Mary (Bloody Mary)

by Hillary Monahan

  “That’s neat,” Kitty said, taking the letter to skim it. When she was done, she slid it onto the coffee table between two pizza boxes, narrowly avoiding a run-in with a puddle of grease. “It’d be cool if it’s really Blood Mary’s letter.”

  Anna shrugged. “There’s nothing in that letter that screams ‘scary ghost chick.’ Husbands and pastors and mean girls? So what?”

  Anna was being harsh, but that edge was part of her personality. She was blunt to a fault.

  “Well, it could be Bloody Mary,” I said. “I mean, yeah, there’s the possibility it’s not, but if everyone in town says it is, why is it so ridiculous to consider it?”

  “Seriously,” Jess said. “Have a little imagination, Anna. Grandpa had me talk to my great-aunt Dell. She’s as weird as he is, by the way, Shauna. Like, seriously creepy old lady. Anyway, she filled me in on the summoning details. She says there’s a real way to do it. I think she was trying to scare me, but I want to try it anyway.”

  “So do it. Why do you need us?” Anna pressed.

  “The summoning has to be four girls, that’s why. Otherwise I’d ask Marc and Bron—” Jess cut herself off with a muttered curse. She wasn’t supposed to mention Bronx. He’d dumped Kitty three weeks ago, and Kitty had spent every day since weeping and listening to their song while one of the three of us stroked her hair and told her it was okay.

  The problem was that Bronx was best friends with Jess’s boyfriend, Marc. Jess couldn’t exactly ditch Bronx in a show of solidarity, and so there was static. It wasn’t like Jess talked about Bronx a lot, but saying his name was enough to make Kitty go slouchy and cast her eyes to the floor.

  I had to swallow a groan. After three weeks, Kitty’s kicked-dog routine was getting old, but my irritation was tempered by the knowledge that her melancholy wasn’t a manipulation tactic. She had zero self-esteem. Kitty was a solid forty pounds heavier than the rest of us and she seemed to think it made her disgusting. Bronx had certainly liked her curves, but Kitty saw herself as the ugly duckling no matter how many times I pointed out her stunning green eyes and gorgeous caramel-colored hair.

  Jess didn’t have the same kind of patience. She’d done her best to overlook Kitty’s moroseness, but lately, Jess rolled her eyes to the ceiling and gritted her teeth. “It makes me feel like a bad friend,” she’d told me in confidence, “like she thinks I’m trying to hurt her, and I’m not.” I understood Jess’s perspective. Intentionally or not, Kitty was laying a major guilt trip on Jess’s shoulders. If she could stop being passive-aggressive, they’d probably be fine, but that wasn’t Kitty’s way.

  Looking between the two of them, I knew we’d skated onto thin ice. Kitty was shriveled in the chair next to the television while Jess’s mouth pinched into a grimace, her eyes narrowed to feline slits. Kitty was about to get a massive blast of Jess fury to the face. I really didn’t want to have to pick up those pieces, so I grabbed the pages of the Mary Worth letter and waved them over my head, a red flag before the bull. I knew it’d at least distract Jess from the imminent danger of a meltdown.

  “This. We should do this,” I said. “The Bloody Mary thing. It’d be cool.”

  Anna caught on to my great distraction plan and hauled herself up from the floor to reach for the letter. “Sure, why not? It’s not like anything will happen. But if it’ll shut Jess up, I am totally down for it.”

  Jess ignored the jab. She was too busy erupting into excited, ear-piercing squeals, like we’d crowned her prom queen for the second time this year. She vaulted the couch to throw herself into the seat beside me, her arms snaking out to jerk me into a spine-crushing hug. She may have been a skinny chick, but she could give hugs that’d make a grizzly bear squirm.

  “Awesome! Kitty, you in?” she asked. Kitty was nodding her head before Jess even got the question out. Depression or not, Kitty fell into line with the rest of us because that’s just what Kitty did.

  If I had known that days later we’d be watching Bloody Mary scratch at Anna’s bathroom mirror, I might have thought twice.

  “That shouldn’t have worked,” Anna said, slumping on the floor between the toilet and the wall. Her hands kept raking through the hair at her temples like it needed to be patted into place. “There is no way that should have worked. How? How did it work?”

