Season of the Witch (15 page)

“He probably didn’t have any idea, right?”

“No. They think he had a seizure, hit his head, and passed out. So no fear and not a lot of pain. It’s not a terrible way to go.”

Cassandra is trying to sound practical. But in the darkness, I feel a wild fluttering, frantic wings of terror, and …

Grief?

Anger?

There’s another feeling there. The beat is more erratic, panicky. She’s trying hard to keep it quiet; I feel her effort to stay calm, hide her thoughts.

Guilt?

I hear her say, “No one will say it? Like, my mom and dad? But they’re relieved. On some level. We all knew Eamonn was going to be a bigger problem the older he got. Poor kid. Can you imagine? Everyone seeing you as this … burden? A drag? No wonder he never stopped screaming.”

She pauses. “But I was good at knowing what he needed. Everyone kind of counted on me for that. So I feel like it was okay. In a way, I gave him what he needed.”

Puzzled, I say, “What?”

There’s a silence. Then Cassandra yawns. “What can I say? My parents just left us alone one too many times. Anyway, do you mind if we don’t talk about this anymore?” she asks.

“Yeah, of course.”

I wait for her to bring up something else, start another game. As the silence stretches, I realize that’s all for tonight. Cassandra’s not asleep. I can feel her energy awake and watchful in the dark. But she’s gone into hiding.

My parents just left us alone one too many times
. What does that mean? Ella said something about this, something that I need to put together with what Cassandra said. Because I don’t quite understand—

Then I feel bad, snooping through Cassandra’s life for some ugly secret. There is no secret. Of course she feels guilty. I would too, if my little brother died and I was supposed to be watching him. There’s no way you don’t feel it was your fault.

I wonder how her parents are, if they blame her in some way. That would be truly horrible.

Go to sleep
.

Go to sleep
.

Cassandra’s voice sings in my head, gentle and soft. Friendly. As if she knows what I’ve been thinking and doesn’t mind. But she does want me to quit now.

Close your sweet brown eyes
.

I smile. Close my eyes. After a few moments, I start to drift.

She sang that song to Eamonn.

The thought comes out of nowhere, jolting me awake. My first frightened notion is that Cassandra has heard me. I feel for anger, hurt …

Hear Cassandra snoring.

Settling back, I think, And so what if she sang that song to Eamonn? He was her baby brother. It doesn’t mean anything dire.

I’m so, so tired.

But it takes me a while to fall asleep.

THE NEXT MORNING, I OPEN my eyes to the sound of Cassandra humming in the distance. I am alone, she’s somewhere else in the apartment. I don’t recognize the tune, but it’s happy, silly—a making-breakfast tune.

There’s sunlight peeking through the curtains; I’ve never been here in daylight. It’s not a cave or a witches’ den. Just an ordinary, messy room.

My head hurts. My stomach feels like it has a heavy, greasy ball rolling around in it. Every once in a while, I think I might throw up.

Cassandra appears at the door. “Coffee? Cheerios? English muffin?”

“Coffee,” I croak. “Definitely.”

Coffee, as always, is the answer. Sitting at the breakfast table, I manage half an English muffin. Cassandra is wolfing down Cheerios; the bowl’s hardly emptied and she’s pouring more from the box. They make a happy little rattle as they clatter into the bowl, which has a bright daisy on the side.

“You seem … really good,” I say blearily.

“I
am
really good,” she says. “Way good, stupendous, and great. Casting a really intense spell is like … sorry … a spiritual laxative. Just takes all the crap inside you and sends it on its merry way.”

Heading right toward Chloe, I think. I sip my coffee. “When do you think it’ll hit?”

Cassandra pretends to look at her watch. “Um, at ten-forty-seven Eastern Standard Time.” She rolls her eyes. “Who knows?”

“But …”

Cassandra smiles. “Look, there probably won’t be any big boom. We’ve blocked her energy.”

