The Graces (13 page)

I forced it hastily away.

We worked together, Summer had said earlier. We combined our collective power – the power of four instead of one, the power of a circle. I watched Fenrin take up the jar of water in front of him and pour it, a steady stream, into the edge of the fire. It crackled and spat and hissed. I took my cup of earth and did the same, careful to throw my handful onto the branch nearest me. Summer opened up her palm and blew on it into the fire. Wolf lit a match, and I watched as the flame danced near his pinched fingers. He threw it into the heart of the blaze.

And we closed our eyes.

This wasn’t like the copse with Summer that day. That had felt like kids’ tricks in comparison to this. As I sat there, I heard the fire and the soft breeze above us winding through the tops of the trees. The longer I closed my eyes, the further away the world seemed. Even the stone in my hands felt like someone else was clutching it. Someone else’s thumb rubbed over its smooth surface, though I knew it was mine.

No one talked. No one coughed. I started to believe, implicitly, that I was all alone, and that everyone had left me. I just knew if I opened my eyes, they’d all be gone.
But I didn’t. I would not wreck this. I would not give in.

I could no longer feel my body. If I wiggled a toe or shifted, this, whatever it was, would break and I’d come crashing back to earth. I was a star, looking down on this world from up high. It all seemed so unimportant. So very unreal. I was lost somewhere inside, and I felt nothing. It was a joy.

It might have been hours later, or maybe only minutes, when I felt warmth on my ear, and a whisper. ‘River, wake up.’

I blinked.

Summer was crouched in front of me, her head cocked. Her eyes were wide and wet in the dark, bare arms slick. The fire was low, wisping, and the night air sharp against my skin.

‘It’s done?’ I said, somehow surprised my lips still worked properly.

‘It’s done.’ She handed me a plastic goblet filled with wine. ‘Now we party. Keep the energy raised, as long as we can. For hours, if we can do it. Can you do it?’

In response, I brought the goblet to my lips and downed half the wine, feeling it spill out and dribble down my chin. I didn’t care. I swallowed.

Summer smiled.

School was over. It was the summer holidays, and endless rippling time stretched out before me.

I usually dreaded it. You could only be enough company for yourself for so long, and I got sick of watching bad daytime TV and fusing into the sofa through boredom. Now I was worried it would go too fast. In my mind the immediate future was filled with sparkling light, like the sun on a river, a compact mirror shining into my face, painting everything peach gold.

It had been over three weeks since the night in the woods. During that time, Marcus hadn’t even shown his face in the cafeteria, and I’d barely seen him around school. Thalia had come back home without incident. Fenrin had an easy grin permanently on his face, Wolf had become ensconced at the Grace house, and Summer and I had spent every minute we could together. More often than not we’d been outside,
sometimes collecting leaves or stones she liked, talking and planning for the holidays. We had spent one lunch hour at school making daisy chains. She had worn hers like a crown the rest of the afternoon, the salt-white petals contrasting gorgeously with her raven hair – and none of the teachers had blinked. We were all too close to freedom.

Fenrin and Thalia had survived their exams unscathed. I often wondered what they would do after school ended for them next year, because they never talked about it, not even among themselves, or at least not when I was there. Summer often spoke to me about vague grand plans – study music, play in a band, be a rock star – but with an air of fantasy, like it was a silly child’s dream that she knew she should let go of but couldn’t quite. It wasn’t in their nature to volunteer their secrets when pushed, and so far my tactic of listening and just being there when they felt a sudden and fleeting urge to open up had served me well. I would not ruin that now by pushing them to examine futures they seemed unwilling to think about.

Anyway, it was the holidays, and all of that was far off, a distant hazy horizon. We were here, and we were now, and if there was one thing the Graces enjoyed, it was being full and present and alive in each
moment – a philosophy I found, in the quiet privacy of my own head, incredibly sexy.

The first of August, the twins’ birthday, dawned heavy with cloud and the promise of on-again, off-again rain. Undaunted, they’d simply moved their plans indoors and prepped the house for their impending guests. One or two were apparently already in town.

My mother had remarked on it with a fascinated kind of sniff, saying she’d seen a lanky man with fluffy white-blond hair like a dandelion, ‘head to toe in Gucci or something’, standing in a supermarket queue, as out of place as a butterfly among toads. Once he’d bought his groceries, he had left with a rounded older woman who looked, according to my mother, like she was in costume as a Victorian pirate. She’d thought they were part of some kind of parade until a friend at work had told her they were ‘Grace people’ and that they flooded the town every year around this date.

She’d spent a good twenty minutes on the topic while I squirmed silently, concentrating on the TV as she talked. I hadn’t exactly got around to telling her who I was spending all my time with. All she knew was that I had some friends, which was good enough for her. We’d been here less than a year, but she’d integrated just fine. She was always off at her work
friends’ houses, which made life easier – we didn’t mix well when we were together. She liked feeling normal. I didn’t. She didn’t want to talk about my father. I did.

