Embrace

by Cherie Colyer

  “Ouch!” He leaned away from me and rubbed the sore spot.

  “Sorry,” I lied and wiggled my thumb and index finger over the floor, pretending to be getting his hair off my hand. What I managed to nab from him was pressed between my palm and two fingers. I feigned embarrassment. “My nail must have caught. You have a piece of thread in your hair.” I reached up with my other hand and ran a few strands of hair through my fingers—no yanking this time. I then showed him the thread I’d brought from home.

  When he wasn’t looking, I wrapped the hair I’d nabbed in the handkerchief.

  The absolute worst class to be in was History, the room Kaylee had lost it in.

  Paige got to class after me. She stopped at my desk and asked, “Is Kaylee still jumping on desks?”

  Emma, who was standing next to her with her arms wrapped around her books, snickered. “I wish I’d gotten that on film.” She laughed harder as she pushed Paige toward their seats behind me.

  “Nice.” I hung my purse over the back of my chair and faced the blackboard, hoping Paige would continue with her usual tradition of pretending I didn’t exist. Unfortunately, it seemed like the only time Paige didn’t ignore me was when I wanted her to.

  She tapped my shoulder, which left me no choice but to turn in my seat and face her. “What?”

  “I was only kidding.”

  “Oh, please. Like you suddenly care about Kaylee or me.”

  “I don’t have anything against Kaylee.”

  Which pretty much confirmed she did have something against me, but I was so past caring.

  “How’s she doing?” Paige asked, more civilly this time.

  “We’re all concerned,” Emma said. She rested her elbows on her desk and leaned toward me. “Really. Have the doctors been able to help her?”

  Several of our classmates watched us, waiting to hear about it. I sighed. “She’s about the same.”

  Sarah sat in front of me and rested a hand on my arm. She looked around us. “I’m sure Madison has been asked about Kaylee all morning. Let’s give her a break.” When the others went back to pulling books and pens out of their backpacks and talking amongst themselves, she whispered, “Was last night about Kaylee? Is she better?”

  Sarah was one of Kaylee’s oldest friends too, and the concern etched across her face made it impossible for me to let her believe Kaylee hadn’t gotten any better.

  I leaned even closer to her. “Yes, but don’t say anything. Not yet.”

  Sarah nodded, and in a normal voice, said, “Tell Kaylee to get better and that I said hi and we miss her and not to worry about the festival.”

  No problem on the last item. I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought since the last week.

  Sarah went on. “I talked to Mrs. Sheppard, and she’ll have her classes bake a mix of chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and sugar cookies. I’m going to tape up fliers in the halls at lunch asking for volunteers to bring other baked goods or work the booths. Mark and Ben said we’re all set on the decorations.”

  I nodded.

  Mrs. Parris started the day’s lesson, and I did my best not to stare at the clock. That was pretty much what I did for the rest of the day: tried not to notice how very slowly the minute hand on every single clock at school ticked forward. When it was finally over, in my rush to get to the student parking lot, I tripped down the stairs and would have been kissing the floor if I hadn’t landed in someone’s arms.

  Chapter 13

  The Visitor

  I TRIED TO MAINTAIN some sort of dignity and get my feet under myself so that I could see on whom I’d just fallen, but that was easier said than done. My purse strap had ended up under the sneaker of my yet-to-be-seen savior, and my backpack twisted oddly around my arm.

  “Are you okay?” asked a familiar voice.

  He helped me regain my balance. His deep blue eyes met mine.

  “Kevin!” My arms were around his neck before he had a chance to respond. “Why didn’t you call?”

  He laughed and hugged me back. When we let go, I took a step away. The last six months had been good to him. He’d grown: I’d have bet he was six feet now, and he’d lost the roundness in his cheeks, which contoured his face in all the right places. His hair was still a disheveled mass of russet brown. His smile reached his eyes.

  “I called a couple weeks ago, on Saturday. Chase said you were out with friends.”

  That would have been the night of the party, the night I’d met Isaac. I hadn’t heard from Kevin in a few weeks, and he decides to call me the night I meet someone else. I didn’t miss the irony in that.

