Текст книги "Rhymes with Witches"

Автор книги: Lauren Myracle

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

Six, sin, and sorcery,” intoned Lurl the Pearl. “All three words come from the same root, which, once celebrated, has now become vilified.”

I copied the words into my notebook and tried to convince myself that it was purely academic, her use of the word “sorcery.” That she was just going off on her favorite tangent about how female folk healers, drawing on the life force of the goddess, were later denounced as witches. Blah, blah, blah. She’d shown the film The Burning Times twice already. She’d quizzed us on the real meaning of the word “wicca,” and she’d told us that many women today have formed their own worship circles as a way to create a sacred space. More interesting than Ms. Bainbright’s English class, but hardly the stuff of midnight terrors. At least, as long as I didn’t connect it with anything else.

Still, when I’d first taken my seat—after dislodging a gray cat with a torn ear—I could have sworn Lurl looked at me funny through her rose-tinted glasses. Then again, she looked at everyone funny through her rose-tinted glasses. The T strap on her forehead didn’t help.

What had she done with Alicia’s lip balm?

A flutter kicked up in my stomach. Don’t, I told myself. What’s done is done.

“Yes, Miss Goodwin?” Lurl the Pearl asked, interrupting her explanation of “six” as the number of the creatrix.

I jumped. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You have a concern?”

The rest of the class turned to stare. Friendly stares, Hi, do you like me? stares, but stares all the same.

“Um, I don’t.” I tried to smile. “Doing fine, thanks.”

Lurl smiled back. It was a loose, smeary smile that made her face look as if it were coming unhinged. “Then let’s pay attention, shall we?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Hey,” Bob Foskin whispered. He’d gotten up from his seat at the front of the room and was now crouching by my desk. “Hey.”

“What?” I said. “I’ve got to pay attention.”

He leaned closer. “Want me to knock her around for you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Wait for her after school. Give her a scare.”

My eyes flew to Lurl, then back to Bob. “You’re not serious.”

“As a heart attack,” he said, crossing himself. “Ganging up on you for no reason. No respect, that’s what.”

“Oh god,” I muttered. Lurl the Pearl was now roaming the room, and I did not want her coming over here. I straightened my posture and scribbled the number 666, along with Lurl’s labored analysis that just as six stood for the creatrix, 666 stood for the holy trinity of maid, matron, and crone. That it was only as people grew threatened by female power that the number took on more sinister meanings.

“No thanks,” I told Bob. “You better get back to your seat.”

“You sure?”

Lurl was two aisles away. One. She paused at my aisle, and my body went stiff. Bob stood up, but he didn’t return to his desk. Lurl didn’t even look at him.

“Very nice,” she said to me in her gravelly voice. “Very nice. But we can never ease up, can we? Not when the stakes are so high.”

My scalp prickled. A force radiated from her, something I couldn’t describe, and I got the uncanny sense that she wanted to eat me. To gobble me right up.

“So we’ll have your assignment by the end of the week?” she asked.

My assignment. As in another stolen item—was that what she was talking about? But I was in a classroom with twenty-three other students. She couldn’t be.

“What assignment?” Bob butted in. “We ain’t got no assignment.”

Lurl came up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. I wanted to jump out of my skin.

“Miss Goodwin is a good little pet,” she purred. “Miss Goodwin is earning extra credit.”

“Aw, man,” Bob complained. “Why don’t I know about no extra credit?”

Lurl bent over so that her lips were at my ear. She smelled like tuna. “By the end of the week for best results.”

She tightened her hold on my shoulders, then let go.

During LIFE, my entire class surprised me by singing “Happy Birthday” at the beginning of the period. Roly-poly Mrs. Parmigian sang loudest of all, clapping her hands and swaying at the front of the room. When they were done, Tina Knowles walked to my desk with a yellow-and-white sheet cake, one of those fancy ones with edible flowers and candied ribbons. In the center was an airbrushed picture of me. I looked really young.

“Wow,” I said. “I mean, wow.”

Fifteen faces beamed. Tina nudged Hannah Henderson, who nudged her back. They both looked tickled pink.

“Only, it’s not my birthday,” I said.

