The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant

by Joanna Wiebe

  The three other winners hoot, but Dia will be standing up there a long time if he waits for the rest of the room to warm up. They’ve all just tasted freedom. Many of them believed they were among the Lucky Ten and this entire ordeal was over.

  “All right, all right, so.” He rubs his hands. “We’ve got four smart kids to congratulate, haven’t we? Now I know that whole Lucky Ten business is something we created for the challenge, but the reward I told you about yesterday—the prize these four kids are getting—is real.” He reads the labels on the vials Dr. Zin hands to him. “Please rise, Miss Shanta Penrose, Miss Jihong Wu, Miss Anne Merchant, and Mr. Toshio Ona, our winners.”

  Molly whoops once as I join the other three in standing, awkwardly, among a crowd of desperate people who can only see me with hate. They loathed me for killing Pilot and despised me for being alive, and now their jealousy is palpable enough to paint the room green. I’ve just taken a second life from someone who actually needed it.

  “The winners will join me in my office, where I’ll reward them with anything they choose.”

  I keep my gaze fixed on Dia as he leads the crowd in their halfhearted applause. He strides from the stage, trailed by the Seven Sinning Sisters, and motions for the four winners to follow them out of Valedictorian Hall.

  Molly pats my arm as I pass her. Plum tries to trip me.

  I’m in the center aisle when Ben and I lock eyes, and he nods his encouragement. So positive. So optimistic. Much too good for this place.

  A wobbly Dr. Zin takes Dia’s place on stage. He is holding his black doctor’s bag and a large ring of keys I recognize.

  “Wave good-bye,” Dia tells the four of us as, at the door, we form a small crowd behind him and the Seven Sinning Sisters. “If you’re going to ask for what I think you’re going to ask for, this is the last time you’ll see any of these people.”

  I glance at Molly, who gives me a thumbs-up and throws me kisses. I look at Teddy, who has the greatest poker face on the planet and off. At last, as I near the door, I look at my beautiful Ben. He presses his hand to his heart, and I wish I could go to him. Then he mouths the three little words we’ve never actually said to each other.

  That seals it. I thought I was certain before about giving this prize to Ben, but now I know there’s no other way: if Ben doesn’t get a second life out of this win, I’ll have to agree to his love-in-theafterlife plan. Ben’s life or bust.

  fourteen

  A DEVIL’S GIFT

  DIA LEADS ME, TOSHIO, SHANTA, AND JIHONG OUT OF Valedictorian Hall. I hear Dr. Zin begin a speech just as the doors to the massive building close, with a dull snap, behind us. Someone locks it from the other side.

  I’ve only taken four or five steps when I hear the first scream, which comes from inside the hall. But the word “scream” is not big enough. I jump to a stop. The other kids flinch but continue on at the peals of terror. The knell of horror. The chorus of shouts and pleas that the heavy front doors of the hall barely muffle.

  Ben, I think. Molly, I think.

  Dia strides confidently on like the Pied Piper with his short train of children—and seven otherworldly goddesses—in tow.

  “Dia!” I shout after him. Uselessly. Only Superbia stops for me. “What’s happening in there?”

  I dart back to Valedictorian Hall. I jiggle the enormous handles and bang the too-solid door. It’s no use. The screaming continues— five, ten, maybe twenty students are shouting—but it soon falters, wanes, and then, obediently, stops.

  I bang on the door. But no one comes out, and no one tells me what’s happened.

  So I race up to Dia and stop dead in front of him. “What was that about?” I demand, shoving him in the chest. “What did you do to them?”

  “Me?” He sidesteps me, brushes where I shoved him, and gestures for the others to continue on to his office. “What could I possibly do? I’ve been here with you.”

  I plant my boots in the snow.

  Dia turns back to me, and the others stop. They all glare my way. The Seven Sinning Sisters appear to be weighing me against Dia, looking us both up and down, wondering who will prove stronger.

  “Only the weak ones are screaming,” Dia says.

  “Who are the weak ones?”

  “Miss Merchant, good news always comes with bad news.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Can we please go?” Shanta insists. Her leg is jittering like she has to pee. “This is—I’ve waited so long!”

