From Bad to Cursed

by Katie Alender

  “Go back to the thing about skiing,” Kasey said.

  I clicked back through the history and scrolled down to Zeergonater’s second entry in the thread, where he’d posted a picture of his prized snow skis.

  “Look,” Kasey said, pointing at the screen. Lightly etched in the red paint of each ski were three letters: LBO.

  I scrolled down the phone directory listings.

  Lance B. O’Doyle. And a phone number. I grabbed my cell phone and dialed.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Lance?”

  A pause. “Maybe.”

  “I have a question for you. About a person named Aralt.”

  “I told you people to leave me alone!” he snapped. “I took down the stupid webpage. It was just a genealogy thing I did for my grandmother!”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I don’t care about the page or why you took it down.”

  He paused. “Then…how do you know about Aralt?”

  “I just heard about him somewhere. I’m curious.”

  “Ha,” he said. “Haven’t you ever heard that curiosity killed the cat? Listen, little girl. You don’t want to get messed up with Aralt. There are people out there who can—and will—wipe the floor with you.”

  I’m going to be honest. It sounded a little melodramatic to me. “Please,” I said. “I’ll never bother you again. Just tell me what you know about Aralt.”

  “Oh, I know you’ll never bother me again,” he said. “You’ll never find me again.”

  But he hadn’t refused to answer my questions.

  “Your website said something about County Kildare?” I said. “Ireland, right? Is that where he’s from?”

  He sighed. “The O’Doyles—my ancestors—were one of the best families in the county, even though they weren’t titled. Titles aren’t everything.”

  There was a defensive edge to his voice that told me I’d better turn on the flattery. “No, of course not.”

  “Aralt Edmund Faulkner was the Duke of Weymouth. He lucked into the title after his uncle died at sea. He was a playboy—he’d make women fall in love with him, then break their hearts and leave them ruined. And it was a bad thing to be a ruined woman back then. A few of them killed themselves. So his family basically shipped him off to Ireland to keep him out of trouble.”

  “Sounds like a jerk,” I dared to say.

  “Yeah, well, when he messed with the O’Doyles, he went too far,” Lance said, and I heard a note of pride in his voice. “My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was Captain Desmond O’Doyle, an officer in the Royal Navy. He came home after a long campaign to find his wife five months pregnant with another man’s child.”

  “Aralt’s?” I asked.

  “Bingo,” Lance said. “She was so overcome with shame that she threw herself off a bridge.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “So Desmond challenged Aralt to a duel, which of course Aralt lost, because he was a lazy playboy. And even as he lay on his deathbed, another young woman he’d seduced was with him, weeping and professing her love.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Some peasant. Maybe a traveler—like a gypsy? She disappeared after he died, but legend says she took his heart with her so he would always be hers.”

  Um, ew. “And what about the book?” I asked. “The libris exanimus?”

  “The what?”

  I decided to change the subject. “Who made you take down your website?”

  “I don’t know who they are,” he said. “They’re cowards. They hid behind a pair of lawyers who did everything but break my kneecaps.”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “Who knows? They aren’t descendants—the line died with the Duke, I’m happy to say. I mean, out of twenty pages of history, I had one that mentioned Aralt Faulkner, and they sicced their lawyers on me like a couple of junkyard dogs.” He paused. “Now. How did you find me?”

  As I answered his question, I heard clicking keys in the background. By the time we were off the phone, the Internet postings and picture of the skis would be long gone.

  “Now, listen,” he said. “I’m not kidding, little girl. You don’t want to mess with these people.”

  Kasey tugged on my sleeve. She flipped back through her notebook to the page marked OUIJA BOARD. Under EXANIM was written ELSPETH.

  “Um, one more question—was Desmond’s wife’s name Elspeth, by any chance?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “It was Radha.”

  I shook my head at my sister.

  “Was anybody named that?” Kasey whispered.

  “What was that? Who’s there?” Lance asked. “Who’s listening?”

  “Nobody,” I said. “Just my little sister.”

  “Okay,” Lance said. “Now listen up, Dora the Explorer. If you dig any deeper on Aralt, you’re going to get in way over your head. Why don’t you and your little sister go find some dolls to play with?”

  The line went dead.

  “Dolls,” I said. “Right.”

  “He’s a little uptight,” Kasey said.

  “We know who Aralt was,” Megan said. “That’s pretty good for one day.”

  It didn’t seem all that good to me. “Knowing he was a womanizer doesn’t help us. It just reinforces the whole ‘lusty’ thing.”

  “And the gypsy—that’s something.” Megan went to my mother’s dresser and stared dreamily at herself in the mirror. “It’s kind of romantic, don’t you think?”

  “Which part?” I asked. “That he left a trail of ruined women, or that they killed themselves to erase the shame of falling for the wrong guy?”

  She drew back, looking offended. “I’m not saying I want it to happen to me. I’m just saying, to love someone so much you’d give up everything for them is…”

  “It’s sick,” Kasey said. “Sorry.”

  Megan lifted her nose snootily. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

  It wasn’t that I approved of the way Megan was defending Aralt. But when you loved someone—really loved them—was it really so wrong to want to give up everything for their sake?