Tina waved her hand. “That’s okay. We figured, you know, what were the odds?”

“We just wanted to celebrate anyway,” Hannah said. “Who cares when the actual date was?”

“Happy birthday!” cried Arnie Aughenbach.

“Happy birthday!” echoed fourteen others. Hands patted my back and ruffled my hair.

I grinned. “You guys are crazy.”

“Heck, it’s better than following the lesson plan any day,” said Mrs. Parmigian. She waddled across the room to give me a hug. “In LIFE, there’s always cause for celebration.”

I raised my eyebrows. “So … do I get presents?”

“Presents!” Tina exclaimed. “Of course!” She ran to her backpack and pulled out a brightly wrapped box. Other kids dug into their packs and reached under their desks.

“Mine first,” Arnie said, plunking down a lumpy package tied with yarn.

“I don’t think so,” Tina said. She bumped him out of the way. “Jane asked me, remember?”

“Wait,” I protested. “I was kidding. I was completely kidding!”

The stack of presents grew on my desk. I tried pushing them back into their owners’ hands, but they wouldn’t have anything to do with it.

“Open them,” Tina insisted.

So I did. I got the new Spayed CD, a pocketknife engraved with my name, a framed picture of Arnie. Four pairs of earrings. From Tina, a sky blue container of stress therapy bath beads (“Not that you need them. What do you have to be stressed about? But they’re so cool, because the water gets all fizzy when you put them in!”). A leather bookmark, a mauve feather boa. A tiny tub of lip balm.

“Thanks, you guys,” I said. I fingered the lip balm, then pushed it behind the boa. “I mean it. I was having a really crappy day—”

“You were?” Hannah said. “Poor Jane!”

“—but you guys totally made it better.” I smiled at them, so easy to do because they all smiled back. “And I love my presents. Thank you so much.”

A chorus of “aww”s filled the air. Arnie gave me a hug, then Hannah did, too. Melina, who was shy, just touched my hair.

“Now cake,” Tina announced. “Oh! Shit! And I completely spaced the band! Arnie, run to the hall and see if they’re there!”

The cake was delicious. The band, decked out in full red-and-black Crestview regalia, was awesome. In addition to the school’s alma mater, they played a fabulous jazz piece composed in my honor, with an amazing solo on the flageolet.

“Have you gotten it yet?” Mary Bryan asked the next morning.

“Gotten what?” I asked.

She looked at me in a not-fun-and-games kind of way. “You know. To give to Lurl.”

A sick feeling clutched my stomach. I fiddled with one of my new earrings, which were shaped like tiny doves.

“Do you like my earrings?” I asked. “Hannah Henderson gave them to me.”

“Yeah, they’re great,” Mary Bryan said impatiently.

“My whole class threw me a party. It was so sweet.”

“Terrific. And if you want them to keep doing stuff like that—”

I cut her off. “I know, I know.”

“Then just do it.”

“Fine,” I said. I sighed and leaned against the row of lockers. I gazed down the hall. “Will this be the last time?”

Mary Bryan snorted, for a second sounding almost like Bitsy. “Hmm, let me think. This’ll be the last time until next week. And then that’ll be the last time until, let’s see, the next week.”

“What?!” I said. I vaguely remembered an “every week” clause from the day of my induction, but it was all so blurry.

“Jane. Keisha told you all of this already.” She raised her eyebrows. “And it’s not just you, you know. We all have to do it, so you can quit acting like such a martyr.”

I went back to staring down the hall. I watched a girl try to shoo a feral cat from her locker, where it perched placidly on a thick blue notebook. The cats were everywhere these days. During homeroom, one had coughed up a hairball on Trish Newman’s backpack, and rumor had it that a pack of three had killed a swan and deposited the carcass on Mr. Van Housen’s desk. Of course, nobody had been there to verify it, and some claimed that Mr. Van Housen had made it up. Still, the fact remained. The cats were getting more brazen.

“Hey,” I said. “Once I … you know. Will that mean Alicia’s off the hook? She’ll go back to the way she was?”

“Back to her usual charming self, you mean?” Mary Bryan said.

I faltered. I got the sense that maybe she was being sarcastic, only I wasn’t sure. “Well … yeah. She’s really not that bad when you get to know her.”

