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A Wicked Magic

Page 13

by Sasha Laurens


  Every book pulled down from the shelves, their covers splayed open and pages bent. The glass of picture frames cracked, the big painting that hung over the couch pulled down and the backing ripped off. The couch cushions strewn around the room, one of them with a deep slash vomiting its stuffing into the mess. Alexa choked when she saw Lorelei’s beloved record collection, scattered across the floor, disks of shiny black slipping from their sleeves, scratched and shattered.

  But the broad wooden table where she’d spent so many industrious hours sitting beside Lorelei, where Lorelei’s precarious pile of papers had always threatened to landslide onto the floor, was bare. Lorelei’s computer, the article drafts and notes, the details of her infiltration into Black Grass—all of it was gone.

  TEN

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 15, SENIOR YEAR

  Dan

  In Spanish on Monday, they went around the room and each student explained what they’d done that weekend.

  What had Dan done? Cried at a vigil for a missing girl, said no to drugs from nasty men, laid in bed for two whole days feeling miserable and listening to IronWeaks.

  She still couldn’t get Friday night to leave her: the way they kept repeating “you wanted to party,” in a way that obviously encompassed a dozen things Dan didn’t particularly associate with parties—less frosted sheet cake and more hungry hands. The disgusting feeling of Rodrigo leaning in to try to kiss her, the unwashed stink of him, the fear and anger singing in her blood as she broke away, and then a lingering shame that she’d gotten upset over something as simple as a kiss. And at the same time, a part of her brain that did not feel very childish kept suggesting what could have happened, but didn’t—things that couldn’t be walked away from as easily as a mistaken kiss. Her favorite sweatshirt still smelled like their campfire.

  But the worst part—one of the worst parts—was Liss.

  All Dan had wanted was to keep Liss from doing anything stupidly dangerous until she finally accepted that Johnny was gone for good. She’d done her best on Friday, following her to Dogtown Beach when they were practically driving past big neon signs that said BAD IDEA. But she’d done it anyway, so Liss wouldn’t have to do it alone.

  And what had she gotten but hurt in exchange?

  Liss never even asked why Dan had wanted to leave the beach so badly that night, like she hadn’t heard what Rodrigo said. Or maybe Liss didn’t care.

  For all Dan knew, making out with Brodie had been Liss’s real goal since they’d seen him looking so tender-eyed at the vigil. It was exactly the kind of thing Liss couldn’t let survive. As long as she lived and breathed, she needed the world to be about her.

  They hadn’t even really figured out if Zephyr went missing by magical means or something else. But Liss had decided that was “someone else’s problem.”

  A guy three seats down from Dan started describing a movie he’d seen about zombie football players.

  Another worst part was, Dan was pretty sure Alexa knew something was up. Dan hadn’t been exactly honest about the fact that she was seeing Liss again. Actually, she hadn’t told Alexa at all, had maybe even done what technically counted as lying to cancel their plans on Friday night. Alexa had never texted her back about that.

  It was the first weekend they hadn’t seen each other since September.

  By Saturday night, Dan felt so bad, she’d given up on waiting for a text from Alexa before she cut a bright red line into her hip. It bled more than she’d expected and didn’t make her feel better at all—actually it made her feel worse, because it was such an awful and stupid and pathetic thing to do, which on the other hand made it an appropriate thing for Dan to do to herself, but on the other other hand it was awful and stupid and pathetic that Dan could even think that way. Her thoughts went in circles until she came back to her anger at the darryls and at Liss, which got her upset all over again, because being angry at them was pointless and hard, because what could she ever do about it? But hating herself was easy, she was right there and she knew she deserved it, even if she couldn’t exactly explain why.

  So basically, that thought process took up all of Sunday.

  The student next to Dan finished reporting the results of her soccer game.

  The last worst part was that in spite of everything, Liss badgered her all weekend about the Black Book: they needed to ask it about Kasyan and Johnny, and they couldn’t wait any longer. Dan knew that was true, but doing anything, even taking a shower, felt impossible, and most of all things involving Liss. She ignored the texts until Liss threatened to show up at Dan’s house on Sunday night. Dan agreed to meet Liss in Marlena after school with the Black Book.

