When My Heart Was Wicked

  “No,” Myrna says.

  I shake my head, sad and confused. “Why did you do it?” I ask.

  Myrna’s eyes fill with tears. “I love my husband,” she says.

  It isn’t enough. I have removed the necklace, but I’m still cold as stone. I feel empty as the drum of the Tin Woodsman. I remember back to the first night I was here. I drank my mother’s tea and it made me sleepy. She asked me to take out the garbage. Shards of glass fell to my chest. I bled. I took my shirt off. And then I fell asleep.

  And when I woke up the next morning, it was gone.

  “Where is my heart?” I slam through the door of her bedroom.

  Cheyenne laughs. “Your what?”

  “My heart. I know you have it.”

  “Your heart? Your heart what?” She looks at me coolly.

  “My. Heart.” I slap at my chest. “You said you own me, heart and soul. I took my soul back. Now I want my heart.”

  “Oh, Lacy. I didn’t mean I have … your heart … in my possession.” She’s acting like she’s trying not to laugh. “Don’t be so literal.”

  “I haven’t felt my heartbeat since I got here. And my hands. Touch them. They’re freezing.”

  “Poor circulation. Your father’s side of the family.”

  “Where is it?” I ask again, looking around her room. Her bathroom. Hadn’t she told me never to go in there? I’d never bothered, it was just a bathroom. Now I push through the door. Cheyenne is on me in a minute, holding my arm above my head. She reels me to face her.

  “You are crazy,” she tells me. “You have always been crazy.”

  “I’m not crazy. You’re the one who’s crazy.”

  “You used to have this imaginary friend. What was her name? Fanny?”

  I remember. “So what? All kids have imaginary friends.”

  “Not like this one. You actually saw her. You would have conversations until late in the night. I’d have to threaten to separate you to get you to shut up.”

  I remember. The fear of being alone, without Fanny. But she was imaginary. I knew she was imaginary.

  Cheyenne drops my hand and it falls to my side. “Go ahead,” she says. “Look for whatever it is you’re looking for. Your heart.”

  It strikes me how crazy I must sound. That I think she could take my heart in my sleep without me knowing. Exhausted, I walk out of her bedroom. I need to think.

  From my bedroom, I can hear Cheyenne. She is in the kitchen, banging pans like she’s trying to beat them to death. Maybe she’s pretending they’re me. After a bit, she comes into my room.

  “I’m sorry we fought,” she says. “The truth is, I get a little jealous of your relationship with Anna.” She holds a cup out to me, her strange tea. “You must be exhausted and so confused, thinking I’ve stolen your heart. You’ve always had a rich imagination. Here, let me tuck you in.” I take the tea and place it on my dresser. Cheyenne’s right. I am tired. I lie down on the mattress and let her tuck me in, like she maybe used to do once, when I was very young.

  “I do worry about you sometimes,” she says, stroking my hair. “The things you conjure up in your mind. Do you know, when you were little, you believed in fairies. Not the way most little girls believe in them. You thought they were writing you notes. You thought they were sending you messages.” She shakes her head. “My poor girl. Drink some tea. Get some rest. Tomorrow will be better.” She leaves the bedroom, closing my door behind her. I can smell the tea from here. Maybe I am crazy. If I’m crazy, I can do whatever I want all day. I can lie in the sun and burn myself to a crisp. I can sing while I’m gardening, laugh when bad things happen. I can stay in bed all day, watch TV, and if I don’t feel like swallowing, I’ll just let my spit hang from my mouth until I feel like mopping it up.

  But I don’t think I’m crazy. She does have my heart. I’m going to have to find it. I leave the tea on the dresser, untouched.

  Waiting for Cheyenne to fall asleep, I take the box out from behind my mattress, and take out the things that are in it. A mermaid’s eye. An egret’s feather. I wish some of their magic could rub off on me. “Where is my heart?” I ask aloud. I put the items back in the box and put the lid back on. About a year ago, I decoupaged the surface of the box with black-and-white photographs from an old magazine. There is a picture of a seagull in flight taking food from a girl’s hand. There’s one of a chic woman with a smoking gun by her feet on the floor. My favorite photo is one of a little girl and her puppy, but my eyes gloss over that one and land on a picture of a dock. I stare at the dock, and I don’t know how I know, but there is an answer for me at the river, I’m sure of it. The mermaid’s eye gleams at me in confirmation, and I pocket it.