“Which is why I was the only one who was nice to her, that day at lunch. Which is why you’ve basically treated her like a leper since the moment you hooked up with us.”

The surprise of it tightened my lungs. “But that’s because … I mean, come on. That’s because—”

“Because we’re all just walking bags of shit, waiting to unload?”

I drew back. Mary Bryan, I was finding, was not all sweetness and light.

Down the hall, the cat leaped nimbly from the locker onto the girl’s shoulders. The girl crouched and cried out.

Mary Bryan watched, then pushed her fingers against her forehead. After a moment, she dropped her hands. “But yeah, Alicia will go back to the way she was.” She half laughed. “Cats will stop pissing on her stuff. The world will adore her.”

Our eyes locked. Her expression was weary, despite her glittery eyeshadow and rosy cheeks.

The girl stumbled our way, the cat still lodged on her shoulders, and I had to step to the side to avoid being bumped. Before I could stop myself, I snapped at her to watch where she was going.

She halted and turned around. “Oh god, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“You about made me trip,” I said.

The cat meowed, digging its claws into the girl’s shirt. The blood drained from her face. She gestured at her back and said, “Do you … do you think you could … ?”

Irritation mounted inside me. I yanked the cat off her shoulders, using my hand to free its claws.

“Thank you,” the girl babbled. “Thank you so much.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I said. The cat squirmed to the floor with a thump.

I turned to Mary Bryan, but she was gone.

Lunch with the drama kids—no Alicia, where was Alicia?—and then PE. Not my favorite class on the best of days, but today it was horrible. Sure, Coach Shaw exempted me from doing the rope climb, and sure, Anna Maria and Debbie, who were total soccer studs, told me I should try out for the team. Never mind the fact that I sucked at soccer, and that just two weeks ago Anna Maria had shoved me accidentally on purpose with her shoulder during a game of battle ball. I’d gone sprawling, and Anna Maria had hissed, “Stay down, you idiot. Tell the coach you sprained your ankle.”

But today they’d loved me. Great. So really, class itself was fine. It was what happened afterward that screwed with my mind.

Everyone except me was changing out of her gym shirt and shorts. I was still in my normal clothes, since Coach Shaw hadn’t made me dress out. But I’d filed into the locker room with the others so they wouldn’t think I was a snob.

“Hey, Jane,” Anna Maria said, pulling a blue-and-white rugby down over her head. “You going to the Fall Fling?”

“Yeah,” I said. I lounged against a wooden bench. “You?”

She stepped into her jeans. “Hell, yeah. Jodi’s mom is on the planning committee, and she says there’s going to be all kinds of cool shit like bungee cords and climbing walls. You know I’m going to be there.”

“Cool,” I said.

“Some of the girls will be, ‘Ooo, it’s too scary,’ ‘Ooo, I’ll break a nail,’ right? It’ll be hilarious. But the people who matter will be, like—” She broke off and turned to Debbie, who’d come up behind her. “What?!”

Debbie jerked her chin toward the end of the locker room. Camilla, a towel wrapped around her waist, was heading from the showers to the nearest row of lockers. Water dripped from her hair onto the back of her T-shirt.

Anna Maria’s face hardened. “Whore.”

“Why is she even here?” Debbie said. “She’s not in our PE class.”

“Bet she’s been using the weight room again, fucking ballerina princess,” Anna Maria said. “Stuart Hill can’t use it, noooo. But our fucking little Camilla can.”

I frowned. The girls’ weight room was separate from the boys’, which meant that Camilla doing her weight training wouldn’t take anything away from Stuart. But I, too, felt a surge of repugnance at the sight of Camilla, and it scared me.

Anna Maria caught my expression. “She’s the one responsible for getting Stuart kicked off the team, you know. Lying whore.”

I tried to cleanse my impure emotions. “I thought he was just on probation.”

“And the crap she told Mr. Van Housen? Lies. Every single bit of it.”

“Huh?”

Debbie stepped closer. Looking at me significantly, she said, “We heard it from Bitsy.”

My stomach clenched. What had Bitsy told them?

