“Forever with you,” she sang against her will. A single tear dripped from her left eye, tickling her cheek on its way down.
The hand pushed something against the door. A flyer or pamphlet. She couldn’t make out the words. It turned and walked slowly into the neighboring alley. The piece of paper slipped to the ground, landing in a puddle between the cobblestones.
Her jaw became her own again. As did her voice. She rubbed her chin with one hand and her chest with the other. She stayed like that, certain the thing would come back. When it didn’t, she kneeled down, opened the door, and grabbed the fallen paper.
The water had wrinkled much of the text but she could still make out the message.
A picture of a girl, the same girl who used to frequent the shop so often, asking about spells no one should’ve asked about. Revenge and mind control and, her favorite, conjuring spells.
Angie Everstein. The same girl who sang “Forever with You.” Her skin glistened, lined with layers of sparkles. Eyes darker than the night. Esmeralda had the feeling the black orbs would follow her if she moved. Underneath Angie was an advertisement for her homecoming concert, to be held Halloween night on Gallows Hill.
The longer she stared at the image, the more she suspected she’d begin to hear the song again.
She crumpled the flyer and tossed it. Except that didn’t seem final enough. She grabbed it once more, tore it into countless sections, and hurled them outside like confetti. The breeze carried them away into the night. For a moment she felt better. But the moment passed quickly.
Because Angie was back in town.
And she might come looking for more spells.
“That one’s mine,” Melissa Meyers said, as though it were obvious.
“But I bought it.” Josh’s voice was barely a whisper. He set the skull-shaped candelabra down, unable to meet his soon-to-be ex-wife’s stare.
“What was that?”
He opened his mouth but thought better of it. It was useless to challenge her. In the eight years they’d been together, he’d never once won an argument. Even when he’d been in the right, which was most of the time.
They sat on the living room floor of the condo they’d once shared. She’d never been fond of their home. The real estate listing had called it cozy. She’d called it microscopic. Not enough room for her clothes and shoes and those adult coloring books she insisted made her feel better. A stack of them stood on the kitchen counter, unused.
In between Josh and Melissa lay the remnants of several holidays: Halloween and Christmas and Thanksgiving decorations that had gathered dust. Tensions had been running high at the Meyers residence and neither Josh nor Melissa had been in the mood to decorate.
He’d been too busy trying to support her.
She’d been too busy sleeping with any guy that gave her a cursory glance.
He shuddered at the thought. That had been the hardest part. Thinking of his wife moaning, face growing flush, pearl-white teeth nibbling her lips as some stranger—and in many cases a familiar face—fucked her brains out.
He stared at the couch, where he’d first found her cheating, and tried to stop his throat from tightening.
“Well?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, what?”
She rolled her eyes, a look he’d grown accustomed to in recent times. “Are you going to give it to me or not?”
He’d bought the candelabra just after they’d moved in. The bulbs were mostly burned out and he’d never been able to find replacements that fit correctly. He knew for a fact she hated the thing but this wasn’t about claiming items she liked. This was about power.
He sighed, slid it forward. “Take it.”
Another roll of the eyes. “Not if you’re going to be like that.”
“No, really. There’re plenty of other things we can divide.” He compared their piles. His was roughly one-third the size. A few cardboard cutouts of vampires and werewolves. A porcelain coffin that had more chips than he could count. Melissa’s bounty trumped his own. She had the remote-controlled rat and hanging bat and motion sensor witch candy bowl.
That stuff is yours. Hell, almost everything in this place is yours.
But he wouldn’t speak up. Nothing new there. Melissa liked to say he was born without a backbone and though the expression hurt deeper than he cared to admit, it wasn’t far from the truth. He’d never stood up for himself these last eight years, some of them good, most of them bad. Why start now?
“Oh, I meant to tell you. The real estate agent is coming this afternoon.” Melissa stood up. Her sweat pants clung to her rear, reminding him of the skin that lay beneath. The skin he hadn’t seen in so many months, though it had been shared with others without hesitation.
“Since when?”
“Since I called her yesterday.” She opened the freezer, pulled out an ice cream sandwich which she devoured in three large bites. She’d insisted on eating healthier, her way of fishing for compliments, though her dietary habits rarely rose above junk food. They both knew her body was goddess-like, that she was light-years out of his league.
Hence the affairs.
“I can’t make it today,” he said, standing up and putting his measly Halloween pile into a crumpled cardboard box. “You know I have work.”
She shrugged, chugged a Mountain Dew. “So don’t. She’s just checking the place out before she takes pictures.”
“Don’t you think I should be here?”
“What does it matter?”
“I just want to make sure she’s being fair with assessing the place. In case you forgot, I lived here too.”
Instead of answering, she opened one of the coloring books and flipped through the blank, colorless pages.
He scratched his back, made certain his spine was still intact.
“Sorry I’m late,” Josh said a half hour later when he entered the shop. “Traffic was hell.” Once October rolled around, the city became a parking lot, only there was never any parking. Tourists flocked from every which way, crossing without looking, stepping into traffic like confused deer. He ought to take his bike from now on but his mind had been pre-occupied.
