by Gwen Hayes
“It sounds amazing. You think it will work on Mara?”
Ame bounced on the balls of her feet. “Totally. You’ll see.”
Amelia had learned a lot about the metaphysical world lately, especially being tutored by Varnie. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Varnie lately.”
Varnie and Haden were odd roommates, but it seemed to work for them both. I’d first met Varnie when he was dressed like a woman reading tarot cards. Apparently, his clients took him more seriously in a muumuu and turban than as a nineteen-year-old surfer. His methods were unconventional, but his clairvoyance was real.
“He’s so amazing,” Amelia enthused. “He’s not only a psychic—he’s more than just intuitive. He’s taught me soooo much. He says I’m a natural. We were both a little freaked out by how strong my powers got so fast. It’s like someone just flipped a switch in my head and I’m this metaphysical badass now.”
“I’m really happy for you, Amelia. I know you’ve always been interested in that world, and I’m glad you’re learning new things. But please be careful. Mara’s dark magic isn’t a good place to try your wings. I’ve seen what she does to people—what she did to me. I don’t think she’s going to give up and I’m afraid I’ve put you all in her line of fire.”
Ame scoffed. “It’s not your fault. If she comes back, we’ll deal with her, just like we’ve done before.”
She didn’t understand. “Mara torments people. I think some of the creatures that live in Under used to be human. Now, they’re just . . . warped. I told you about the handmaids, right? There were three of them that went everywhere together. And they were stitched together from each other’s body parts. Someone hacked them apart and put them back together as if they were interchangeable.” I shuddered, remembering the black floss stitches that had sewn their wobbly heads to their necks, how their eyes had been mix-and-matched. “I’m serious, Amelia. I don’t want you poking around magic when it comes to Mara. You’re in over your head.”
Amelia’s brow furrowed, but not because she was worried about Mara. Because she was worried about me. “I know she’s powerful—but there is a reason that her kind of magic doesn’t rule the world. The good stuff—the kind that creates balance and harmony—it always wins in the end. Just remember, a dark shadow needs light to exist—but light doesn’t need darkness to be luminous.”
I hugged her tightly. She was so precious to me and I appreciated her more now than ever. “Thank you for being just the way you are. I love you.”
We rocked a bit. “I love you too, Theia.”
Donny sighed heavily. “Oh, my God, are you two about done? I’ve heard enough psychobabble this spring to last me through at least ten of my supposed reincarnations.”
I let go of Amelia and turned to Donny and laughed.
“Hey, English.” We made eye contact and she said with her eyes all the mushy things she would never utter out loud. Instead, she grabbed an iced coffee for me from the cardboard carrier on the bench and said, “I asked for an extra shot of chocolate for you.”
That was good enough for me. I loved my friends.
Awkward silence ate up the time as the three of us tried to decide where to begin with the conversation now that the welcome-back portion of our morning was done.
“Can we start with normal, everyday things?” I asked after I had my first sip. “I just really want to feel normal for a change.”
Ame began, “I totally froze on the SAT last week. I started geeking out about how important it was and couldn’t read the questions, let alone come up with the answers.”
I patted her back. “Oh, Ame. I’m sorry. You can retake it in the fall, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah—and you’ll be able to take it then since you . . . missed it.”
The iced coffee tasted wonderful, so I concentrated on that instead of what else I’d missed. Luckily, Haden still had many loyal servants who had made sure I was well cared for during my time in Under. I didn’t think he knew how much they still loved their prince there.
Ame shoulder-bumped me and coerced a small smile from my lips. I looked into her almond-shaped eyes and found the comfort I’d missed so much while I was gone. Ame never failed to mother everyone she came into contact with. Her maternal instincts were spot-on. She always knew when I needed a hug or a word of encouragement.
She had a great mom of her own, but she still understood what I was going through when I missed the mother I never knew. Amelia had been adopted from Korea as a baby and even though her parents loved her, there was a part of her that felt the same loss I did from time to time. Her adoptive parents were so different from her physically that Ame often overcompensated by dressing even more alternatively, as if drawing attention to her clothes would draw people’s focus away from her Asian features. It was only recently that she had stopped trying to—how did Donny say it?—de-Asian herself. I loved how she was starting to play up the shape of her eyes with eyeliner and no longer bleaching her hair to match her blond mom’s.
Another long pause allowed me to take a huge drink. There were no iced coffees in Under, at least none that I’d found. I was always very wary of what I ate and drank there anyway—it was a type of hell after all. The cuisine was often so fresh it still writhed on its serving platter.
“You’re not mad at me that I went to prom with Haden while you were gone, are you?” Amelia blurted out, surprising me so that I almost spit out a mouthful of my drink. Apparently she’d been trying to keep that one in for a while.
“Of course not,” I said. “Haden told me you went together. I just wish it had been more fun.”
“Well,” Donny said, “the whole night wasn’t a waste. Gabe finally put out. He was so freaked out by that séance we had after the dance that he forgot he was being a prude. He was all ‘Hold me, baby.’”
“There’s something to be said for extreme fear,” Ame said and then giggled.