  Kitty nodded her agreement from inside the tub. After we’d broken the handhold and turned on the light, Kitty jumped inside the bath to lie down, her head tilted back like she wanted the shower to rain a better reality over her. She was stiff with fear. Her eyes bulged, a flush stained her cheeks. Her right hand was white-knuckled on the side of the tub, like she needed something solid to hold on to while she reconciled the impossible thing that had just happened.

  “But it did happen,” Jess said gleefully. She pulled a red notebook from her backpack and perched on the bathroom vanity, her butt in the sink, her back to the salted mirror like it hadn’t just had clawed ghost hands menacing it. She recorded every detail of the summoning, including the time and which cardinal points people stood on when Mary appeared. There were papers glued to the first few pages of the notebook, presumably the letter she’d shown us. Jess was keeping everything in one tidy place for all her Bloody Mary needs.

  “How are you not even a little bit bothered by this?” I asked. I didn’t look as rattled as Anna, and I wasn’t catatonic like Kitty, but I had my own issues. My head pounded like a one-man band was doing laps across my forehead.

  “I am freaked out a little, too, but it was so cool. Wasn’t it? It was awesome!” Jess insisted. She grinned at me and rubbed her shoulders like she was cold. Maybe she was a little more bugged out than I gave her credit for, though it still took massive stones to sit on the sink with her back to the mirror like that. “Bloody Mary. We did it. Like, really for real. How awesome is that?”

  “Awesome in the broadest sense of the word, maybe,” Anna returned. “I’m not so sure what we just did was smart. Some stuff is better left to books and movies. The reality is too…I don’t know. It’s too something. And that something isn’t necessarily good.”

  “No way,” Jess said, hopping down and turning around to scoop the salt off the vanity. I wished she wouldn’t do that. It made me feel safer to have it around, but she’d brushed it aside before I could make my mouth form the request to keep it there. The headache was wreaking havoc on me. “We’ve done something only a handful of other people have ever done. We’ve done something historic. Yes, it was scary, but she’s a ghost! Ghosts are supposed to be scary.”

  I started to see Jess’s point. It had been exciting until it turned terrifying, and even then the terror was pure adrenaline. I’d only felt uncomfortable when Kitty began her freak-out dance beside me. “I guess,” I said. “I just got…I feel a little sick. I got scared it’d go bad at the end. We never really talked about what would happen if we screwed up.”

  “There’s no point discussing it if we’re not going to screw it up. Which reminds me. You,” Jess said, whirling on Kitty. Jess leaned over the tub so far, her profile was hidden behind a veil of blond hair. The only thing I could see from my position on the floor was Kitty’s bewildered, slightly gassy expression.

  I swallowed a groan. Why had I brought it up? I knew Jess would go after Kitty sooner or later. I didn’t have to make it sooner. I braced, ready to intervene if Jess got bitchy. For all that she was my best friend, she had a mean streak, and Kitty was the poorest equipped of our group to handle Jess when she was riled.

  “What’d I say about the handhold?” Jess demanded.

  “I’m sorry. I got scared,” Kitty replied. I watched her sink farther into the tub, shrinking away like Jess was going to unhinge her jaw and swallow her whole.

  “I said there were three things we had to do. One, line the mirror. Two, light the candle. Three, and most importantly…” Jess let the thought linger.

  “Hold hands, I know,” Kitty said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry won’t cut it if you
screw it up next time. Hold it together, or if you can’t, I’ll have to get someone else.” Jess’s hand reached down to pat Kitty’s shoulder. It was supposed to be a reassuring gesture, but Kitty flinched like Jess was going to beat her to death.

  “Wait, there’s a next time now? You want to do this again?” Anna asked. I was guessing she was less interested in a repeat performance than Jess was. Or I was, to be fair. I was curious about the rest of the Bloody Mary package. I wanted to see what was attached to those hands, but there was no way Anna would listen to me.

  Jess, however, stood a chance of convincing her. Jess was one of the most charismatic people on the planet when she put her mind to something, and even the iceberg that was Anna Sasaki would melt in the wake of an impassioned Jess speech. Jess wasn’t stupid. She didn’t get great grades like me or Anna, and she spent most of her time texting instead of paying attention in class, but she was clever. She understood people. If she wanted us to do something, she’d appeal to us in whatever way would get her results.

