Light as a Feather

by Zoe Aarsen

It was Candace who broke the spell. We were snapped back to our senses, and before we had an opportunity to even feel the full weight of Olivia’s body in our hands, she had dropped to the ground with a thud and was rubbing her behind good-naturedly. Relief washed over me.

  “Thanks, guys!” she teased, not at all hurt in her tumble back down to the carpet.

  Despite the fact that we had all played the silly game before when we were younger, and had experienced the effect firsthand, everyone but me was delighted with our small success. It was as if Violet had cast the spell on us so skillfully, so thoroughly, we hadn’t even had to exert an ounce of thought toward making the chant work.

  “That was amazing!” Mischa exclaimed, her entire face ignited by a smile.

  Unlike my excited friends, I was troubled by everything that had just happened, from the precision of details that Violet had chosen to the ease with which we had raised Olivia off the ground. Something in the basement—something about Violet—was different. The gruesome story she’d told had been so realistic that it seemed more like she’d been recalling a memory than inventing a tale on the fly.

  It was kind of like becoming aware of a tiny splinter in my finger that didn’t necessarily hurt, but refused to be ignored. Since the first day of school I’d been under the impression that Violet was reserved, maybe even shy, but her turn as the storyteller in the game revealed that under the right circumstances, she could be captivating. Maybe she had just been pretending to be introverted since we’d met her, and it took her a while to warm up to people. I could understand that—I was shy around adults I didn’t know well—but that still didn’t explain how Violet had known about the Prius in the driveway. I couldn’t grill her about that in front of Olivia and ruin her birthday surprise, but I also didn’t want to play the game anymore.

  “Who was the driver?” Olivia asked. “I wouldn’t just accept a ride home from Green Bay with anyone.”

  “And you skipped the part about where Olivia buys her dream dress,” Mischa teased Violet.

  “Yeah. It would be helpful to know where I’m going to find that dress,” Olivia said.

  Violet blushed, her alabaster skin heating up into a deep pink. “Sorry, I’m not a fortune-teller.” She looked directly at me and added, “Just making up stories here.”

  “Do me next!” Candace insisted, dropping down to her knees on the floor.

  We reassembled our little circle, my friends eager to see if Violet could deliver the phenomenon with such conviction a second time. A warning voice in my head urged, Don’t do it again. Not another person. However, I was a little afraid that my reluctance to participate was going to annoy the others. I’d been waiting since elementary school to be welcomed back into Olivia’s circle of friends, and I wasn’t about to blow it by acting babyish about a spooky game. “Okay, we all have to calm down and focus or it won’t work,” Violet reminded us as she adjusted Candace’s head on the pillow in front of her knees on the floor.

  She drummed her fingertips on Candace’s temples and stared up at the ceiling, lost in thought. “Candace Cotton. What should we do with Candace Cotton?”

  As soon as the story came together in her mind, the expression on her face changed. Her gaze steadied and she looked down at Candace, who dutifully closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest as Olivia had done. Olivia had assumed Candace’s position down near the feet, and had daintily placed two of her fingers beneath Candace’s heels, her palms facing the ceiling. Candace took a deep breath, preparing herself for Violet’s terrible story, her chest heaving toward the ceiling as she took in air, and then sinking back toward the floor as she exhaled.

  “It was October, and Candace’s family was far away from Willow on a spur-of-the-moment vacation. Candace was excited to show off her new bikini at the beach, and to swim in the ocean for the first time. The waves were mild that day, so she blew off her parents’ insistence that she try her luck with a surfing lesson instead to wade out into deeper water on her own. At first she stayed close to the shoreline, not venturing too far away from where her brothers were building sandcastles on the beach. The water was warm and tempting, not nearly as cold as she had been expecting, so she waded in deeper, to her hips, and remained there until she felt confident she could handle herself in the stronger currents.

  “After she disappeared, her brothers told her parents that they saw her walk straight into the deeper currents, right at the waves, as if on a mission. Unafraid, as if she was daring the ocean to come and take her. They said a wave washed over her and the ocean just swallowed her whole, enveloping her in blue and carrying her away. Her body washed up three days later, two miles down the shore. Foul-smelling seaweed was tangled up in her hair. Fish had nibbled away at her eyeballs and lips.”

