“What?” I asked, ripping my eyes away from the It Girls. Not an easy task. Kate’s hair matched Heather’s slushie, demanding attention. “You’re not leaving because they came here, are you?”
She stuck out her bottom lip. “Whatever. We deal with them at school all week. I’m not dealing with them on the weekend, too.”
“So you’re letting them run us off?”
“It’s not like that,” she said, staring down at the bowling shoes now in her hands. “You don’t even like bowling. Let’s just go, okay?”
Sarah’s presence swelled behind me, and I spun around. She hovered the way I imagined – arms crossed, hip out, the blue lights overhead casting glowing orbs on her silky blonde hair. Kate clicked a wad of gum loudly, and the longer-haired twin twirled her locks while making gaga eyes at the boys in lane six. Meanwhile, twin B stood around like a slinky model with no runway and zero personality.
Sarah stepped closer. “Funny seeing you girls here.”
“Not really,” I shot back. “We’re the reason you came.”
She put her hand to her chest and threw her head back in forced laughter. “Oh, do get over yourself, Emily! Have you spoken to Noah? He told me he’s coming back to school on Monday.”
I’d spoken to Noah, and he hadn’t told me that. “Glad he’s feeling better,” I said through gritted teeth. “Ready to go, Heather?”
I shouldered my way past Sarah, but she put her hand out to stop me. “Don’t forget your shoes,” she said, smirking. “Or do they resemble the ones you usually wear? I hear that’s common with people like you. As in, people who hallucinate.”
She couldn’t possibly know. Medical records were private, and just because the doctors thought I was hallucinating, didn’t mean I was. And my more recent “hallucinations” definitely had something to do with her – something she did to me. To Noah.
Heather came up beside me as I brushed Sarah off on my way to the shoe rental counter. “What was she talking about?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled.
“It didn’t sound like nothing.”
I shrugged. “She’s making it up.”
Once in the car, we drove in silence. When we parked outside my house, Heather still wouldn’t look at me. Finally, she spoke. “Sarah is a lot of things, but she’s not a liar.”
“So?” I asked.
“So,” Heather said, “she knows something about you that I don’t. I wish you would trust me. Wouldn’t you rather people find out from you than from Sarah?”
“Let her tell everyone,” I said. “I don’t care.”
“She’s digging into your personal life and all your history and secrets. You don’t want that.”
I swallowed hard. “You still want to sleep over?”
She chewed her lip, her eyebrows drawn together. “Yeah, of course,” she said with a nod. Reaching into the backseat, she grabbed her overnight bag. “You still want me to? You aren’t mad?”
“Never,” I said, forcing a smile in an effort to make Heather feel comfortable again. Surely she didn’t mean to pry; she wanted to help. Thunder boomed overhead, and suddenly the sky cracked open, the dark night clouds pouring rain down in gusting sheets.
I raised my eyebrows. “Race you in?”
I didn’t wait for her to respond before bolting from the car. She ran while clutching her overnight bag above her head, a shield against the downpour. Neither of us made it in without wet hair and muddy shoes.
“Geez!” Heather said as we stepped into the foyer and took off our shoes. “It’s freezing!”
I stopped by the thermostat in the hallway and raised the temperature a few degrees. “That’s my dad. He thinks the house should be the same temperature inside all year.”
My dad’s recliner creaked from the living room. “If you never left the house, you wouldn’t notice!”
“But I do leave the house, Dad,” I hollered back.
“Is that Heather?” Dad again. “Hello, Heather!”
“Hi, Mr. Bishop.”
“Please, call me Jonathan.”
I grabbed Heather’s arm and pulled her into the kitchen. “Don’t engage him. He’ll never shut up. You want some hot cocoa?”
She agreed, and after I prepared two piping mugs complete with whipped cream and cinnamon, we headed to my room.
“Night, Dad,” I called as we clomped up the stairs.
“Night, Squirrel,” he called from the living room below.
I cringed as I pushed my bedroom door open with my foot. Heather shut it behind us.
“Squirrel?” she asked.
I figured my nickname was a safe enough thing to share with her. Revealing it might make her feel not so in the dark about me. I set our hot cocoas on my nightstand, and she dropped her overnight bag in front of my closet.
“Yeah, actually, he’s been calling me that since I was four.”
“Any reason?” she asked.
“I wanted to be one.” I laughed bitterly to myself. “My dad entertained the idea. For a little too long, I think.”
Heather picked up her cocoa and took a sip. “What about your mom?”
“She died,” I said, dropping my gaze to my clementine-colored nails.
“Oh. I just thought –”
“It’s okay.” I sank to my knees beside my bed, sitting back on my heels with my hands in my lap. “Hey, I found a Ouija board while unpacking some boxes my dad missed. Wanna try it?”
Heather lowered the mug from her mouth. “I don’t think so.”
“It’ll be fun! Nothing serious. This stuff isn’t for real anyway.”
“I know,” she said, but the pause in her voice told me otherwise.
“Have you ever used one?”
