For Better or Cursed

by Kate M. Williams

  “So, when did you stay at the Riverbend?” I asked as we stepped back out onto the porch.

  “Never,” Cassandra said. “I sensed that he was about to start spiraling out over the difference between a Hilton and a Hyatt. Better to just prevent that entirely.”

  I nodded. She had a point. Brian was definitely someone who couldn’t see the party for the invites, a whole forest-trees situation.

  The temp had dropped a lot in the time we were inside, and now the air was cold and tinged with a damp that blew right through my tights. “I don’t think there’s anything to Return tonight, do you?” Cassandra asked.

  I shook my head. What Brian had said earlier was true—as Sitters, we were connected to the Portal. When demons came through, we knew. It wasn’t like a flashing light or a siren; it was just a tickle, like throwing a filter on our senses that made everything clearer and brighter, and us more alert. In the short time we’d been doing this, we’d learned we could count on at least a demon a day, with the tickle starting in the morning, then slowly building until it felt like a full-on itch. Demons weren’t big on mornings or afternoons, which was good for us, since that meant we were out of school when they came through. Not that Cassandra would have cared—I got the sense she came to school only because she hadn’t found anything better to do yet. She would have welcomed a high-noon demon duel, while I was still pretending that school was important. For now, at least.

  I looked up and down Brian’s street. “I haven’t felt anything at all today,” I said, and then ran one hand over the back of my neck. That was where my tickle usually started. Cassandra nodded. “When they come, do you feel it?” I asked.

  “I hear it,” she said. “It’s like a buzzing streetlight. Not loud enough to pay attention to, at least not at first, but there when I stop and really listen for it.” She rubbed an ear. “But yeah, now I don’t hear anything.”

  Dion’s van was parked on the street, so I knew Cassandra had driven. “You want a ride?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, and then stepped back so she could help me wrench the passenger door open. I climbed in and used all my might to pull the door shut again. Cassandra climbed into the driver’s seat, and after a few turns of the key, the van sputtered to life. I was sure that right now, at this very moment, every radio station in Spring River was playing “Jingle Bell Rock,” but I was saved from the aural assault by the fact that Dion’s radio didn’t work.

  I was always surprised by how carefully Cassandra drove. Arm-out-the-window turn signals and all. But I suspected the reason was that she didn’t want to get pulled over because she didn’t have a license.

  “I don’t like it,” I said, giving words to a feeling that had been burbling inside me ever since Brian had picked us up and flashed that creamy piece of paper.

  “No one likes this van,” she said. “Not even Dion.”

  “No, not that,” I said, because truth be told, I was starting to like the heap of rusty metal. It was like an ugly dog that kept growing on you until you thought it was cute. “The Summit,” I said. “It just doesn’t make any sense. We’ve known we were Sitters for barely a month, and this town is hardly a destination, so why have the Summit here, of all places? Why make us the hosts?”

  “I think I know,” Cassandra said.

  I turned to look at her, surprised. I had no doubt Cassandra was capable of keeping secrets from me, but if she knew why the Summit was coming to Spring River and she hadn’t told me, I was going to be more than a little PO’d. “And you were going to share this with me when?” I asked.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Because I don’t remember.”

  “W-what?” I stammered. “You don’t remember?” Then Cassandra slammed on the brakes, and the van squealed to a stop. She threw the van back into park and started fumbling with her seat belt.

  “You need to drive, Esme,” she said. “Switch places with me, now!” Suddenly she was standing between our two seats, pawing at my seat belt. Then, just as suddenly, she stopped and dove into the back of the van. The driver’s seat was empty, and we were sitting at an intersection, the red light in front of us ready to change to green at any second.

  “What is going on?” I yelled. I could barely drive a go-kart. “What are you doing?” There was no way I knew what to do with Dion’s van. But Cassandra didn’t answer. Instead, she was rolling back and forth on the carpet in the back, giggling up a storm. I had no choice, so I jumped over to the passenger seat and got the van back into drive right as the light changed.

  I pressed on the gas, and nothing happened. “Cass! I don’t know how to drive this thing.” She was humming, and then her humming turned into singing: “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, take one down!” she belted, then laughed again. “Pass it around! Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall!”

  I decided, for the moment, to focus on driving. Instead of just pressing the gas pedal, I stepped on it, mashing it to the floor. It took a second, but the van started to move. I got us through the intersection and used all my might to crank the no-power-steering wheel to the right and pull us to the curb. In back, Cassandra was doing a handstand and kicking the ceiling, still singing, though never changing the number: always ninety-nine bottles of beer, never ninety-eight. She gave the ceiling one last kick, and then crumpled into a ball. The singing stopped. My heart was pounding, and I was still gripping the wheel even though I’d turned almost all the way around in the seat so that I could look at her.

  “Esme?” she said, and then coughed a little. “Are you driving?”

  I was almost mad and wanted to yell at her that she’d left me no choice, but I wasn’t, and I didn’t. “Are you okay?” I asked instead. “You didn’t, uh, take anything, did you? I won’t judge, I just want to know so we can get help.”

