by Aarsen, Zoe
I felt my chest ache and my throat begin to close as if I was going to start crying. Trey and I were really alone in this miserable mess. The only person in our town who believed us, and who we could imagine might possibly be able to help us, was refusing to do so. We were going to have to figure out how to save ourselves, or more specifically, me and Mischa, on our own.
On Thursday night after Mom got home, Candace’s mom surprised us with a visit. Mom put on a pot of coffee and Candace’s mom handed me a plastic bag after taking a seat in the kitchen.
“Candace’s father brought this back from Hawaii,” she explained as I accepted the bag. “Candace apparently bought these for you and Mischa on their first night of the trip.”
I peeked inside the plastic bag and saw inside of it what looked like a cheap toy ukulele. The plastic bag was from a gift shop in Hawaii, and a crumpled receipt was at the bottom of the bag. I thought of the music that had filled my head and distracted me in the days before Candace flew to Hawaii, and then throughout mid-terms. It had been my strongest warning from Olivia, and I hadn’t acted on it.
Candace’s mom stayed in our kitchen, sobbing and talking to Mom, long after I turned in for the night and tucked the ukulele into the box in my closet where I’d stowed all of my other problematic possessions. I could smell cigarette smoke, the reassuring scent of company, and guessed my mom was probably counseling Candace’s mom about losing a child. Not long after I heard the clock chime midnight, Trey texted me asking if I wanted him to come over and I assured him that I was okay and that he should stay in his own room for the night. Through my window, I saw strange patterns of lights out on the street, and when I got out of bed to raise the blinds and investigate, I saw teenagers dressed as superheroes walking around with flashlights. It was Halloween, and somehow I had completely forgotten about the holiday. I climbed back into bed, vaguely remembering how, back in September, I had assumed that I’d buy some kind of sexy cat or sexy bunny costume that year, and trick or treat up and down the Richmonds’ block with Olivia, Candace, and Mischa. The sadness wafting off of Candace’s mom seemed to fill our whole house, settling in my bedroom and surrounding me as I fell asleep.
On Friday I woke up without the help of an alarm clock at dawn, and dressed for class even though I knew my mother would be surprised that I was ready to return. Before Homeroom, I walked directly toward Mr. Dean’s classroom and entered boldly while Trey waited for me in the hallway with his books.
“Mr. Dean?” I asked, causing him to look up from the papers he was grading at his desk. “I have some bad news. I didn’t do so well on my mid-terms and I’m resigning from my position as Class Treasurer to focus on bringing up my grades.”
Mr. Dean’s expression was one of absolute astonishment, but I stuck to my story. As I twisted the combination lock on my locker and mumbled goodmorning to Dan Marshall, I thought of how wildly my priorities had changed since the beginning of the year. In September, securing my popularity had seemed more important than anything. Now, I had just willingly abandoned my foothold in the world of popular people without fear of how Hannah would react. Senior year was going to be a complete roll of the dice, if I lived long enough to experience it.
Mischa and I agreed that at lunchtime that day in the cafeteria, we would abandon our old lunch table and sit elsewhere. We wandered through the cafeteria together with Matt, our empty trays in our hands, and eventually after considering nearly all of the kitchen’s options that day, I stepped into line behind Mischa with a turkey sandwich.
“That’s all you’re having?” I asked, noticing that she had returned her tray to the stack and was carrying nothing but a carton of skim milk.
“I’m not hungry,” she claimed.
After she paid and stepped into the seating area to wait for us, I stepped forward to pay for my sandwich at the register, and Matt, behind me, said quietly, “She won’t eat. She hasn’t eaten anything solid in days.”
“Why?” I asked, holding out my hand for the cashier to return my change.
“She’s afraid of choking,” Matt said, concerned.
We ventured out into the seating area, the salty stench of deep-fried tater tots and spicy chicken patties clinging to our clothing and hair. When we found space at the end of a table of sophomores and sat down, they looked at us as if we were bonkers. Across the cafeteria, I sensed heads turning in our direction and didn’t wonder too much what Pete, Jeff, and Isaac were thinking about our sudden departure without explanation. I would leave it to Hannah and Tracy to explain. I watched Mischa, who sat across from me, as she unwrapped her straw and tucked it into her carton of milk.
“You have to eat, Mischa,” I warned her. “Chew slowly if it makes you feel safer, but come on. You can’t just stop eating.”
Mischa blinked and looked away, and casually brushed away either a tear or a stray eyelash. “That’s easy for you to say. You weren’t predicted to choke to death. You don’t have nightmares about not being able to breathe—î
Mischa stopped short and when I looked over my right shoulder, I saw Hannah standing behind me. Her posture and gestures were aggressive, but her voice was intimidated and unsteady. True to what Tracy had said at Candace’s wake, she did sound stuffed up as if she had been suffering from a bad cold, and her nose was pink and dry from the heavy use of tissues.