She nodded. “With Sarah. Before, well, what I told you.”
“Right. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try again,” I said, sliding the Ouija board out from under my bed. I took it out of the box and set it up. “What do you think? Lights off, candles lit?”
It was a crappy move on my part, putting her on the spot for something she clearly didn’t want to do, but this might trigger some info about Sarah. It was this, or letting Noah possibly die and missing a chance at finding out if any of this was somehow connected to my weird drawing powers, which, in turn, were connected to my mother’s death.
Heather shifted away as if she was about to tell me she suddenly felt sick and needed to go home. But then her gaze trailed to the Ouija board, and she brightened a little.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s not a real Ouija board.”
She said this like it was a good thing. I’d spent good money on this thing, and now she was telling me it was bogus? “What do you mean? Of course it’s real!”
She giggled, shaking her head. “Well, I’ve only ever seen one before – Sarah’s – and the markings on hers were different.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “Different how?”
She tilted her head, gaze drifting around my room. She set down her cocoa and retrieved a pad and pencil from my desk. “Here, I’ll show you.”
She started sketching something that didn’t resemble anything at first, but eventually took form.
She slid the drawing to me. “This is the only one I remember. Not sure how accurate it is. There were a lot of symbols, all around the letters and on the underside of the wood. Yours is…well, cardboard. No offense.”
“None taken.” I took in the image she handed me. “What does the symbol mean?”
“Sarah didn’t say.”
I returned my attention to the strange symbol, tracing my finger over the lines, circle, crosses, and asterisks. There was so much to take in. “Can I keep this drawing?”
Heather shrugged. “Sure. What do I care?”
“So you were afraid my Ouija board would be like Sarah’s? Ho
w do you know mine won’t work?”
“It’s made of printed cardboard. Sarah made a big deal about the real wood and carvings on hers. I bet –” She flipped over the board and pointed to a stamp on the back that read, Made in Chine. “Yep. There it is. And they didn’t even spell China right. Do you think it will work?”
I pushed the board under the bed. “I guess not.”
“Trust me,” Heather said, “you don’t want anything to do with that stuff. When Sarah used hers, she got scary. She like, invoked some ancestor or something. I thought she was messing with me, but her eyes were all black.” Heather laughed nervously. “You must think I’m crazy.”
“No crazier than me,” I said with a smile to end the conversation.
We abandoned summoning spirits and popped an old movie – my dad’s copy of The Crow – into my laptop. We fell asleep sometime after Eric woke from the dead to take his revenge. It was my third time trying to watch the movie, and I zonked out at the same part every time.
Maybe sometimes you don’t get to find out how things end, but when it came to Sarah, I was one step closer to finding out how her path of evil began.
7
FIRST KISS
Saturday morning, I sent Noah a text.
ARE YOU COMING BACK MONDAY?
Had he told Sarah? Was she messing with me, or was he?
I shook the thought away. They couldn’t control my visions, and his image had come to me in one of my drawing trances. No faking that.
I spent all of Saturday and Sunday sketching and re-sketching the strange symbol, trying to think of helpful Internet search terms to track its origins.
The weekend passed with no luck – neither with my research nor a response from Noah. Now here it was, Monday morning, and I still didn’t know if he would be in school or not.
Part of me hoped he would – butterflies fluttered in my stomach at the thought of seeing him – and part of me hoped he wouldn’t, because that would mean Sarah was right.
I wanted to run down the hall to first period, but I thought the better of it. Instead, I placed one foot in front of the other at my normal pace. When I reached homeroom, I forced in one deep breath, my hands shaking as I stepped into the room. My attention snapped to Noah’s usual seat.
Empty.
I deflated like a balloon as I strode to the back of the class and took my seat.
At least Sarah had been wrong. There was that.
I pulled out my notebook and continued sketching and re-sketching the strange symbol Heather had shown me. I thought part of it resembled something like a little stick-figure woman with short hair flipping out at the ends, but I couldn’t come up with a web-friendly description.
I sighed and closed my notebook, glancing up at the wall clock to check how many minutes until homeroom started. And there stood Noah, staring at me from the doorway, his expression soft and searching. After a moment, he hurried to his desk and slunk in his seat. He didn’t make eye contact with me for the rest of the hour.
Which turned into the rest of the day. Every class we shared, it was as though he was avoiding me at all costs. Conversely, Sarah seemed to stare at me every chance she got, arms crossed, always either smirking or sneering. As if to say she had won.
Maybe she had. Noah even sat with her at lunch and smiled, albeit uneasily, at whatever she was blabbering about on the other side of the cafeteria.
By the end of the day, I was through. I shoved my books into my backpack, smashing papers in before yanking its drawstring closed. Then I whipped it over my shoulder and stormed out of a side door by the stairs.
In the parking lot, someone grabbed my hand and tugged me, spinning me around to face them. I found myself chest-to-stomach with Noah. He was wearing his best-fitting shirt – the red-and-white baseball tee one – with no jacket; in these bitter cold days, everyone else in school wore their coats outside. Noah was the lone exception.
