The Scapegracers

by Hannah Abigail Clarke

  She touched the letters, and they stained plum.

  Daisy squealed. She clapped her hands in approval.

  Yates lifted her head off my lap.

  Jing had a specter. Witch to the bone.

  “I want to try,” Daisy insisted. She made eyes at the book, reached for it with grabby hands. I wasn’t so cool with her grabby hands. But I didn’t say anything, because what if I fucked up and she stopped liking me? I’m supposed to be missile-proof. Why was I so insecure about everything suddenly? Since when do I care if people like me?

  Since you remembered how nice it is to have friends, Sideways, sweetie.

  Daisy touched the word, and the plum melted into gunmetal gray. It was an inevitable gray, gray like death or the promise of rain. I had to blink a few times to make sure it wasn’t the default black.

  Yates looked up at me and gracefully extended her hand to the book. Her fingertips tapped the S, and Daisy’s gray blurred into opaline blue. It was almost too pale to make out against the page, and it sparkled in the red light. Cinderella blue. It was a stupid-pretty color, if spectacularly un-punk.

  They all had specters. All of them.

  My heart seized up in my chest.

  “What the fuck,” said Daisy. Her mouth hung slightly agape. “Yates’ specter is prettier than mine.”

  Yates shrugged and flashed her the sweetest smile I’d ever seen.

  “So we’d be targets for them, then. All four of us.” Jing ran her tongue over her teeth. “The Chantry boys might come after any of us, or you again, at any time. Right?”

  Daisy and Yates looked at each other. Clearly, this wasn’t the teasing specter-prettiness-ranking comment they’d been mentally anticipating.

  “Yeah.” I sucked my teeth. “I guess they might.”

  “Then we should make a spell against stalking. Something to keep them off our backs.” Jing crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t deal with these bastards right now. Until we’re showing up to torch their house, I don’t want to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch them. And I sure as hell don’t want them near us. There’s got to be a spell in here for that, right?”

  My cheeks flamed and I wasn’t sure why. Throat prickly, sticky-feeling down the sides. “There’s not.” There were lots of little spells, but nothing exactly like that, and it felt a bit involved for us to just make up. The stakes were high. What if a sigil of my design was flimsy and crumbled on us? My Chett hex hadn’t done its fucking job, after all.

  Maybe if I’d been able to name him. Jab a finger at Levi’s stupid face and proclaim him Chett, remind the spell where to go.

  But I couldn’t speak last night, now could I?

  Jing didn’t reply. She was on her phone instead, eyes downcast, the glow from the screen bleaching her blond hair blonder. For a second, I was astounded—this wasn’t exactly the time—but then something shifted in her expression, and she snapped to attention. She gave us a Suck it smile. “Delacroix House. You said your dads found your spell book at the Delacroix House and that they had more. Well, that place is an hour south of here. The pretentious official website says that it’s an art gallery that puts on a burlesque-looking dinner theater at night. They’re open every night until two a.m.”

  My insides clenched up and wrenched themselves three degrees to the right. My body thrummed all over. Radiated heat from my core outward. “The third volume might have spells in it we could use.” Another spell book. The thought made me shaky, like I’d downed too many energy drinks. The thought thrummed through me.

  “Oh, Sideways, we should go!” Yates perked up, black eyes big and sparkling. She pulled her hand back into her lap, and the S-P-E-C-T-E-R resumed its neutral ink color. She leaned back so that her spine nestled against my sternum, and my skin prickled where it touched hers. God, she must be made of silk. Lila Yates, the velveteen witch, who I desperately wanted to belong to, who I was ever so slightly afraid of. She wanted to be my friend. She looked at me like she knew me. She didn’t, but, God, I wanted her to. And here she was, asking me to do the thing I wanted to do most, beaming at me like we’d been holding hands since kindergarten.