  Finally, Cheyenne falls asleep, and I sneak out. Like with Drake, I go out through the window.

  The night is cool. In Chico, the heat sticks around, so day burns into night and it feels like the stars are aflame. But here in Sacramento, the breeze blows in from the delta, and after the sun goes down, the world begins to cool. I head to the river.

  At night it looks like a river of blood. Or maybe I’m just being crazy again. I feel like I’m turning into Cheyenne. I need to get my heart back before she takes me over completely.

  I kneel in the sand along the shore, and without meaning to, I begin to dig. I dig until I am digging up clams, poor souls who washed in with the current. Horrified, I toss their bodies back into the river, cover the hole with chilled damp sand. And suddenly I know. I know what she’s done with it.

  There is no moon, dark of the night. A time to cast for beginnings, for fresh starts. The backyard is very dark, aside from the eerie green glow of the pool. Like a cat’s eye in the night. The poppy plant looks like it has grown since just yesterday; its blooms are as big as rubies and just as red. It thrives as if it is being fed by a nutrient so powerful it could keep a human being alive, so amazing it could become a symbol for all that is love and desire.

  I kneel in the dark earth and pull at the plant. It resists, clinging to the earth, wrapping its thick strong roots like dirty veins around my heart. I will have to pull it apart to make it let go. I stand, about to go to the potting bench for a shovel, when I see her. How long has she been here, out on this dark night, watching me? Her shadow sways, and her mouth opens. Her teeth are like green pearls in the light cast from the pool. She looks like a mermaid or a monster. “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “I’m digging it up. It’s poison. It’s poisoning all the other plants.”

  “Who are we to turn up our noses at poison?” my mother says. “We are the Fins. We embody poison. Our sharp teeth, remember? Fierce birds with gilded wings?”

  “I don’t want to be a fierce bird. I want to be who I was before I came here.”

  “Impossible,” my mother says. “That girl wasn’t really you.”

  “It was me. It will be me again.”

  She yawns. “Lacy, I’m tired. It’s late. Can we end this charade? Let me tuck you in. I’ll make you some tea.” It hits me. I know what her tea is. Poppy pods. Opium. Charmed opium, fed by my own heart.

  “I don’t ever want any more of your tea.”

  “Then what the hell do you want?”

  “I want my heart back.”

  Her words come cold and hard as steel. “You can’t have it. It’s mine now.”

  I walk toward her. “It’s not yours. It doesn’t belong to you. I don’t belong to you.”

  “Listen to me.” She grabs my arms, and her fingernails dig into my skin. “You are not the one in charge here. I am.” She squeezes tighter, and I remember the day she burned me. She held me tight with one hand and, with the other, put her cigarette to my wrist. “No. More. Questions,” she had said. I was six. I squeeze my eyes closed and try not to cry. I can’t fight Cheyenne. She will win. She always, always wins.

  “You’re hurting me,” I tell her, and I hear a sound like rain. She squeezes tighter and I open my eyes, expecting to see drops falling, to feel them against
my skin. But instead of rain I see the flapping wings of a butterfly. It lands on my mother’s mouth. Its wings shine green in the night.

  “Goddammit,” Cheyenne says, releasing me to brush the butterfly from her lips. My arms throb, but I go for the shovel. I reach past her to the potting shed and she grabs my wrist; her fingers burn my skin. “No,” she says like a command. But she is not the one in charge. I rap hard on her hand with my knuckles and she lets me go. I grab the shovel.

  “Lacy!” she shouts as I go back and dig with the steel into the flesh of the poppy plant. “Don’t you dare do this to me,” my mother growls. She changes tactics. “Please,” she says. “It doesn’t matter anyway. You can’t change who you are.” But she’s wrong. I can change. I’ve done it before.

  Again I stab at the plant. I can feel it loosening its grasp. Then it releases. I push it to the side and dig in the earth, gently, with my fingers, until they reach something wet. The thing emits a glow through the dark earth; my blood surrounding it glows too, like scattered jewels. I pause for a moment to catch my breath, and then my mother is behind me, her palm against my face, wrestling with my arm. I shove her away hard, afraid that she will crush my heart, and she looks at me, furious.