Blocked? Is that it? Some of the things we said were pretty extreme. I try to remember the words, what we actually asked for. But it’s all a wine-queasy blur.

“She can’t hurt you anymore, that’s all that matters. Monday, when we’re back at school—you’ll see. I bet she’s scared to come near you.”

The thought of Chloe scared cheers me up. “Pass the butter,” I say. “And maybe some jam.”

It hits as I am walking home. I am walking from Columbus to Amsterdam when the moment comes. The autumn chill in the air eases. The day becomes fresh, rather than fierce and biting. My shoulders feel looser, like when you shrug off a heinously heavy backpack. I take a huge gulp of air, realize my chest doesn’t feel so tight. The last few weeks tumble out of reality and into the past.

It’s over, I think. I’m free. Chloe no longer has power over me.

I can do anything, go anywhere I want.

The world is mine again.

I bounce into the house and hand my mom a sunflower. I bought it on the way home. I was so happy, I wanted to give someone something.

Taking it, my mom smiles and says, “My, my—thank you.”

I flop down at the dining room table. From the kitchen, my mom asks, “How was the sleepover? Did you get any sleep?”

As I try to answer her question, the memory of last night hits, and with it, a feeling of … ugliness. Shame. Now that I’m home, talking to my mom, I don’t want to think about burning things and cutting myself. It’s like taking something you thought was beautiful in the store and holding it up to the light once you get home to find it’s all cheap and cracked. You feel stupid for buying it.

“Fine,” I say, tugging my sleeve over my hand. “What’d you guys do?”

“Oh …,” says my mom vaguely. As she puts a small vase with the flower in it at the center of the table, she catches me fiddling with my sleeve and says sharply, “What happened to your hand?”

“Gym dumbness,” I say, wishing I’d been smart enough to take the bandage off.

She’s about to say more when my phone rings, sharp and loud in the Sunday quiet. “Ah—teen crisis,” says my mom. “I’ll leave you to it.”

I dig in my bag for the phone. For a brief, silly moment, I
wonder if it’s Chloe. Then feel happy when I realize I don’t care if it is or not. I’m beyond that.

But it’s not Chloe. It’s Ella.

“Hey, Ella,” I say, happy to hear from her.

“Hey.” She sounds out of breath, as usual.

Then she says, “So, I don’t know if you heard.”

Instantly, my entire body goes on alert. “No.”

“Um—oh, God, this is awful. I mean, really bad.”

“What, Ella? Just tell me!”

My mom draws close, a worried look on her face.

“It’s Chloe—”

My stomach wrenches. I am going to throw up, here and now, on my parents’ hall rug.

“What?” I demand.

“I know you didn’t like her, I know she was horrible to you—”

Walls, ice-cold iron walls, slam down on all four sides of me. There is no room. No air. I am trapped.
I know you didn’t like her
. It’s an accusation, a pointed finger. The world knows I hated Chloe.

And while I am struggling for air, Ella is saying things like last night and party and coming home and truck. And it all jumbles in my head and it kind of makes sense but I still don’t know what’s going on.

“… and this morning, she died. At the hospital. She—”

And Ella can’t say any more. She just starts crying.

What time? I want to ask her. What time did she die?

But I can’t. I don’t have to. I know what time Chloe died. I know exactly when. I know where I was, what I was doing.

I was walking from Columbus to Amsterdam. Feeling free.

What happened is this.

Chloe was at Alison Maxwell’s birthday party. It was a twenties theme. To Alison’s parents, this meant flappers, jazz, copies of F. Scott Fitzgerald on the tables. To Alison and some of her friends, it meant sneaking in alcohol like they would have done during Prohibition. Which they would have done no matter what the theme was, but it gave them a fun excuse to hide mini bottles in their bags. Once Alison’s parents went out for the evening, they tumbled the booze out on the floor and everyone grabbed some, like kids at a piñata party.