  Today would be the end of it, Dan had decided. She would give the Black Book back to Liss, and she could do with it whatever she could manage on her own. Liss would get what she wanted and leave Dan alone to close the door on this part of her life: magic, Johnny, Liss. Dan had wanted to help Liss, but enough was enough.

  “Daniela?” Ms. Alonso asked. “Cómo estuvo tu fin de semana?”

  “Fine,” Dan said, reflexively, in English.

  Ms. Alonso clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “En español!”

  “Lo siento. Fui a la . . . ceremonia . . . de Zephyr,” she mumbled.

  “De Zephyr Finnemore? Ah, eso es muy triste, no?” Ms. Alonso said, making an exaggerated frown.

  Dan’s eyes darted to the seat by the door that, last winter, was Johnny’s, and that same awful fist of sadness tightened all over again. “Sí.”

  * * *

  —

  When the bell rang for lunch, Dan waited for Alexa in their usual spot in the cafeteria, but her stomach was in such a knot, she couldn’t touch either the ginger-soy seitan and brown rice her mom had packed or the Pop-Tart she’d grabbed from her secret locker stash.

  All morning, Dan had agonized over what to tell Alexa about the weekend when she saw her at lunch. She wanted to tell her how horrible Liss was and about the nasty darryls trying to kiss her and the weird performances of sadness she’d seen at Zephyr’s vigil. Most of all she wanted to tell Alexa how she’d been nearly swallowed by blackness all weekend. Even though she was never entirely honest with Alexa about how bad she felt, talking around the edges of her sadness somehow made her feel better.

  But she couldn’t tell Alexa any of that because she’d lied to her about hanging out with Liss. That could be forgivable on its own, if it weren’t for the even bigger problem, which was that Dan couldn’t come clean about spending time with Liss without explaining why: magic, Johnny, all the horrible, stupid things she’d done.

  She had to keep lying. Specifically, she was going to have to lie about seeing Liss that afternoon.

  Dan was wondering if she could escape the cafeteria and eat lunch in her car, when Alexa walked up, dropped her backpack on the floor, and slumped into the chair.

  “Oh, hey!” Dan chirped. “How’s it going?”

  Alexa folded her arms on the table and dropped her forehead onto them. “Perfect.”

  “Perfect?”

  “Absolutely,” Alexa said into the table.

  “Cool. Same.” Dan shoved a dry lump of seitan into her mouth. “But I had the most annoying weekend. You would not believe my mom.”

  Alexa picked her head up, and the words just started spilling out of Dan: “You know my college apps were basically done? Well, on Friday when I got home my mom decided she wanted to go over everything again.” Dan hoped Alexa wouldn’t realize this sounded nothing like her mom. Graciela only ever nagged Dan about her apps by affirming she trusted Dan to be responsible about her future—a lot more than Dan herself did. Dan rambled on. “Honestly, she was just like, Let’s proofread everything again and Did you make sure all the recommendations were requested? It took literally the whole weekend. She had to reset her password on the College Board website like eight times. And when we were finally done, s
he insisted on celebrating, so we had to drive like forty minutes to that Ayurvedic Indian place in Rancho Carrera for dinner. She made it into this whole thing.”

  “A whole thing, huh?” Alexa’s voice was flat as she picked at her sandwich. There were dark circles under her eyes. “It sounds kind of nice.”

  “Well, it just took all weekend, that’s all.” Dan recalled the actual Great College Application Review, which they had conducted over Thanksgiving. Truthfully, she had enjoyed it. Her parents told her how proud they were that she was applying to such good schools—although anyone could apply—and she’d imagined coming home during a break and telling them what she’d learned in Intro to Music Theory or Aesthetic Philosophy. “Have you talked to your mom about where you’re applying, or just Lorelei?”

  Alexa flinched, her PB&J halfway to her mouth. “My mom doesn’t care about that kind of stuff.”

  “About college? Parents love caring about college.”

  Alexa set her sandwich down and pulled the sleeves of her cardigan over her hands. “Not mine.”