  Jess slithered past me to sit down in front of Anna. The bathroom was so small their knees touched, but that didn’t stop Jess from worming her way in so Anna was forced to look right at her. “How are you not seeing how amazing this is?” Jess asked. “I know it was scary, and scary is usually bad, but this is different. It’s a miracle that it worked. Doesn’t that excite you? That you’re doing something other people can’t? I bet fewer people have seen Bloody Mary than have…I don’t know. Climbed Mount Everest. Or gone into space.”

  “Well, yes.” Anna groaned, leaning her head against the tiled wall beside her. “It’s scary. I’m also not sure it’s safe. She clawed the glass. What if she’s violent?”

  “She’s violent on the other side of the mirror. She can’t hurt us while our hands are held. We control the summoning, we control her. You know?” Jess grabbed Anna’s hand, giving it a long, reassuring squeeze. “One more time. What can it hurt?”

  Anna jerked away with a sigh. The moment I heard that sound, I knew Jess had won. “Fine. Fine! But if something happens to me, I’m going to come back and haunt you. I will haunt you when you pee. I will haunt you when you’re making out with Marc. I will make you miserable for the rest of your life.”

  “How’s that different from any other day of the week?” Jess flashed Anna a grin before whirling around to look at me. “Tomorrow for another summoning, yeah?” She glanced between me and Kitty. Both of us nodded, though mine was more enthusiastic. Kitty was afraid, but Jess had already given her the out if she didn’t want to come along. There were more than enough second-string friends to replace her. Laurie Carmichael and Becca Miller came immediately to mind, two girls from Jess’s softball team who followed Jess around like puppies.

  “Cool. One thing, though.” Jess whirled in a circle so she could look at all of us, her finger pointed at each of our faces. “No parents. My mom would flip if she knew what I was up to. They won’t believe you, anyway, so unless you want to look stupid, keep it quiet.”

  I hadn’t considered telling my mom, but Jess had a point. If I told my mother that I’d conjured an evil ghost in a mirror, she’d probably look at me funny before asking if I needed to see a doctor.

  “Right,” I said, Anna and Kitty nodding along with me.

  “Good. Okay, I’ve got to get home for dinner. You coming, Shauna?” Jess asked.

  “Sure,” I said. My mom had worked doubles since Monday, so Jess had dragged me home with her every day this week. Mrs. McAllister always seemed happy to have me, and I always thanked her profusely for the meal, feeling like a charity case.

  “Let’s go,” Jess said, slipping out of the bathroom. She handed me my backpack as I followed her into the hallway.

  I could hear Kitty and Anna talking quietly behind me. I poked my head back inside the bathroom to say bye to them. They waved, both looking tired and scared, and in Anna’s case, a little irritable. She had her glasses off and was rubbing her eyes. Her hair had escaped its clip and had slithered over her shoulders like a black waterfall. Kitty had cried so much, her eyeliner had smudged down her cheeks in black tracks.

  “See you two tomorrow,” I said.

  “Later,” Jess echoed, and we climbed the front stairs to get to the driveway. Jess drove a hybrid car so green, it practically glowed in the dark, but she liked it and that was all that mattered. I climbed inside and buckled my seat belt, my hand already looping around the handle in the ceiling. One too many car rides with Jess had taught me to hold tight or risk massive head trauma when she took corners.

  “Can you call your mom and make sure it’s okay that I come over?” I asked when she climbed in beside me. “I don’t want to crash again without asking.”

  Jess nodded and pulled out her cell. Two minutes later we were headed back to her house, four neighborhoods away.

  The whole “honorary McAllister kid” status was fine until Todd, Jess’s seven-year-old brother, decided to annoy me like I was his real older sister.

  “Shauna, guess what?”

  “What?”

  “No, you’ve got to guess.”

  “Uhhh…” I said, concentrating on putting my napkin across my lap so I wouldn’t have to answer.

  “Shaaaauna. You have to guess!”

  “Todd,” Jess warned, slapping a wad of green bean casserole onto his plate so hard, bits of it splattered over the front of his blue T-shirt.

  “Eat your dinner before it gets cold,” Mrs. McAllister said. She leaned over the table to stuff a buttered biscuit in his mouth to muffle him. “I’m sorry, Shauna. ‘Guess what’ is one of the lovelier things he picked up in school. Oh, Jess, Marc called while you were out. He said he couldn’t get your cell. Give him a call after dinner.”

