I bit back a smile and hurried to homeroom, wondering if I could tell by looking at Noah if he was himself today.
He had to be. That was the only explanation for those balloons.
But when I got there, he was nowhere to be seen. I slumped into my chair and doodled a whole lot of nothing. I glanced up at least a dozen times, expecting to see him standing in our homeroom entry with an imploring gaze. I told myself he would meet me later, but the excitement faded in his absence.
I took out the notecard I’d found in my locker and read it twice more before caving in to get some work done. I pulled out my sketchpad for elective art and worked on the assignment. I still didn’t understand that class – art was emotion, not required drawings of sunflowers. Perhaps Miss Kelley would accept a mixed media project instead. As my thoughts drifted to petals made from printed poems and covered with colored tissue paper, the morning announcements began.
Normally I tuned them out, but normally they didn’t begin with, “Emily Bishop, I don’t deserve you.”
My heart came to a standstill, and the gossipy whispers of homeroom ceased.
Noah.
And there it was – my proof it was really him: Nirvana’s “All Apologies” blasting over the school intercom. Sarah could dig up all the records on me she liked – she could even read my diary, if I’d kept one – but only Noah understood how I felt about Nirvana. Not because it was some big secret I liked Kurt Cobain or because Noah was the only one who ever heard me listening to the Nevermind soundtrack on repeat, but because he was the only one who saw something in me whenever I listened to music. Something that couldn’t be put into words, and thus something Sarah would never be able to pull out of him.
The song cut out.
“Hey, who let you in here?” came Principal Johnson’s voice. “Get out!”
“Sorry,” came Noah’s voice, but he didn’t stop his antics – I practically heard him wrestling to keep control of the microphone. “Emily –” Tugging and clanking noises. “I’m sorry, Emily! I’m an idiot!”
It hadn’t been his fault, but the rest of the school didn’t know that. He was doing this for the sake of my reputation.
The last four words sealed it. A public apology if ever there was one. “Forgive me, Emily Bishop!”
Then the intercom went silent.
After that, my homeroom erupted in cheers and clapping. It took a moment to realize the same noise was echoing down the halls. The whole school was cheering him on. Cheering us on.
Except Sarah, of course. She stood outside the door, shooting daggers at me with her eyes. I didn’t care. She could bring it. I knew her secret now, which meant I was one step closer to stopping her and one step closer to Noah and me having the chance to be more than wishful friends.
Ididn’t tell Noah what I’d discovered. In part because I wanted to learn more first, and I wouldn’t be able to until Friday. But also because I didn’t want to lie and tell him I would stop digging into things when I wouldn’t.
He was certainly ready to fight Sarah for his freedom, or else why would he have risked pissing her off with his very public apology? But was he ready for me to be on the front lines to fight with him? Somehow, I didn’t think so.
The reality was, every time I tried to help, Sarah went after me. And every time Sarah went after me, Noah stopped her. And every time Noah stopped her, she made him suffer. Indirectly, I was hurting him, but I refused to let Sarah own him forever – that would be eternal suffering.
Still, I was playing a dangerous game – with both our lives. In two more days, I would be another step closer. Then I would tell him everything.
Noah nudged me with a bump of his knee. “You okay? You’re quieter than usual.”
We were at his secret location, where we had spent every moment together we could since Monday.
I leaned my head against the passenger side window; the cab was warm, but the glass was cool on my temple. “I was just thinking.”
“So I noticed,” he said gently, not prying. Surely he wanted to, but he must’ve realized how hypocritical that would be.
I swung my gaze toward him. “Why do you think Sarah backed off this week? She must be pissed.”
Noah shrugged. “Maybe she isn’t able to do what she wants right now.”
“Hmm.” Could be, especially if I’d interrupted her at the asylum before she could finish her spell. Would that stop her from controlling Noah, though? “What if she’s planning something extra awful instead?”
“Is that why you’ve been so quiet?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Just wondering.” The dead chicken she used as part of her ritual flashed through my mind. “You don’t think she would like…kill someone, do you?”
The look in Noah’s big blue eyes was the saddest, most lost thing I’d ever seen. His lips moved, but no sound came out. He tried again. “I think Sarah would do anything to get her way.”
I nodded slowly. “Me, too.”
“I won’t let her hurt you,” he said, fiercely now. He hands tensed, and his expression hardened.
“Not on purpose,” I whispered.
We both knew that Sarah could make him do anything. And that anything could include making him be the one who tried to hurt me. Until I could help him, I needed to keep Sarah away from her voodoo.
Noah reached across the bench seat of his old Chevy and grabbed my hand, pulling me closer, and I rested my head against his shoulder.
“Emily?” he said quietly.
I peered up at him, a question in my gaze.
His hand brushed mine. “About the other day –”
“Don’t,” I said. He’d already apologized a million times, and I didn’t want to think about it ever again. The more we thought about it, the more Sarah continued to hurt us with what she’d made him do. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He nodded once, but he didn’t break eye contact. “It’s not about you helping me anymore.”