  “You’re a freshman,” I fire at her. “You’ve been here how long? A month?”

  That shuts her up.

  “Tell me, Mr. Voletto. Tell me now.”

  “Look, we didn’t have a Lucky Ten,” Dia explains, tightening his woolly cardigan to block the wind, “but we did have an Unlucky Twenty.”

  Even Shanta, with her impatience for escape, can’t ignore that.

  “What does that mean, unlucky?” I ask.

  “Twenty kids who should’ve been gone long ago,” Ira clarifies. “They’re gone now.”

  “Twenty. Expelled.” I have to keep saying it to believe it. “Twenty. Dead.”

  “Whom did you expel?” Toshio asks Dia.

  “The ones we had to wake. The ones who believed,” he says with a smirk. “Their chances of actually being successful in the world are crap, wouldn’t you say? I’d be slapping the four of you in the face if I’d let them continue battling for something they don’t deserve. And I’d be keeping how many deserving students out of Cania by letting them take up seats?”

  “Twenty.”

  “But their parents pay for them,” Jihong says softly. “They pay to be here, sir.”

  “We have contracts, Headmaster,” Toshio says. “This isn’t fair.”

  Dia shakes his head, chuckling lightly. Almost all seven of the sisters chuckle, too.

  “Is your prize in the contracts?” Dia asks. “Is your potential freedom today in your contract, Ona-san? No. Of course it’s not. And the idea of the Lucky Ten wasn’t in anyone’s contract, either. But you’re all more than happy to accept the good; you forget that light brings shadows.”

  “And you forget that expulsion is always an option for a disappointing academic performance,” Avaritia adds.

  “Now,” Dia says, “before I change my mind about your reward.”

  He starts away. But only Shanta and the Seven Sinning Sisters go with him.

  “Come on, you guys,” Shanta calls to me, Jihong, and Toshio. “It’s done. Besides, it happened to them, not us.”

  The ones who were still asleep have just been expelled. All of them. They were killed because they believed they were free, because they had hope. They’re gone now. Ben’s safe. And Molly’s safe. Even Harper’s safe. But Emo Boy. With his teary eyes. With his hope.

  Before I can think, I blurt out, “I want to use my wish to save Emo Boy’s life! Give him my second chance!”

  Dia turns back. So do the Seven Sinning Sisters, but where Dia looks irritated by my outbursts, they look intrigued.

  “Go ahead to the office,” Dia commands them. As they glide away, he turns his dark stare on me. “Who exactly is Emo Boy?”

  Oh, hell, what’s his real name? Is it…Jake? Wally? Alec? Connor?

  “It’s big of you to offer that,” Dia says, “but you can’t save anyone else with your wish.”

  “I can’t?”

  “You’ve got one request to make, and it has to impact you directly. No tradezies.”

  So I can’t help Ben at all? That changes everything!

  As we trudge to his office, I quickly rethink my plan.

  I’m not going home—I refuse to. But I can’t send Ben home, either. So what can I use this one wish for?

  I’ve got three things to do, as I see it: save Ben, help my mom (and Teddy), and get off this island. In that order. I think of my list of teachers’ names. I think of Ben’s Guardian. And I piece together a plan that had better work. Because I’m going to lose a lot today,
and it has to be worth it.

  DIA STANDS BEFORE the fire in his office. The Seven Sinning Sisters are behind him. We face them as he explains that we each get to ask him for one thing, and that one thing has to be for ourselves, not for anyone else. He takes a moment to remind us to word our requests carefully so we get exactly what we want.

  My easy plan to free Ben has slipped through my fingers and crashed like a vial on the floor. I think about exactly how to word my request so I’ll get the most out of it.

  Superbia hands Dia a silver bag, which he sets in the middle of the fire. The flames lick at it, and smoke swirls around it, but it glistens as if untouched. He takes our labeled vials—all twelve of them—from his sweater pocket and lays them in a row on the carpet.

  “Freshman first,” Dia says.

  Shanta, shaking with anticipation, carefully says, “I’d like to be my living self again. Just as I was before I came here.”

  “Very well.”

