But maybe it’s the simple togetherness she wants, which is still a meaningful prize. She holds my hand as we make our way to Sheep Meadow—she holds it close to her side, against her hip, so it doesn’t look unnatural to people passing by. She’s also gotten a headset for her phone, so she can talk to me without getting stares. But today, we just walk. I am worried we’ve run out of words, and am hoping she is just saving them for later.
There are hundreds of people around us, most on blankets or towels, a few on lawn chairs. In summer, Sheep Meadow becomes something like the town square of Central Park—a place to gather, a place to picnic, a place to slip away from the tall buildings and expose yourself to the sun. To sit in the sun—a desire I am sure is as old as time. My mother had no idea what effect the sun would have on me, if any. Looking back, I realize she had no idea what the parameters of the curse were—was I invisible just to other people or invisible to the elements as well? Since sunscreen wouldn’t necessarily work, she kept me to the shadows, the shade.
Now I decide to risk it. Because this I know: I can feel the sun. I know what it’s like to bathe in it, to hold your face into it and feel the radiance settle lightly on your skin.
Elizabeth lays out a blanket, and I sit alongside her. To any observer, it will look like she’s waiting for her boyfriend to show up. Nobody will question this.
“Have you ever been to Shakespeare in the Park?” she asks me.
“No,” I murmur, shaking my head. I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that I don’t need to say “no” out loud when I’m shaking my head, not with her.
“We should go before the summer’s over. I’ll wake up at dawn and get two seats. It’ll look like you’ve stood me up.”
“You could give Laurie the seat. I can just sneak in behind you and stand on the sides.”
“No.” Elizabeth smiles at me. “I want to go with you. I want you sitting next to me.”
“I won’t argue with that. We better not tell Laurie, though.”
“If he wants to go, he can get up at dawn too.”
“What are the odds of that?” I ask.
“About the same odds as your grandfather treating us to dinner afterwards.”
There. She’s mentioned him. I wait for more, for this to be a transition into another conversation. But I wait for a few beats too long. By the time I realize it’s a dead end, it’s too late for me to construct a road.
“I was once Viola in Twelfth Night,” Elizabeth says. “We had a major shortage of boys interested in drama, so the boy cast as Sebastian was Korean. Everyone was very surprised when we ended up being twins in the end.”
“Why didn’t Laurie play your brother?”
“Ha! When Laurie was a freshman, he had these legendary fights with our drama teacher over the school musical. She wanted to do Annie Get Your Gun. He wanted to do this musical based on the life of this huge gay kid. She said tomato, he said to-mah-to-you-bitch, and as a result he was blacklisted from all future productions. The only role she would have given him in Twelfth Night was the role of the storm that caused everything in the first place.”
Elizabeth closes her eyes, leans back. “That feels like another time, another country. You think it will take you forever to break free, and then you break free, and there you are. Free.”
She turns her face away from me, towards the sun. I remain sitting up, looking at all the people around us, caught as they are in their own stories. As Elizabeth drifts off, I try to glimpse lines or paragraphs of what’s going on. I lose myself in others because I can never lose myself in myself.
“It’s nice,” Elizabeth murmurs.
“It is,” I agree.
* * *
She sleeps. In the middle of the park in the middle of the city, she sleeps. Like a child, napping during the day. Quieting herself. Resting.
It’s only as the hour turns, only as her time with Millie nears, that I have the heart to wake her.
“Wow, how long was I out?” she asks once I nestle her into consciousness.
I tell her.
“Sorry,” she says. “I guess I really needed that.”
She stretches out and looks around at the people around us. I find myself wondering if she’s seeing what I see. Or if there’s another element layered on top of it. What spells could all these people be under? What curses will destroy them?
If she sees any of this, it doesn’t show. She stands as any other girl would stand, gathers her things as any other girl would gather them. Her expression does not betray any sign of noticing spells or curses.
