A Wicked Magic

by Sasha Laurens

  No, that wasn’t right. Rickey’s music was beautiful and passionate and glorious. Then why did the sadness feel like the only thing that mattered? Maybe because it was the sadness that he’d chosen over everything else in the end, over music, over life itself.

  Liss’s last text was still lighting up her phone. Dan wouldn’t reply. She didn’t owe Liss anything, forgiveness included. So what if Liss thought Alexa was a liar? Liss thought everyone who didn’t do exactly what she wanted them to was an inferior creature.

  But it had been days since Dan had talked to Alexa—really talk talked. She’d avoided her because of Liss, which felt horrible and weak to admit, and then on Monday she’d said the wrong thing and upset Alexa without even meaning to. Now that she’d definitively resolved to move on from the whole Liss-Johnny mess for good, Dan missed Alexa more than ever. Alexa would make her feel better, fill the void that Liss and magic and Johnny had left behind.

  No, that wasn’t fair to Alexa. Alexa was more than just a bandage on the Liss-shaped wound in Dan’s life, even if being friends with her made Dan feel like she could be okay—that maybe she already was okay and she just didn’t know it yet. But other times, that same feeling made Dan want to wrap her hands around her own neck and squeeze. It made her feel pathetic and undeserving and precarious, like her feet were about to be kicked out from beneath her.

  Dan’s gaze moved to the background of the poster of Rickey. The other members of IronWeaks were there, slouching rockstarishly against a wall. None of them had done anything much after his death. Rickey made their whole lives about his pain, and then he got free of it in the worst way imaginable. Probably they had their own issues, problems they didn’t get to sing beautiful, tragic songs about.

  Dan grabbed her phone. Are you feeling better? Want to drive up to the CVS in Gratton?

  It took fifteen minutes, but Alexa replied. Be at your place in 10.

  Alexa

  Alexa watched from her car as Dan climbed out her bedroom window onto the roof, then lowered herself down onto the plastic storage chest that stood near her mother’s pottery studio, and jumped to the ground. Dan liked sneaking out, the way characters in TV shows did when they were disobeying their parents. Except Dan wasn’t disobeying her parents, who never stopped her from doing anything or got mad at her or told her she was a waste of human space. The only thing they cared about was that Dan make good choices and respect herself, which for some reason Dan thought was the world’s greatest burden.

  It was probably a bad idea to meet up with Dan tonight. Dan would ask questions she couldn’t answer, or Alexa would spontaneously set something on fire or start speaking to an animal, or something would happen to Lorelei while she was gone. Swann had delivered her potions—eyedroppers of scarlet red and green-brown liquids that Alexa dribbled into Lorelei’s mouth—and warned her to keep Lore cool. Now the house was so cold Alexa went around in two pairs of sweatpants and just as horribly oppressive, with the smell of Lorelei’s decomposition. Alexa felt like she’d lost hold of herself. She’d thrown away the notebooks where she’d been planning her fantasy world. No more Flintowerland, no more Quest of the Axials. Domino was dismayed, but what did Alexa need a fantasy for, now? Then she had dissolved into tears thinking about whether it would be more humane to somehow put Lorelei out of her misery than to let her keep living in what was certainly excruciating pain.

  Alexa knew that she was being weak, for wanting to see Dan, for wanting an escape—not to mention the last time she’d seen Dan, she’d nearly bitten her head off—but she had grabbed her keys when Dan texted her anyway.

  Now, the tension in Alexa’s chest coiled itself tighter.

  She expected it to loosen upon seeing Dan. Dan was her lifeline back to everything normal, back to before her life had been knocked hopelessly askew.

  Alexa hadn’t really made any friends in LA. Everywhere she looked she found something to be angry about: the traffic, all the stupid juice bars that tried to meet the city’s demand for nasty kale-water. Once, she’d kicked a hole in the plaster of her bedroom wall, and they’d had to rearrange the furniture around it. She didn’t know where the anger came from, only that sometimes everything about the world felt wrong. It felt like there was a bomb inside her, and some days it felt like it had already exploded, but she was still holding it in, containing the damage.

  Even Lorelei made her angry sometimes. Alexa didn’t want to think about those times.

  But for the last few months, Dan had centered her with sleepovers and local band shows and leaning over to doodle on her notes in the library and listening to the Smiths because Dan liked them in their separate beds in separate houses at night and skipping around to her favorite tracks until putting “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want” on repeat while they both fell asleep. Slowly, the anger had begun to quiet, concentrating itself into a form that could be taken apart. Alexa didn’t know if this was what friendship was like, or something particular to Dan.

  It had crossed Alexa’s mind that she might be a little in love with Dan. If Dan was interested in girls, she’d never mentioned it. Dan never mentioned being interested in anyone like that, other than Rickey IronWeaks, and Alexa wasn’t sure that was even really romantic. In any case, love was mostly irrelevant and impractical when it was yours to give and completely unpredictable as a thing to receive. Alexa wasn’t stupid enough to mess up their friendship with an unrequited crush.

  It was better to have Dan next to her.

  It was always better with Dan next to her.