  I felt sick in the head. Why did this feel wrong? It was like I’d swallowed too much candy, and now my body was floating away. I wanted this. I’d always fucking wanted this. Here I was, ringed by friends who understood the witch thing, who were part of it, sitting in my bedroom and listening to me and telling me they want what I want. I was so used to an abundance of nothing. All this was out of my depth. There’s gotta be side effects. Fucking—there’s always fine print and trick conditions, and saying otherwise was a lie, because that was how life worked. Magic and kidnapping and ancient violence, that much I could fathom. This? People wanting to do things with me? Wanting me around, wanting my opinion, wanting my body beside their bodies? Giving a fuck? I didn’t understand. It didn’t add up. This wasn’t how my story was shaped. I’ll never stop being that rotten, mean little vile-tongued brat. I worked hard for my social disclaimer. Don’t bother—this one bites.

  They were bothering.

  What had Yates said about all of us and ambiguity?

  Jing flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I’ve got a full tank. I’m going to make a reservation, and you are going to put on a bra. Yates, come with me for a second.”

  Yates crawled off me and bounced to her feet. In the back of my head, I considered scooting to the edge of the bed and pulling her so close to me that my arms snapped in the process. I didn’t do that, of course. I hugged my arms across my stomach and tried to scowl, keep myself impassable.

  Jing and Yates disappeared through a crack in my bedroom door, and it closed behind them with an audible click. I watched them vanish with my mouth half-open. Why did she need Yates? Why was I so paranoid about where Yates was going? I didn’t have a crush on her, I was certain about that. I wasn’t jealous. I more just . . . wanted to be where she was. That was a thing, right?

  Daisy sidled beside me. Her mouth was curved up at the corners, but it didn’t read like a smile. It was malicious and dimpled; promising something unspecified but unquestionably mean. No doubt, she was a crow in a past life. An entire flock of crows. I imagined her as a mob of glossy black birds, clacking and cackling, ripping the meat off a body. She could’ve been one of those girls in that movie, a Ghastly girl. Maybe we all were.

  She flickered her tongue between her teeth. “Tell me,” she said. “The Chantry Brothers. Where did they live?”

  “I don’t remember,” I replied. I hated that it was true, but it was. A few turns off Main, and then off into one of the countless black holes of backwoods mansions. Other than that? Nothing. It could take forever to find the specific private drive, because that sort of thing cropped up a lot around here. This was the right type of suburban hell to breed Chantry-type wealth. There were a plethora of people who bought enough land that they could submerge themselves in pockets of isolation, away from the lowly faces of people less privileged then themselves. “The woods out of town a little.”

  Daisy cupped her mouth with a hand, lips pursed, hushed like she was spreading rumors in the back of math class. “I wanna find out where they live,” she whispered. “I want to go to their house at night and toss firecrackers in their windows. Maybe something better. They need to suffer for what they did to you, you know that? For what they did to you and Yates. I’m not sure if I like you yet, Sideways, but you’re with me now. I hate this sort of thing. People don’t punish boys who hurt girls, because people don’t care about girls. So, when I find ’em—and I will—I’m going to make them drink nail-polish remover. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She put her hand back in her lap. “You know what? We didn’t know what to think, you calling like that. I thought you were pulling a stunt. A stupid, weird stunt that wasn’t funny or cute or even clever. You know, the kid who leaves the sleepover first is usually my least favorite kid? They care too much about the wrong stuff. I was kinda pissed. But I knew pret
ty quick that that wasn’t it, because I cut my feet on that broken glass when we went upstairs looking for you. You really fucked up the kitchen, you know that? Blood everywhere. The floor was all slick and sticky. I didn’t want to freak out Yates, but after she went home, Jing and I followed the blood spots down to the swimming pool. Freaky, right? The blood stopped by the poolside, and the deer were missing. Raised a lot of questions. Made us believe you hadn’t been lying. Made me believe, anyway.

  “Jing considered calling 911, but what would we even say? I figured it must not be as bad as we imagined, and we’d shake you down at school. But you never showed. We thought the worst, you know. None of us had your number, not that it’d have mattered, since you left your phone. We’re not exactly friends online, neither, so I had no idea who to contact to check on you. I asked god-awful Ashleigh fucking Smith about you, and she had no idea where you were. I asked . . .” She paused, squinted. “His new name is Mickey-Dick, right?”