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “I believe that.”
His face inched closer to mine, or mine to his, or maybe both. I think we were more frozen in that moment than the icicles hanging from the tree branches above, and yet I was so blazing hot inside that I would have melted if I were an icicle myself.
“Part of me wanted it,” he whispered. “To kiss you.”
I heard the longing and anger in his voice. Sarah had stolen that moment from him. From both of us.
“And you did, too, didn’t you?” he asked.
His words tingled in my chest. A burning heat traveled all the way up to my ears. I wasn’t sure I was ready to admit my feelings for him, but I couldn’t stop myself from whispering, “I think you already knew that.”
Forgiveness hung in the air around us. His fingertips touched my arm, sparking the smallest of nerve endings in my skin and chasing a shiver through my body.
“I hope so,” he whispered before his lips brushed against mine. I let out a small sigh as his mouth opened softly against mine.
Finally, it was happening: our first kiss. The way it should have happened – because we both wanted it to.
Turned out Noah was a much better kisser on his own than he’d been under Sarah’s command. By the time we came up for air, he had me under a spell of his own.
10
YOU’RE SCARING ME
Ididn’t ask my dad if I could go to Chinatown. A good parent would have to say no trips to New York on a school day. And, in an ideal world, my failure to clue him in meant he could honestly tell the school he had no idea where I was. I would face the consequences of my decision whenever I got home.
I left for school around my usual time then swung by Heather’s to pick her up. Her dad apparently had the day off from work because he stood outside scraping green paint off the shutters. A lawnmower sat parked in the middle of the overg
rown grass. He wiped sweat from his brow then waved.
“Hi, Emily!”
I waved back in a flash of rainbow fingernails. “Hi, Heather’s dad!”
He chuckled. It’d been an inside joke between us since the first time I’d come and blanked on their last name.
“Heather will be out in a minute,” he called back. Then he turned to his shutters once more, his fists plugged on his hips, paint scraper clutched in his right hand.
A few minutes later, Heather barreled out of the house, dressed in skinny jeans with boots and a dark gray, fur-trimmed, hooded wool coat. She stopped to kiss her dad on the cheek then hopped into my Corolla with a beaming smile.
“Your dad said yes?” she asked.
“Did yours?”
She grinned deviously. “I asked my mom after school yesterday during one of her soaps. I got a ’Huh? Yeah, sure, sweetie,’ and called it a day.”
“You’re evil.” I nodded to her dad. “Kinda cold out to be painting.”
Heather rubbed her hand over her forehead. “Oh my God. Don’t even talk about it. He paints like four times a year, but trust me, summers are the worst. Last year he got sun poisoning.”
“Say no more. Happened to me on a class trip in middle school. Not exactly the best day of my life.” I finished the coffee I brought with me and tossed the empty cup in the backseat. “I was thinking we should take the train. You good with that?”
She popped down the passenger side visor and slicked on a peachy lip gloss that complimented her freckles and red glasses. She smacked her lips and turned to me. “Is that how all the cute guys travel?”
I raised an eyebrow, shook my head, and shifted my car into drive. “We’re taking the train. I hate city parking.”
“Does the train at least play better music?”
I glared at her as I pulled onto the street. “What’s wrong with my music?”
“Is it even from this century? I’ve never heard most if it before. What was that song Noah played – one of yours?”
“It’s a sad state of affairs when Nirvana is forgotten,” I said. “But think of it this way – you don’t need to worry about me playing any songs you’re sick of hearing, yeah?”
By that point, I doubted she was listening. Her nose was in her cell phone.
“Parade starts at two,” she said.
I had no idea. I wasn’t actually going into the city for the parade. “If you say so. We can stop and get breakfast before we catch the 10 o’clock train.”
“Sounds good.” She shoved her phone into her bag. “What about you and Noah? I’m guessing you were with him all week?”
“Yep.”
“Then you forgave him for what he did?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t think you would. He kissed Sarah of all people. So he can kiss whomever he wants and play a song on the intercom and that’s it? All is forgiven?”
I gave her a sidelong glance, sighing heavily. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?”
I pulled into the diner parking lot, got out of the car, and started heading inside. Heather followed. We got our table and ate our breakfast, and she didn’t say another word about Noah or what had happened. That was one of the things I liked about her. Eventually, she figured out when to let things go.
I, on the other hand, refused to let things go. Which was why I was on my way to Chinatown.
Once in New York, we made our way to Mulberry Street where the parade would begin in Little Italy. I took out my cell phone and pulled up directions to my intended destination. A New Age place that, according to one of the forums online, listed voodoo as one of their specialties.
Problem was, I had clearly misjudged the distance between the parade location and the shop in Brooklyn. Thirty minutes if I walked. I sighed and put my phone back in my pocket. Not only would I have to get rid of Heather, but I would also need to hail a cab. Great.
“You okay?” Heather asked.
“Yeah, just wondering what we should do while we wait. Any ideas?”