  Dan knew Alexa’s family situation was sensitive; Alexa didn’t like to talk about it, so Dan tried not to bring it up. The basics were that Alexa’s dad checked out of the family early, her mom drank too much and moved Alexa all around Arizona before marrying some new guy, and then Alexa went to live with her dad’s youngest sister, Lorelei. It was complicated and sad in a way Dan wasn’t sure she understood. “Maybe if you tried to talk to her about it, she’d get excited. This is like a rite of passage thing for parents. They all geek out on it.”

  “Not my mom, okay, Dan?” Alexa was glaring at her so fiercely Dan nearly dropped her Pop-Tart. “Are you trying to rub my face in it?”

  “I—no, absolutely not.”

  “My mom does not care. She tried to use the college fund from my grandpa to buy herself a boat, and she doesn’t even live near a fucking lake. Of course, I want to have a cute heart-to-heart about liberal arts versus state schools, or whatever. But I never will. That’s your life, not mine. I have Lorelei and—” Alexa broke off. She ran her fingers under her glasses, and it seemed for a second that she might cry. Her eyelids already looked swollen. “You just have no idea what it’s like.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry—really sorry,” Dan stammered. “You’re super lucky to have Lorelei.”

  “Just forget about it,” Alexa muttered. “I have to run an errand for Lorelei with our landlord after school today, so don’t wait around.”

  Alexa crumpled the tinfoil around the remains of her sandwich and left the cafeteria.

  * * *

  —

  After school, Dan sat in her car waiting for Liss by the coffee cart in Marlena—where Willow, thankfully, was not on shift. The Black Book was in Dan’s trunk, still sealed in its secret shoebox, but Dan was barely aware of its nearness. She couldn’t stop thinking about that vicious look Alexa had leveled at her during lunch. As if Alexa had forgotten entirely why she was supposed to care about Dan at all, like she was just waiting for Dan get out of her way so she could move on with her life. It almost made the lying feel pointless. But then again, that argument worked equally well to justify lying to her, which was somehow easier. Telling her the truth would bring Alexa so close, too close. She’d see Dan for who she truly was.

  Dan pulled her bag over from the passenger seat and pawed through one of the pockets. There had to be something in there sharp enough to make bloody scratches in her skin, if not actually a cut. A safety pin, even a paperclip—Dan stopped herself. What good would it do? She’d hurt Alexa, even if she didn’t mean to, and hurting herself didn’t undo that.

  So instead she let the paper cup of her mocha burn the pads of her fingers as she slurped up the whipped cream. She thought about asking for a top-up, even though a whipped cream top-up was not a thing, but she needed something else to feel, even if it was only a little greasy.

  But the more she replayed the conversation with Alexa in her head, the more it overwhelmed her. Alexa had to know that Dan didn’t mean to hurt her; she’d apologized right away. Had Dan done something else, something she wasn’t aware of, to set Alexa off?

  A sick certainty flooded Dan’s chest. It was, as Liss would say, stupid obvious.

  Alexa knew Dan was lying to her. She must have figured out that Dan was spending time with Liss, and she was punishing her for it. Probably she was waiting to see how long it took Dan to break and confess what she’d done.

  At that moment, Liss yanked the passenger door open, shoved Dan’s backpack onto the floor, and collapsed into the car. She was smiling, her blond hair falling into her face, like they were back at the beginning again, when magic was an adventure and Dan hadn’t let everything go hopelessly wrong. Liss’s eyes were bright. “You brought the Book, right?”

  Dan burst into tears.

  “Oh my god, are you okay?”

  Obviously she was not, with her face buried in her hands and her forehead resting against the steering wheel. “I’m fine,” Dan snorked out. “It’s nothing, I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” Liss said tentatively. “It just seems like something’s bothering you.”

  Dan glanced at Liss: Her body was pressed against the door, as far from Dan as she could get in the car, and eyebrows were drawn together. She looked more uncomfortable than empathetic.

  “The weekend was just kind of hard. I was—” Dan sniffed and rubbed the tears from her cheeks. Why couldn’t she just admit what was bothering her, like any regular person would? “I was stressed out.”

  “Ugh, same. I’m stressed like, all the time.” Liss was fidgeting with her fingers again. Up to four and back. “College applications. Finals. Finding my boyfriend before Kasyan eats him or whatever, and my mom is being totally batshit lately. But we’re staying focused, right? Once we ask the Black Book, we’ll be on track.”