  “Mickey Richardson. Mickey-Dick, yeah.” I sucked in my cheeks. Poor Mickey-Dick. He got everybody to bleach his deadname and all adjacent nicknames from their memories, only to instantly be presented with a new stupid nickname. He didn’t seem to mind much, though. He signs Mickey-Dick on pop quizzes, and made a whole thing of it when we read Melville in class.

  “Yeah, well, he’s a fucking weeb and a half-rate plug and I’d normally never talk to somebody like that, but I did for you. He didn’t know, either. So at that point I thought you were probably chopped up in someone’s freezer or something. Then Yates remembered that your folks owned this place, so we came as soon as school let out.

  “When I saw you, I kinda wanted to wring your neck. Like, I was genuinely concerned, and I don’t get like that. Particularly not for people who aren’t mine. But then you told us everything, and I think I know why I cared. We’re friends now. Blood is truly thicker than water, is it not? We spilled some blood between us with that glass. If Yates is your sister, I’m your sister, too. And now I have to fucking kill those assholes. Boys don’t touch my girls, I swear to God. I can be a fucking monster when I wanna be. I’m not good at a whole lot, but I’m spectacular at terrorizing people until they’ve literally lost it. I can ruin people like you wouldn’t believe. And I wanna wreck their sorry lives.”

  I took a beat to let that simmer.

  “You know what, Daisy Brink?” I looked at her crooked, spoke with too much gravel in my voice. In an itchy, charred kind of way, this was the most honest I’d felt in a while. It was an honesty that chafed, that irritated my mouth like I was allergic to it, but it was inescapable. Here it was, plain and ugly. “You and me, we’re spooky similar, where that is concerned.”

  She snorted, batted her lashes at me. Objectively speaking, she was Mad Hot, but that wasn’t anything new. I should be used to it by now. I wasn’t. She and Jing and Yates were all feliform angels. They laughed and sneered and drank pink lemonade. They were vain, self-centered, overconfident. They ran riot and wrecked the world. Who was I, comparing myself to one of them? Daisy could murder someone with a glance. Holy hell, I wanted that. I wanted to be gorgeous and reckless and legendary, or at least somebody people liked. I wanted the privilege of being mistaken for someone like her. I wanted to be her.

  No, I didn’t.

  I wanted to be the leather in her jacket.

  We could be despicable together.

  Despite the snort, she didn’t shoot down my comparison. Did it mean that she maybe agreed? That we were maybe alike?

  Daisy slid off the bed, knelt for a moment, and stood back up with a bra and a pair of tattered jeans in her hands. She eyed me, pursed her lips, and shoved the articles of clothing in my general direction. “We’re going out to eat. Look less finals week.”

  “Anything to get us out of here,” I said, and I snickered as I fumbled with my bra.

  I convinced myself to smudge on some eyeliner before we left. It wasn’t neat eyeliner, but it was enough to make me look like I might have sauntered in the direction of trying. It was passable by Daisy standards, which were lower than I would’ve thought. I even went so far as to fish something clean smelling off the floor that wasn’t obviously pajamas and put it on before we headed out.

  We moved in a pack down the stairs. I walked slightly ahead. Both of my volumes of the VMM were stashed in a shoulder bag, and together they were ungodly sorts of heavy. There was something off about taking the lead. Maybe it was just that I wasn’t used to being in a group, but I didn’t feel justified in walking in front of them instead of beside or behind them. I tried to smush the thoughts before they took too much shape. Chill out, Sideways. This is what you’ve wanted since you were, what, twelve? Head in the fucking game.

  When I didn’t think about it too hard, this felt spectacularly cool. It was blood stirring and it prickled sweat on the back of my neck. Real friends. Friends who were going to do magic with me, who understood how important it was. Friends I was safe with. Wow.

  The shop was intentionally labyrinthine. You could spend hours wandering around and finding things, which of course would make you want more things, or at least present more options. It was a decent marketing plan. I, however, knew the most direct path to the door, and I made a decent effort to steer the flock in that direction.