  “When I didn’t hear back from you,” he continued, “I decided to come to Gloucester and surprise you.”

  I shook my head. “Chase forgot to tell me.”

  We stood there a moment. Kevin was right in front of me, close enough that I could have put my arm around his waist, and even though we weren’t going out anymore, I couldn’t get myself to tell him I was dating someone else—not after he’d come all this way to see me. Meanwhile, Isaac was waiting for me at his house. I was so screwed.

  “Do you still hang out with Kaylee and Josh?” he asked.

  “Um, yeah.”

  Damn, this wasn’t fair. Two weeks earlier, I would have been thrilled to death to see Kevin. I would have been talking his ear off. This day, well, it left me confused. I liked Kevin. He had been my first real boyfriend, yet seeing him after all this time didn’t make my heart race like when I saw Isaac. I really, really liked Isaac. Maybe it was because our relationship was new. Maybe he had bewitched me with his powers. I didn’t know, but I wanted time to figure that out. Besides, we had pressing business to take care of. We had to bind Mark before he realized Kaylee was missing. Before he realized we were onto him.

  “Kevin, I really wish you would have called. I have somewhere I’m supposed to be.”

  He kept his eyes on his shoes. “Can I give you a ride?”

  I looked toward the exit. “Josh is waiting for me.”

  “Oh.” Kevin rocked back and forth, heel to toe. “I’ll walk you to the parking lot.”

  “That’d be great.” We headed toward the double doors to the parking lot. The silence between us seemed louder than a roused-up crowd at a basketball game. It drove me crazy, so I asked, “Will you be in town for a while? Maybe we can get together another day?”

  Kevin’s mood seemed to perk up. “For the week. I’m at my grandparents’ house.”

  He grabbed my backpack, fished out a crumpled piece of paper from its depths, and held it up. “Need this?”

  It was a worksheet I’d completed last month for History. “No.”

  “Great.” He found a pen next and scribbled across the back of the paper before tearing it in half. “My new cell phone number. Call me when you get home.”

  He stuck the pen back in my backpack and handed me the number. “Don’t lose it.”

  “I won’t.”

  Josh was leaning against his car when we approached.

  “Dude.” Josh gave Kevin one of his playful slugs in the shoulder that he reserved for his good friends. Kevin smiled and slugged back. “I didn’t know you were in town.” Then, as if Josh had just realized I was standing here, he added an uncomfortable, “Oh.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it great?” I giggled nervously. “He wanted to surprise me.”

  “Yeah. Great,” Josh repeated, his eyes wide.

  “Am I missing something?” Kevin tensed and looked from Josh to me. “Are you guys dating now?”

  Josh choked out a “What?”

  I had to pick my jaw up off the asphalt. “Of course not! He’s dating my best friend.”

  “Well, you guys are acting awfully strange.” Kevin shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

  “It’s been a strange couple of days,” Josh admitted. He then explained, “Kaylee’s been sick.”

  “I’m sorry.” Kevin’s shoulders relaxed. “Is it serious?”

  “Doctors have
n’t been able to say,” Josh replied. “Her parents aren’t allowing many visitors. We’re heading over to see her.”

  “I’m sorry Kevin, really,” I said, resting a hand on his arm. “Your timing’s just bad.”

  Boy was it bad—two-weeks-late bad. There was a time I would have told Kevin anything, and I felt horrible not telling him the truth now. But how could I? The truth included Isaac. How would I word that? A lot has changed since you left. I discovered I have magical powers. Josh does too. Kaylee was cursed, but Josh managed to break the curse by destroying a necklace. Now we’re putting together a spell of our own to bind the jerk that did this. Oh, and by the way, the person who did this likes me, and I have a new boyfriend, who has powers too.

  You just didn’t have conversations like that. Men in blue coats would come take you away in a white jacket with extra-long sleeves, and I had it on good authority there was a vacancy on the fifth floor at the hospital.

  “You around awhile?” Josh asked. “It’d be nice to catch up.”

  Kevin nodded. “I’m at my grandparents’. Madison has my new number.”

  I held it up as proof.