  “I didn’t take anything. I don’t do drugs.” Her voice was small, and I knew she was telling the truth. Cassandra didn’t even drink coffee. “It happened, didn’t it?” she said. “I was driving, and now I’m in the back of the van, lying on the floor.”

  I nodded. “But you caught it, whatever it is,” I said. “You stopped driving before you, uh, started singing.”

  “I was singing? What song?”

  I shook my head. “ ‘Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer.’ ” Cassandra got up off the floor and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “I don’t even know that song,” she said.

  “Well, the lyrics are real easy.” I swallowed.

  She leaned her head against the window. “I think you better drive for a while. I always feel a little woozy after.”

  I nodded, and bit my lip. I could feel the pedal hit the floor under my foot and we inched away from the curb. The speedometer read seventeen mph.

  “Be careful,” Cassandra said. “It can pick up speed real fast.”

  “Oh.” I let up on the gas, and we slowed down to eleven.

  “I just pump my foot up and down real fast the whole time,” she said, “and hope it kind of evens out.”

  I started to do just that, and thought about how they’d never mentioned anything like this in driver’s ed. We drove in silence for several minutes. “Cass, what is going on?” I finally said. “You know why the Summit is coming here, but you don’t remember?”

  “I just keep blacking out,” she said.

  We were at a four-way stop and it took my full concentration to balance the delicate pedal ballet with figuring out when it was my turn to cross. I decided to go for it, and no one honked, so I could finally exhale.

  “Was the other night the first time it happened?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It might have just been the first time I was with anybody when it happened. I’ve been feeling weird since Halloween. All of a sudden, I’ll feel like I had a glitch. Nothing major, just like I missed a few seconds or something. But today, in
the bathroom, and now, they’re getting longer. I think it started…”

  “After you got back from the Negative,” I finished for her. “Is that why you wanted to talk to the Shimmer?” I looked over at Cassandra and she nodded.

  “It’s like the blackouts are so that I won’t remember the thing I can’t remember. I have no idea what it is, but I know there’s a hole where a memory is supposed to be. I want to talk to something that might know what that was.” She laughed, a quick snort. “It’s stupid, but I figured a Shimmer was as good a source as anything.”

  By the graces of the traffic goddess, we had reached my house, and I stopped at the curb by using both feet to press on the brake.

  “And you think that this thing you can’t remember is why the Summit is coming to Spring River?” I asked, turning the van off.

  She nodded again. “I have zero proof,” she said. “It’s just, you know, a feeling.”

  I didn’t press her any further, because I knew exactly what she was talking about. For us, a feeling was proof. There was something else that I was thinking, but I didn’t want to tell her. Cassandra’s episodes were strange and unusual, but they were also familiar. To me, at least: They brought flashbacks of watching my mom try to make a phone call with a banana, or serving powdered Jell-O for dinner. Things that seemed funny…until they didn’t. Cassandra sounded cursed.

  But I wasn’t going to tell her that, and I was going to hope, with everything I had to hope with, that that was not the case. “We should talk to Brian,” I said finally, to say something.

  She shook her head. “No way.”

  I sighed. “Cass, needing help, being sick, doesn’t mean you’re weak. It just means you’re a human being. Whatever this is, it’s nuts, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She was silent, and then she peeled her forehead off the window. “I don’t want to make a big deal about it, and I am asking for help. Your help, to make sure, for now at least, nobody knows about this but us.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” I said. “How can I help?”

  She gestured at her head. “This whole thing. Whatever is going on with me. Just, like, if you see me getting weird, help me get out of there. Wherever it is we are.”

  “So, I’m supposed to babysit you, basically.”

  “Ha,” she said, instead of actually laughing. “When you put it that way, it sounds less appealing. But basically, yes.”

  I pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Well, my first order of business as your babysitter is to not let you drive home. Do you want to call Dion?”

  She shook her head. “I appreciate it, but I’ll be fine for a while. The episodes are happening more frequently, but they’re not irregular. I’ve got at least a couple of hours before I have to worry about it again. Plenty of time to get home.”

  I was conflicted. There was a part of me that didn’t want to let her drive because I was worried about her, but I also knew it was a big deal for Cass to share this with me, and for her to ask me for help, and if I started using her confidence to restrict her autonomy, then she’d never do it again.

  “Okay,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt and starting to get out of the car. “But if you so much as have to sneeze, pull over. And text me as soon as you get home. Promise.”

  I held out the keys. Cass took them and nodded. “I promise.”

  I stood on the sidewalk and watched her drive away, wondering whether I had just made a huge mistake. So far, being a Sitter felt like schlepping secrets with you everywhere you went, and I’d just added another one to my already pretty heavy burden. Also, what if Cass really needed help? What if what was happening to her wasn’t magical at all, but medical? But, still, I could see why she didn’t trust Brian. Sure, he was all we had, but even so, I wasn’t sure I trusted Brian. He seemed way better at withholding information—about my mom, about Cassandra’s family, about this Summit—than he was at sharing it. No matter how much time we spent with him, training or studying, the Sitterhood remained a puzzle, and we were still missing most of the pieces.