  Just then, Dan flung herself into the car as if she was escaping something other than supportive parents who loved her.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. What’re you putting on?”

  “Guess,” Alexa said. She shoved the CD into the player and soon Johnny Marr was picking out a jangling melody, and Morrissey was moaning that it was really nothing.

  Alexa turned the music up and pulled onto the road.

  * * *

  —

  The distance from Dogtown to Fort Gratton didn’t feel far enough away from home. The hour’s drive was almost exactly as long as the runtime of the Smiths’ Hatful of Hollow, which was perfect because it meant they could stay lost in the album. Alexa didn’t actually feel like talking, and the one place that was always okay was in a car, in the dark, with music.

  And if she had felt like talking, what could she have said?

  Dan wasn’t saying anything either. Something was probably wrong, and it was Alexa’s responsibility to find out what and help Dan survive it. It wasn’t fair to think of it this way, but she liked taking care of Dan. It made her feel useful, needed, more like herself—like a version of herself that she had never gotten to be. A person who could really care about others, because she didn’t have to worry so constantly about protecting herself.

  Alexa was about to ask when Dan said, “Listen, I’m sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean what it sounded like. Your relationship with your mom is your business.”

  “No, it was my fault. I overreacted,” Alexa said. “But thanks.”

  “Is something going on?” Dan asked. “You’ve seemed kind of, I dunno, off lately.”

  Alexa opened her mouth, then closed it again. If she was going to keep Dan in her life at all, she had to split herself in two. One, truer Alexa, who sat at Lorelei’s bedside and worried if the yellowish pus that seeped from the split places in Lorelei’s skin was dangerous to touch, who needed to figure out what to do when the inevitable happened. That Alexa would need to leave Dan and North Coast behind someday soon, and would be better off keeping her distance. Then there was another Alexa, who could sit in a dark car and listen to music with her best friend and try to etch into her brain how that moment felt—to remember forever how three and a half months of those moments felt, because soon they’d be gone.

  “I had a cold, that’s all,” Ale
xa answered.

  “Really?” Dan asked.

  “Yeah, what else? Honestly, if something was wrong, you’re the one I’d tell.”

  Alexa glanced at Dan. She was watching the road, her feet up against the dash. She seemed satisfied with Alexa’s answer.

  It was enough, for now.

  * * *

  —

  They stopped at the 7-Eleven outside Gratton and bought too-sweet hot chocolates that burned their tongues, then parked in the empty lot at CVS. They wandered the beauty section, sneakily giving themselves rainbow manicures by cracking open bottles of colors with names like She’s Got It! and Green with Envy. They tried on every pair of sunglasses and two pairs of old-person reading glasses and sat in the rickety plastic beach chairs until closing time ejected them, along with Mad Mags, who had also been wandering the aisles, back into the parking lot, where the girls sat in the car listening to a Nick Drake album in the dark.

  “Oh, I wanted to ask you,” Dan said around a mouthful of Swedish Fish, “what were the stories Lorelei told you about that Kasyan guy?”

  “The one the Lizard’s looking for?” Alexa’s heart sank. Dan had told her she intended to be firm with Liss: Liss could say her piece, but friendship wasn’t on the table. That was supposed to be it. “Dan, I don’t know, they’re just stories. Not even interesting stories.”

  When she said it, somehow it felt like a lie—which was impossible, because it wasn’t. When Alexa was young, every time Lore babysat she had a new tale of some creepy monster or demon— things that skulked in shadows or slumbered in rivers, undying spirits that manifested when the energy was right, bogeys that helped lost travelers or led them further astray. When Alexa got frightened, Lorelei told her being scared wasn’t a bad thing, because it meant you knew what to watch out for. Kasyan was a creepy story in a long list of creepy stories—stories Alexa always assumed Lore had made up. The other night, when Liss mentioned Kasyan, that was all Alexa had known.

  But that was then.

  Kasyan.

  The name tugged on something buried in her brain, a thread leading her into the dark. The path was littered with dim memories that Alexa knew were not hers, of things lurking in the shadows that pooled beneath trees at night, girls and boys stolen away, and Kasyan himself, a creature of black smoke, granting wishes designed to unravel around the wisher.

  “They can’t be that boring,” Dan was saying. “That defeats the whole point of a story.”

  “I just—I don’t really remember a lot of the details.”

  Dan dug another Swedish Fish out of the bag. “I’m curious. You said he was like the Big Bad Wolf.”

  Alexa fiddled with her keys. “The stories were creepy and I kind of tried to forget them.”

  “Whenever I try to forget something, it’s basically a guarantee I’ll remember it forever.”

  “Honestly, I only remember snippets here and there.” Alexa scrubbed a hand over her face. She searched her memory for Lorelei’s words from all those years ago. “There’s one about a woman who wishes for a daughter but after she gives birth, Kasyan takes the baby. I think there’s one where he drowns a man in gold coins when he wished for riches.” She could see them, suddenly, in her mind: the woman’s screams, the weight upon the man’s chest—a power that fed on the inexhaustible energy of desire. Alexa cleared her throat. “The morals are always like, never stand with three at a crossroad or something.”