“Why are you guys sitting over here? There’s room at our table,” she said. She was wearing a beautiful brand new sweater with a stylish cowl collar, multi-color cashmere flecked with strands of fine gold thread. A sweater like that could not have been inexpensive, and it served as yet another unwelcome reminder that the Simmons’ family was wealthy. “And Mr. Dean said you quit Student Government. I don’t get it, McKenna. We had such great stuff planned for this year.”
“You killed Candace,” I said firmly in a voice low enough to prevent the sophomores at the other end of our table from hearing us. Although I knew the time was right to confront her as Trey and I had discussed, I still wished he wasn’t so adamant about avoiding the cafeteria during our shared lunch period so that I wouldn’t have to address her alone. We decided that it might be easier to distract her from our true intent by making sure she was aware we were angry. The time had come for all of our sneaking around to end. “Not to mention Olivia, too, but that goes without saying.”
I fought the urge to look away from her and as uncomfortable as it was, I watched as she turned beet red and struggled to find words to respond. Her ankle twisted, her lips mashed together, her fingers tightened where her hands were placed on her hips. Her discomfort with confrontation was as evident as was mine with being confrontational. “McKenna, you know that’s irrational. I was nowhere near Hawaii when Candace died. And I wasn’t anywhere near Olivia when she died, either. A human being cannot control the weather. I can’t control the ocean.”
Feeling my pulse begin to race with anger, I steadied my nerves before replying, “We all know now that you are very much in charge of what’s happening to us. We have something very special planned for you, and we’re waiting to see what you do next.”
Hannah opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Her eyes darted from mine across the table to Mischa’s. After a moment of hesitation, she regained her composure. “Is that some kind of threat?” she asked haughtily.
“You’d better believe it is, Hannah,” I bluffed.
“We’ll kill you,” Mischa blurted, taking me and Matt both completely by surprise. “If you die, the spell is broken. I’m not afraid to kill you to save my own life.”
Trey and I hadn’t told Mischa about going to visit Father Fahey, or our plan to determine which object belonging to Hannah served as her connection to the spirit. Her comment about killing Hannah was completely out of left field, but it served a perfect purpose: distracting Hannah completely from what Trey and I had in mind. Hannah’s face drained entirely of color. Her expression faded to one of absence of emotion, and she turned on her heel to return to our former tab
le. We didn’t watch long enough to see the reaction of everyone else sitting over there to her explanation as to why we weren’t accompanying her.
“Are you crazy?” I asked Mischa. “She can go to the principal and say you’re threatening to hurt her! She could go to the police!”
“Fine,” Mischa said firmly, taking a sip of her milk. “I’m serious. I will throttle her with my bare hands. If I’m going to die, then I want her dead, too.”
Matt put an arm around her shoulders and kissed the side of her face, but I could tell by Mischa’s tone and calmness that she was not kidding around.
In gym class, I attempted to be sent to the nurse’s office by claiming I had cramps, but Coach Stirling thwarted my efforts by informing me that moderate exercise was as good a cure for cramps as Tylenol. Earlier that week, before Mischa’s return to school, her parents had done what Candace’s had done for her and switched around her entire class schedule so that she could avoid Hannah in every class other than lunch. I wished I could be more honest with my parents about what was happening at school and ask them to do the same thing for me, but I knew if I asked my mother to change my schedule I would face an endless assault of skeptical questions. I changed into my red and black gym suit in the row of lockers other than the one I usually used to avoid Hannah and Tracy. I pulled on my gray hooded sweatshirt as an afterthought, because it was starting to get cold out.
On the track, I jogged at my own slow pace, avoiding the eyes of everyone around me. I focused on the lyrics of the song playing on my iPod until I unmistakably heard my name called.
“McKenna!”
Hannah was behind me, walking at a brisk pace. Quickly I noticed that Tracy was half-way around the track, running, so I took out my ear buds and listened.
“What?” I asked.
“Why are you suddenly so mad at me?” she asked, sounding earnestly bewildered about the change in our friendship since the previous week.
“This isn’t sudden, Hannah,” I told her sternly. “I was willing to consider the possibility of coincidence when Olivia died. But not now that Candace is gone, too. I’m onto you, I know what you’re doing, and I think you’re sick. You’re going to sit back and watch all of us die, the whole time pretending to be completely oblivious.”
“No,” Hannah said, shaking her head. “You’re not all going to die, and I don’t have any control over what’s happened.”
“Tell me one thing,” I said, standing and facing her, not caring who saw us arguing on the track. “When it was my turn, why couldn’t you see my death?”
“I don’t remember,” Hannah quickly claimed. “That was weeks ago.”
“You do remember, and you know exactly why!” I accused.
Hannah looked around wildly, but I was staring her down, demanding an answer. “Because you’re already dead,” she finally said matter-of-factly.
Her answer stunned me so profoundly that I began walking again just to get away from her, just to gain some distance from those words. Numbly my fingers jammed my ear buds back in my ears, and music blasted out the frantic reaction in my head.