  I felt Candace twitch above my fingertips at this horrific description of her own body.

  “As her devastated parents identified her decomposing body at the coroner’s office, its stink was unbearable. It lay on the metal autopsy table . . . light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

  “Light as a feather, stiff as a board,” we repeated.

  Unbelievably enough, Candace’s body, heavier and larger than Olivia’s, lifted just as easily as Olivia’s had. I did not dare to look up at the other girls raising Candace with their fingertips for fear of being the one to ruin the thrill, even though my heart was racing in terror. We only got Candace about two feet off the floor before she startled and we dropped her.

  “Oh my God, that was crazy!” she shrieked, throwing her hands to her face to press her own cheeks. Her eyes were glossy, watering with excitement. “I could actually feel you guys lifting me!”

  All my friends were bubbling over with enthusiasm then, thrilled with our success. I was quiet and smiled in an effort to appear like I was having fun, but I was really wishing that someone would pull out a game of Twister or suggest that we do something—anything—else. Violet had become the party hero. The warm rush I’d felt surge through me during my encounter with Henry upstairs had abandoned me completely. My limbs were cold with fear, the same kind of nervous fear that overtook me when I watched horror movies. An enjoyable fear, but a sensation that I hoped wouldn’t last long. Self-conscious, I wondered if I was the only one who was a little freaked out by the grotesque details that Violet was so easily able to conjure as elements of her stories. Maybe she was some kind of sociopath and we’d somehow overlooked her mental disorder over the last two weeks, distracted by her big, innocent blue eyes and long lashes.

  “You’re so good at this!” Mischa exclaimed.

  “I’m okay,” Violet admitted. Her comment sounded to me less like a humble-brag and more like she truly didn’t want any of us to make a big deal of her storytelling talent.

  “I’ve never even been to a beach before,” Candace said, “other than at Lake Winnebago, and that doesn’t even count. But it was so real ! I could practically smell the salt water as you were telling the story.”

  “This is so much fun! I’m so glad you suggested doing this,” Olivia gushed. Suddenly, she pointed directly at me. “Let’s do McKenna next!”

  “No, no,” I said, holding my hands up in protest. With reluctance I had watched the others receive their stories, but I wasn’t eager to hear one of my own. “That would be too weird.”

  “Come on, McKenna!” Candace egged me on. “You have to. We’re all doing it.”

  Violet’s not doing it, I thought to myself.

  I found myself stretching out on the floor among them all, easing my head onto the upholstered couch pillow. Violet’s fingertips grazed my temples, cool pressure against my head, touching me so lightly that I could barely feel her skin against my own.

  “Oh,” Violet said suddenly, the second her fingertips touched my temples. She sounded surprised. “This is going to be a tough one.” At my feet, Candace’s eyebrows shot up her forehead in alarm.

  Mischa and Olivia exchanged concerned, knowing glances. “Why?” I asked, looking st
raight up at Violet.

  “Usually when I play this game, I get a good idea as soon as I touch someone,” Violet explained. “But I don’t have any ideas for you. The only thing I can think of is fire, but it doesn’t feel right. I mean, I can tell a story about fire if you want. But I don’t know if it’s going to work.”

  My heart began beating furiously fast and I wanted to sit up and bring an end to the stupid game right there and then. I knew it wasn’t fair; Violet was new in town and couldn’t possibly have known how eerie her words were. For me, the party was over. I wanted to call my mom even though it was after midnight and ask her to pick me up immediately. But I couldn’t do that. I was sixteen, not a baby, and I couldn’t even find the strength to sit up and relieve Violet from having to tell my story. I desperately didn’t want Candace, Mischa, and Olivia to think I was too chicken to play.

  “Don’t tell a story about fire,” Olivia said finally, with tenderness in her voice that suggested she knew how much that would terrify me. “Anything but that.”

  “No! Tell it!” urged Mischa. “Wouldn’t that be so scary, if McKenna were to die just like—”

  “Stop, Mischa,” Candace commanded, silencing her. “That’s totally messed up.”

