Of Curses and Kisses

by Sandhya Menon

  As she turned back around, her hand automatically went to her throat—and came up empty. She realized with a lurch that she’d forgotten to fetch the necklace from her dresser when Penelope had knocked on her door.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” Jaya said to the red-haired teacher as she flew down the steps and past him on her way back to the building. “I’m so terribly sorry!”

  She thought she heard him mutter something like, “Is it winter break yet?” but she couldn’t be sure.

  Grey

  He wasn’t going. He waited as the bustle in the hallway got quieter and quieter and finally completely stopped. Then he threw on one of his many pairs of bland sweaters and pants and walked out of his room.

  It was summer-level quiet in the senior wing. No one else had stayed behind. Rahul had texted him a few minutes ago, but Grey was hoping he’d forget about him in the chaos of the morning. Going on this trip wasn’t mandatory, and he’d already spoken to Dr. Waverly about staying behind last night. He hadn’t told anyone else because he hadn’t wanted to defend his decision—or worse, for anyone to feel obliged to convince him to go.

  All the other students were probably sitting in the limo-bus St. R’s got every year, already eager for a break from the monotony of classes that had only just started. Even Jaya. Thinking about her made him feel less alone. It didn’t make any sense, considering how they bickered about very basic values. They had seemingly nothing in common and yet… Jaya was as tied to her family’s expectations of her as he was to his. For completely different reasons, but still. She was in a straitjacket of their rules and decrees too, even if she didn’t know it. And knowing Jaya, even if she realized it, she’d probably enjoy wearing the straitjacket as part of her royal couture. It was ironic, too, that he should feel any sense of camaraderie with her, considering her bloodline and the harbinger of his curse she’d brought with her.

  Grey steeled himself for what he was about to do. Taking a deep breath, he walked down the empty hall and made a right into an interconnected hallway. The girls’ dorms were all here, twenty-five doors spooling out in front of him. Grey walked forward, his eye on Jaya’s door. It was an unspoken St. R’s custom that no one ever locked their doors. Friends came and went as they pleased, and if anyone needed privacy, they’d just hang a tie from their doorknob. The administration wasn’t crazy about this, but there wasn’t much they could do to force people to lock their doors.

  Grey had never particularly cared about the open-door culture one way or another. Right now, though, he was infinitely grateful that he could steal into Jaya’s room unnoticed. A sudden pulse of guilt and shame heated his face as the doorknob turned easily under his hand and he slipped inside. He’d never considered himself a thief. He’d never ordinarily do something as underhanded, as dishonest, as taking another person’s belongings without asking them. But these were not ordinary circumstances. This was literally life and death.

  Jaya had said at the mixer that she might begin keeping the pendant in her room because the rubies kept falling out. And then he’d noticed that she hadn’t been wearing it these past couple of days. Once he’d realized that, Grey knew what he had to do—what any normal person in this situation would do. He wasn’t sure at all that she’d left it in her room today, but he also knew he’d never have another opportunity like this one. She was going to Aspen to ski—if she was really worried about the necklace, she’d leave it here. That was all he had to go on, and it was thin as a newly formed skin of ice, but he was hanging on to it nonetheless.

  He had to get that necklace and fix it somehow. He’d lain awake too many nights, sweating and plotting and worrying about the fucking curse. Maybe the answer was finding a good jeweler to repair it and sending it anonymously back to the temple in Mysuru from which it had been taken. Or maybe he should just destroy it completely.

  Or maybe, a very pessimistic voice inside his head thundered, maybe it was too late now that the rubies were falling, especially since three of the original rubies were lost completely. Grey didn’t know. What he did know was that he couldn’t just watch the thing count down his fate and sit there idly, letting the curse happen to him. He was utterly done with being sent away, with having his life course already decided, with feeling like he’d been born simply to cause heartache to his parents and live a life devoid of love or companionship only to die young. Because if that was true… what was the point? Of anything? What was the fucking point?