  “I know that. I mean, I . . .” Dan forced herself to go on. Like Liss always said, she couldn’t know when Dan was upset if Dan deliberately hid it from her. “I feel bad about lying to Alexa.”

  “Wow, tragedy of the century.”

  Dan tried to ignore this. “I just think she’s upset.”

  “Then apologize to her when this is over and I’m sure she’ll forget about it. And if she doesn’t, then maybe the whole friendship thing wasn’t meant to be. There’s that quote—if you can’t forgive me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best.”

  Dan didn’t know what to say. Surely, you couldn’t be forgiven for anything—but on the other hand, her reasons for lying were at least understandable, if not actually good.

  “I can’t keep doing this much longer,” Dan said.

  Liss nodded. “We’ll be a lot closer to finding him once we’re using the Black Book again. It’s in the car, right? Let’s go to my place, my parents won’t be there.”

  “Jesus, Liss.” Her tears were threatening to spill over again. “I’m having a crisis here.”

  “I can drive if you want to cry on the way.”

  “Seriously? You really don’t get it?”

  “No, I don’t get it.” Liss’s body was taut, her eyes wide. “What’s your issue? How can Alexa be more important than this? So you lied to her—it happens. People lie all the time. If you two love each other so much, then she’ll forgive you and you can go back to your platonic version of The Notebook or whatever.”

  “The thing I’m worried about is her not forgiving me,” Dan snapped.

  “People can forgive anything. Look, you were so mad at me about Johnny that you didn’t talk to me for months—which I have never given you a hard time about, by the way, and you’re welcome for that—and now everything’s fine between us. You forgave me, because you wanted to stay friends more than you wanted to stay mad, and I did the same to you. If you and I can get over that, then Alexa can get over a few harmless lies.”

&n
bsp; Dan couldn’t breathe. “Everything’s fine between us,” she repeated.

  “Right. I mean, you never apologized either, but I accepted that and I forgave you anyway.”

  “You forgave me?”

  “Yes,” Liss said. “And it took a while.”

  Dan’s heart was racing now, her tears forgotten. “Honestly, how do you manage to make yourself the victim in every situation?”

  “You can’t make yourself a victim, Dan. Someone else does that for you.”

  “Johnny is the victim.” Dan’s voice filled the car. “We did that for him.”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  “Johnny is dead,” Dan ground out.

  “Don’t say that!”

  “He’s dead, Liss,” Dan said. “He’s dead. We have to move on.”

  “Shut up!” Liss cried. “He is not. I know he isn’t.”

  “Get out of my car.”

  “But the Book—”

  “Get out of my fucking car!” Dan screamed. “I’m glad you forgave me because I never want to see you again.”

  FALL OF JUNIOR YEAR

  Dan

  A month after Johnny and Dan kissed, Liss went from annoyed to outraged that Johnny hadn’t made another move on Dan. She cajoled Dan into various stakeouts at school—eating lunch near where his crew usually sat, loitering in the hall where he’d have to pass them on his way to Chemistry—but she wanted more info. Dan complained that there was no more info, she’d told Liss everything, and besides, Dan already saw him at work, so it wasn’t as if he had no chance to talk to her if he wanted to.

  Mortified hardly began to describe Dan’s feelings when Liss pulled up his social media again, for the sake of research, or when she shouted his name from across the cafeteria and pretended Dan had done it. Johnny was all Liss wanted to talk about. They’d spent hours discussing The Kiss in the weeks since it had happened, to the point that Dan could barely find the spark she’d felt in those few short moments. The memory of that brief thrill when he pressed her up against the car had been overwritten by the embarrassment of describing it to Liss, of answering Liss’s questions about it. Dan could never manage to admit to Liss that mostly the kiss had felt strange, confusing, unfamiliar—she could barely admit it to herself. Who didn’t like kissing? Now Dan almost wished the whole thing had never happened. She couldn’t help the feeling that all of this was going to end in some humiliation for her, that Liss would push and push and push, but Dan would be the one who finally broke when Johnny spelled out what she already suspected was true: he wasn’t interested, he’d never been interested, and he was grossed out that she thought he could have been.

 

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