Just then, Gabe, the boy who Donny pretended wasn’t her boyfriend but most assuredly was, appeared. “Cheerios, Theia.”
He hadn’t heard us talking about him, thankfully, and had no idea why we were laughing so hard. When I was able to bring myself under control, I answered, “Cheerios, Gabe.”
He’d mistakenly thought that all British people said “Cheerios” to one another in greeting, and I’d yet to bother correcting him. It was cute. He was cute. I don’t remember Gabe ever going through an awkward phase during our freshman year when the rest of us did. He never needed braces, his sandy brown hair landed in perfect waves, his skin was always clear, and he was a natural athlete.
Everything about Gabe made him the wrong guy for Donny, except that he was perfect for her. Much to her chagrin.
Donny believed that variety was the spice of life—and she liked her love life very spicy indeed. She’d earned herself a reputation, but it had never bothered her. In fact, she was somewhat proud of it. If she’d been born a guy, she would have been known as a player. Since she’d been born a girl, instead they called her names like “slut.”
Somehow, though, Gabe had managed to really get under her skin. And stay there. And he was a sneetch, of all things. Donny had nicknamed the popular crowd at our school “sneetches,” from a Dr. Seuss book where the Star-Belly Sneetches thought they were better than the other sneetches born without stars. Donny had no use for the sneetches other than to mock them. And now she was dating one. Exclusively. It must be killing her a little.
A boy I didn’t recognize stopped in front of us and stared at me. He looked younger—possibly a freshman, definitely not a sneetch. He worked his mouth open and closed a few times, as if searching for words that refused to come.
“Hello,” I prompted.
He blinked hard and dropped the stack of papers in his hands. It looked like it was an essay or a report, something important, so I crouched down to help him collect the pages.
“You don’t have to—I mean . . . it’s okay. . . . I’m sorry,” he rambled, trying to hide
that he was shaking while he picked up his papers. We stood up and I handed him what I had gathered. He stammered some more. “It’s just . . . you’re nice . . . and I . . .”
“Are you all right, dude?” Donny asked.
“She’s so pretty,” he replied, his face turning beet red. “I’m so stupid.” And then he ran.
We all looked at one another, dumbfounded. “Well, that was thirty-one flavors of weird,” Ame said.
Donny slugged down the rest of her coffee. “I have to get to class. One more tardy and I have Saturday school.” She squeezed my arm as she passed.
Haden texted me that he would be late, so Amelia and Gabe headed to class and I made my way to the admin office. By the time I got my paperwork signed and in order, the hall was empty but for one other student. I didn’t recognize her at first. Brittany Blakely, one of Haden’s admirers and homecoming queen three years in a row, ambled down the hall like a zombie. Her blond hair, normally bouncy and shiny, hung lankly in a messy ponytail. Instead of her normal cheer uniform or miniskirt, she wore a pair of sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt. Her skin looked sallow, and the dark circles under her eyes made her appear to be hollowing from the inside out.
She didn’t look at me when we passed each other, which I suppose was no big surprise. The sneetches rarely deigned to notice anyone who was not in their social circle. I don’t know why it bothered me that she hadn’t even looked at me. I’d always been a doormat to the students at Serendipity High. The only time they’d cared was when my disappearance had become a juicy morsel of intrigue. The more I thought about the way she looked, the more satisfaction I felt. Good. She deserved to be sick. I may have been through hell, literally, but at least I didn’t look like it.
The pattern of light on the opposite wall caught my eye as it became disordered from the shape of the windows. A shadow from nowhere stole across and ate the light, darkening the entire hall for a second. I blinked and a hunger pang began in my center and radiated out through my veins. My mouth filled with saliva and I felt weak. I leaned against the bank of lockers and tried to stop shaking. It wasn’t like the pangs that twist the stomach . . . it came from a deeper place than that. A depth I hadn’t possessed before the curse.
After I took a few deep breaths, the consuming hunger was gone as quickly as it had come upon me, leaving me breathless and clammy but otherwise back to normal. I splashed water on my face from the drinking fountain and tried to reason away the sense of impending doom that something wasn’t right.
I leaned against the wall and tried to collect myself. I didn’t really want Brittany to be sick—that was just my petty jealousy. It was only natural to feel jealous from time to time, I rationalized. Other girls said catty things about one another all the time. It didn’t mean I really wished her harm. And the dizzy spell . . . Well, I hadn’t eaten anything before school. I was a bundle of nerves before I had even added the caffeine. That was all.
Surely, that was all.
* * *
Looking forward to my trig class was a new experience for me, but it was the only class I had with Amelia, and I needed to see a friendly face.
She met me outside the door. One look at me and her sunny smile slid into a frown. “You okay?” she asked.
“Everyone is staring at me. I’m used to them ignoring me, but now they are staring and ignoring.” I hated being the focal point. I preferred the background to the foreground. “Sometimes I hear whispering, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.”
Ame shrugged. “They’ll get bored soon.”
“Is my seat still open?” I asked as we entered the room. Our seats weren’t assigned in that class, but in the hierarchy of high school politics, there were still rules about seating. The last thing I needed was to anger someone by taking a chair that no longer belonged to me.