Though recently I’d found myself not even thinking about him, or his disappearance, for whole days at a time. It was hard to concentrate on the past with so much present to look forward to, filled with sunlight and Graces and magic. It was better that I’d begun to let him go. Didn’t that mean I was finally moving on?

Learning my lesson from the last birthday party, I arrived at the Grace house over an hour after Summer had told me to be there, though it was still a couple of hours before the party was due to start. When I stepped into the hallway from the back door, Summer barked at me from the first-floor landing.

‘You’re late. Why are you late?’

Resigning myself to the fact that I would never get it right, I took my shoes off at the bottom of the stairs and ran up to her room, feeling my steps get lighter and lighter as I went towards her.

‘How’s it going?’ I greeted her at her bedroom door, but she whirled away from me.

‘No time for that. Brush your hair out.’

I watched her curiously, letting my bag slip to rest on the floor by her bed.

‘What are you jabbering about?’

She fixed me with a dark, mischievous gaze. ‘I have plans for you.’

‘Summer, I don’t know about this.’

I stared at the sludgy brown mess in the bowl.

Her hands were covered in stained gloves so she settled for wiping her forehead on her arm.

‘Too late,’ she said. ‘I’ve worked my ass off making the mix. Anyway, what makes you think you have a choice?’

‘The party’s in two hours. What if it’s a total disaster?’

‘You’ll wear a hat. Come on. Since when have you been afraid?’

Since my whole life
, I thought.

Summer already had her fingers in my hair, sectioning it off with clips. I clutched the towel tighter round my shoulders. She’d greased up my hairline and neck with coconut oil – stuff that looked like lard to me – and made me face the long mirror hanging on her wall while she worked.

She scooped the gritty mud onto my head, and I felt it ooze over my scalp.

‘This really doesn’t look right,’ I tried.

‘Henna always looks like cowpats but it’ll come out amazing. Especially on your hair. Esther makes
the stuff. She imports the henna, and it’s pretty much the purest quality you can get. And she makes it up with these different oils and butters. You’ll look like a goddess. Just trust me.’

She gently massaged my head.

‘So who’s coming tonight?’ I said, trying to ignore the way the sensuous feeling of her fingers on me ruffled up my spine.

‘Aunts and uncles and cousins. Wolf’s parents. Friends of the family.’

The entire house would be filled with Graces. Summer laughed behind me.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We get to disappear back upstairs a bit later. We usually hang out in Fen’s room. Maybe he’ll even dance to “Footloose” again this year.’

‘He dances to “Footloose”?’

‘Only on special occasions.’

‘Is he any good?’

‘He’s amazing. A regular Kevin Bacon. Don’t ask him about it, though, or he won’t do it. He thinks he’s too cool. Oh, but I should introduce you to a couple of people first. One of my great-aunts does Tarot cards. She always brings a deck with her and does readings for people who ask. She’s brilliant at it. We should get yours done.’

She could see my face in the mirror, so I shrugged, smiling. ‘Yeah, sure.’

She finished off, and then tightly covered my whole head in plastic wrap.

‘Seriously?’ I drawled.

‘Ha, you look stupid.’ She peeled the gloves off and dropped them into the bowl. ‘Now we wait. Don’t get it on my rug, or Esther will raise an eyebrow at me.’

‘Sounds bad.’

‘Trust me, it’s enough.’

I swivelled carefully on the chair and watched her clean up.

‘Summer,’ I said.

‘Yeah?’

I opened my mouth. I didn’t know what I wanted to tell her. Something profound. Something intimate.

‘How come you started hanging out with me?’ I laughed, awkwardly. ‘I mean, you had friends already. And I’m just some girl.’

I waited.

Summer shrugged. ‘You just seem different from everyone else. More honest. Most people don’t have the guts to be, but you do. That’s important. Why do you hang out with me?’

She said the last suddenly, as if the words that had just come out of her mouth hadn’t set my world on fire. As if she couldn’t see me burning up with guilt.

Why did I hang out with her?

Not for the same reasons as everyone else did. Not because she was popular. More because I had the very real, heart-pounding hope that the Graces could tell me who I was.

And lately, for the plain, simple reason that I liked her. I liked them all. I couldn’t seem to help it.

‘Because you’re amazing,’ I said, deciding to try for the honesty she thought she saw in me. ‘Thanks.’

She looked up at me. ‘For what?’

Letting me in
.

I shrugged. ‘Being you.’

I thought she’d laugh at me and mouth some perfect quip, but instead she looked wrong-footed, like I’d caught her stealing. ‘Yeah, sure.’

She left the room to dump the bowl and gloves.