Apparently she had more than a few. She’d been to the city a dozen times, which was a dozen more than me, so she wanted to show me everything. Too bad she couldn’t know why I was really here. She would have made a lovely tour guide.
As she explained the cultural importance of the different shops we visited, a strange feeling – something like guilt – twisted in the pit of my stomach. If I wasn’t mistaken, I think it meant I actually considered Heather a good friend – and myself a horrible one.
We stopped off for a late lunch at a restaurant her parents had taken her to once, and she convinced me to try calamari. She didn’t tell me until afterward what it was, but I’d never been squeamish. Fried squid? Down the hatch.
While we waited for dessert, Heather got a call from her dad. I motioned I was going to stop off at the bathroom, then debated if I had enough time to leave and come back, absence unnoticed. A cab would make it thirty minutes round trip, plus like what, ten in the shop?
Okay, it wasn’t enough time, no matter how I fudged the numbers. But I didn’t see another opportunity coming along anytime soon, and she was safer in the restaurant than alone on the streets of New York. I would come up with a decent lie either on my trip there or on the way back.
I swooped by the register, paid for our meals, and when I was certain she wasn’t watching, snuck out the door.
Movies made hailing a cab look easy, unless it was raining, so I was surprised at how hard it ended up being. Impossible, in fact, so I started walking the way my phone’s GPS indicated. I would call a cab for the way back – it shouldn’t be as busy by the shop as Little Italy and Chinatown.
On the way, I passed a street vendor with a wild collection of lipstick, one of which happened to be Heather’s favorite shade of red. I imagined it was the color she always wanted to wear but was too afraid to try. I traced my finger along the frosted plastic tube. Red Lizard. Hmm.
A woman with feathers in her hair tapped my shoulder. “You buy?”
“Oh.” I held it out to her, and she took it from me. “How much?”
I was already digging through my bag for my purse when she said, “Twenty dollars.”
I stopped. “Twenty dollars? For lipstick?”
She glowered. “Very good lipstick. Not cheap.”
My insides withered. I didn’t have time to barter, and it was the perfect color. And it was for Heather, my only friend. One I didn’t even deserve. The least I could do was spend the twenty dollars.
Begrudgingly, I forked over President Jackson in the form of green paper, and the vendor smiled as she dropped the lipstick in a plastic bag and handed it to me. “No returns.”
When she turned away, I checked my phone and realized I’d wasted five minutes I didn’t have. I picked up the pace to make up for lost time, my fingers, toes, and ears burning from cold by the time I made it to the shop. I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
It was not what I expected. Where were the funny herbal smells and beaded curtains? Or those weird altars and symbols and statues Sarah had used? A glance at the shelves showed scented sprays for blessing your home and floor cleaners that would keep ghosts away. This was Brooklyn’s best occult shop?
Maybe they kept the real stuff in the back. I approached the lady who smiled from a stool behind the register. Her ketchup-red hair fell in straggly waves past her shoulders, and her tan was kind of frightening, but other than that, she seemed “normal” enough. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, considering why I’d come here.
“Can I help you?”
“Umm,” I said, digging in my bag and pulling out my sketchpad. I didn’t hold it out right away. Perhaps I shouldn’t show her. I probably knew more about magic than she did.
“Were you needing something in particular?” S
he spread her hands to indicate all the store had to offer. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Don’t be scared. It’s not as ominous as it appears.”
Wow, she thought this was ominous?
I’d come all this way, so anything was worth a shot. I put my notebook back, for now, and approached the counter. “I’m actually wondering if you know anything about voodoo?”
Her eyebrows went up. “Oh, like those little dolls you stick pins in?”
“Sometimes, I guess.”
“I have this,” she said, holding up a large doll in a white apron dress. “It’s kind of voodoo-ish, don’t you think?”
I had come all this way and blew off my friend for this? I tried for a polite smile, but who knows how it turned out. “Thanks for trying to help me,” I said. “Do you possibly have some books on the topic?”
She shrugged and pointed to a bookshelf. “If we have any, they would be over there.”
She clearly didn’t know the inventory well. I picked through the books – not because I thought I would find anything, but more so because I thought it might seem weird to turn and bolt out the door. I needed to ease my way out.
So that’s what I did.
I even stopped by some shelves to check out the candles before pushing the door open to leave.
“See you soon,” she called after me, and I cringed. I’d hoped to get out unnoticed.
“Thank you,” I mumbled as I rushed out the door, already digging my cell phone out of my pocket to call for a cab.
I had several missed calls and texts from Heather.
WHERE ARE YOU?
OMG ARE YOU OKAY?
PLEASE ANSWER ME.
YOU’RE SCARING ME, EMILY. TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE AND I’LL MEET YOU.
I stopped at a street corner to return her text before calling a cab. But when I heard the shuffle of footsteps behind me, I froze. Peaking over my shoulder, I spotted a black-hooded figure stepping out of sight, between two buildings. I hurried my step, sending Heather a text as I walked.
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