Even in the ice-chill of winter, my cheeks burned and my breathing hitched as I slowly lifted my gaze. His dark lashes seemed darker, his pale skin paler, his sky-blue eyes stormier, his expression more intense than I’d ever seen. He ushered me to the side of the building where his car was parked.
“Get in,” he ordered, nudging me into the truck before I could respond. He glanced over his shoulder before hopping in the driver’s seat and speeding away.
I knew where we were going. He didn’t need to ask me to close my eyes; I did so knowingly. At some point, his hand clasped mine, his thumb smoothing circles over the backs of my knuckles.
When we arrived, he jumped out and paced through the snow. The dirt mounds were now dirty snow-slush piles. I let myself out of his blue Chevy and walked over to him, placing my hand on his forearm as he strode past me.
He stopped and turned, taking my hands in his. “I messed up, Emily. I shouldn’t have brought you into this, and I don’t know how to undo what I’ve done.”
“You can’t,” I said. “Even if you could, I wouldn’t let you.”
His eyes went cold. “Why won’t you leave this alone? For my sake and for yours?”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“I told you already,” he said sharply, his eyebrows curving lower over his eyes. “I can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Can’t,” he said, his voice huskier this time. “Why won’t you trust me?”
“I do,” I said, softening. “Although, to be fair, I barely know you, so would it be so bad if I had my doubts?”
The creases in his forehead smoothed out. “But you do trust me?”
I cringed. For whatever reason, I did. Enough to say, “Yes.” Then, “I kind of trust you. It’s me I don’t trust.”
My sanity. My judgment. I didn’t tell him this. When possible, I avoided admitting it even to myself.
“Look,” he said. “I have never lied to you. I will never lie to you. But there are things right now I need to keep from you.”
“Because you’re scared?”
“Jesus Christ! No!” he said, dropping my hands. “I literally cannot say the words, okay?”
I was sure a guy this tormented was no good for me and yet here I was, wanting to come to his rescue anyway. “But you asked me to help you. How am I supposed to help you if you won’t tell me anything?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I don’t need your help anymore.”
“What?” I asked, stunned.
“Can’t we just have this place?” he said, spreading his hands to indicate the clearing around us. “This place where we can be together. Maybe that can be enough.”
I couldn’t decide if he was asking me to be his girlfriend or run away with him. “Enough for what? For you, for me, or for us?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled.
“We’ll never get the chance to see where things lead if the only time we can talk to each other is when we run off. What kind of relationship is that?”
“One where you’re safe,” he said, his voice gravelly.
I stepped closer and took his hands. “Safe?” I said. “That’s no fun.”
A smile almost cracked his face but died at his lips. “One day you will find out what this is all about,” he said, “and you’re going to think I’m the most selfish person you’ve ever met for dragging you into it.”
I perked an eyebrow. “Somehow, I doubt that. But now that we got all this out of the way, I have something to show you.”
I trudged back to the Chevy and retrieved the drawing of the symbol from my backpack. Noah followed, so I simply turned around and handed it to him.
“Do you know what this is?” I asked.
Recognition melted through his expression. “I can’t say.”
“You can’t tell me, or you don’t know?”
&nbs
p; “I can’t tell you.”
Hmph. Well, I was on the right track.
He walked around the back of the truck and let down the tailgate. I hopped up first and pulled up my legs to sit cross-legged.
“What can you tell me?” I asked. “Can you tell me about what I saw that day in the cafeteria?”
He shook his head.
“Can you tell me if it was real or imagined? The painted skin, the markings, that strange rattlesnake sound?”
This part I had to know most of all, because if I had imagined the whole thing, I needed to get back on my meds. If I hadn’t, then my doctors were wrong. I wasn’t insane, and taking those meds might have been blocking my most important gift.
At the same time, if this ordeal was real, it meant Noah’s life was most certainly in danger, and I didn’t have a shot of helping him. Not if my track record was any indication.
Noah licked his lips nervously. “Sarah can use magic to cast illusions, but that’s not what was happening. She wouldn’t have wanted you to see that.”
“What was I seeing?”
“I can’t say.”
It was his go-to comeback. I growled my frustration. Obviously whatever I’d witnessed had something to do with this magical hold she had on him. At least he had confirmed I wasn’t hallucinating.
My shoulders relaxed. “So these illusions I saw. Is that what she does to you?”
Noah chuckled bitterly. “No, Emily,” he said, his tone almost amused. “It’s the same kind of magic, but nothing like what she does to me.”
I nodded slowly, recalling how I had felt while Sarah was attacking Noah – heart racing, mind in a panic. It must have been so much worse for him.
I tilted my head. “What does it feel like? What she does to you?”
He widened his eyes and blew out a thin breath. “Like a fever that won’t go away. Like the fire of hell is in my veins. Who knows, maybe it is.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shook his head, wrapped his arm around me, and pulled me against his side. I was a little startled, but I liked being in his arms, having his body this close to mine. “It makes me irritable sometimes.”
Something like Voodoo Page 8