  Jess had shut off her phone when we were summoning Mary so we wouldn’t have any interruptions. Marc must have called while we were incommunicado.

  “Thanks,” Jess said.

  The thing I liked best about coming to Jess’s house, besides the food, was the noise. Being an only child with a mother who worked all the time meant my apartment was tomb-silent. Sometimes it was okay. I could hear myself think to get my homework done, I could read or go online without any interruptions. But it was isolating, too. Here, with Mr. McAllister’s loud deejay voice, Mrs. McAllister’s propensity to drone on about anything that came to mind, Jess’s phone ringing off the hook, and Todd’s unbridled energy, I was distracted. I let the family’s whirlwind swallow me.

  “How was studying today, girls?” Mr. McAllister said with a mouthful of green beans I really wished he’d kept to himself. Apparently, instead of telling her parents she’d convinced her best friends to summon a deranged ghost, Jess had told them we were studying. Her parents should have known better. Jess didn’t know the meaning of the word study.

  “We didn’t get as much done as we’d like. We’ll probably finish up after dinner,” Jess said, the lie sliding smoothly off her tongue.

  “Then I don’t want to hear the TV on.” Mrs. McAllister gave us a pointed look. “And this isn’t going to be an all-night thing, either. Bed by midnight, Jess.”

  “Can you talk to me like an adult? Seventeen, not seven.” Jess hunched in her seat, stabbing her chicken like it was the dead bird’s fault her mother nagged her.

  “Maybe if you hadn’t spent all last term on the phone with Marc, you wouldn’t have gotten C’s and D’s on your report card. You’re far too smart for bad grades, and softball’s only going to get you so far.”

  The amazing thing about Todd, besides his ability to get anything in the universe stuck up his nose, was his complete lack of survival instinct. For some ungodly reason, he picked that exact moment to launch into a string of whining that was so high-pitched and irritating, I couldn’t understand a word he said. Eventually, I figured out something about giant robots and dinosaurs and going to the movies, but it had practically required a translator and a Todd-to-English dictionary to reason it out.

  “Saturda
y, Todd. Your father already told you that. Whining’s not going to get you there any quicker. Now finish your dinner,” Mrs. McAllister said.

  “But Moooooom. I want to gooooo.”

  “Oh, my God, will you shut up about that stupid movie? It’s all you talk about. You’re so annoying sometimes,” Jess snapped. The combination of Kitty’s flip-out, her mom’s scolding, and Todd’s Toddness had frayed Jess’s last nerve. I knew it was coming, but I’d hoped to be clear of the shrapnel before the bomb went off.

  Mrs. McAllister’s hand jerked out to grab Jess’s wrist, her expression dark. “Knock it off. Seventeen, not seven, remember?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Not ‘whatever.’ It wasn’t so long ago that you were throwing tantrums, and you’d better believe we didn’t treat you like you just treated your brother. Check the attitude.”

  “Apologize,” Mr. McAllister said.

  Jess rolled her eyes. “Fine. Sorry, Toad.”

  “Jessica!”

  “…Sorry, Todd.”

  Dinner conversation petered out after that exchange. I helped clear the table, meticulously scraping each plate before putting it into the dishwasher. Jess was already halfway up the stairs to her room when I asked if I could be excused. Mrs. McAllister smiled and nodded, her voice getting louder when she said, “Your friend still has better table manners than you, Jessica.”

  Another one of Jess’s whatevers floated down the staircase.

  I grabbed my book bag from the floor of the kitchen and followed Jess to her bedroom. In the McAllister stairwell, there was a decorative mirror hanging among the family portraits. I caught a glimpse of my reflection mid-step and a shiver racked my spine. For all that I’d come down from Bloody Mary during dinner, seeing that glass made the unrest slither back. I ran the rest of the way to Jess’s room, my eyes pinned to the floor.

  The second the bedroom door clicked behind me, Jess pulled out the red spiral notebook from her backpack and looked over her Bloody Mary notes. I sat on her bed and grabbed a stuffed pony Marc had won for her at the summer carnival last year. It rested on my stomach, and I bent its ears back and played with its hooves while Jess plunked down in front of her computer, her hand shaking the mouse to clear her screen saver.