“But, um … how would Bitsy know?” I asked. “She wasn’t there, was she?”

“Bitsy knows everything,” Anna Maria said. “And she’s not scared of telling the truth.”

“She’s not scared of anything,” Anna Maria said. “Especially not a slut in a tutu.” She took a step toward Camilla’s locker. “Come on, Little Debs.”

I got a bad taste in the back of my throat, but I followed anyway. It was as if my feet were on some sick sort of auto-pilot.

They caught her unawares. Anna Maria lunged forward and grabbed her towel, leaving Camilla in just her T-shirt and panties.

“Hey!” Camilla cried.

“You think you’re so hot,” Anna Maria said. “But you’re not. Everyone hates you, you slut.”

“You’re such a lesbo,” Debbie contributed. “Prancing around like a freaking ballerina.”

Camilla grabbed for her towel. “I am a ballerina, you idiots.”

“So dance for us,” Debbie said. “Show us what you can do.”

I knew I should do something, stop them, but part of me thrummed with desire. Part of me wanted to join in.

“—and don’t go running to Mr. Principal, because he doesn’t give a fuck,” Anna Maria was saying. “He hates you as much as we do.”

Oh god. Mr. Van Housen. The last thing I needed was to be dragged to his office again, a witness for the second time. What would Bitsy say to that?

I made myself turn away, telling myself it was none of my business. Anyway, it wasn’t as if anyone was actually getting hurt. Coach Shaw would come soon to hurry everyone to their next class, and Debbie and Anna Maria would drop the game. Camilla would be fine.

I felt like throwing up.

I returned home to another of Dad’s guilt offerings, this time a silver pendant from Macedonia. The pendant hung from a black silk cord, and it was in the shape of a J, for Jane. Because clearly, in Dad’s mind, I was still learning my letters—or at least still wearing them around my neck, as the fad had been in elementary school.

I could wear the necklace if I wanted to, and people would see it as a kitschy-cool. Soon every girl in school would have her first initial dangling from a cord. Or, more likely, they’d all have my first initial dangling from cords. An army of glittering Js.

Only that would be way too depressing.

I lowered the pendant onto my dresser. Sometimes I didn’t know which was worse: the possibility that Dad would keep sending these inane gifts, when all they did was remind me of what I didn’t have, or the possibility that one day he would stop.

Out of nowhere, a memory wormed in. Me, huddled naked in an empty bathtub, because I didn’t know how to work the faucets. I must have been about five, and usually Mom ran my bath for me. But that night, Dad was on duty. “You can do it,” he’d said, barely looking up from his magazine. “You’re a big girl.”

When he’d come to check on me half an hour later, still huddling naked in the empty tub, his face had caved in. “Oh, baby,” he’d said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

Remembering, the stupid familiar ache opened up inside me. Did Dad ever feel this ache? No, I didn’t think so, or he would be here. So if he didn’t care, why did I?

I opened my dresser drawer and scooped the necklace toward me, letting it fall in with the other Dad dross. Then I paused. Wait a minute, wait just a minute …

Lurl.

Yes. It was perfect.

Excitement swelled inside me. No more stealing, and Alicia would be free. And hey, thanks to Dad I had tons of crap I could give away. A piece of crap a week, no problem. Even non-crap if it came down to it. I could take the loss.

I snatched back the pendant and did a happy dance on my blue shag carpet, gyrating my hips. It lasted about a minute before I was hit with reality. Because they would have figured it out before, wouldn’t they? If it were possible to beat the system, wouldn’t Bitsy and Keisha and Mary Bryan all be offering up junk of their own?

Unless I was the only one smart enough to think of it. Unless they liked siphoning off other girls’ popularity—which in Bitsy’s case seemed almost certainly true.

Or maybe—aha—maybe they were putting their own lip balms and clippies on Lurl the Pearl’s desk. Maybe I wasn’t the only one to think of it; maybe I was just the last to think of it. And they were all cackling secretly to themselves as they waited for me to catch on. Well, hahaha, they wouldn’t be laughing for long.

