamsin had actively courted at Maplethorpe, but something she was starting to think she might like to develop.
Odd.
“What does it say?” Tamsin asked.
Hana opened the letter, laying it flat on the floor between them.
“ ‘On the day of the prophet false,’ ” Hana recited, “ ‘one mustn’t dance a forbidden waltz. A copper found and a fortune told, all beside a box of gold.’ ”
“This is where it gets interesting.” Tamsin rummaged in her backpack to retrieve the tarot card she’d found taped to her locker. She placed the card beside Hana’s letter. The text of Hana’s had been culled from various magazines, judging from the variance of fonts and paper textures.
“Holy … you got one, too?” Hana leaned closer to inspect the card, squinting at the tiny font. “When? Where?”
Tamsin shrugged. “A few days ago. Someone taped it to my locker.”
Hana sat back. “On your locker? Anyone could have grabbed it there.”
“I was the only person in the hallway,” Tamsin said. “Wood had just called me into his office, so everyone else was in class.”
Hana shook her head. “This doesn’t make sense. Your locker is at least public. My notebook is private. Super private. And I always have it on me. I don’t know how someone could have snuck a letter in there.”
“Who has access to your stuff?” Tamsin asked.
“My mom and dad, I guess. Maybe some people at the rink, but I usually lock my stuff up when I’m there. I don’t think I’ve ever left it in my locker at school …”
“That’s it?”
“My world is really small.” Hana shrugged. “It’s basically just the rink, home, and school, and I spend most of my time at the rink.”
“That’s kind of sad,” Tamsin said, before the part of her brain responsible for filtering insensitive remarks caught up with her mouth. It rarely got much exercise, so Tamsin couldn’t blame it for being a little too slow. “Sorry, I didn’t mean …”
“No,” Hana said, “you’re right. It’s not ideal, I guess, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices if you want to succeed.”
“And you’ve chosen to sacrifice having an actual life?”
Hana shrugged again. “I’d rather have an Olympic gold medal.”
Tamsin felt herself at the edge of that great precipice. To step forward would risk destroying the fragile friendship she felt forming between them. But caution had never been her strong suit.
“Is a gold medal worth killing yourself for?”
Hana froze, her fingers hovering over the tarot card. Her eyes darted up to meet Tamsin’s. They were wide, and she was blinking too fast.
“What are you talking about?” The tone of Hana’s question contained the truth she didn’t speak. She knew exactly what they were talking about, but denial was probably a reflex for her at this point.
“Have you eaten anything today? Like, for real?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation with you,” Hana said, each word sharpened to a fine point. “And I already told you I did.”
“Okay, fine,” Tamsin said. But the damage was done.
Hana stood, collecting her things. She shoved the note into her backpack, her movements stilted. “I’ve gotta go.”
She didn’t wait for Tamsin to say goodbye before she strode to the door and stomped down the stairs. Tamsin watched her go. Her smartwatch buzzed again. And again. She didn’t bother looking at it.
Noah tried to time his visits to Magnolia Children’s Hospital when he knew his mother wasn’t there. He was still avoiding his parents after the unexpected revelation of the blood test, but he’d never
relished being at the hospital with her. She had a tendency to hover over Cece in a way both he and his sister found grating. Neither one of them complained—Noah couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to have a terminally ill child, so he had no business telling his mother how to behave—but it was always something of a relief when she left.
Cece’s main issue wasn’t actually the hovering. It was their mother’s draconian view of snack foods. The woman monitored every morsel of food that went into Cece’s diet, but a twelve-year-old girl had needs, no matter how sick she was.
Which was why her smile nearly blinded Noah with its intensity when he held up the bag of goodies he’d smuggled in.
“I brought all your faves,” he said as he dumped an unhealthy amount of candy on the bed. Every kind of chocolate imaginable, flavored with sea salt, caramel, raspberry, and mint. Sour gummy worms. Rainbow gummies shaped like little sharks. Raisins coated in yogurt. Lollipops with mystery centers. And a bag of chips in case she needed a little salt to counteract the sweet.
“You’re a true hero,” Cece said. She hugged him with one arm while the other swept the candy closer to her.
One of the first gifts he’d brought her during her first stay at Magnolia was a large stuffed bear that unzipped in the back, exposing a pouch large enough to hide all her illicit treats. The first few times Cece had glutted herself to the point of nausea, but with time she learned the beauty of rationing her supply. It lasted longer, and she wouldn’t puke all the colors of the rainbow.
Noah perched on the edge of her bed as he watched her divvy up what to eat now and what to save for later.
He thought about not telling her. But a secret like that would fester if left on its own. He hadn’t talked to his parents about it yet. There were too many emotions all jumbled up together to make it an easy conversation. But he wanted Cece to know. She had a right to know.
“Hey, spark plug,” he said, “there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m never gonna live down that fork in the electrical socket incident, am I?”
“Nope. Never.”