  “You are just like me. Mean enough to hurt your own mother. Cold enough not to care.”

  “Of course I care. I wouldn’t hurt you,” I scream.

  “Only because you can’t. Because I did a binding spell against you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say fiercely, her silhouette black against the glow from the pool. “I wouldn’t.”

  Again she grabs at me, but I am stronger now that I have seen it. I strike without thought, pushing her backward, and she topples into the murky pool. When she surfaces, her face is lit up green and gold. The butterfly lands on her wet hair. The gash on her forehead is almost invisible — the plantain tincture worked its magic as I knew it would. And she is beautiful.

  “Do you know why I wanted you here?” she asks. “Why I came after you in Chico?” She is shivering, but she continues. “I thought you and I could be amazing together. Don’t you see? With our power, we could change the world, you and I.”

  “I don’t think that’s why you wanted me,” I say.

  Her eyes fill. “Sometimes I don’t know what I want,” she admits. She reaches out her arms. “Please,” she says.

  But I turn my back to her and gently dig up my heart. It glows in my hand like a great glittering thing. I swallow it whole. It tastes like rosemary and earth.

  “I do love you,” I whisper. But I know what the butterfly knows. The struggle to leave the cocoon is what strengthens the butterfly’s wings so she can fly. I am about to become something beautiful.

  Heat flows outward from deep inside. I feel warmth moving down my arms, my legs, into the tips of my fingers and toes. I feel my heart beat in my chest. With every beat I’m being pumped with a newer sense of compassion, not only for Cheyenne but also for myself. I look at my mother shivering in the pool. Her eyes are dark and dull as stones. She reaches up, touches her head with her fingertips.

  “Come on, Mom,” I say, reaching out my hand.

  Like a child, she looks up at me, she takes my hand, and she doesn’t pull me in. She lets me help her out. I go inside for a blanket and wrap it around her, and her shivering begins to slow.

  I think of her as a young girl, fearless. The kind of girl who can charm a poisonous snake, or dig her own grave in an empty lot. I wonder again what she thought about, lying for hours in a grave she dug herself. How powerless she must have felt. How utterly alone.

  “Lacy?” she says, and her voice is hollow.

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think I’m unlovable?”

  I don’t answer at first. I think of the lives she’s tried to ruin, the curses and dark spells and the way she’s been blackmailing her best friend. That slippery thing in the field that night. Myrna’s heart. I’ll have to find that field and help Myrna take it back.

  But I do love her. Maybe it’s a fault of my own, but I do.

  “Of course not,” I say, and she sighs, leaning her head against my shoulder. I am almost as tall as she is, I notice. I’m not an adult, but between the two of us, I’m the closest we’ve got. I lead her inside, making sure she doesn’t trip over the shovel.

  We sit on the couch, drinking real tea, made from peppermint leaves and purchased at Trader Joe’s. She has showered and her hair falls across her shoulders in glossy waves; her kimono falls open, revealing the smooth tan space between her breasts. She looks exhausted. To me, she has never looked prettier.

  “Are you sure Anna wants you?” she asks, but I don’t think she’s being mean. I think she’s just making sure.

  “I’m sure,” I say. I want to tell her that she can visit anytime, but I think it might be best if we don’t see each other for a while.

  “You know” — she looks down at her fingernails — “I’ve never cared for Anna. She seems so … vanilla.”

  “She is. That’s one of the things I like about her.”

  “I know. You and I … maybe we aren’t as alike as I thought.”

  “I think I’m like my dad,” I say. She nods and doesn’t comment. She is going to let me have it, this belief.

  “Those spells we used to do when I was little. Did we ever do anything to hurt him, or Anna?”

  She is silent for a moment. “No,” she finally says. “You wouldn’t let me. I told you that.”

  “Did you really do a binding spell on me?”

  “Yeah. Right before you got sick. I saw what you did to the frogs, and I was afraid you’d do something to me. I hadn’t realized how powerful you were until then. And just so you know, I didn’t go against my promise. I didn’t use magic on your dad or Anna. But you never said I couldn’t use it on you.”