When she came back, she put on an album I actually liked, which I laughed at her for until she protested that she’d taken it from Fenrin’s room. The henna was surprisingly heavy on my head – I had to move carefully, like my neck was cased in cement, and it kept cracking her up, and I kept telling her to shut up, until the buzzer on her alarm clock sounded.

Summer sat up, her eyes shining, and marched me to the bathroom. We rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, until my neck ached and my thighs pinged from kneeling over the bath for so long. When we got back to her
room, she made me keep my eyes closed while she blow-dried my hair.

I sat, my ears filled with noise, hair fluffing around my face.

‘Don’t you dare open your eyes until I tell you,’ she said for the fifth time.

‘Seriously, I’m not going to!’

‘Just sit really still.’

‘What are you doing?’ I said, out into the quiet around me.

Something cold and thin touched my forehead, and I flinched.

‘Er, do not move.’

‘Summer …’

‘I’m just going to trim your fringe a tiny, tiny bit. Don’t freak out. I’m nearly finished.’

I waited. Friendship meant trust, didn’t it?

‘Okay, I’m done. Open your eyes.’

I stared at the girl in the mirror.

The girl in the mirror stared back, transformed.

Esther was flitting around the kitchen when we finally went downstairs. She glanced up at us.

‘Ten minutes,’ she said distractedly. ‘Then the first people will be here.’

‘Anything we can do to help?’ Summer asked.

‘Choose some music for the living room.’ She eyed Summer. ‘From my music collection, not yours.’ Her gaze fell on me. ‘I thought I told you to only bring River tonight, dear.’

Summer rolled her eyes. I stood confused.

Esther gasped theatrically. ‘Oh, my word! It is River! What have you done to your hair?’

‘Summer did it,’ I blurted. I touched my new fringe self-consciously.

‘Oh, it looks
gorgeous
.’ She came up to me and reached a hand out. ‘Oh yes, and the green eye shadow really frames your eyes. You look like a totally different person. Just lovely.’

I squirmed, delighted and cringing. ‘Thanks.’

‘And the hair! Fiery auburn, like autumn personified.’

‘Summer and Autumn? Just no,’ I said. ‘Summer and River is hippy enough.’

Summer scoffed, but Esther frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s a joke,’ said Summer. ‘Never mind. Come on, we’ll sort the music out.’

We wandered out into the hallway.

‘Is that what you’re wearing tonight?’ Esther called after us.

Summer had gone for a look that was best described as ‘goth sorceress’ – a black dress with delicate lacing
that spidered across her collarbone, a long, full skirt and pointed lace-up boots. She looked dark and sexy as hell. I wished I could do that.

‘Erm, yes,’ Summer called back.

Silence.

‘Quick, before she says anything else.’ She pulled me into the living room and pushed the door shut.

Thalia and Fenrin made their joint entrance about twenty minutes into the party.

I learned later that this was a traditional ritual called Lammas – the Graces observed it every year. The music cut off. A bell tinkled sweetly in the hallway, and the guests gathered at the foot of the stairs, their heads tilted expectantly up to the first-floor landing.

After a moment, Fenrin appeared to whistles and claps. He was so lovely to look at, it made my throat close up. He wore a white muslin shirt, with his shell dangling through the shirt’s open V. His hair was loose and tousled, and his grin was extra lazy. He looked fresh as the wind and cool as the sea.

He waited on the landing, and then Thalia appeared, to more noise. Fenrin offered her his arm and she took it with a coy smile. She looked incredible in a white drippy gown covered in crystal bead patterns that caught the light, and her hair was done in a loose
knot at the base of her skull, as if she’d just carelessly swept it back – a chignon, she called it. I could just see her horse-hair braid twined into the style, its coarse ridges nestled against the soft lines of her hair. A pure white feather dangled from the tie down her bare back.

Two members of the audience, a different two each year, approached the foot of the stairs, each with a half loaf of bread. They proffered up the bread halves to Thalia and Fenrin with bowed heads and raised hands. Solemnly, the Graces took them. Fenrin winked at Thalia as he took a bite out of his, and she raised a brow back as she did the same with hers. Then they gave back the rest to the two bread bearers, who melted into the front of the crowd.

Together Fenrin and Thalia walked slowly down the stairs, and the waiting audience of Graces clapped in time with one another, a deliberate, strong beat that pumped your blood for you. I wanted to join in, but I couldn’t quite shake the embarrassment. Summer led us back into the living room before the clapping died down.

‘They’ll split the bread again,’ she said to me when we were alone. ‘And then the four pieces will be put at the four corners of the house, for three days. It’s a good-luck thing.’

‘Thanks for letting me watch it.’ I had the impression that it was something outsiders weren’t supposed to see.

She smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s okay. I vouched for you.’

‘Is that why Fen and Thalia don’t get to invite anyone from school to their birthday? They don’t like people seeing that kind of thing, do they?’