“I think I’m going to stay here a little while longer,” I tell her. It’s not like there’s anywhere else I have to be.
“Cool,” she says. “I’d leave you the blanket, but, you know, you’re invisible.”
“Thanks for that reminder. I’d almost forgotten.”
The smile on her face is still a little sleepy, even under so much daylight.
“I am kissing you goodbye,” she says into her phone mike.
“I am happily receiving your kiss goodbye,” I tell her. This is the best we can do in public. People in New York are forgiving of conversations with the air, but they tend to get worried when you start kissing it.
I watch her go. As I do, I realize we’ve managed to stave off the loneliness for almost an hour.
But I only realize that because I feel its return.
* * *
I sit on the grass, but I don’t really feel the grass. I sit in the park, but the park doesn’t recognize that I’m there. Children play around me. Lovers have no sense that I’m close. A cloud passes over the sun, but it has no idea that I feel the shadow it leaves.
I used to do this a lot, especially in the summer.
It feels different now.
Ivan, my favorite dog walker, comes into view. He is leashless, dogless. Instead, Karen the nanny is by his side. She has been unmoored from children for the day. It is just the two of them, and they would seem like just about any other young couple, only I can’t take away what I already know about them, can’t help but picture the dogs and kids that aren’t there.
I shiver, even though the sun has returned. The woman sitting alone on the blanket next to me has started to itch her face. I notice it out of the corner of my eye. Politeness decrees that I look the other way, but there’s something about her that makes me look more. The itching has turned to scratching. She is starting to claw at her face, her fingernails drawing blood. I want someone else to notice. I am invisible; I can’t help.
I hear a scream. I assume someone has seen what this woman is doing. But it’s coming from the other side of me. I turn and see a man has set his blanket on fire. “I’m so cold!” he is shouting as his wife pulls their child from the blanket. She keeps screaming.
People are starting to look over. People are wondering what’s going on.
A man runs over to help. He looks like an off-duty cop or fireman. He stomps on the blanket . . . even as the father reaches again for his matches and starts to set his own clothing on fire. The cop yells at him to stop—but no words come out of his mouth. He is shocked by this. He goes to scream again. But nothing comes out. The mother is wrestling the matches away from her husband. The woman on the other side of me has blood running in trails down her face, and she is about to go for her eyes. People are starting to run away. They saw the fire and are running away. But one girl—she can’t be older than me—goes to run and she can’t move her legs. I see her trying. But her legs won’t work. She’s lost control of them.
I feel faint. The shivers are rocking my body. I can’t explain it—I feel weak. And at the same time, I feel like I am responsible. I feel that something coming from me is becoming this.
It is the child who tips me off. The boy who was saved from the burning blanket. As people run and scream and try to help, he is looking at a fixed spot. He is looking at someone who is there to him but isn’t there to me. And that’s how I know my grandfather is here.
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Someone has wrestled the woman to the ground before she can scratch out her eyes. But she is putting up a mighty fight, screaming that they must come out, that her face must come off. The girl who can’t run is crying; the man who can’t speak is stuck still.
Ivan is running over to help. As he does, a woman he passes drops to the ground and starts eating the dirt.
“RUN!” I shout. I don’t know what else to do. “RUN! RUN!” I scream it over and over again—this voice that isn’t attached to any body. I make it over to Ivan and push him away, push him back to Karen. “GO!” I tell him. “GET OUT OF HERE!” He does.
My grandfather can hear me now. My grandfather knows I am here. But of course he’s known that all along. My curse has tipped him off.
He can’t see me. I can’t see him. But here we are.
The woman drawing blood. The man who feels he’s so cold that he’s setting himself on fire. The man who can’t speak. The girl who can’t move. The woman eating dirt. How can he be doing all of these curses at once?
I feel it draining from me. The energy. It’s not that the curse is lessening—I am no more visible than I’ve ever been. But he’s feeding off of me. I know this. And because of that, I know that I’m the one who has to run.