  But there was one thing about this whole Sitter thing that I was sure of, and that was that I could trust Cassandra. The back of my neck told me so. Everything that was shady about her, the shoplifting and the bad attitude, it was right there on the surface. And I definitely trusted Cassandra to watch out for Cassandra. So if she wanted me to keep her secret, I would, even though I didn’t know what that secret was.

  By the time I let myself into the house, Dad was already asleep. Lately, he and I were passing each other like cat burglars in the night. Dad didn’t know I was a Sitter. He didn’t know Mom was a Sitter. He didn’t know that his only friendship was a sham, and that Brian, his best friend, was magically implanted into our lives to keep an eye on me. Basically, Dad didn’t know his whole life was a lie, and there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t feel guilty about that.

  And by the way he’d been acting lately, I was starting to think Dad had some secrets of his own. He was stressed all the time, and the mailbox was always full of bills. I think he thought I didn’t know, but sometimes, when I was expecting a package, I got to the mailbox before him. Now I just put everything that’s addressed to him back where I found it, ever since I saw the look on his face when I handed him a notice that was clearly from a collection agency.

  I assumed that he had fed Pig, because she was only at about a six on the pathetic scale, and if she hadn’t had dinner, she would have quickly turned it up to eleven. She followed me into my room, her tags jingling along the way, and then she curled up on a pile of stuff in the corner before she started snoring with her eyes wide open. I kicked my shoes off and climbed into bed. It was an Olympian feat to keep my eyelids open, but I managed to just finish my Earth Sciences paper before falling asleep with my computer as a pillow.

  * * *

  —

  Dad was already up when I stumbled downstairs in the morning. I could see a little gray sprouting in the stubble on his chin, and there was a coffee stain on his polyester long-sleeved polo shirt. He slurped his coffee like it was a punishment inflicted on him by Satan himself.

  “Hi, sweetie,” he said, and then yawned.

  “Tough week at work?” I asked as I poured some coffee into my Snoopy mug.

  “Oh, the worst,” he said. “In fact, I should probably get to the office early. You ready to go?”

  I was still in my pajamas, which were purple flannel printed with black bats. Dad would be the first to admit that he had zero fashion sense, but he was tripping if he thought that was an outfit.

  “I need at least twenty,” I said. “But don’t worry about it. Janis can give me a ride.”

  “Sounds good, kid,” he said, reaching out to muss my hair like I was five. “Have a good day at school.” He patted his pockets for his keys and wallet, then pulled on his jacket and headed out the back.

  When the door slammed shut behind him, I sent Janis a quick text. When I looked up from my phone, Pig gave me a heart-melting mournful look. “Oh, girlie,” I said, “he didn’t feed you breakfast? How rude.” I dumped some food into her bowl, and as the kitchen filled with sounds of serious nomming, I drained my coffee and raced to my room. Last night, I’d made the rare decision to spend my remaining drops of energy on doing homework instead of planning my outfit, so now I needed to throw something together fast. I still hadn’t had time to wash my suede jacket, which was too bad because I had a really rad pair of go-go boots that were made for it, but high school was not the place where you wanted to take chances with BO twice in one week.

  I settled for the go-go boots—made of shiny black pleather—with a pair of cropped red velvet bell-bottoms, a black ribbed knit mock turtleneck, and my purple fake-fur coat. The first time I’d ever worn it to school, Shauna Derks had wrinkled her nose and said, “Oh my God, Esme, is that real fur?” even though it was the col
or of Dimetapp.

  I added my rubber snake earrings and my round Beatles sunglasses. The whole look was “Go-go goes Hot Topic,” and it was very warm. I grabbed my backpack and stepped out onto the porch, locking the front door behind me right as Janis rounded the corner, practically on three wheels. She dinged the neighbor’s trash can as she pulled up to the curb. I ran down the sidewalk to meet her and opened the passenger door. My jaw dropped. The car was clean. Not even a gum wrapper in sight, and it looked like the floors had been vacuumed.

  “Whoa,” I said. I climbed in and took a deep breath, catching not even a hint of mildew. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t want any more vermin in here,” Janis said. “So it was either clean it out or set it on fire, and I figure I still need it to get to school, so…”

  “It looks good,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said, ramming it into drive. “I feel classy. Oh, and I got new nails!” She waved her fingers at me: black with delicate white snowflakes.

  “Nice!” I said, taking in the rest of her outfit. Earlier, she’d texted me “Lenny is a good husband,” which was the name of her Lisa Bonet–inspired look for today: gray top hat, patchwork velvet jacket, a mess of necklaces made of several rosaries, including one that looked like it glowed in the dark, and a black maxi dress so long she had to hike it up with one hand when she walked. She also had on thermal long underwear, because Janis got cold easily.

  Once we got to school, it went by in a blur, thank goddess. We handed in our Earth Sciences papers with two of the most basic photos of us in the library paper-clipped to them as proof we had done the thing required of us. After school, I was babysitting MacKenzie McAllister, the little girl whom Dion had kidnapped on Halloween. There were times when MacKenzie seemed more like a bank branch manager than an elementary schooler, but no matter how mature a kid was, you never wanted to see her get nabbed, and I had a definite soft spot for MacKenzie. She was braver than me.