  Breathing harder, he stalked to the far corner of Jaya’s room and rummaged through her desk. A few neatly opened letters from home, sachets of lavender-scented potpourri, stationery with her initials embossed in gold at the top. Grey squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

  Pulling himself together, he turned to her vanity, careful not to look at himself in the mirror. The top was organized neatly with her perfume, makeup, and an ornate silver jewelry tray all arranged parallel to each other. A few necklaces were looped carefully around the corner of the mirror. None of them were the ruby pendant. He opened the first drawer—and stopped short. A black velvet bag sat there, looking innocuous enough. But he imagined he could feel something… a kind of dark energy, pulsing through the fabric.

  Grey took the bag out and gently shook out its contents into his palm. The heavy rose pendant lay waiting, its tightly coiled center now completely bare, the remaining rubies grinning at him like a handful of bloody teeth. He wanted to throw it across the room. He wanted to rip each remaining ruby from its socket and crush them under his boot. Instead, he picked the pendant up carefully, intending to slide it back into the velvet bag to take with him, to decide what to do with it in the safety of his own room.

  Ping!

  Grey wasn’t sure at first where the sound had come from. Then he looked at the pendant and understood. Another ruby had fallen, bringing the total to four missing. As he traced its path and saw it roll under Jaya’s vanity, he heard the noise again, twice in quick succession. And when he looked, he saw two more rubies had fallen. Twelve rubies remained in their sockets.

  As he stared at the rose pendant, his stomach twisting, he was suddenly sure it was fully aware who was holding it. It was as if the thing wanted to punish him, to show him that it wasn’t at all surprised that he, a thieving Emerson, had crept in here to try to steal it yet again. Only now the ruby was fighting back.

  Terror turned Grey’s bones to mush. He felt certain that by the time he got the pendant back into its bag, all the rest of the rubies would’ve fallen and his fate would be completely sealed, a month and a half in advance of his eighteenth birthday.

  “No, no, no, no,” he whispered as he pushed it as gently as he could back into its bag, into its Pandora’s box. With shaking hands, he set the velvet bag back into the drawer and slid it shut. He caught sight of himself in the mirror then, his forehead shiny and damp, his eyes wide, his cheeks pale and hollow. He looked like someone who’d gotten terrible news at the doctor’s. He looked like someone whose life was ending.

  There was a sound down the hallway, as if someone had just come up the elevators. Grey jerked his head up, his heart thundering now for different reasons.

  Jaya

  Jaya stepped off the elevator, walking quickly down the hallway to the senior girls’ suite. She’d get the pendant, and maybe she’d walk over to Grey’s room and see where he was. He couldn’t just hide away in here. He had to go to Aspen.

  A familiar knot of guilt formed in her stomach as she walked. Grey Emerson was obviously very troubled. Continuing to execute the plan felt a little… cruel. But what was she to do, just let this opportunity go? It had landed in her lap, as if the fates themselves had conspired to bring the Emersons to justice. Emotion had no place in this. And yet revenge was supposed to be sweet. Why, then, was the inside of her mouth so ashy and bitter?

  Jaya reached her door, turned the doorknob, walked in, and stopped short.

  Grey Emerson stood in the middle of her room, his blue eyes wide, wild. He was dressed in
a charcoal sweater that hugged the hard planes of his chest and stomach, and loose jeans. Strands of his dark hair hung in his eyes, and there were bags under his eyes that said he hadn’t slept well. Stubble dotted his upper lip and jaw.

  Stop staring at his stubble, Jaya, her inner critic said, exasperated. There are more important matters at hand.

  “What the hell are you doing in my room?” Her paralysis breaking, Jaya took another step inside and noticed her dresser drawer was open. Had she left it open? “Are you snooping through my things?”

  “What?” Grey said. “No!”

  Jaya turned back to him and stepped forward, her pulse high. “Then what? Why are you in here? It is not okay to go into someone’s room when she isn’t there. Do you understand that? I could have you expelled.”