  The ridiculousness of that loophole. But wait. A binding spell. Right before I got sick. Which means Drake’s car accident has to have been a coincidence. I couldn’t have hurt with magic if I’d been bound. I still could have done the binding spell. But I couldn’t have used magic to hurt anyone.

  “Well, can you remove it? I just want to be me. I want to have the power to choose to be good. I want to be good from now on, but I want that to be my choice, Mom.”

  “Yes,” Cheyenne says. “I’ll take it off. And yes. You are like your father,” she admits. “He must have been proud of you.” For a moment it looks like she has softened, like she may even tear up, but her face hardens. It occurs to me that I’ve never seen my mother cry, except for those choking sobs when she was having her stomach pumped. Maybe that’s how she protects herself. Like me with my cutting. Maybe she is afraid of the beautiful feelings inside her.

  I reach out for her hand and take it. Her hand is warm, and so is mine. Soon I will let go, though, and I’ll fly away.

  Crossing the park after school, I see Anna out gardening in the front yard.

  “Hey, senior,” she calls, seeing me coming. “How was the first day of school?”

  I do a little dance as I cross the street, and Mr. Murm comes murming up to my feet. I pick him up and nuzzle my nose into his glossy black fur.

  “It was good,” I tell her. “My math teacher’s really cool. She’s going to teach us about the history of the mathematicians. And physics is going to be awesome. And it was nice to see Zach again. He asked me to go see a movie with him Friday night.”

  Anna reaches out to pet Mr. Murm. “That sounds like fun,” she says. “I’m glad to hear school went well.”

  “I miss Martin and Stacia, though,” I say, even though they were just up visiting last week. They had gotten along well with my old Chico friends. It would be so cool if we could all be together. “I wish they went to school here.”

  “Make it official?” Anna plucks a dandelion from a crack in the sidewalk. I take it and blow, spreading dandelion seeds into the hot Chico air. I know it won’t come true, but there’s no harm in wishing. Like Anna says, magic e
xists in the everyday.

  For dinner, we have a picnic at Alligator Hole. Tomatoes and basil and thick hunks of mozzarella cheese. I lean back on the beach blanket Anna made, remembering the time we came here with my dad, that day that had wings. And I think of Cheyenne, and I feel a little pull, a little tug. I still love her, and I wish her well, but this is what we’ve agreed on, and I know it’s good. I know she might be back for me one day, the smell of her perfume in the kitchen. But I’m stronger now. And she isn’t here now, not even in the deepest recesses of myself. I am purely, majestically, me.

  “Look,” Anna says. I sit up and she is pointing to a light above Big Chico Creek.

  “What is that?”

  “I don’t know, there’re a few of them.” The lights flicker in the growing dark.

  “Fireflies?” I ask. We don’t have fireflies in Chico.

  “Maybe they’re fairies,” Anna says. Her voice is full of wonder. We are learning, together, that anything is possible. My heart fills. We lean against each other and watch as the fireflies or fairies flit and dance in the late summer air.

  My most heartfelt thanks to my agent, Molly Ker Hawn. Molly, working with you has been such a magical experience, and I can never thank you enough. Thanks to Jenny Bent at the Bent Agency for recognizing Molly and me as kindred souls and forwarding my manuscript to her. Thank you to Mallory Kass for bringing my book to Scholastic! It has been such a pleasure working with you. Thanks to everyone at Scholastic for all the encouragement. I was always the kid who bought more books from the Scholastic Book catalogs than could be reasonably stacked on my desk at school, and it is such an honor to be an author for this amazing company.

  Thanks to my mom, Karin Ireland, my always first and most critical reader. Your insights are invaluable and I am forever grateful. Tina Cooper, Tracy Thompson-Parker, Kathy Katayama, Holly Coady, and Haesoon Maytorena are in my book group. They read an early draft, and loved me and trusted me enough to tell me the truth. I hope they know I appreciate that more than I can say. The same is true for my niece, Kayla Stirling. Thanks to Jennifer Olden and Shane Gallaway for help early on, when the manuscript was a clunky, wingless thing. Erin Azevedo has been enthusiastic and encouraging and reminded me to keep writing when the writing got tough. Maureen Wanket has helped me through every stage of the writing process. Maureen, I hope we’re still writing together when OA becomes a genre.