Already dead.
I could hear Hannah calling my name as I broke into a run, but didn’t stop.
Did that mean that Jennie and I had shared a soul? Did half of me die with her? Had I died instead of her, and by some strange twist of nature, was I still walking around? If I was technically dead, was that why it had been so much easier for Olivia’s spirit to reach out to me instead of Mischa?
And most importantly: was I exempt from the curse?
The thought that I may have been truly immune to the curse made my core glow with joy. If Hannah had no power over me, then I wouldn’t have to worry about what might happen to my mom if I suddenly died, or about Trey’s reaction. Suddenly the promise of ongoing life made the morning air all the more fresh, the sunlight all the more warm, the music in my ear buds all the more spectacular. But almost as fast as relief flooded my nervous system, I remembered that Mischa was not immune. And I still didn’t have the slightest clue how to go about saving her.
After school, Mischa and Trey met me at my locker. Mischa was planning to invite herself over to my house to do homework to avoid having to go to gymnastics practice with her sister, who was waiting for her in the parking lot, presumably with her engine running.
“Just wait for me right here,” Mischa instructed just outside the West doors of the high school, right before she darted off in her black suede blazer through the cars in the lot toward her sister’s hatchback Volkswagon GTI. Trey and I watched as the sisters argued, and finally Amanda threw her car into reverse and pulled out of her parking space. She shouted some parting words at Mischa, which appeared to have been along the lines of, “wait until Mom and Dad find out.”
Mischa shrugged when she rejoined us near the doors to the school, adjusting the strap of her stylish leather messenger bag over her shoulder.
“Is everything okay?” Trey asked.
“Fine,” Mischa said in a sing-song voice. “My sister just doesn’t understand that gymnastics don’t really seem very important to someone who’s about to die.”
A moment after those words left Mischa’s mouth, the red doors of the high school behind us opened and we found ourselves face to face with Hannah. There was a moment of awkward, sickening silence as the four of us all examined each other.
“Hello,” Hannah finally said sheepishly to us, and then turned and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun as she looked across the busy parking lot for something.
“I believe you owe Trey an apology,” Mischa piped up, preventing Hannah from just dashing off without further acknowledging us.
Hannah looked at her, startled. “For what?”
“You knew it was going to be Trey driving the car the night that Olivia died,” I intervened. “And you didn’t even say a word.”
Trey looked at his feet, uncomfortable for having been pulled into a girl fight.
Hannah batted her eyelashes wildly, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” but I could tell by the tone of her voice that she knew exactly what I was talking about.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Hannah. Trey knows; he knows everything.” I took a step toward her, studying her, trying to determine what item on her person might have been given to her by her grandmother. Her vintage Louis Vuitton leather Speedy handbag? The charm bracelet around her wrist? Could the key to our troubles be as elusive as a bottle of perfume, a mist of magic that Hannah sprayed on each morning? “With one phone call to him, you could have prevented Olivia from dying. All you had to do was tell him, and you could have saved her life. Olivia knew, you know. Trey said right before the truck hit, she was begging him to pull over. The last moments of her life were spent in terror, and that’s all on you.”
Accusing her so directly seemed to have an emotional impact on her. She probably hadn’t thought too much about how her inaction had resulted in the death of two friends. She had probably been so concerned with just following the orders she had been given that she had overlooked her own responsibilities as a moral human being.
“You have to believe me, guys. I didn’t know it was going to be him,” Hannah said, her eyes pleading with us for mercy. Her voice was almost shrill; she was so desperate that I not doubt her. “They didn’t show me his face.”
“Why should we believe you?” I snapped. I didn’t buy her claim that whatever had allowed her to watch Olivia’s death had obscured Trey’s identity from her. “If you had warned him, Olivia would still be alive.”
“But that’s just it,” Hannah sputtered. The doors to the school behind her opened and a flood of freshman boys rushed past us toward an idling minivan driven by someone’s mom. Hannah waited until the minivan pulled away before she continued, “I’m not allowed to ever warn anyone. I’m not supposed to change what will happen. They don’t let me see enough to try and stop it.”
The impact of everything she had said to us was all
at once so shocking I didn’t even know how to continue interrogating her. And I found it odd that she kept insisting that there were multiple spirits who kept her informed instead of just one. I was speechless for a second as my thoughts tried to assemble everything Hannah had just said in my mind. I tried to remember Father Fahey’s guidance: don’t try to figure out the spirit’s motivations. Just focus on the object connecting her to it.
“What do you mean, they let you see things? Who?” I asked. “And you knew. If this has happened before, then you knew that Olivia was going to die!” My lips were forming words, but I was trying to scouring her with my eyes. Was it an object in her bag that we couldn’t even see? Would Mischa and I have to break into her gym locker to search the contents of that leather handbag? Was it something she kept hidden away in her bedroom? No… my hunch was that it was something she had brought with her to the Richmonds’ the night of Olivia’s party.