  But Yates saw something pretty, and then we turned left into No Man’s Land.

  “This is the sweetest little bracelet I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said, her hands fanned over her heart. She’d been caught by one of the jewelry displays; a palmistry hand with beaded bands looped over every finger. Julian had made those bracelets out of my grandparents’ broken rosaries. We’d inherited a lot of them when they died. The bracelet that Yates was particularly hypnotized by was made up of freshwater pearls and milky silver that bore an eerie resemblance to a string of baby teeth. “God. Now I need it.”

  My eyes rolled up in my skull.

  They understood that buying stuff involved talking to my dads, which entailed explaining where we were going, yeah? Yeah? No, apparently not. I heaved a sigh, scratched the back of my neck, and trudged in the direction of the checkout counter. “This way, losers.”

  It was fucking weird, me calling them losers.

  It was left uncontested.

  Fuck.

  It was Julian behind the counter. He was sitting with his legs crossed, and he was wearing a sweater with elbow patches. His curls were pinned out of his eyes with a copper clip. He sat with Anne Rice in one hand and an Earl Grey in the other, and Schnitzel (a skinny tomcat who lived in the shop) was perched on his shoulder like a vibrating stole. He didn’t see us coming, because he was preoccupied with rereading The Vampire Lestat for the umpteenth time.

  Why’d it have to be Julian? He was habitually concerned for my well-being, which was both very sweet and massively inconvenient. In some ways, I understood. I’d been a glutton for disaster when he first adopted me. If something had the potential to hurt me, I’d throw myself at it as quick as I humanly could. How many fights had he pulled me out of? How many seriously stupid dares had he stopped me from doing? How many times has he forgiven me for disobeying simple rules? I might be dead, or at least in several pieces, if it wasn’t for his antics. He cared about me and could potentially have serious issues with me fucking off with girls he hadn’t met, particularly if he made the connection that these were the girls I’d been staying with before I came home mangled last night. Or this morning, I guess, technically.

  Yates waltzed over to the counter and presented her prospective bracelet. “Hi. Can I buy this?”

  Julian startled, jumping at the sound of her voice. He adjusted his glasses with his thumb and forefinger, put down his book, and peered down at the bracelet in her hands. “Oh, you like that one? I’m quite happy with it. I thought they were just the prettiest pearls—I’m glad they’re finding a home.” He leaned over the counter and blinked a few times, his mouth screwing up at the corner. “Hm. Those bracelets are fifteen dollars. Sound about
right?”

  Typical Julian, asking his costumer if the price sounded reasonable. Also, even more typical for Julian, he hadn’t noticed the rest of the group yet, me included. He just looked so happy, seeing Yates with his bracelet. Dimples lit up his cheeks like twin suns.

  “Sounds right,” said Yates, practically bouncing on her toes. “Also. Are you hiring people right now? I could bring in my résumé. I’d really love working here.” She glimmered, and I wasn’t even sure if she was faking it. She might genuinely be this thrilled about working for my dads. Huh.

  “Oh.” He paused, tilted his head to the side. And then his eyes popped wide, and he swiveled his head around to see all four of us. His eyes stopped on me. There was a beat of silence as he loaded this new information, and then he folded his hands together and nodded at me. “Lamby, is this a friend of yours?”

  Something inside me shriveled and died.

  Lamby.

  “Yeah,” I ground out, and I locked my arms across my chest. My leather jacket and fingerless gloves suddenly felt drastically less cool. Fucking Christ, I was supposed to be Sideways the spooky lesbian weirdo. I had a fucking reputation to maintain, and it would not withstand a nickname like Lamby. Lamby. Goddamn it.

  “Well, I was actually looking for someone, as a matter of fact.” Julian crinkled around the eyes, which meant I couldn’t be mad at him, which sort of pissed me off. “And if you’re my employee, then the bracelet will be ten dollars. That’ll be ten please.”

  “Really?” Yates clapped her hands, pulled a bill from her clutch, and smoothed it across the countertop. “Thanks, Julian. When should I come for training?”