  Dia double-checks her name on the labels of the three vials closest to him. He dangles them over the silver sack in the fire. He whispers a charm, or what sounds like one, in fluid, elegant Italian.

  We hold our breath and watch. Waiting. Shanta whines to see her vials so near the destructive fire. Dia, silent now, slowly lowers them into the sack. His palms circle the opening of the bag, wiping through the fire painlessly; the fire is his element.

  Shanta’s unmoving, unchanging. She looks like she might start tearing the place up if nothing happens soon.

  Seconds turn into a minute.

  At the very moment it seems there’s no point in paying attention to her anymore, a shimmer of silver passes down her body. It moves like a searchlight in the fog, shining under her hair, then in whispers over her stomach, her knees, her toes—and rolls back up again. Shanta gasps and, as if in the richest ecstasy, closes her eyes to take the experience in. Pearlescent strands of color circle her in magnificent swirls, dazzling the three of us and even, it seems, Dia. At last, the color diffuses, twinkling about the room like light through a prism, and vanishes.

  Shanta vanishes with it.

  “Enjoy your glimmer of life, Shanta,” Dia says as the Seven Sinning Sisters giggle. “Sophomore next. That’s you, Jihong.”

  Jihong nervously wrings her hands.

  “Wait,” I say to Dia. “What did you mean, her ‘glimmer’ of life?”

  “She asked to be just as she was before she came here.” He waves Jihong forward. “Shanta’s gone back in time to just before she came here.” He lifts Jihong’s vials, checking the names. “So she’s in the moment before she died. She’ll relive her death, unless she can escape it, but this time I don’t think I’ll let her into Cania. Been there, done that, right?”

  “So Shanta’s…dead?” Toshio asks.

  I think everyone’s starting to see who we’re really playing with.

  “Not yet,” Dia says. “But soon. She should be riding her bike now. The car that hits her won’t be along for at least a minute.”

  Jihong, a little thing that could be toppled over by a cough, looks nervously at me, certain now, as I am, that the only way to get what we want, not some demonic version of it, is to ask for it precisely. Great. Not like language is open to interpretation or anything…

  “I am request,” Jihong says carefully in her second language, but Dia stops her. She cannot be expected to ask for the right thing if she’s not even speaking her language! In fluent Mandarin, Dia says God knows what to Jihong, who, with the most earnest expression, makes her request of him in her native tongue.

  I hold my breath. I hope she got the wording just right.

  The transformation we witnessed in Shanta repeats on Jihong. Except she doesn’t disappear at the end of it. She just stands there, looking as flawless as any Cania student. I wait to hear her fate.

  “You won’t be your mortal self again until you leave the island,” Dia explains. “Now, go pack and head to the village. Some of the construction guys are boating to Kennebunkport in an hour, so they’ll probably give you a ride. Just remember: you’ll need a new name.”

  It looks like that worked. She got through it. A skip in her step, Jihong waves good-bye to us and leaves the office.

  “Doesn’t she get a new name?” I ask. “Pilot told me winners get the whole package. Money, a new identity, documentation.”

  “Jihong asked for a second life like that which winners of the Big V get,” Dia says. “Not for the riches. Naturally, she’ll have to change her name; that’s part of our contract. But we won’t help financially or otherwise.”

  Tricky, tricky stuff. I take a deep breath, stand straighter, mentally will myself to get this right, and try not to think about the craziness of what I’m about to request—something that will probably make Toshio pass out with shock.

  “Okay,” I say to Dia and step forward, feeling the weight of the stares of seven intimidating underworld goddesses on me. “Let me phrase this just right.”

  “Actually,” he says, “would you mind if Toshio goes next?”

  “Toshio?” I look at the senior; he’s nodding like a bobblehead on an ATV dashboard. “Why?”

  “God, you’re inquisitive.” Dia’s smile is smooth and beautiful. If I had half a brain in my head, I’d ask to wake up in California and be free of that smile. “Well, we’ve spent a few Saturdays together now, and I’d like to say good-bye to you. Properly. I think we all would.” He gestures to the sisters, who agree. “Is that okay?”

