We wait for my discharge; she brings OK! magazine from the foyer and we gossip about people we will never know. Finally free, around nine P.M., we load everything into the car and drive off. She reminds me, once we’re on the highway, that we’ll have to go back to get my stuff at Smith before finals week. Did I email all my professors about making up my exams? Oh, right, I didn’t have phone access.
I yell at her about her choice of topics, complain that all I really need is quiet and a long shower. She shuts up; close to home, one exit away, I see that she’s crying.
“When your cousin was in the anorexia facility, she took her exams,” my mom says, almost inaudibly, and that’s the thing. We love the oh-so-secret melancholic who lives under the top dermal layers of the outwardly flawless Class President type, who might strangle herself beneath the slanted ceiling of her Cape Cod bedroom following her valedictorian address, whose parents will appear on the local news, shocked, heartbroken, unable to grip the rope-burn truth, that their tumble-proof baby had the manners to kill herself after cleaning up the kitchen and taking down the party banners and folding her laundry and leaving it perfectly arranged in her dustless bureau. We don’t love the girl who can’t hide her issues, who succumbs to her demons’ ideas and cruel suggestions at every turn, who dares to have a visible breakdown, who dares to allow her life to be disrupted by such an innocuous event as rape.
I guess that’s my goal now: to numb and freeze myself to the right subzero degree to ensure that I never get visibly fucked up ever again, that my trauma stays chained to my stomach lining and never steers my hands or mouth, that my issues remain unresolved in the subconscious backdrop of my pristine suburban existence and instead of going to therapy, like a weak, attention-seeking, damaged person, I just take my neuroses out on my future children, like all good respectable people.
Only I’m so far beyond the possibility of cutting my past out by the umbilical cord, it seems a more realistic strategy to wear my mistakes like a regrettable tattoo, a good story even if it’s embarrassing and ugly. The truth is, there will always be coffee stains on the edges of perfect white bedspreads, there will always be chips in bridal manicures, there will always be forest fires tormenting the gated community of your immaculate life plan. It’s true, I’m not one of the perfect people, but I’m interesting, and I deserve to heal. Maybe even go to L.A. and discover if I still want to follow my dreams, because once you’re damaged, you’re not afraid of spilling milk. Once you’ve fucked up, you’re free.
“That’s great for cousin Jenna,” I reply, proud of myself for daring to be weak.
We swerve off the highway, back to the Puritan-haunted suburbs, back to the beginning, and my mom complains that the car is stuffy and rolls the windows down. I get hair in my face, yell at her again, start to roll my window up.
My mom stops at a light.
“What’s that?”
She points to a broomstick, moving of its own accord, bouncing across the road like tumbleweed.
“Strong wind, I guess,” she says as the broom shoots up into the pines and disappears.
NEXT FALL
IN OCTOBER 2014, I GET an email from Gabrielle M. Avery, asking if this is still my email. I stop there, mark it unread, leave it trembling at the top of my inbox during the train ride into Boston, the boarding of the bus, the stranding at the Springfield Peter Pan station and the Uber tour of New England postindustrial decay, ending in the comparative vibrancy of autumn Noho, Smithies and UMass adventurers clutching non-Starbucks maple caramel lattes to their pea coats (infinity scarves are still de rigueur).
The driver lets me off at Thornes; I grip the stress ball they gave me at McLean, the yellow foam star with a little face I drew myself in black Sharpie.
Sienna is technically on sabbatical, but it’s one of those sabbaticals where she’s still in her office all the time so she can advise her thesis students, she’s only headed to Croatia for part of January term and then it’s back to dictating the manuscript to her research assistant (after her car accident and the injury sustained to her left hand, she can’t really type). She told me she would “definitely” be in her office when I arrived, so I head straight for Neilson, shoving boxy vintage sunglasses over a good quarter of my face and keeping my posture bent, my steps rapid.