  The basement was quiet for a moment as the girls’ eyes locked. Without a single word uttered, I sensed Mischa back down. I looked up at Violet, and flinched when I found her looking directly down at me with an expression that told me she knew exactly why I couldn’t stand to hear about my own demise in flames. She knew about Jennie. I was certain of it, and it chilled me to the bone. I sat straight up, bolting away from her, my concern with popularity temporarily forgotten. “I don’t feel like playing anymore,” I announced in a shaky voice.

  “It’s okay,” Candace assured me. “Mischa can take her turn.”

  “Yeah, I’ll go,” Mischa volunteered.

  Mischa readily stretched out on the floor and gently set her head upon the pillow. I took the position at her feet, wanting to distance myself as much as possible from Violet. I was barely paying attention as Violet told the tale of Mischa’s death, something about choking and turning blue.

  Instead of devoting my thoughts to the story, I found myself wondering about Violet. Who was this girl, really? Was it normal to have such control over this type of game, to be able to hypnotize one’s peers so casually? Had she observed more with those huge blue eyes than we had noticed since the first day of school? Did she know more about all of our lives than she was letting on?

  Perhaps because of Mischa’s eagerness for the game to work like a charm, we lifted her higher than anyone else, barely breathing, we were so charged up as we raised Mischa’s tiny body above our shoulders, level with our eyes, and then over our heads.

  It was a buzzing from Olivia’s cell phone on the coffee table that broke our concentration. Luckily for Mischa, we caught her before she fell five feet to the floor.

  “Wow, you were really high up there, dude,” Candace informed Mischa as Olivia bolted across the basement to grab her phone.

  “It’s Pete!” she whispered to all of us. “He and Jeff Harrison are—”

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  A loud knock on the basement storm window from the backyard made all of us jump in the air. Mischa screamed, and we immediately heard commotion on the second floor as Olivia’s parents sprang into action. As soon as Olivia realized that the source of the knock was handsome Pete, squatting in her backyard with another member of the basketball team, Jeff Harrison, she erupted into giggles. Candace clutched her chest dramatically as if she were having a heart attack. I was still too rattled by the intensity of Violet’s game to be amused, but I was relieved that the boys were there. Their unannounced visit meant that we were probably done playing.

  We heard the door at the top of the stairs open and we all froze.

  Olivia made hand motions to Pete to back away from the window. “Olivia, what’s going on down there?” we heard Mr. Richmond call from the top of the stairs.

  “Nothing, Dad!” Olivia chirped back in reply. “Mischa just saw a spider.”

  “Must have been some spider,” Mr. Richmond said in a tone that suggested he knew she was lying.

  Mischa and Olivia both suppressed giggles with their fingers. “It was,” Mischa called over her shoulder.

  “Get some rest, girls,” Mr. Richmond encouraged us. “It’s after one. Busy day tomorrow.”

  “Okay, Dad,” Olivia said, clearly just wanting him to go back up to the second floor and leave us alone.

  She waited until he climbed all the stairs back up to the second-floor master bedroom, her head nodding slightly as she counted his footsteps, before dragging a chair over to the window to slide it open.

  “Pete, what are you doing here?” she asked, standing atop the chair as the rest of us watched.

  “Jeff and I were driving around and I thought it would be fun to stop by and wish you happy birthday in person,” he told her, putting his hand up to the window screen separating them. His eyes wandered the room as he made notice of all of us in attendance. Violet nervously chewed her lower lip. When she’d packed her pajamas for the party, she probably hadn’t been expecting that Pete would see her wearing them, just like I hadn’t expected to run into Henry while wearing mine.

  “That is so romantic,” Candace muttered to no one in particular.

  “That’s totally sweet, but you guys have to get out of here! If my dad hears you, he’ll call the cops!” Olivia cautioned.

  Pete vowed to leave quietly, but only after Olivia figured out how to remove the screen so that he could kiss her through the window. She fumbled with the screen in the window frame until it fell forward and silently hit the grass of the backyard, and lifted herself on her tiptoes so that Pete could lean through the open window and kiss her.

  “Isaac would never be that romantic,” Candace grumbled.

  An hour later, we snuggled into our blankets, finally ready to go to sleep. I spread out my sleeping bag on the floor, turning my back on my friends as I heard them all begin to breathe more deeply and then snore.