“Of course it is.” She tugged my sleeve. “What kind of friend do you think I am? I saved your seat because I knew you would be back.”
When class began, I opened my book and tried to follow along. Unfortunately, while I was a good student, I had just missed too much to pick up that day’s lesson. Which meant that instead of concentrating on the law of tangents, my mind went off on a tangent of its own.
As always, my daydreams circled back to Haden. He’d found me between classes after first period and made it quite clear to anyone who saw us together that we were a couple. It wasn’t like it was an extreme display of public affection either. It was the way he looked at me when he held my hand—as if I were the sun in his orbit.
Just thinking about him made me warm all over and I blinked myself back to the land of trig equations reluctantly. It was then that the sensation of being watched hit me again. I tried to ignore it, but the tension grew each minute like a balloon gathering more and more air. The feelings were overwhelming. The balloon was going to pop from all the pressure.
The heat grew over my right ear and I finally whirled in my seat to send a scathing look to the rude starer. Two rows away, Mike Matheny’s eyes grew wide before he cast them down quickly to the open book in front of him.
Towards the end of class, we were released to work together on the next day’s assignment. Brad Wickman approached my chair.
“I thought you might need this,” he said shyly, handing me a spiral notebook.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Trig notes. The ones you missed are towards the end.”
My brows knit together. “You’re giving me your trig notes? Don’t you need them? We still have a final coming up.”
“I’ll be okay.” He smiled.
“Brad, I can’t take your notes—”
“Wick,” he interrupted.
“Excuse me?”
“Everyone calls me Wick.”
“Erm . . . well, thank you, Wick. It’s very sweet for you to share your notes, but I would feel really bad about keeping them. How about I copy them in the library and give you back your notebook tomorrow?”
He blushed a little. “That would be really great. You’re the best, Theia.”
Before I could respond, he bolted back to his seat. The tips of his ears were bright red. I knew a thing or two about blushing, but it was a strange experience to be on the other side of the flush. Had I made him nervous? Me? Perhaps he was embarrassed to be seen talking to the notorious girl on campus.
The bell rang and we all scattered to my next least favorite place on campus—the cafeteria. Maybe that was an exaggeration. There was nothing wrong with the cafeteria; in fact, I quite enjoyed the pizza and Tater Tots, since I didn’t get that kind of food at home. I just wasn’t in the mood to be in an enclosed space with everyone in the school and their gossip.
Amelia had to retrieve her cell phone from jail—her first-period teacher was well-known for confiscating them—so I went on to the lunchroom without her. I threaded my way between the tables in the cafeteria with my tray and waited for my friends at our old table. Mike Matheny, Amelia’s unrequited crush and somewhat rude starer from trig, joined me. His presence was unexpected. For one thing, most of the school had always preferred to ignore me rather than acknowledge my existence. For another thing, he seemed to prefer to ignore Amelia rather than acknowledge her existence, and she was really the only thing we had in common besides our math class.
“Hey, Theia,” he said. His tray was filled with what must have been two lunches.
“Hello, Mike.”
Mike wore what most of the male population of Serendipity High sported in the late spring—board-length shorts and a T-shirt with a sports logo. Somehow, even though Haden shopped in the same stores, the clothes looked different on him. Mike, however, blended seamlessly into the fabric of our school.
He looked at me intently, as if he was expecting something. Only, I didn’t know what. I lowered my eyes to my tray, hoping he’d get the hint, but I still felt his gaze on me, overwarm and awkward. You would think he’d have gotten the hint after I caught him staring in class.
To
be fair, while he didn’t know that Haden was born half-demon and that I had been cursed with demon blood, Mike had been part of our group briefly. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was trying to be supportive and not just nosy. And Amelia still liked him, so if they ever dated, his presence would be normal at lunch every day. Still, he could have said something. Anything.
“Are you excited for the end of the year?” I asked, finally, to break up some of the strangeness. It’s not as if I didn’t know the answer to my question—everyone was, after all. “Do you have plans for the summer?”
“I’ll be working for my dad,” he answered. “I get to wash all the new cars on his lot.” I gathered he wasn’t very excited about it by the tone of his voice.
Amelia would be happy to know he would be staying in town for the break, though I still wished she’d give Varnie a better look. Mike was nice, but he would never understand the things that really made Ame happy. I didn’t see Mike hanging out reading auras with her or casting spells. But Amelia had always liked Mike, so I guessed I had better at least make an effort.
“Do you like cars?” I asked, for lack of another subject.
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t like working for my dad.” He bit into his apple and spoke around the mouthful. “We’re not close.”
I looked away from his open mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m not very close with mine either.”
“English,” Gabe announced as he slid onto the bench next to me, nodding at Mike. “I need a favor.” He looked over his shoulder at the students filtering in and then hunkered closer to my ear. “I need your help to—”
“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Haden’s cold, steely tone preceded him as he stopped at the end of the table. His posture was relaxed, but there was no mistaking the look on his face—his jaw clenched tightly and his brow drew down. Then he smiled.
“Relax, dude.” Gabe rolled his eyes. “I have enough girl problems without adding your British babe to my stack.”