  “I was…” Grey looked away and pushed a hand through his hair, not finishing his thought.

  Jaya walked over to her open dresser drawer. Nothing seemed to be rifled through. The velvet bag was still there, right on top, unmoved.

  “I’m sorry,” Grey said quietly, his face leaching of color.

  “For what?” Jaya walked closer to him and narrowed her eyes. When he was silent, she pressed on. “Grey. You can’t just walk into my room without permission and not answer my questions. This is unacceptable!”

  His mouth opened and then closed again, his fists clenched at his sides. “I know.”

  But he didn’t say anything else. “Were you looking for things to send to the tabloids?” Jaya asked, her voice hard.

  “No!” He looked genuinely shocked. “I would never do that. Never.”

  In spite of her extreme skepticism toward all Emersons (indeed, she even doubted most of them were fully human), she believed Grey. He looked… physically sick. Like someone who was too swept up in their own thoughts to go snooping around for salacious gossip. “What, then?” she asked, unrelenting. He’d been in her room without her knowledge. She deserved to know why. “My dresser drawer is open. What were you looking for?”

  After a long pause, both of them staring at each other, Grey spoke, so softly she could barely hear him. “Your ruby pendant.”

  “Why?” Why had he been so obsessed with her pendant from the beginning? What was going on?

  Outside, the bus horn honked three times.

  “That’s the warning,” Grey said faintly. “They’re leaving in five minutes.”

  They studied each other, and for once Jaya let her expression mirror his once-more impassive one. “Fine,” she said. “But you’re coming too. We can finish this conversation in Aspen, when you tell me why you were skulking around my room.”

  “I wasn’t skulking.”

  “That’s the least important part of everything I said.”

  Finally, Grey nodded once. “All right.” He walked forward and brushed past her, striding out into the hallway.

  Jaya watched his retreating figure for a moment, then reached into the drawer and pulled out the black velvet bag. She peeked in briefly—the necklace was still ensconced safely inside. Slipping the bag into her coat pocket, she followed Grey Emerson down the hallway, her mind churning.

  Grey

  As they took the elevator down and crossed the large entrance foyer, Grey wondered why he was doing this. Technically, Jaya Rao couldn’t force him onto that bus. Sure, she could get him expelled like she’d threatened—and then where would he go? Definitely not back to his father—but he had a feeling she wouldn’t. She was as interested in finding out why he’d been in her room as he was in keeping the reason from her. And now, thanks to his stupid guilty conscience, she knew it had something to do with her pendant. Damn it.

  The truth was, he had been snooping in her room. There was no going around that, and he had no right to be. He was clearly in the wrong. And so, caught in a weak and guilty moment, he’d found himself agreeing to go to Aspen and confess to Jaya exactly what it was that he’d been doing in her room.

  As they walked, he glanced at her sidelong to find that she was looking at him, too. He forced his eyes away and lengthened his stride, so he was ahead of her as they pushed the doors to walk outside toward the bus. Yes, she wanted the whole story. Yes, she had a right to ask. But still, Grey couldn’t imagine himself telling her. He hadn’t told a single soul in all of his nearly eighteen years. How was he supposed to change that for a Rao, of all people?

  His mind turned back to the pendant, as it always did. The Raos had cursed the ruby. Jaya shows up to St. R’s wearing it. How could there not be a connection?

  Grey recalled all the times he’d asked Jaya about her pendant. She’d never once looked guilty, never once said anything to hint at the fact that she might know where it had come from or what it meant to him. Besides, she’d thought he was snooping in her room so he could sell information to the tabloids. She hadn’t mentioned the pendant at all. So her having it was probably just another weird thing to add to the list of weird things that had plagued Grey since he was born.

  “There you are,” Mrs. Wakefield, the Russian Lit teacher said. She was waiting just outside the bus, her brassy blond hair blowing in the breeze. “Come on, you two, we’re ready to go.”

