Sean’s face colored. He pursed his lips, not saying anything.
“Forget it, man. I’m sorry,” Corey said. “I don’t know where that came from.”
“Call me whatever you want, but you’ve beenway too strung out on that girl from the minute she showed up here. It’s not gay to think something feels wrong about her,” Sean said, sounding calmer than he looked. That said, Sean looked away from him, staring back toward the fire-pit.
Corey was shocked to realize he was on the verge of shedding another tear. Whatwas wrong with him? He’d said only three or four sentences to that girl, and his emotions were barely within his control. Maybe Sean was right—it was some kind of obsession. Maybe that was why he kept dreaming about her, and why the dreams were soreal .
“I need to do something about this while I still can,” Corey said. His knees were shaking, so he sat cross-legged, hugging the bag of food. “Before something happens to me.”
“Let me help you,” Sean said, looking back at him, clear-eyed again.
“It’s not safe for you to get involved.”
Sean waved his mother’s letter in front of Corey. “This is a letter from mymom . I don’t care how I got it, and I’m not giving it up,” he said. “That makes me pretty involved.”
Corey stared at the glistening gold of the ring on his finger. “Yeah. Same here. I’m keeping it,” Corey said, studying the designs that were identical to the ones drawn in Gramma Marie’s papers. Those ritualistic symbols were a key, she had written, a coded word of pure magic. Sacred. “If there is an evil spirit, he already made his first mistake—this ring makes me stronger, so we’re already ahead of the game. Maybe he didn’t have any choice when I asked for it. This ring can help me with the cleansing ceremony. So I can banish it.”
“When are you doing it?”
Corey took a deep breath. “Tonight, I think. If I can make myself get ready. Shit, I said the same thing yesterday, but I punked out.”
“Then let’s do it tonight,” Sean said. He held out his palm, ready for a shake.
Corey smiled, hooking Sean’s palm, sliding away soul-style. “I’m really sorry, man. I was acting ignorant before. And I’m sorry I brought you out here the other night.”
“I’m not sorry,” Sean said. “We sawmagic, Corey. How many other people can say that? My life’s going to be different now, even if nothing else like it happens again. It’s like, I don’t know—it’s like seeingGod . It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Seeing Sean’s earnest eyes, Corey remembered his day of joy, sparked by the sight of Gramma Marie’s ring in the sink, in a place and time it didn’t belong. His body shivered and he blinked, nodding. It really had been like staring God dead in the eye and seeing Him smile. He only wished he could forget the dread chewing away at his insides.
“You’re right,” Corey said. “We just have to fix the curse. After that…”
Corey’s mind couldn’t peek around the corner toafter that, but he knew something large and important was waiting for him, something that would make retrieving a single ring look like a small feat. Gramma Marie had said he came from a powerful line. Once upon a time, she’d said, his people could fly. That meant he could banish the demon. Hecould do it.
“Come on,” Corey said, invigorated, feeling more energy than he’d felt since he’d read Gramma Marie’s warnings. “We need to find some raven feathers. And some other obscure stuff it’s probably impossible to find in Sacajawea.”
“Nothing’s impossible,” Sean said.
“That’s the truth.”
While Sean untied Sheba, Corey wrapped up the bag of food and left it beside the fallen tree trunk. He thought about bringing the bag with him for a second, but he decided to leave the food behind—there was no harm infeeding Becka. Even Sean didn’t ask about the bag, preoccupied with quizzing Corey about what they needed to conduct the banishing ceremony.
Corey’s offering to thebaka sat against the ancient tree, waiting to be found.
Dinnertime was torture. His parents were playing theCosby Show riff, everyone sitting together like a family in the dining room, trying to think of happy things to say. The jambalaya tasted like wood chips in Corey’s mouth; his appetite was long gone. But he had to sit and fix a pleasant expression on his face, trying not to fidget, trying to keep his eyes away from the clock on top of the china cabinet, trying to remember to make responses when he was spoken to. His mood pissed off both his parents, but he couldn’t help it. His mind was holding him prisoner.
By nine o’clock, as Will Smith’sWillennium blasted from his bedroom CD player and the sky outside was finally turning dim, Corey wondered how he would find the stamina to pull himself off of his bed and walk to Sean’s house. He’d gotten permission to spend the night there, although his mother had asked him why he never invited Sean to spend the night attheir house. They both knew the answer to that, although he didn’t say it: Corey had more freedom at Sean’s. He would need it.
Corey left his CD player on all the time now, hoping his parents would assume the music meant everything was fine. No curses, no magic, no problems. But he’d lost his way to the music; it was only the background noise to the thoughts that rang in his head and made his skin feel hot to the touch. Maybe he’d come back to Will and OutKast and Nelly one day, but for now the processed sound was meaningless, like the living room’s old piano rolls sitting forgotten in the corner. These songs had nothing to do with him. His music only reminded him that he could be in Oakland thinking about less pressing things, like whose house he would hang out in for the weekend, what movies he’d have to see on opening night, and what clothes he’d buy for school. And oh yeah, that PT Cruiser Dad had promised him in the fall. Those were another person’s concerns now. Sometimes, though, the music shut off his brain some and helped him sleep, no matter how loud it was. The louder the better, in fact. Corey welcomed sleep whenever it found him. Ten minutes, maybe twenty minutes, that was the best he could do, but it was better than nothing.