  You know, objectively speaking.

  I’d never thought about it before. I studied the computer screen.

  Kasey closed out of the browser. “I’m with Megan,” she said. “I think that might be enough for today.”

  I was about to reply when we heard the rumbling of the garage door.

  “Mom’s home!” I said. “Clear the history!”

  I handed Megan her shirt, and she ran to the bathroom to change. Tashi had been right. None of my usual stain-removal methods had even come close to working.

  Kasey’s fingers dashed around the keyboard. “I’m going to say I’ve been working on an English essay,” she said. “You go!”

  I hurried to the living room and plunked down on the sofa seconds before Mom came in from the garage.

  She reached the end of the hall and looked me up and down. “Honey, you’re not ready!”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding?” she asked. “Your interview! We really should have left already.”

  Oh, right. Young Visionaries.

  Megan waved good-bye and left, and I went back to my room and stared into my closet, at a total loss.

  Finally, I dug out a ruffly red blouse Mom had given me for Christmas and a slim-fitting gray skirt one of her coworkers gave me (people who lose everything in a fire get a lot of hand-me-downs). I tucked the shirt in and, on impulse, wove a thin yellow belt of Megan’s through the belt loops. And I found another pair of Mrs. Wiley’s castoff shoes from the pile in the corner—dark brown leather pumps with little cutouts around the edges. I caught sight of myself in the mirror and decided the outfit was all right—but I couldn’t suppress the unease I felt about the greasy, awkward girl who was wearing it.

  Did I really go around looking like this all the time? Had I only realized it by being surrounded by a mob of beauti
ful girls?

  I went to the bathroom and brushed my hair back into a ponytail. Then I started experimenting with Kasey’s makeup. I was unfamiliar with the brushes and powders and bottles and palettes, but I bumbled my way through, trying to recall what I’d seen Megan do.

  To my relief, with each stroke of the makeup brushes, my reflection became less offensive.

  Mom came to the door of the bathroom and glanced at her watch in a very obvious way.

  “Almost done,” I said.

  “We’re already behind,” Mom said. “I’m very disappointed about this. You know how important punctuality is.”

  “Can I borrow your dangly earrings with the roses?”

  That caught her off-guard. “Yes—but I wish you’d hurry. Do you really need to wear three shades of eye shadow?”

  “Mom,” I said, turning toward her. “You standing there nagging doesn’t help. Go get the earrings!”

  She returned a second later and dropped them on the counter. “I’ll be in the kitchen whenever Your Highness is ready,” she said, walking away. “Something’s really gotten into you tonight, Alexis.”

  You don’t know how right you are, I thought, leaning in to blend my eye shadow.

  “WARREN? ALEXIS WARREN?”

  The receptionist directed me to a conference room with a long table in the center. On the far side were the five judges, including Farrin McAllister. On the near side was a single chair.

  It looked like a firing squad.

  I wondered if I was supposed to say hi to Farrin, or pretend we’d never met, or what. But as soon as I sat down, she spoke.

  “I talked to Alexis when she dropped off her application,” she said, not looking up at me. “I was quite impressed with her work.”

  I could tell that Farrin’s word carried weight among her fellow judges. A couple of them sat up straighter and looked at me almost like I was the one who needed to be impressed. The guy on the end even straightened his bow tie.

  “So…tell us what photography means to you,” the woman in the middle said.

  “What it means to me?” I repeated. Under the table, my hands fidgeted.

  They waited.

  What came to mind first were a bunch of bland platitudes: It means sharing my ideas with the world. It means creating a beautiful and exciting image. “I…don’t think it means anything.”

  Good-bye, car, good-bye.

  “I mean,” I said, and suddenly the answer sort of cobbled itself together in my head, “it’s not something I think about. I don’t do it to mean something. I just do it. It’s part of me.”

  Farrin leaned closer. “What’s your favorite photograph?”

  Now that I could answer without thinking. “‘Can of Peas,’ by Oscar Toller.”

  “Tell us why,” she said.

  “Oscar Toller was a photographer who found out he was going blind. So every day, he took a picture of something he wanted to remember. And one of his pictures was a can of peas on the kitchen counter. And the way the light hits it, it’s almost like there’s this halo.”

  They were all watching me, and I wondered if I’d made a huge tactical error. “Can of Peas” wasn’t one of Oscar Toller’s more famous images.

  Nobody said anything, so I faltered on. “And even though it’s just an ordinary tin can sitting on a kitchen counter, it makes me think that the real power of photography isn’t finding a new way to look at stuff, but like…showing other people how I see things.”

  “You think the way you see the world is special?” the man in the bow tie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Probably not. But even if it’s not…being able to share it with someone—that’s what’s special.”

  I noticed that my portfolio was being passed down the line, and my heart fluttered. But the words kept coming, so I kept saying them. “I mean, a tin can is just a tin can to most people. But if it were the last one you’d ever see…it might be beautiful. Or sad. And you feel that when you look at that photo.”