  “Do you need a ride?” Josh took his keys from his pocket. “I could drop you off before we go to see Kaylee.”

  “No.” Kevin tilted his head toward the other side of the parking lot. “I have my grandma’s car.”

  “I’ll call you,” I promised. And I would. Not because my powers made my word unbreakable, but because I wanted to know how he’d been and what life in Minnesota was like. I gave him a hug, minus a kiss—which was weird considering our history—and got in Josh’s car. Josh said his goodbyes and got in next to me.

  “That was awkward,” Josh commented.

  I groaned. “He must think I’m a jerk.”

  “He couldn’t have picked a worse time to visit. We can’t tell him about the powers or what happened to Kaylee.”

  My head fell back against the seat. “I know that.”

  “Sooo…” Josh let the word drag on while he started the car. “You and Isaac are dating, right? I mean you guys seemed to really hit it off, and The Grill was a date, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I moaned. Why couldn’t life be easy? Why couldn’t it leave old doors closed after new ones opened?

  Josh ignored the pained expression on my face and continued, “And now Kevin’s back, and you promised to call him.”

  “Josh. Stop. Please. Kevin and I had a lot of great times. I can’t tell him to get lost. To answer the question you’re not asking, yes, I like Isaac.” An understatement, really—I was falling hopelessly in love with him, but I didn’t need Josh relaying that to Isaac. “I’d like to spend more time with Isaac once we get this situation with Mark under control. I will call Kevin because I told him I would and because he came all this way to see me. I’m screwed, okay? I don’t want to hurt Kevin, and I don’t want to lose Isaac. Ugh! My head’s spinning just thinking about it.”

  Josh studied me. I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned.

  “O-kaay,” he said. I wished he’d started driving already. “We’ll talk about something else. Did you get what you were supposed to?”

  I held up my purse with the handkerchief and Mark’s hair tucked inside. “How about you?”

  Josh pulled a not-so-white sock from the pocket of his jacket. “Nabbed it while he was in the shower after Gym. You should have heard him when he went to get dressed. He was still swearing when I slipped out of the locker room.”

  I was anxious to get back to Isaac’s. Josh put the car in reverse, made it about a foot out of the parking space, and slammed on the brakes. I looked behind us in time to see a yellow hatchback speed past. Then, when we were a couple of blocks from the school, a guy in a blue minivan ran a red light at the exact moment we were going through the intersection. It was like the van had come out of nowhere. Josh threw his right hand up, and his power streaked past me. The van suddenly moved in slow motion. I could have reached out and plucked the Toyota logo off its grill; we were that close. A series of brakes screeching and car horns blaring rang out behind us as I tried to get my fingers to unlock themselves from around the door handle.

  I looked over at Josh in amazement. His hands clenched the steering wheel as he took several slow, deep breaths. We should have been dead or at least in critical condition, like Kaylee should have been last week. The day her car had acted up, if Josh hadn’t been following her home, the semi-truck would have turned her MINI Cooper into a pile of mangled metal with her inside. I would have thanked him for saving her and us if he didn’t look like he needed a few minutes to let what had just happened sink in.

  Josh’s full attention remained on driving, which left my mind to wander back to Kevin. It was good to see him, even for just a few minutes, and knowing he came here to see me made me feel like a loser for not dropping everything to spend the afternoon with him. But I couldn’t, not until we took care of Mark. I figured I’d make it up to Kevin. Maybe invite him over for dinner; Chase and Dad would love to see him. And with Kevin only being here a week, there was no reason for me to mention Isaac.

  I had the entire dinner planned—right down to the chopped nuts and whipped cream for the hot fudge sundaes—before I realized I’d been so lost in thought I hadn’t paid any attention to where Josh was driving, so it took me by surprise when he stopped the car in the middle of nowhere. We were on a dirt road. Off in the distance, surrounded by untouched countryside, an abandoned barn leaned against the horizon. One glance at the clock told me I’d managed to zone out for close to twenty minutes.

  “Why are we here?” I didn’t like the feel of the place. It was desolate, and the air was wrong. Chilled. Not your normal autumn chill, but a deep-down-in-your-soul chill. Maybe only those who have embraced the powers would feel it. I wished I couldn’t.