I am careful not to bump into anyone. I am careful not to leave any kind of trail. I don’t want him to know which way I’ve gone. Although, if I’m right about him sensing me, then he will certainly know I’ve left—and where I’m going.
I can’t go back home. I don’t want to draw him there. And I can’t go to Millie’s, for the same reason. So I plunge north, deeper into the park, as far away from anyone else as I can go. I push through the Ramble, skirting past any people I encounter. I allow myself to be a purely invisible boy once more. I untie myself from the city and become its watchful ghost. I glide through and hold on to the illusion that nothing I do can touch anyone. I am a cause with no effects. I am footsteps without a sound. I am nothing but air—noticeable in motion, but gone even as it arrives.
The screams follow me through the air.
Chapter 24
I’VE NEVER THOUGHT TO care about tea one way or another, but sitting in the hexatorium while Millie pours me the zillionth cup I’ve had since I met her, I decide I hate it. I hate everything about this place. This bunker of secrets that has proven utterly useless. Like the tea, it’s meant for sitting and steeping, but with neglect inevitably comes bitterness.
I haven’t put milk or sugar in my cup. Nonetheless, I stir my ridiculously tiny spoon in the amber liquid, letting the silver scrape against porcelain, the rasping noise echoing my irritation.
I’m ready to share all of my discontents with her, lest I suffer alone, but I wait for my moment.
Millie clasps her delicate, wrinkled hands in front of her chest.
“Let’s begin.” She smiles and I grimace, but she ignores my sour look. “Tell me the code of the spellseeker.”
Recitation is Millie’s education tool of choice.
“A spellseeker identifies the presence of magic in the world.”
“To what end?”
“To sanction just practice and eradicate the malicious.”
Millie smiles at me. “Very good.”
“So how do we eradicate anyway?” I ask, not waiting for the next prompt. “I would like to get to the eradicating ASAP.”
With a brief, chiding glance, she circles the table, continuing the lesson and letting my question vanish in the air like the steam from my cup.
“What are the spellseekers’ tools?” she asks.
I manage not to groan. “Knowledge, patience, and will.”
“And how does one gain knowledge?”
“Through study and observation.” I look at the cobwebs linking the top shelf of thick tomes to the ceiling, thick enough to mimic lace. “When was the last time you studied?” I point at the dust-covered books.
Millie’s hands fly to her hips and I’m surprised that she almost looks ferocious. “Young lady, must you waste our time with this selfish, rude behavior?”
“I’m not the one who’s wasting time,” I mutter.
Her fingers whip out before I can move, and she’s grasping my chin. “Elizabeth, I am deadly serious. The time we spend in these sessions is precious, and if you want to help your friend, you must take me seriously. This is the way it is done. The way it’s always been done.”
I jerk my face away from her. My eyes burn, and I blink as quickly as I can. Her words haven’t provoked tears; my frustration has. No matter how many years of experience or how much tradition Millie brings to the table, it doesn’t sway me. I can’t sit here anymore. Not with Arbus out there, plotting who knows what. Why can’t Millie understand that?
Millie pulls a chair close, sitting beside me. I resist the urge to flinch when she pats my hair, knowing she means well.
“There, there, dear,” she says. “I know this must be difficult. I’m simply trying to protect you.”
I stiffen. “I’m not the one who needs protecting, Millie. Stephen—”
Before I can go on, a ruckus erupts above our heads. I hear a muffled shout and the rapid beat of shoes on floorboards, immediately followed by the clomping of heavy boots. A door bangs open out of sight. The flurry of footsteps grows louder as they descend the stairs.
Stephen flings himself into the room. I’ve never seen him like this. His hair sticks to his forehead. He’s out of breath but obviously desperate to speak.
I stand up when he says, “Elizabeth.” Hidden in the way he’s said my name is a story that I’m afraid to hear.
“Why are you here?” Millie asks the general space from which Stephen’s voice came.