  He climbed up the steps, feeling Jaya right behind him. As he’d expected, everyone was on the bus already. (Except Caterina, who apparently was in her Tesla, according to what Alaric was saying. Who knew what her problem was besides an insatiable thirst for drama.) Grey took a seat across from DE and Penelope—one of the only few seats remaining—and Jaya promptly plopped down beside him. He kept his body rigid, and his eyes out the window in front of him.

  “Where were you?” DE asked, reaching over to kick his foot with hers.

  Grey flushed as he slid his foot out of the way. “Upstairs.”

  DE snorted. “Upstairs!” she said to Leo, who was on her other side. “That explains everything.”

  Leo shook his head and went back to talking to Rahul. There was an awkward pause while DE and Penelope waited for Grey to tell them more, which he didn’t. And then Jaya cleared her throat and began to speak in that very classy, very Jaya way about dresses or dancing or something.

  He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as the bus began to move. Why the assist? But if she saw him looking, she gave no indication. Feeling equal measures of gratitude and guilt, Grey settled against the plush seat, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

  About twenty minutes into the drive, DE leaned forward and said to him, “Who are you taking to Homegoing?” and Grey realized the dance had been the conversational topic the whole time he’d been alternating pretending to be asleep and staring out the window at grazing cows and sheep.

  Feeling waves of something coming off Jaya and pointed in his general direction, he kept his voice neutral when he answered, still looking out the window. “I’m not going.”

  “Homegoing” instead of “Homecoming” was another one of St. R’s “fun” events. Since St. R’s had to be different in everything they did as a proclamation of their elitism and inherent superiority, they’d decided to instead have “Homegoing,” the biggest event of the season. Homegoing was a winter formal, and everyone dressed up in their designer best and took a date they’d been gathering the courage to ask out since the beginning of the school year.

  “You are not going to Homegoing?” Leo this time. “Why not? Mon ami, it is our chance to blow off steam after finals, non? It is the biggest event of the year. Everyone goes.”

  “Well, I guess it’s going to be everyone minus one this year,” Grey said, turning to look at him.

  Jaya was studying him, her eyes slightly narrowed, as if she couldn’t make him out.

  “You have to go,” DE said.

  Grey turned his gaze on her. “Have to? I don’t remember seeing that in the school handbook.”

  DE rolled her eyes and looked at her phone. On her other side, Alaric was talking about his limited-edition gold-plated Lambo to Lachlan McCoy. He could almost have passed as a little bo
y bragging about his new Hot Wheels car.

  They were silent for a long moment, Grey looking out the window while his attention was laser-focused on Jaya. She was ostensibly looking straight ahead too, but Grey could tell her attention was elsewhere. Finally, in a voice so low he almost didn’t hear it, she said, “You’re going to tell me.”

  He jerked his head to look at her. “What?”

  She turned her cool brown gaze on him. “I can feel it; you’re going to try to wriggle out of telling me what you were doing in my room. About my pendant.”

  Feeling the beginnings of panic, Grey glanced around at the other students, but they were all intent on their own conversations. Jaya was speaking low enough that it was hard enough for him to hear her over the bus engine and the chatter of the other students, but still. “I’m not wriggling out of anything,” he said, pushing a hand through his hair. He had been tempted to avoid her, but that was too cowardly. It wasn’t how he rolled. “I’ll tell you everything, okay? I promise.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “When?”

  “I just need to think.” Grey leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thigh. He needed to get up the courage, figure out the words to say. How did you begin to explain something like this? “Meet me at the Forest Lakes Lodge tonight, seven o’clock.”

  Jaya looked at him, assessing. Satisfied with whatever she saw in his eyes, she nodded. “Okay. Seven o’clock, sharp.”

  With a hissing sigh, the bus stopped. Everyone began to chatter loudly, all at once. Grey looked out the window at the parking lot of the large Aspen shopping plaza St. Rosetta’s always took them to. “Go time,” he said softly.