Sienna is out of her office, no note on the door, no text, so I settle in amid the open boxes of seventies thesis papers and open Gabi’s email—which is, simply, a revelation. Not only does she write, What I did to Luna was wrong, she informs me that, lo and behold, I was the only one who knew what was right. In fact, I was so right that she wants advice on how to act with her new girlfriend, because she doesn’t want to repeat what happened with Luna.
I consider never answering the email, but I do write back, tell her some bullshit about forgiveness and recommend she seek psychiatric assistance, if she still can’t distinguish right from wrong. But the email does cauterize the grudges still festering in my heart. Maybe all I wanted, all this time, was to know that I was right.
“Leisl?”
Sienna helps me out of the cardboard dust, hugs me (a first).
“How are you,” she frets, welcoming me into a leather chair across from her desk, handing me tea, Quadratini cookies, and I remember my wounds are still hot, no matter how many ice cubes I melt in my fists (per DBT).
Sienna tugs at the hourglass charm hanging over her chest; she holds her hand to her chest like it’s still broken. She still isn’t painting her nails. She settles into her old chair and crosses her legs, adjusts the buckle of her mustard-yellow seventies platforms, complains of a blister.
“I’m transferring,” I begin.
Sienna nods. “I’m sorry to see you go, Leisl, but I’m happy to help you in any way I can. Where would you be applying to transfer?”
“Boston area, mostly. BU, BC. Maybe Tufts. A big school, definitely.”
She nods slowly. “What do you want to do?”
“For a major? History—”
“No, in your life.”
“I used to want to go to L.A.”
“For what?”
“I wanted to be a filmmaker.”
“Do you still want that?”
“I’m not sure.”
Sienna raps her right hand, thronged with rings, on the edge of her desk, and the office feels empty without Luna’s breath and Charlotte’s fidgeting with pins and zippers. “Well, whatever you end up doing, you’re an incredibly gifted young person, Leisl. I look forward to hearing about whatever you decide. And if you’re still interested in getting that paper published, I’m happy to look at your revisions. You really should think about presenting your work at conferences. A shame you couldn’t join me at Columbia back in June. If you were to stay at Smith, I would be able to assist you even more. Next semester—on the off-chance you were to return—I’d be happy to reserve a space for you in my senior seminar. I’ve only ever had one other sophomore, but you—”
I start to cry.
“I can’t come back to Smith,” I tell her.
Sienna grabs me a box of tissues.
“Tell me, how are you doing? How is your health?” She sits back down. “It wasn’t your fault, Leisl. You’ve survived. You’re stronger, whether you know it or not. We often look back and give thanks for the obstacles we encountered on our paths. Though it doesn’t always make sense until later.”
“I wish it had never happened,” I say, about other things. “There are so many other ways to become strong. I could have grown another way. I’m not even sure I’ve grown. Actually, I feel exactly the same.”
Sienna congratulates me on my recovery, asks me to send her the application due dates so she can know when to submit her recommendation. “The world needs you, Leisl,” she calls after me as I walk out of the office, vaguely, like one of those motivational posters that hangs over a school auditorium doorframe, inviting you to value your individuality and never compare yourself to others, right before you’re about to
take a standardized test.
Yet she is really smiling, and she sounds sincere.
“Thank you,” I call from the hall. “Thank you very much.”
Stepping into the elevator, I notice a Moleskine notebook, black, pebbled, frayed, but I don’t pick it up from the ground.
I step out of Neilson and it’s one of those eighty-degree October afternoons all of a sudden. I sling my coat over my arm and cut across the lawn, narrowly missing a garter snake in the grass. My bus doesn’t leave until six.
I find a bench, out of view of Chapin’s phantom height, and take out my phone.
“Lee! Leisl Davis!”
My stomach makes a fist. I swallow, turn, but we’ve already joined eyes, and I can almost forgive her, her hair is shorter and lilac and that’s a new lipstick (it can’t be Train Bleu, must be Cruella, or a heavy application of Dolce Vita), she has a new tattoo on the interior of her wrist, and she sits down without my permission, though my bag stays between us.