  I couldn’t sleep. Everything about Violet’s contributions to the game, including her suggestion that we play it in the first place, was troubling me. How had Violet, who hadn’t gone upstairs all night, known that Olivia’s parents had bought her a red Toyota? Was it possible that someone in our tiny town had told her about Jennie, even though the subject was an odd one to share with anyone new at the high school?

  My eyes began to burn with tiredness, and I noticed the time on the cable box near the television was 3:31 a.m. Suddenly, I sensed that I wasn’t the only one awake in the basement, and turned to find Violet sitting up on her sleeping bag across the room, rubbing her eyes.

  “Sorry if I freaked you out earlier,” she whispered, careful not to wake the others.

  “It’s okay,” I lied, because that’s what girls say. It wasn’t okay at all, but after her impressive performance, I was a little afraid of offending her. I rolled over, turning my back to her once again. That night I barely slept, unable to shake the suspicion that the fire in the fireplace that had burned so wildly while we were chanting had never burned itself completely out.

  CHAPTER 3

  IN THE MORNING, OLIVIA RUSHED through the front double doors of her house to squeal in delight in the driveway at her new red car.

  “Oh my God, I love it! I totally love it!” she exclaimed repeatedly, throwing her arms around her father, and then her mother, and then her father again.

  None of my friends said anything about how trippy it was that Olivia’d received the same make and model car that Violet had mentioned in the story she’d told just a few hours earlier. If Violet was surprised by this element of her prediction coming true, she didn’t show it.

  Mrs. Richmond made us all pancakes in the shape of the first letter of our first names, which was kind of a childish treat, but we all enjoyed it anyway. I devoured my misshapen M in silence, still unsettle
d by the game we had played the night before. Thankfully, Henry had left the house to drive to his appointment for X-rays before we had even stirred awake. I wasn’t in the mood to flirt or act bubbly; still freaked out by Violet’s game, I wanted to repack my backpack and rush home in the safety of daylight.

  When I emerged from the first-floor bathroom and began my descent back down to the basement to retrieve my overnight bag, I heard Olivia uttering the words “sister” and “fire.” I knew immediately that she was debriefing Violet about my life story, and in an odd way I was flattered that Olivia even still remembered it. All the events she was relaying had occurred right around the time I had fallen out of favor with Olivia and Candace and the other girls who had been considered to be the prettiest and friendliest back in elementary school. I couldn’t blame them for allowing our friendships to lapse when we were little kids. What had happened to my family was so terrible that parents wanted to keep their own children away from us, as if distance were a preventative measure to keep tragedy from striking them, too.

  My footsteps on the creaky stairs interrupted the story, and both Olivia and Violet smiled awkwardly when I reached the basement. Only Candace turned and nodded at me with sad eyes, confirmation that I was indeed interrupting exactly what I suspected.

  “We’re going to go see Blood Harvest 2: The Reaping this afternoon,” Olivia announced cheerfully, her offer laced with falseness. “Do you want to come with?”

  “I can’t,” I lied smoothly. “I’m going shopping with my mom to look for stuff for the dance.”

  I was thankful that I hadn’t previously announced to my new friends that the lavender dress had already been purchased, some information I’d held back on sharing just in case a date never surfaced.

  That was the day that summer settled comfortably into fall. The temperature finally dropped noticeably by ten degrees and a sharp scent of dry leaves crept into the air, overpowering my town’s summer smells of freshly cut grass and honeysuckle bushes. I rushed home on foot, not wanting to have to wait for my mom to arrive at the Richmonds’ in her station wagon. My mom put other parents on edge. She was lucky to escape Willow on the three days each week when she taught in Sheboygan, where the only people who had known her long enough to remember about Jennie were the other professors who had been at the university as long as she’d been teaching there. Within town limits, everyone her own age remembered not only the story but the headline that appeared the next morning in the Willow Gazette: ONE CHILD DEAD IN TRAGIC HOUSE FIRE. A lot of kids I knew had divorced parents and lived with their moms after their dads left Willow to find new jobs, pursue new wives, and start over with fresh rules in a new game. But only my mom inspired awkward kindness everywhere she went. Even the checkout girls at the grocery store smiled a little wistfully when handing over her change.