  There was a long silence. Suddenly I felt a layer of nervousness melt away. I wasn’t sorry for anything I thought about photography. I was just going to answer.

  “At least, I do,” I said.

  “You don’t work with digital?” one of the women asked. “Or color?”

  “I had some color pictures,” I said. “But they were lost.”

  She looked up, alarmed. “Losing stuff” probably wasn’t high on the list of intern qualifications.

  “In a fire,” I added.

  A few of the judges made sympathetic noises, and I realized that, if they were photographers, they understood what it would mean to lose everything.

  “I might get a digital camera for Christmas,” I said.

  “Until then, I just work in the darkroom.”

  “At home?” someone asked.

  “No, at Surrey Community College.” I shrugged. “I had one at home, but I lost it.”

  A couple of them looked up at me and smiled, getting the joke.

  “Have you taken classes?” the bow-tie man asked.

  Surely one disastrous week didn’t count. “No.”

  “Good for you,” one of the women muttered, and they all laughed.

  “Do you think you could survive a summer making coffee and photocopies and answering phones?” someone else asked.

  I looked straight into her eyes. “I’ve survived worse.”

  They were quiet.

  Then Farrin spoke. “One last thing.”

  I looked up at her.

  “Describe your work in one word,” she said.

  The word slipped out of my mouth before I could stop myself: “Mine.”

  * * *

  As Mom and I snaked through the crowd of my competitors, I was glad I’d worn something unique—there was a punk boy with a Mohawk, a boy wearing a purple suit with a skinny tie, and a super-preppy girl who reminded me of Carter. Everybody else was dressed like they were going to a fancy dinner with their great aunts. They dissolved into the background.

  Behind me, I heard the sound of the doors opening, and several sets of footsteps.

  “We’ll be resuming after a five-minute break,” said the man with the bow tie, and the judges came filing out.

  We’d made it out to the car when Mom remembered she’d left her book on the bench inside. She went back to get it. I stood, looking down at the recent calls list on my phone to see if Carter had tried to reach me. So I didn’t see Farrin approach.

  “‘Can of Peas,’” she said. “Really?”

  I nearly dropped my phone.

  “You don’t like it?” I managed to ask.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” she said, smiling like the Mona Lisa. “We asked you the question.”

  “I love it,” I said. “I don’t know how to put it into words.”

  “That’s not your job,” she said. “You’re a photographer. But yes, I love it too.”

  I tried to smile back, but I’m pretty sure it came out as a lopsided smirk.

  “You should wear your hair back more often,” Farrin said. “You have good facial planes.”

  “Thank you,” I said, trying not to blush.

  It didn’t matter, though—Farrin wasn’t looking at my face anymore.

  “Let me see your hand,” she said, her voice hushed.

  I lifted my right hand for inspection, thinking maybe there was some sort of ideal camera-holding bone structure.

  Farrin touched my wrist and looked at me.

  “I knew there was something about you,” she said. “But I would never have guessed…”

  She let go of my hand, and I stuck it in my pocket.

  “You don’t have a darkroom at home?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  Mom was on her way back, close enough to be watching with intense curiosity.

  “Please,” Farrin said. “Feel free to come here and use mine. Anytime.”

  She took off, as excited as a kid getting saddled up
for a pony ride, and all I could do was stand there and try to keep my jaw off the ground.

  “What on earth was that all about?” Mom asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  Either I had the best camera hands west of the Mississippi, or Farrin had been waiting a long time to find someone who liked “Can of Peas” as much as she did.

  THE NEXT MORNING my skin looked as splotchy as a mud-spattered car, and I could see dark circles under my eyes, no matter how much concealer I used. My face seemed wider and my features seemed flat and somehow…swinelike.

  Kasey stopped at the bathroom door and watched me studying myself. “Lexi,” she said, her voice cautious, “what are you doing?”

  I leaned in to look closer, and immediately regretted it. My pores looked as big as craters. “Did it suddenly get more humid this week?” I asked. “Do I look bloated to you?”

  “No.” She stood next to me. “You look perfectly fine. Same as usual.”

  “So I’m usually a troll?” I asked. “Good to know.”

  Megan picked us up, as petite and perfect as ever, making me feel even worse about myself. But after we parked, she flipped her visor down and began frantically primping.

  “Megan, please,” I said. She looked a million times better than I did. For her to pretend she didn’t was actually a little insulting.

  “I’m a gorgon,” she answered, using her pinkie finger to touch up the gloss at the corners of her lips.

  If she was a gorgon—note to self, look up “gorgon”—what did that make me?

  When she finally felt presentable, we went inside. Walking through the halls of the school was like torture, with the sheen of the fluorescent hall lights reflecting off my bulbous nose.

  I sat down next to Carter on the courtyard wall.

  “I’m really sorry about yesterday,” he said. “I overreacted.”

  God, that was only yesterday? I felt like I’d lived a month since then. I could hardly even remember why we’d fought. “Me too.”

  “We should go out to dinner tomorrow,” he said. “I’d say tonight, but I have therapy.”

  “Okay,” I said, but then I remembered—there was a club meeting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. “Actually, I don’t think I can. I have a…thing.”