From the sound that erupts out of the stairwell I expect a boulder to appear, but it’s Saul. He’s wielding a crowbar.
“Where is he?” Saul menaces the room.
Catching sight of the crowbar, Stephen wisely remains silent. Still, I edge my way between him and Saul.
Millie wags her finger at the huge man. “Put that down. It’s just the boy.”
“No one comes in without being cleared by me!” Saul shouts. The veins in his neck are bulging. “I don’t care who it is. Them’s the rules!”
As if she’s speaking to a raging beast, Millie coos, “It’s fine, Saul. There’s no danger. Stephen didn’t know any better.”
She glances at me for help.
“Something’s happened,” I say quickly. “Hasn’t it?”
Making sure he’s out of striking distance, Stephen speaks. “The park.”
He begins to cough, a violent racking through his limbs, and I realize he’s dry heaving.
“Is he ill?” Millie asks me, squinting at the rough sounds coming from Stephen’s throat.
“I don’t know.” Fear leaves a raw tang in my mouth. “Stephen . . .”
“I’m okay.” He rights himself, but his face has been robbed of its color.
Saul leans in Stephen’s direction. “You listen to me, boy—”
“Shut up!” I snap at Saul. “If you could see him . . .”
I approach Stephen carefully, lifting my hands to touch his cheeks with my fingertips. He lays his palms over my fingers. His skin is cold.
“Tell me.” I look directly into his eyes, hoping that our connection will help him get through whatever this is.
Without breaking our gaze, Stephen nods. “He was there, Elizabeth, after you left. I couldn’t see him. But he was there.”
“Your grandfather?” Horror snatches my breath, and the phrase comes out in a whisper. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. I was going to keep Arbus away from Stephen. I’m the spellseeker. I’m the one who can save Stephen. But Arbus got there first. I’ve failed before I began.
Stephen is still talking, his words fevered. “He unleashed curses. Not just one. People all around me.”
“Multiple curses?” I turn to Millie. “Can he do that?”
Millie doesn’t answer me, instead
asking Stephen, “What curses?”
He shudders. “Curses meant to kill. Kill horribly. A man . . . set himself on fire.”
I’ve stopped breathing. Nothing I’ve seen—what I’ve thought to be the worst kind of torment in curses—nothing comes close to that.
But it isn’t over. “He made a woman eat dirt. And another woman . . . she was going to claw her own eyes out.”
I must have gasped because Stephen says, “People stopped her. But she was still fighting them, trying to tear her own skin off.”
Millie puts her hands over her mouth, but her eyes have moved from Stephen to Saul. I follow her gaze quickly enough to catch the twitching of his face. A spasm within the cluster of muscles in which an eyeball used to nest.
Still trapped in his memories, Stephen doesn’t see it. “I couldn’t do anything to stop it.” He pauses, drawing a ragged breath. “And I felt like he was able to do it because of me.”
“What are you talking about?” I move my hands from his face to grip his shoulders.
“When the curses manifested, I didn’t just see what they did. Something physical happened. Like he was siphoning power from me.”
I run my thumbs over the backs of his hands, hoping to transfer some warmth from my skin to his. To give back some of the life that his grandfather just stole.
“None of this is your fault,” I say. “It never has been and it never will be.”
Stephen falls silent. I keep his hands in mine but look at Millie.
“Is it him? Is it Arbus?”
“Those curses,” she says slowly, sinking into a chair, “are a few of Maxwell’s signatures.”
“And was it—” I turn to Saul, not sure if I should ask the question I’m considering, but find that his hulking shape is already disappearing up the stairwell. Anger spent, he’d apparently had enough of us. Or perhaps the hexatorium had filled with too many painful memories for him to abide.
With Saul out of earshot, I finish my thought. “Maxwell Arbus is the reason Saul lost an eye?”
“Yes,” Millie answers stiffly. “But that was a long time ago. Saul has moved on. So have I.”
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