Chloe had a lot of mini bottles, apparently. She may have had some other things too. She spent much of the night huddled in a corner with Isabelle. Most people avoided her; she was in a ranty mood and being a “downer.”

At around one in the morning, the party broke up. Chloe headed home. Both she and Alison live on Fifth Avenue in the Seventies, so she decided to walk. People were a little worried because she was pretty out of it. But they let her go, thinking, Hey, it’s only a few blocks.

To get home, Chloe had to cross three streets. At Seventy-Second Street, she didn’t see that the light was red. She didn’t see the truck come barreling around the corner. She just wandered out into the middle of the street.

They got her to the hospital. So her parents were with her. When she died.

It’s been ten minutes since I hung up with Ella. I can’t get up off the floor. My mom keeps asking if there’s something she can do.
My dad keeps asking questions. Things like “Did you know her well?” “Did she usually drink a lot?” “Did she have a fight with someone?” “How much do kids drink at these parties?” “Are they charging the driver?”

“Henry,” says my mom. “Stop.”

“What?”

“Stop looking for a rational reason this girl died. It’s just a”—she gropes for the word—“a tragedy. A senseless, awful tragedy. It’s nothing she did.”

She strokes my hair, says softly, “It’s nothing anybody did.”

One o’clock, I think for the nine thousandth time. Midnight to one. Last night was so crazy, I don’t remember time in a normal way.

That’s what I tell myself. But way back in the corner of my brain, a tiny echo of Cassandra’s voice saying, “ ’Tis the midnight hour.”

It means nothing, I think fiercely. You’re stupid, you’re insane. Stop this fantasy that because you got drunk and burned some hair you have some sacred magic power that pushes cars into people.

But Chloe was not a big drinker. She didn’t get stupid, never threw up. How could she not see a truck coming? How could she not hear it? You hear those things rumbling blocks away.

I want to talk to Cassandra so badly. Because there’s other stuff I don’t remember. The spell was to block her energy—not destroy it. Not … wipe it out. Right? We just wanted to stop her hurting me.

I send these thoughts out to the air. Hear back,
Bullshit
. My voice in my head or Cassandra’s?

Okay, even if it is bullshit. Even if I did want to hurt Chloe, I never said “death,” did I? There was nothing in that spell …

A street. No stones. Just a truck. A two-ton truck hurtling at a hundred-pound girl, throwing her in the air till she lands ten feet away, her body broken.…

Oh, God, I did not mean this. I did not mean for this to happen.

I stand up suddenly. “I have to be alone right now,” I say, and go to my room.

The second the door’s closed, I call Cassandra. I have trouble punching in the numbers; three tries to get it right. My fingers are not working at all. I’m a jangle of disconnected wires.

As the phone rings, I think, She has to answer. She has to. She’s the only one who can tell me what that spell could do. The only one who can say, “Chill. I just did it to make you feel stronger. It was a head game. There is no power to this stuff at all.”

It rings for a long time. Then goes to voice mail.

I hang up. Dial again. Again no answer.

My heart is banging in my chest. I don’t so much put the phone down as let it fall out of my hand.

Cassandra won’t talk to me. That means every awful thing I’m trying not to think is true. It means Cassandra knows what happened to Chloe and doesn’t want any contact between us.

Because we’re guilty. We sent something out into the world, and it killed Chloe.

I slide down the wall, pull myself in tight. I feel terrified of moving, aware that even the slightest motion could set off something that I never intended. I am hyperaware of my body, the ripples in the air caused by my breathing. The way my heat changes the atmosphere. If I move even a finger, it could change something. If I even think the wrong thing …

I see the truck, Chloe turning.

They say it sounds like a bomb going off, when a truck hits someone at high speed.

A little while later, there’s a knock at the door. My mother’s voice: “Honey?”

“No,” I say.

The door opens anyway. “Oh, baby—”

My mom makes me take a shower. “I promise,” she says firmly. “It helps.”