Then the oh, shit feeling descended again as I realized the flaw in my logic. If the object I offered Lurl was mine, then it would be my popularity that would be siphoned off. And bestowed upon … me, as the object-giver? Which would mean I’d have the same amount of popularity as I’d started with, no more and no less. Which wasn’t so bad, really …

Except I wouldn’t have the bonus bit from Alicia anymore. I’d return to non-Bitch status, which would totally suck.

I lay back on my bed and groaned.

“Jane?” Mom called. “Everything all right?”

I popped up. Jesus, she was right outside my door. “Everything’s fine,” I said. “What are you doing?”

She pushed in and sat down beside me. “Hey, baby,” she said. She pulled me into a sideways hug. Recently she’d been very huggy. “Not to be nosy, but you’ve seemed kind of stressed the last couple of days. Anything bothering you?”

I relaxed against her, soaking in her Mom-ness. She smelled like leftover Chinese food. “Not really,” I said. “Just, you know, high school.”

“Hmm. Yeah. I remember those days.” She combed my hair with her fingers. “Want to talk about it?”

“Nah.”

“Okay.” She held me for a little while longer, then gave me a parting squeeze and stood up. “You’re a good person, Jane. I love you more and more each day.”

I felt a pang.

“Night, doll.” She pulled the door shut behind her.

I flopped back on the bed. The pendant, still in my hand, had grown warm from my touch.

Screw it, I decided. It wasn’t really mine; I’d had it for less than a day. Tomorrow I’d give it to Lurl, and whatever would happen would happen.

As I was brushing my teeth, it came to me that I no longer doubted that all this was real. The offerings, the siphoning of power. Lurl. No longer was I saying to myself, “Oh, baloney. You don’t really believe this stuff, do you?” Because I did believe, I guess ever since that moment in geometry when the world slipped to the side. When I saw how just a shimmering shadow separated what could and couldn’t be.

My toothbrush stilled as I thought again of Sandy, whose need for affirmation ran too deep. Who died for her sins. But that would never happen to me, because I wasn’t like that. Maybe I used to be, but not anymore.

I brushed hard to combat the sudden sourness of my breath. When I spit, my toothpaste was tinged with blood.

“Um, no,” Keisha said. She dangled the J from her slender fingers, then yanked upward on the cord, caught the pendant in her palm, and shoved the whole thing into the pocket of my denim jacket.

“Not cool,” she said as I stumbled backward. “Lurl told me you put it on her desk, trying to pass it off as a proper offering. Did you honestly think she wouldn’t know?”

“I just thought … I mean, I was only—”

Keisha waved her hand. “Don’t.”

I knew I was bright red, because I could feel the heat in my face. Being scolded by Keisha was horrible, worse by far than if it were Mary Bryan or even Bitsy.

Keisha walked farther away from Hamilton Hall, indicating with a head jerk that I was to follow. She stepped around a tabby cat basking in the sun. It regarded us with indolent amber eyes. When we were clearly, absolutely alone, she said, “It’s been a week, Jane. You’re neglecting your responsibilities.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just …” I knew that nothing I could say would make it better. “I don’t like that part.”

She put her hands on her hips. “What part?”

My voice went even tinier. “The stealing.”

The look Keisha flashed me was wounded as well as pissed, as if I’d been incredibly tacky to mention it.

“It’s the way it works,” she said in clipped tones. “For one to rise, another must fall.”

“But why? Why can’t we just rise, and everybody else can stay where they are? I wouldn’t care!”

“And you think I would?” Keisha demanded. She glared at me, then visibly pulled herself back. When she exhaled, her nostrils flared. “Say you’ve taken a math test. Or an English test, since you love books so much. And you get a hundred. You’re psyched, right? ‘Mom, I got a hundred! I got the highest grade in the class!’” She raised her eyebrows. “But say everybody else gets a hundred, too. Are you still as proud?”

“Of course,” I said stubbornly. “I’d still have my A.”

“Bullshit. You like your As because other people get Cs. Because that means you’re smarter than they are. Better than they are.”

“I don’t think I’m better than anyone.”

“Then you’re an idiot.”

Behind us, kids ambled out of Hamilton on the way to their next class. Two girls giggled loudly from the other side of the quad.