  Just the thing to make my stomach sink. After all, I just sat through a lust challenge with this guy, which he may or may not be aware of. I don’t want this to get awkward.

  “Murdering Merchant can wait.” Toshio bellows. “I’m ready!”

  It happens even faster for Toshio, now that he’s seen it done twice and knows what to do. He asks for the prize he would have received had he won the Big V, which seems to be just the ticket. When it’s over, he bows to Dia and proceeds to back all the way to the door, bowing as he goes and fumbling to grab the door handle without looking. It’s only because he takes so long opening the door and bowing his way out that I catch a glimpse of Ben standing in the hallway, trying to peek in. Our eyes meet, and he leaps forward, catching the door before it closes after Toshio.

  “I’m sorry, Headmaster,” Ben says. “Anne, I just wanted to say good-bye.”

  “Anne’s about to take her turn, Mr. Zin. We were going to have a private discussion. I, too, would like to say good-bye.”

  “Wait,” I say, holding my hands out to both of them. “Nobody has to say good-bye. I’m”—Ben’s not gonna like this—“not leaving.”

  Like they’re both ducking from an unexpected blow, they lean away. The sisters gasp and whisper among themselves.

  “You’re not?” Dia asks.

  “Yes, she is,” Ben says, marching into the office.

  “No, I’m not.”

  I let Ben turn me toward him. This is the last time for a long time—maybe forever—I’ll see him look at me with those beautiful green eyes, with his heart beating somewhere deep inside them, behind the flecks of gold and the few but lovely dark stipples. This is the last time he’ll touch me like he wants to keep me near him. If anyone wants to say good-bye, it’s me.

  “Ben, my plans are different from yours.”

  He shakes his head. As if he has any say. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret. Please.”

  Surely, at some point, I’ll regret what I’m about to do. I’ll lie in bed at night, feeling martyred, wondering if I’m always going to destroy my chances at love, wondering if I took a gamble and lost. I wish I could have warned Ben, but I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d do until he mouthed that he loved me. I smile at the memory, which he misreads as a lunatic’s grin.

  “Dia,” he rushes to stand before our headmaster, “I refuse to let her give me this gift. I don’t want the new life. She needs to take it.”

  “She couldn’t give it to you if she wanted to,” Dia tell
s him. “But I’m not sure she wanted to.”

  Dia has been leaning against his chaise, observing us with interest. Now he moves to pace before the fireplace. My vials are the only ones that remain on the carpet, and he sweeps them up.

  “I would, of course, love to know what she wants,” Dia finishes. “I thought you’d want to get away from Teddy.”

  “Teddy?” Ben asks.

  I’m thinking exactly the same thing as Ben. “My ex-Guardian?”

  What does Dia know? But he reveals nothing. And he shrugs like it’s none of his business.

  Ben returns to my side. He grips my hands, arms, shoulders, anything he can, maniacally, as he begs me not to do whatever I’ve got planned.

  “So Miss Merchant,” Dia coos, “what do you want from me?”

  This is it. This is the last chance I’ll have.

  Knowing that, I clasp Ben’s too-perfect face and, holding my breath, press my lips to his. It’s a replica of our first kiss, our falling moment, with all the breathlessness of wanting him and the agony of knowing that, in moments, he is going to be torn from me, and I’ll be thrust into a life I can’t imagine. By choice.

  I hold him as long as I can, careless to Dia’s stony gaze and the sisters’ ahhhs.

  Only when I’ve had my fill—and even then, even then I kiss him one more time—do I release Ben, pray I’ll never forget what it’s like to be loved by him, and turn to Dia.

  “I want you to bring me to Eve Risset.” I take a breath. “And let me watch you use her to sever Ben’s ties to me.”

  fifteen

  SPIRIT AND FLESH

  MOLLY IS IN THE HALLWAY WHEN THE THREE OF US—ME, Dia, and a white-faced Ben—leave the sisters behind and dash out of the office. We make a beeline for the stairway to the second floor, where the secretaries’ lounge is. Molly’s smile fades when she sees Ben’s wide eyes.

  “What’s she doing?” Molly asks him. “Isn’t she going home?”