Melissa on that couch, covering a scream with her hand as the guy—had it been Rick from the Haunted Stirrings walking tour or was it the guy with the flaming phantom tattoo on his neck?—thrust deep into her.
Usually when he got to work, his problems faded but today they grew on account of the cardboard cutout standing just to the left of the door.
A cardboard cutout in the shape of Angie Everstein.
She stared at him, eyes mischievous and innocent at once. The board matched her likeness perfectly. It captured her hour-glass shape to a T. He shook his head.
“What the hell is this?” he finally said.
Trish shrugged from behind the counter. “Don’t ask me. I thought you ordered it.” The way she acted, perpetually disinterested, wasn’t all that different from Melissa, yet he could not deny his attraction. At least they liked the same music.
“Don’t even tell me.” He studied Angie’s cardboard eyes. They seemed to follow him. Probably just his nerves or a defect at the printing factory.
“It was here when I got in.” Trish texted on her phone, giggled softly. He’d told her before to look more alert at work but this was hardly the time. There were more pressing issues.
Like who had stocked the Angie Everstein CDs. They’d been moved out of the back room and now occupied the front display, where the new releases should’ve been. Black and death and thrash metal were replaced with a manufactured, formulaic pop princess. He gritted his teeth.
“Who else had a key?” he said. “Besides you. I think I gave one to Tommy and one to Jeff a few months before he left.”
“I doubt Tommy or Jeff would take the time to order a wholesale amount of that shit. Or maybe I’m wrong. Not my cup of tea but the girl can belt it out. Song gets stuck in your head after a while, you know?”
He did know. He’d
only heard a sample yesterday but if he tried hard enough he could recall the melody. Could almost hear that soft, soothing voice as if Angie was living between his eardrums.
He rubbed the crown of his nose. It had been ages since his last full night’s sleep. When he closed his eyes he saw Melissa and the life he’d wanted. “I don’t have time for this.” He hadn’t realized how loud he’d been talking until a potential customer eyed him from the corner, set down a record, and made his way outside.
“Way to go, boss,” Trish said. “Look, I don’t know who ordered the stuff or set it up. It wasn’t me—I swear. But what do you say we put that damned cutout in the backroom and swap the new releases back in?”
He calmed some but not all the way. That was impossible with the synthetic version of Angie staring him down with those dark orbs that passed for eyes. “Sounds like a plan. Thanks, Trish.”
“Forever with you.”
He tensed, nearly shoved her away. “What’d you just say?”
She held her hands up as if she were talking a jumper down from a building. “I said, ‘Don’t mention it.’”
He nodded, tried to catch his breath.
From behind them, one of the Angie CDs tumbled to the floor on its own accord.
CHAPTER THREE
AND THE WEEK BEGINS
MONDAY.
Shawna Everstein’s stomach knotted. Monday signaled the beginning of the school week, which in turn signaled the beginning of hell.
She woke five minutes before her alarm sounded, as if the universe were laughing from nearby. A cosmic prank.
This too shall pass. Something her father once said before he left town on a business trip that turned out to be a permanent vacation.
The knot in her stomach remained.
Some things never passed.
She showered, dressed, and put in her hearing aids. From downstairs she heard bacon sizzling. It had been dry toast and cereal since Angie had left but now that Little Miss Perfect was back, her mother needed to keep up appearances. The smell churned her stomach as she made her way downstairs.
In the kitchen, Kristen Everstein huddled over the stove, flipping strips of bacon and scrambling eggs. It was the most maternal thing she’d done in ages. It was clear which daughter she favored. Angie was the angel, Shawna the ugly twin. It was also no secret that Kristen was beaming over Angie’s success. She’d declared bankruptcy twice in fifteen years, handled money as well as a pre-teen.
The Eversteins were, for lack of a better term, broke as shit.
Nearly every purchase over these last few years had been made via plastic. But now, with a celebrity in the family, things were looking up. The debt would soon vanish with the money Angie was bringing in and Shawna would fade further into the background.
“That you, dear?” Kristen said, not turning around.
“Yeah.” Shawna poured herself a glass of orange juice, drank it in three long gulps.
“Sit down. Breakfast is almost ready.”
“What’s the occasion? We run out of Pop-Tarts?”
Kristen ignored the insult and made a plate of food. She set it down on the table and fixed a cup of coffee, adding a half dozen Splenda so it became more of a milk shake.
“Where’s the girl of the hour?” Shawna took a bite of eggs. Her stomach sizzled in response. Bile climbed her throat.
“You just missed her. Left right before you came downstairs.”
“Finally going back to real school?” Angie had had personal teachers since she’d entered the competition. Shawna had begged to be homeschooled each year as her deafness grew worse yet she’d been denied. Apparently all it took was winning a national talent show.
Kristen shook her head. She held her mug with two hands as if it were something delicate, an infant or kitten. “She’s meeting with her manager to go over the concert.”
“Concert?” A bite of bacon, met with more bile.
Kristen nodded. “Her homecoming show.”
“How come I didn’t hear about this?”
“The details were being sorted out. Even I didn’t know. It’s going to be so much fun. Televised nationally. Can you believe that? Our baby girl is going to be a star.” As if Angie wasn’t already topping the charts. As if she’d never been on TV.