“I’m not saying it’s fair,” Keisha said. “But life isn’t fair. Some people are boring and stupid no matter how you cut it. You can try to make conversation with them all day, and they’re still boring and stupid.”

“So, what? They should be shot?”

“Yeah, they should be shot,” she said sarcastically. “Steal a barrette, shoot them in the head—what’s the difference?”

Keisha’s cell phone jingled. Her eyes flew to mine.

I held out my hands, like, Hey, it’s not me calling you.

She dug for her phone. Turning her body from mine, she muttered, “This better be important. I’m at school.”

I walked a couple of feet away and feigned interest in the giggling girls on the quad. By the sound of it, they were pretending to be dinosaurs. “Aaaah-roooo!” one bellowed, dipping her voice way down and then raising it up into her higher register. “Aaaah-roooo!”

“No,” Keisha said. “I told you, six o’clock.”

“Mmmm-waaaah!” the other dinosaur girl responded.

Keisha hunched her shoulders and put her hand up to her ear. “Call your sponsor,” she said, raising her voice over the noise. “Call your sponsor.” She paced in a tight circle. “Fine, I’ll be there. I said I would, all right? I have to go, Mom. I’ve got class.”

She hit the end button.

“Mmraah-wah-oooo!” trumpeted girl number one.

Keisha scowled. “What the hell are they doing?”

“I have no idea. Pretending to be dinosaurs?”

Her scowl deepened. She looked at me, and she didn’t have to say it.

“Maybe it’s for a play,” I said feebly.

Keisha strode back toward Hamilton. “You’re one of the lucky ones, Jane. Don’t blow it.”

I hurried to catch up with her. “Just one quick thing.”

She didn’t stop. “What?”

“Why did you really pick me? The truth.”

Now she stopped. She turned around. “Because you were broken. Just like us.”

Bitsy snuck up on me in the library, where I’d gone to muddle things out. Because what did Keisha mean, “broken”? My thoughts flitted again to Sandy’s neediness—was that the kind of “broken” she meant? But in my case Keisha had spoken in past tense, as in I used to be broken but now was fixed. I thought of that gospel song Mom sang when she did laundry: I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind but now I see.

“Amazing Grace.”

Was that how it was for me?

“Boo,” Bitsy said.

I jumped.

“Ha,” she said. “Gotcha.” She came around the back of my chair and lounged against the work surface of the carrel. Her Powerpuff Girls shirt hugged her body.

“What’s up?” I said, trying my best to act cool. “Have you come to yell at me?”

“Pardon?”

I swallowed. This was the first time I’d seen Bitsy since Anna Maria and Debbie had tormented Camilla during PE, and it made me feel weird. I kind of wanted to talk to Bitsy about it, but at the same time I kind of really didn’t.

“Keisha got all mad at me about the Lurl thing,” I said. “She was like, ‘You’re neglecting your responsibilities. You’re letting us down.’”

“And right she is,” Bitsy said. “Trying to pass off your own necklace as someone else’s, you poor sod. Think no one’s tried that one before?”

I looked at her from under my bangs.

“Bet you about wet your pants putting it on Lurl’s desk, too. And now you have to do it all over again. Life’s a bitch, eh?”

Was she teasing me? I got the strangest feeling she was teasing me.

“I don’t want everyone to hate me,” I said. “I didn’t mean to let you guys down.”

“I know, luv,” Bitsy said. “And that’s why I’ve decided to help you out.” She fished into the pocket of her jeans. She drew out a brown bobby pin. “Here.”

I looked at Bitsy, then back at the bobby pin.

“Don’t go getting used to it,” Bitsy said. “I’m not going to bail you out every time.”

I gazed at the bobby pin’s brown ridges. Finally I said, “But … I’m not the one who took it.”

Bitsy tilted her hand, and the bobby pin dropped to the floor. She lifted her eyebrows.

“Whose is it?” I asked.

“No one’s. Not your darling Alicia’s, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Still, I hesitated.

“Fine. If you don’t want it—”

“No, I do,” I said. I bent to retrieve it, my face at Bitsy’s shoes. Strappy black sandals, even though fall was officially upon us. A silver ring on her second toe.

“Brilliant,” Bitsy said. “Lurl will be so pleased.”