Corey thought he was dreaming again when he heard something scrape against his window, so he ignored the noise. When the scrape became a knock, he opened his eyes.
In the window, Becka was waving at him, bending her fingertips up and down without moving her palm, bobbing gently in the air. Her shadow lurched across his wall, back and forth, in the dusk light from outside. Corey had been staring at her for almost ten seconds before he realized he was wide awake. He sat up with a gasp.Becka was floating outside his second-story window .
But she wasn’t, of course. Once he dared get to his feet to take a closer look, he realized she was sitting on a tree branch. Granted, it wasn’t a branch he would want to sit on—she was high up, probably thirty feet from the ground, and the walnut tree was not a climbing tree. The walnut tree’s branches were a long way from its trunk, and those branches were a jumble up there. The branch where she was sitting couldn’t be all that sturdy, not growing this close to his window. The gardener sheared the big branches that grew too close to the house, leaving only the thinner ones behind. Yet, Becka was sitting there like an aerialist in a high-wire act. Like it was nothing.
“How’d you get up there?” Corey said, pulling on his windows, which opened into his room like cabinet doors.
Becka smiled, and he noticed again how beautiful her teeth were. “I couldn’t always get in this tree, but you should see me climb it now. I climb like a monkey.”
Corey didn’t like the way the branch was swinging under her weight. It looked like it could snap if she turned her neck to sneeze. “Becka, you better come inside. Just keep quiet so my parents won’t hear.” Corey peered down at the ground and felt his stomach roll when he saw how high she was. “And hurry, before you fall.”
Becka leaned over, resting her elbows on the windowsill. Corey heard something fall when she moved, maybe some walnuts she’d shaken loose. “Thank you for bringing me the food, Corey. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for m
e,” she said, ignoring his invitation. Her eyes stared at him with a private message. He hadn’t been able to tell if her eyes were gray or blue before, but they were definitely gray. It was possible he’d never seen gray eyes, and he’d certainly never seen any like Becka’s. All she had to do was look at him, and Corey’s jeans squirmed. He was hard.
OnWillennium, Will was rapping about the Wild, Wild West, and Corey turned his music down so he could hear if anyone came near his door. Luckily, the wooden floors in the hall were noisy. That was how he knew Dad traded bedrooms sometimes after Corey was in bed.
“I thought you were probably hungry,” Corey said. “Where do you live?”
“Out there,” she said. “Not far.”
“But do you live in ahouse? Do you have a family?”
The sides of her lips curled downward, bored. “Corey…”
“Yeah?”
“I came here so you would kiss me. What are you waiting for?”
Corey squatted to meet her at eye-level, leaning close to her in the window, where he could smell her breath. He wasn’t quite sure he liked the way she smelled—the pungence bothered him some, although not as much as the first night. Maybe she just needed to brush her teeth. “I wrote you poems,” he said.
Sweet honey cream. That was Becka. Wild woman of his dream. That was Becka.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less of you,” Becka said. “That’s why I picked you.”
Their lips came together. Becka’s wet mouth made love to his, and he followed her lead, until he was sucking on her tongue. They washed each other, tasted each other. She took his hand and led it to her chest, inside her dress, allowing him to feel the pliable mounds of her bare breasts. Her nipples felt like pearls to his fingertips. He had never touched a bare nipple. Corey’s face was under a sheen of sweat by the time the kiss ended, and he pulled away, his crotch making his jeans feel as if they were full of rocks. No, not rocks. Hot coals. An eager agony.
“Come with me,” Becka said. “Sneak out the back door and meet me outside. I’ll show you where I live. Don’t you want to see?” Becka’s hand dropped to his knee, and she rubbed a circle with her index finger. His knee trembled so badly, he had to lean against the wall to keep his balance.
“Right now?” he said.
“Yeah, right now. Meet me outside, out back.”
He could do that, he realized. He could tell his parents he was leaving for Sean’s and meet Becka instead. He could go into the woods with her.He could do it.
“What’s in your pocket?” she said suddenly, and he was sure she must be talking about his boner, but his erection was shifting left and Becka was pointing right. He stared down. He was carrying the ring in his right pocket, where it had been since dinner. It was so small, it looked like nothing more than a crease.
“You can see that?” he said.
“What is it? Show me.”
Corey reached into his pocket for the ring, but he felt a jolt of uneasiness. As weird as his first meeting with Becka had been, this one was weirder. Weird squared. The girl had risked her life to climb a tree, and now she was fishing after Gramma Marie’s ring right off. Corey imagined how a drunk must feel when he first starts feeling sober, wishing he could feel drunk again.