  “What did you say?” Dan’s face was suddenly hard and serious.

  “Never stand with three at a crossroad,” Alexa repeated. “Why?”

  “No reason,” Dan said hurriedly. “It’s just weird advice. What happens if you stand with three at a crossroad?”

  “Depends on when you do it. I don’t really remember the details. Sometimes it’s good luck and sometimes it’s bad luck, but the point was that messing with luck is risky in general.” Alexa tried to laugh. “So, you know, make sure to cross the street in ones and twos.”

  Dan ignored the joke. “What story was that in?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Can you ask Lorelei?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “You said that already. Why are you even asking about all this?”

  Dan was silent, fiddling with the empty Swedish Fish bag.

  “It’s Liss, isn’t it? You caved to her after all. Did she tell you to talk to me? Dan, what the actual fuck?”

  “Liss doesn’t have anything to do with this. I don’t just do what she tells me. I’m actually curious. Like I think it’s pretty weird that you got bedtime stories about a fairy-tale character who isn’t even Google-able.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Kasyan is like . . . not a thing. I can’t find any information about him—no books in the library, basically nothing online. You say there are fairy tales about him, but you and Lorelei are literally the only people who seem to know about them.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is. We looked everywhere—”

  “We?” Alexa’s eyes narrowed. “So it is Liss.”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “Are you hanging out with her again or not? Because you just told me this whole conversation has nothing to do with her, and I really hope that isn’t a straight-up lie.”

  It felt like a very long time before Dan said anything. She was looking out into the parking lot with the intensity of someone struggling not to let themselves cry. “I’m not hanging out with her again,” she finally said. “But it’s also not true that this has nothing to do with her. I’m helping her look for Johnny. That’s all it is. We’re not friends again.”

  “Good,” Alexa said before she could help herself.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean, it’s good, you can be friends with her if you want. Don’t let me stop you.”

  “Not, good, you’re doing the right thing by helping find a missing kid? Why do you care so much if I’m friends with Liss anyway?”

  “Yeah, that part’s obviously good. And I care because I care about you. She made you miserable, that’s what you always say, and I’m sorry if it’s super offensive that I don’t want you to be miserable again.”

  “Right, thanks, I totally agree, having more than one friend would probably break me entirely, I’m so super fragile. Lucky I have you to protect me.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Alexa said. “You can be friends with her if you want to. But I thought you didn’t want to. That’s what you always told me.”

  Dan dragged her knuckle against the window, cutting a line through the silvery condensation that filmed the glass. “Let’s go home.”

  * * *

  —

  On the way home, they didn’t speak, but now it felt like there was something to say. The air in the car with thick with it, the energy of their fight vibrating with the tinny beat from the speakers.

  Alexa was furious and couldn’t figure out what to say to relieve the anger inside her. She knew she had no authority to tell Dan who she should and shouldn’t spend her time with, what she should and shouldn’t do, but at the same time—clearly she shouldn’t waste her time with a private school bitch with entitlement coming out of her ass and a grotesquely expensive candy-apple-colored SUV. Liss didn’t respect Dan. Alexa knew that from how Dan talked about her, and it had been dripping off Liss that night she’d been waiting for them at Dan’s house. Liss was the kind of person who used people—used people up—and Alexa didn’t want that to happen to Dan.

  There was nothing wrong with that.

  So if nothing was wrong with that, why was Alexa so angry?

  She looked over at Dan. She was staring out the window, hiding behind a curtain of black hair.

  That familiar storm of
anger rocked in her chest—and something else. Rain clouds that hadn’t yet broken, lightning that hadn’t yet struck.

  Alexa accelerated too hard out of a turn.

  Now it seemed infuriatingly stupid that she’d ever imagined that she and Dan could go visit each other over fall break in college the next year, that she’d have North Coast to come home to for Thanksgiving. That future couldn’t be salvaged, and the sooner Alexa understood that, the better.

  No more Lorelei, no more Dan, no more North Coast.

  She didn’t have time for hurt feelings.

  Alexa stepped on the gas.

  Dan

  Dan stole a glance at the speedometer, then up at Alexa’s face in the dark. She was breathing shallow and fast and her jaw was set, like she was grinding her teeth. She was definitely driving too fast, and Dan wasn’t sure if she should say anything. What did Alexa have to be upset about anyway? Dan was pretty sure she was the victim here: Alexa basically told her she was too weak to spend time with Liss without getting hurt. Dan wasn’t that easily broken. It was one thing for Dan to say Liss was an evil destroyer of worlds, because she’d been there, but Alexa only knew Liss secondhand, from what Dan said about her. She didn’t understand Liss the way Dan did or anything about why Dan loved her.

  The Toyota hit a bump and the CD skipped in the player.

  Used to love her.

  None of this mattered, Dan told herself, because she’d already given herself the advice Alexa wanted her to take. She’d cut Liss off before Liss could hurt her all over again. She was done with forgiveness and magic and that irresistible influence that Liss wielded like a precise weapon.

  Still, that didn’t give Alexa the right to say all that to her face.