On the way to Lurl’s office, I spotted Alicia trailing out of her geometry class. The other kids strolled out in groups of two or three, chatting and laughing, and then there was Alicia, all alone. I knew in my gut that I should go talk to her, but I didn’t want to. Not the right time, I told myself.

Except that unfortunately, she’d spotted me, too. “Jane!” she called.

I walked faster, eyes straight ahead, then gave up when she touched my shoulder.

“Jane,” she said. “Jesus, are you deaf?”

I turned around, trying to tell myself that the yuck factor I felt didn’t have to do with her. I was in a hurry and she was interrupting me, that’s all.

“Alicia!” I said. “Hi! So how’d it go Saturday night? With Tommy. Oh my god, I’ve been dying to hear.”

Alicia narrowed her eyes, her black hair lanky around her face. “Yeah, which is why you’ve been avoiding me all week.”

“I haven’t been avoiding you. Why would you even say that?”

“Uh, because it’s true?”

My smile cracked. If I were in Alicia’s shoes, I would at least try to be nice. “So are you going to tell me about Tommy or not?”

“He canceled,” Alicia said. “An hour before he was supposed to pick me up.”

What cheerfulness I’d mustered crumbled to dust. It was like a lead weight dropping down inside me, and not only because I was sad for Alicia—if I even was sad for Alicia. It was more the tiredness of realizing, Oh shit, now I have to deal with this on top of everything else.

“That sucks. What a jerk.”

“He said he’d gotten the date wrong. He was like, ‘But let’s do something another time, okay?’”

“Oh, well that’s different.”

“How? He totally blew me off.”

“He didn’t blow you off. He just, you know, rescheduled.”

She made an extremely irritating face. “Do you have any idea how fake you sound? I’m serious. Do you?”

I gritted my teeth. If she wanted to be this way, fine. It wasn’t my job to coddle her. “Look,” I said. “I’m trying to be supportive, but it’s hard when you’re so nasty all the time. You ever think maybe that’s why Tommy canceled?”

She flinched. Like she was honestly surprised, when here she was acting like a grade-A prat, as Bitsy would say.

Then her eyes went small. “Screw you,” she said.

“Screw me?” I said. “Screw you! All I’ve done is try to help!”

She poked my chest. “Rae was right. You’ve lost your soul.”

Anger flamed through me—anger and fear and other things, too. But instead of retaliating, I stuffed it down and walked away.

Keisha was right. Some people were boring and stupid no matter how you cut it.

Still, I couldn’t quite catch my breath. I almost wanted to go back and shove her, spill her backpack again so I could snatch a pen. Or another tub of her pointless lip balm, because who would ever want to kiss those lying lips? No one, that’s who.

She was the toad. Not me.

I put the bobby pin on Lurl’s desk, closing my mind to whom it might have once belonged. It was easier than I thought. And an hour later, as I gathered my books from my locker, I felt the spine-tingling surge that meant Lurl had claimed the offering. It filled me up and left me breathless.

That evening, after an impromptu Through the Looking Glass theme party at Sukie Karing’s house, I played back a sad-sack message from Alicia.

“Um, hi, it’s me,” she said in a snivelly voice. “I hope you’re not mad at me. I know I was really rude, but I didn’t mean to be. It’s just, what you said, it really …” She sniffed. “Anyway, I’m sorry. That’s all I wanted to say.”

The first message was followed by a second. This time I could hear Rae in the background.

“Um, hi again,” Alicia said.

Then Rae: “Tell her, Alicia. Just say the words on the paper.”

“I can’t!”

“Say it!”

Alicia came back full strength, as if she’d removed her hand from the part you speak into. “Um, sorry, Jane. That was just Rae. Anyway—”

“She hates your guts! She thinks you’re scum!”

“No, I don’t! Oh my god, Rae! Jane, I swear—”

Her voice cut off, and the machine beeped, announcing the third and last message.

“This is Rae. My sister hates your guts, even if she’s too afraid to admit it. And I do, too. Everyone does. They may not act like it on the surface, but we all know that what’s on the surface is a big, fat lie. So take that and shove it up your bunghole, you lying bitch!”