Corey slid the ring onto his ring finger, securing it, then he held it up for Becka. Wearing it, he felt better. Becka leaned further through the window to stare at the ring with wide, eager eyes. Again, Corey heard something from the tree fall, thumping softly to the grass far below.
“Theboy puts the ring on thegirl ’s finger,” Becka said.
“Stop being crazy, girl. Come in out of the tree.”
“Can’t I hold your ring?” She was gripping his hand tightly. So tightly, really, that he wondered how she could exert so much strength without it showing in her face. She ran her thumb across the ring, and each time she touched it, he felt more jumpy.
Sherita, all over again. That was how it had started in fifth grade. “I don’t think…”
Becka’s gray eyes talked to him, pleading. “Corey, don’t you like me like this?”
She sounded hurt, and suddenly he felt awful for hurting her. “Of course I like you, Becka. I told you, I wrote poems for you.”
“Don’t you like my face?”
Maybe it was the light, something about the purples and oranges in the space between dusk and night, but in that instant Becka looked like a dancer on an MTV video, fresh and impossible to own. “Becka, you have a beautiful face,” he said. “Everything about you is beautiful.”
“Let me hold your ring,” she said. “Pretty please?”
Corey’s heart thundered. What was wrong with him? The girl just wanted to hold the ring. She was outsidein the tree, for God’s sake. He didn’t have to be such a dick about it.
There were two knocks on his door. “Corey?” his mother’s voice called.
Corey shot up to his feet as she tried the doorknob, but the door was locked. His door was always locked now, because there was too much his parents might see if they walked into his room unannounced. Things he would have to explain, but wouldn’t know how to.
“This door isn’t supposed to be locked,” Mom said, knocking again.
“Just a second!” Corey called. Becka was smiling at him, already pulling away from the window, her branch bobbing more violently beneath her.
“Are you okay out there?” he whispered.
She nodded, still smiling. Somehow, he believed her despite the way she was rocking. Her face was so cocksure that Corey could believe shelived in a tree. “Sorry I have to do this. Stay there a minute,” he whispered, then he closed the windows, hiding them behind his heavy curtains.
His room went dark.
Another knock, louder. This time, Corey heard his father’s voice instead. “Corey, your mama said open the door.” Dad rode him harder when he was around Mom, trying to score points with her.
“Dag, I’m just taking a nap!” Corey said. The irritation in his voice wasn’t a lie. He quickly closed his desk drawer first, then his closet door. Especially his closet.
“I thought you were spending the night at Sean’s,” Mom said.
“Yeah, I am. Guess I dozed off.” Corey fumbled to unlock the door.
His parents were together in his doorway, a united front. They didn’t usually stand this close together, as if they were afraid to brush each other’s skin, but in his doorway they looked like old times. Better than old times. Shorty and the Giant, he used to call them, because Mom made Dad look like Shaquille O’Neal, and Dad made Mom look so little, like a doll.
“If you’re so tired, why in the world are you going over to Sean’s?” Mom said, flipping on his light. “Stay here and get some sleep.”
“I’m okay,” Corey mumbled. He heard the tree branch bump against the windowsill, and his eyes went back toward the curtains to make sure his parents couldn’t see Becka swinging outside. There was a small crack in the curtains, but he couldn’t see anything, so he felt himself relax. A little. “I’ll leave in a minute.”
Mom wasn’t the kind of person to wait for an invitation to come into his room, so she walked past him to get a look around. Corey could see her head working: His door had been locked, so she figured he was doing something he didn’t want them to see. She glanced toward the window first. Mom didn’t miss a trick. She was like Miss Cleo, that psychic on TV.
Please let her stay away from the window,he thought.
He also hoped she wouldn’t look under his bed, where she would see the bowl of water he had left there because it might help Gramma Marie find him in his dreams. Or the closet, where he’d hidden the items he and Sean had collected during their wild run to Portland in a car Sean borrowed from a friend. Corey had seen a listing for a Portlandbotanica in the Yellow Pages, and he was thrilled at how much he’d found in the large store, labeled as plainly as supermarket shelves: John the Conqueror root, virgin parchment for petitioning the gods, goats’ horns, coconuts, cowrie s
hells, scented candles, and incense. He had enough to do a simple cleansing ceremony tonight. The ring’s symbols were more important than the ritualistic items, she said; but the more complete his offerings, the better his chance of putting thebaka to sleep for good.
Sean’s brother Andres had even killed a raven for them with his BB gun, like he’d promised he could, and Corey and Sean had stripped the dead bird of its feathers. Those, too, were in the duffel bag in his closet. Andres didn’t know or care why Sean wanted the raven feathers; he just liked shooting birds. For once, Sean said he was glad his brother was so trigger-happy. The raven feathers would make Corey’s blessings stronger. Maybe the raven could substitute for a dove.
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