“Charlotte’s been asking about you all the time,” Luna says, hands electric in her lap; she wants to hold me. “We’ve really missed you.”
“I texted her over the summer,” I say. “We were supposed to get ramen before my bus leaves, but she never got back to me.”
“She lost her phone,” Luna says with a frown. “Are you back to get your stuff?”
“No, I had a meeting with Sienna about her writing a recommendation.”
“Oh.” Luna nods slowly.
She opens her mouth, closes it, swallows; we’re both wild rivers, pummeling the dams, but neither of us is willing to spill first, we’re content to wait, to search each other’s faces like maps and wonder what has changed, if anything has changed, if everything has changed.
“You probably don’t need more people asking you about your educational future,” Luna says, when it’s right.
“No, I don’t.”
She picks a stray purple hair from her lips.
“Can I touch you?” she says.
My eyes sting. I move my bag to the ground.
“Of course.”
She seizes me.
I wrap her tight, her neck in my elbows, she still smells like lavender; she is thinner and older, and I wonder what has changed about me. Hiding in her, I don’t have to tell her the truth, I can just keep my secrets a part of me, not say what I mean aloud and let it cut me from the inside, until I become nothing but a dark room of disconnected parts, the sum of my secrets and unrequited unexpressed never-loves.
All I really want to say is, The six months I didn’t see you were the best of my life, but I am never cruel.
She gives me her new phone number and assures me that I should stay in touch.
“I will,” I say, brushing an awkwardly long piece of pixie hair behind her ear.
Her lips part and I can see the pink behind the dark paint.
“Lee,” she says, “last semester, have you thought about—”
She gets an idea and rummages inside her rucksack’s front pocket.
“Damn,” she mutters. “Oh, okay. Here.”
A tape-mended, fraying tarot card, the Star.
“Is this from one of your decks?”
I gulp. “No, I think all my decks are complete.”
“You sure?”
I nod.
Luna tucks the ragged card back.
“Well, I don’t want to keep you,” she says.
“Yeah, my, um, my bus is probably going to arrive soon.”
Luna stretches her arms out again; I pick up my bag.
“It was nice to see you,” I say, standing.
I start to walk away.
“You know he’s been expelled,” Luna says suddenly.
I turn. Her hand is outstretched, like she’s trying to catch a firefly in her net.
“During the investigation about Clara. They were able to expel him. He’s totally banned from all the Five College campuses. He’s not even in this state anymore.”
I gulp.
“I just wanted you to know,” Luna insists.
My eyes fall to the gap between us, the pavement, the lonely can of hard lemonade rubbing itself on the gravel to the lull of the breeze, the dingy old pair of craft scissors lying open, sticky-bladed from slicing Twizzlers or tape, spinning, twirling like a compass, hay rolling to my feet.
“Luna,” I say. “Don’t talk about him ever again.”
We part. Student crowds fill the path, and Luna disappears behind a wall of arms and legs. I walk back to the Peter Pan station, stare down at my phone, and try to forget where I am, but I don’t have faith that my open wounds will regenerate on their own. Nature to me is still storms and tsunamis and vengeance, and heterosexuality may be the carnal equivalent of choosing to major in engineering and Chinese, but ten years down the road, when you’re living in a Shanghai high-rise with Gucci money in the bank, you’ll be glad you chose abundant boredom and long hair over starry nights and turpentine and curiosity, because your pussy doesn’t have nine lives, only an expiration date.
I reach the end of campus, the teal spiral steeple and the junk drawer of traffic, the air thick as butter; it’s like how at the end of the movie, everything is the same, the top of the mountain looks exactly the same as the old world locked in the valley—finally you’re trapped in the future, but only you know you’ve moved on.
Or have you?