Shawna gave up on eating. “Why does she have to stay here? I mean, she can afford any hotel in town. I bet the Westin would pay her to stay there.”
Kristen rolled her eyes. The dream-like sheen vanished, replaced by the unfit mother once again. “She wants to spend time with us. We’re a family in case you didn’t remember. Can’t you at least pretend to be happy?”
“I’d deserve an Academy Award if I did,” she said under her breath.
“What did you just say?”
“I have to get going. Don’t want to be late for school.” She tossed her food into the garbage disposal and flipped the switch before her mother could protest.
“Make sure you’re home for supper,” Kristen said. “Angie will be joining us. I’m making your favorite. Pork chops and apple sauce.”
Her sister’s favorite, she almost corrected. Her mother’s pork chops tasted like shoe leather and the applesauce, often served at room temperature, reminded her of vomit.
She grabbed her backpack, covered with heavy metal patches: Iron Maiden and Slayer and Metallica. On her way out, her mother called her name.
“Oh, and dear?”
Shawna stopped in the doorway, torn between two hells: school and home. “Yeah?”
“This is going to be good. For all of us. Angie’s going to make us the family we’ve always wanted to be.”
Shawna cringed. She thought of the dark eyes, the devilish grins, all the torment Kristen had turned her head from.
And other things she told herself were just nightmares.
Someone had drawn nasty things on her locker. The artist had the penmanship of a grade schooler, letters shaky and deformed. The pictures, though—those took skill.
There was a portrait of Shawna, her figure cartoonishly plump, though it wasn’t far from reality. Angie had gotten the talent and the looks. On the ground beneath the animated Shawna were her ears, ripped from her head. A speech bubble hung in the air, just to the right of her face, which looked very much like a pig.
Deaf and dumb and ugly as fuck.
From behind she heard laughter. At first it was muffled, the owner trying to hide their glee, but eventually they gave up. Others joined in. She could sense them pointing.
She spun around. Within the sea of onlookers, she saw Derek Sorrentino and Brandon Matheson. Their faces said it all as they admired their artwork and then jogged in the opposite direction. The closest classroom door opened.
As the crowd dissipated, Shawna noticed one member linger for just a moment.
She and Mia locked eyes and for a nanosecond, things were the way they’d been last year. They were in love and for the first time in Shawna’s pathetic life, she felt like somebody. But then Shawna noticed Mia’s new outfit, the sparkles and tight-fitting clothing in place of the ripped jeans and oversized hoodie.
A hand touched Shawna’s shoulder.
She spun, expecting to see her sister’s dark, peering eyes, but it was only her English teacher, Mr. Fuller. “Rough day?”
“Horrible is more like it.”
“Come on,” he said, waving her into his classroom and shutting the door.
Miles Fuller had transferred from Somerville High last year. His parents were from Wales and his accent was somewhere between the homeland and a Boston drawl. He got his fair share of jokes but Shawna found it endearing. She found everything about him endearing. Her interest lay in girls but she could not deny the way Mr. Fuller gave her stomach a pleasant flutter every time their eyes met.
“Have a seat.” He leaned on his desk, removed his blazer, and set it down beside him. He dressed much more professional than his colleagues, took pride in his work. On the board behind him was a set of written n
otes on Catcher in the Rye.
“Didn’t they try to ban that book?” Shawna said. She rubbed her eyes, pretending she was just tired instead of wiping away stray tears.
“Some schools did. For a while, at least. But art usually prevails. That’s the way it should be. I read your poem.” Miles pulled a piece of paper from a folder and studied it for a moment. “It’s quite good.” This said with more of a Welsh accent for emphasis. “Really good, in fact.”
Her cheeks reddened. “I just kind of threw it together.” A lie. She wasn’t the world’s greatest student, but when it came to Mr. Fuller, she couldn’t help but give her all.
“You should think about submitting it somewhere. There are plenty of journals that would love this sort of thing. I can give you a list if you’d like.”
She smiled. “I’d love that.”
He grabbed a blank sheet of paper and wrote for a few moments. “Don’t listen to them,” he said without looking up. “The students, I mean. They’re just being cruel for the sake of it.”
“It’s hard not to listen. And that’s coming from an almost deaf girl.”
“I’m glad you can laugh at cruelty. You’ll go far with that attitude.”
As he handed her the paper, something fell from his desk.
Shawna studied the fallen object. A flyer. Not just any advertisement but one for the homecoming show her mother had mentioned that morning. Angie, in a sexy dress, stared up at her. The event of a lifetime, the ad copy promised. She begged to differ. She’d had enough of her sister to last several lifetimes.
“Where’d you get that?” she said, lifting the flyer.
“Found it on my desk this morning. From the sound of it, so did every other teacher in the building. Maintenance and the cafeteria too. They’re really pushing her, aren’t they? At this rate, she’s going to burn out.”
“Good.” She gritted her teeth. “I hope she burns in hell.”
“I didn’t mean to touch a nerve.” He handed her the slip of paper, several poetry journals listed.
A Voice So Soft Page 3