  “Isaac texted. We need dirt from a crossroad.” Josh grabbed some paper out of the glove compartment and went to open his door.

  I grabbed his arm. “Don’t you feel that? It’s not safe.”

  “I feel it. It’s safe enough. Just don’t go burying a box of personal items and asking for a favor.” His tone was as serious as a priest’s at a funeral.

  I nodded, remembering an old myth—maybe there was some truth to it—about burying personal items in the middle of a crossroad and making a deal with the devil in return for your soul, to be collected at a later date by the hound dogs of hell.

  Josh used the heel of his shoe to loosen the dirt, and then he scraped it onto the paper with his school ID. I scanned the countryside, looking for the eyes I could feel watching us. The one minute we were there was the longest sixty seconds of my life. I didn’t feel safe until we turned into Isaac’s driveway and passed under the red and gold web of maple branches extending from his yard.

  Isaac’s mom answered the door. She had a dishtowel in her hand.

  “Hi, Mrs. Addington,” Josh said. “Is Isaac home?”

  “He’s in his room.” She stepped aside to let us in. “Go on down.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Josh and I made it to the top of the basement stairs and stopped. An inky void, blacker than the darkest night, loomed before us. The air smelled musty like an old crawlspace and seemed to moan and groan. I didn’t want to go down there, which turned out to be the same feeling the basement had about us. I could have sworn I heard a low guttural growl say, Go away.

  Josh went to step down on the first step, but paused and brought his foot back up to the hallway. He held his arm out to the side. “Ladies first.”

  I looked into the darkness. “No way.”

  “Josh, Madison.” Isaac’s voice drifted up through the void. “Come on down.”

  An amber glow reached up toward us. Vanilla and spice replaced the rank smell. The candles in the nooks came alive all at once, lighting the stairway. I let Josh go first; this way, if the candles went out, I’d be closer to the first floor. My nerves were on edge. I made it a few steps, tripped
, and slammed into Josh’s back with all my weight. He grabbed one of the nooks in the wall to keep from falling.

  “Sorry,” I said, more embarrassed than anything else.

  “It’s okay.” Josh helped me steady myself and asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” And to get the attention off my clumsiness, I asked Isaac, “What was that darkness all about?”

  “I added an unwelcome ward,” Isaac explained. “I have to invite you down before you’re able to see what the basement really looks like. Once you’re invited, you always see through the spell.”

  “Didn’t your mom ask why you’d need that?” Josh inquired.

  “Kaylee hid in my bathroom while I asked my mom if she could bring me some aspirin, which essentially invited her down here. I’ll come up with a way to invite my dad when he gets home. Did you get everything?”

  Josh held up the sock and folded piece of paper. I took the handkerchief from my purse.

  Kaylee sat on a pillow in the center of the room. She had a half-full sixteen-ounce bottle of soda, needle, thread, and several small bowls filled with various things I didn’t recognize arranged in front of her. Isaac handed me a ceramic plate, container of salt, and a small dagger-like knife. He handed Josh a length of rope, a white votive candle, and a bottle of water.

  “Unravel a few pieces of rope,” Isaac instructed. “We’ll need them for the poppet.”

  “Poppet?” I asked. The knife slipped from my hand and fell to the floor, point-down and a mere hair’s width from my boot. I quickly picked it up.

  Isaac raised an eyebrow.

  Kaylee grabbed a couple more pillows from the bed and tossed them on the floor so there was one for each of us. “It’s the doll for our binding spell.”

  I had a pang of jealousy that Kaylee had gotten to spend the day with Isaac. She probably knew more about magic than I did. I wanted my best friend to be informed, but while she’d spent the day learning about spells and poppets with my boyfriend, I’d gotten to take a pop quiz in history, endure an endless parade of classmates asking me if Kaylee was okay, and sit next to the slime ball who’d caused this mess in the first place. My hands became sweaty, and this time the knife and the plate and salt slipped and fell onto the floor. The plate shattered into a gazillion small pieces.