I run back to the bench. It’s empty, but I can still see, hear, taste Luna’s memory. I pick up the scissors from the ground, slip them into my coat pocket. Then I reach for my phone, fingers clammy but sure.
“Luna?” I exhale into the receiver. “I have two hours. Do you want to get ramen?”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my agent, Lucy Cleland, for your total dedication, immensely hard work, and belief. Thank you to Maddie Caldwell, my editor, for your enthusiasm, meticulous attention to detail, and commitment to making Consensual Hex the best book it could be. Thank you to my UK editor, Poppy Mostyn-Owen, for your insight, dedicated attention, and hard work on behalf of this novel. Thank you to the team at Grand Central Publishing, including Jacqui Young, Tree Abraham, Abby Reilly, Laura Cherkas, and Anjuli Johnson. Thank you to the team at Atlantic Books, including James Roxburgh, Kirsty Doole, Aimee Oliver-Powell, Gemma Davis, and Carmen R. Balit. Thank you to Hope Denekamp and my phenomenal agency Kneerim & Williams. Thank you to my UK agent, Ben Fowler, as well as Sandy Violette and the whole team at Abner Stein. I am also grateful to Heather Baror, at Baror International, for championing the work in translation, and Flora Hackett at WME.
Thank you to Mom and Dad for your unconditional love, support, and encouragement. Thank you to Richie for being an incredible brother and for your promise to read the back of the book. Thank you to Nanny and Grammy for always supporting my dreams—I deeply regret that M and Poppy are not here to read my debut novel.
Thank you to Elizabeth Tammi for years of fantastic feedback; I am so grateful to have your support and insight as my critique partner on this publishing journey. Thank you to Caroline Lengyel for your valuable insight and appreciation for the project. Additional thanks to Weronika Janczuk, Emily Gardner, and, of course, my highest gratitude to you, the reader.
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Discussion Questions
Harlowe puts a magical spin on a societal epidemic; despite the spells, hauntings, and potions, Consensual Hex is still a story many women are familiar with. How does Lee’s experience still feel true and relatable, even if her recourse isn’t?
Lee’s initial reaction to her assault is not violence. Five days after the fact, she tries to file a report with Campus Police. How does the officer’s response and the reactions Lee receives from others, like the hotline operator in the introduction, ultimately shape her reaction? More broadly, how does our
cultural response to sexual assault on college campuses and the difficulty of the Title IX process affect survivors?
Friendship and shared interests, not magic, initially brings the coven together. Over the course of the novel, their dynamic shifts considerably. Do you think they trusted each other at the beginning? Do you think their bonds are strong or fragile? Was there ever a time when you were similarly embroiled in a tight-knit group of friends with lots of ups and downs? How does Consensual Hex’s portrayal of an ensemble of female friends compare to other books you’ve read?
In twenty-first-century Western culture, we often associate “femininity” with softness, delicacy, passivity, nurturing—even weakness. Yet many mythological traditions include depictions of a divine feminine that is dark, severe, violent, and exists for the purpose of merciless destruction of evil. How does Consensual Hex engage with these archetypal concepts—feminine power as creative and destructive, “the womb of the grave”?
“Shit, magic is so cisheteronormative,” Charlotte remarks while discussing elements of witchcraft that explicitly deal with possessing a uterus. How does the coven reconcile their queerness and trans-inclusive understanding of gender as distinct from assigned sex with the implicit essentialism they encounter in Sienna’s grimoire, composed at the height of the second-wave feminist movement?
Lee and Luna, both survivors, have very different responses to the “aftermath” of sexual assault. Lee argues that survivors have a duty to seek justice for the sake of other potential victims, whereas Luna senses the potential futility of seeking recourse and, prior to the coven’s discovery of magic, attempts to cut herself off from reminders of her trauma. How did you respond to Lee and Luna’s different decisions regarding the “after” of their trauma? How do you feel survivors possessing different healing needs can support each other instead of invalidating each other’s perspectives?
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