Chapter 41
41
As I step toward the flames, a piece of paper clutched between my fingers, my eyes water from smoke and wind, making everything wobbly, like I’m drunk or tired. The swaying shadows beneath the trees are animated, their creaking branches reaching out. Again I hear, somewhere in the distance, the beat of drums, the din of strings. Iz is to my left, Angelique to my right, and the blazing fire burns in front of us. I resist staring into the flames, their hypnotic dance; it makes me dizzy, makes me want to fall.
“Is everyone ready?” Bella Marie had instructed us to write down one thing we wished to leave behind for good after the trip and then to throw the paper into the fire to burn. A cleansing ritual to help manifest good energy . It feels like self-help bullshit, but everyone else is enthusiastic about it. I guess it doesn’t hurt.
I glance down at the paper in my hand. It only has one word: Aunt.
Yes, a human.
Tucked away in my dark corner of the forest, my aunt was the only thing I thought of. Her barking voice, her vile tongue, the cut of my earnings that she demands every month. Even on this faraway island, she’s the one thing that pulls me away from joy, the one thing holding me back from flourishing. If she were gone, if she left me alone, I know I’d be able to reach my potential. Without my aunt I’d truly be able to start anew.
And in my defense, Bella Marie hadn’t set the parameters properly. I know she meant to write down something like self-doubt, but at no point did she say we couldn’t write a human.
“Now,” Bella Marie says, “close your eyes and focus. Breathe in your intentions, and exhale to exorcise all the negative energy into the paper.” With my eyes shut, her voice is intimate, like she’s close enough to lick my ear. I do as instructed, the hairs on my neck rising. “Open your eyes and let the paper find the fire. Allow your negativity to be burned with it, gone forever.”
Everyone lets go of their paper. They drift into the flames like flower petals. But there’s a sudden kick of wind and mine flails out of its path.
“Shit,” I whisper under my breath, bending to pick up the paper. The word aunt has been smudged with dirt. I go to toss it again—
“STOP!”
I recoil from the fire, eyes snapping to Bella Marie. She comes running, and rips the paper out of my hand. The music stops suddenly as I glance around. Everyone’s staring at me. Their dire faces cut with long shadows.
“W-what?”
“You’ve been chosen.”
“Chosen?” My heart thumps hard into my ear.
“Yes, chosen,” Bella Marie says, the fire’s reflection dancing in her icy blue eyes.
“Chosen!” exclaims Sophia.
“Chosen,” says Maya.
“Cho—”
“What does that mean?” Iz asks, interrupting Emmeline.
“Her paper shall not be burned,” says Bella Marie. “Not like this. Not right now.”
“Um. I kind of prefer it to be burned.” I reach for the paper. Kelly snatches it and hands it to Bella Marie again.
“It’s not about what you prefer,” Kelly says. “It’s about what the world is asking of you.”
Bella Marie keeps my paper in one hand, not looking at it, as she holds my shoulder with the other. Her breath is chocolate and smoke. “Be honest, darling, you have something ailing your heart, don’t you? Something dark and heavy. Something that you must confess. I can feel it, the unease. You’ve changed these past months, become a whole new person with your pain.”
Her words strike a chord of panic and I suddenly notice that I’m sweating—perhaps I have been sweating for the past while. My clothes are wet and cling to my skin. But wasn’t I cold earlier? Why am I feeling so feverish now?
“Your paper,” Emmeline asks. “What did you write?”
“Um…” I search for a savior. At Angelique—she looks away—at Iz.
“Wasn’t it supposed to be personal?” Iz says. “Just let her burn the paper. It’s not a big deal.”
“No!” someone says, I don’t know who, can’t sense who. I’m beyond stressed; the trees surrounding us are starting to spin. Shadows breathing, pulsing. I feel like I’m floating, just slightly, losing control of my limbs.
“I want you to tell us,” Bella Marie says. “What did you write? You can trust us, darling. We’re your safe place, remember? We’ve been your family for years now. Return to us. Confess .” Her blue eyes are the daytime, safe and serene, compelling the truth out of me.
“M-my aunt.”
After looking at me for a long while, as if searching for something that isn’t there, Bella Marie releases me. “Your aunt.”
“Your aunt?” Lily asks.
“Why your aunt?” Emmeline adds.
I can’t tell the truth. I can’t reveal how she’s blackmailing me. It would expose me entirely, let everyone know that I’m not Chloe.
Why did I confess? Why didn’t I just rip the paper out of Bella Marie’s hands and toss it into the fire? The words had slipped out before I could control it. How can I cover my tracks? “I mean my biological aunt—Julie’s aunt. I didn’t really know her, but ever since Julie died in my apartment, she’s been threatening me.”
Bella Marie tips her head. “Threatening you?”
“Yes, like demanding money. She’s”—I swallow—“been threatening to leak Julie’s secrets. I think my twin was involved in some nasty stuff. And I-I don’t want my sister’s name to be tarnished. I want to protect her.”
“I see.” Bella Marie crumples the paper in her hand and holds her arms wide, welcoming. I go to her, letting her hold me. “I feel your pain, Chloe. I feel Julie’s pain too. Thank you so much for confessing.” I lean into Bella Marie’s body, her warmth, her bones. She smells impossibly sweet, like candy, and I almost want to lick her skin, her sweat. She pulls away. “I know just the thing to help you.”
“Oh, you really don’t have to—”
“Nonsense!”
I’m glad Bella Marie says this, because I want their help, their saving. I want their support. She leans forward, kisses me on the forehead, sealing her words in. I am disarmed, at the mercy of her touch as she holds my hand and guides me through the forest like a child. Bella Marie starts picking up twigs from the ground and the Belladonnas follow suit. By the time I am aware of the bundle of tiny sticks clutched in my fingers, I’m already heading back to the bonfire. Viktor appears with twine and a piece of muslin. We gather in a circle, the fire cracking and cackling. We sit cross-legged.
Iz’s knee bumps into mine, and she reaches out to touch me. Her fingers are clammy and smell like dirt. “Do you feel a bit weird?”
I’m about to answer, but my attention is pulled away by Bella Marie, her soft skin, the smell of chocolate. She uses her thumb to anchor onto my chin, pulling my lips apart, and slips the crumpled piece of paper with my aunt’s name into my mouth. I salivate at the uninvited object, the paper gritty with dirt yet somehow saccharine. Then, slipping two fingers between my lips, making me quiver, she pulls out the moist clump, my saliva curving into the night. The bundle of sticks we’d gathered has been tied together into a nest. Bella Marie places the wet paper in the middle and wraps it with the muslin cloth. There’s tinny music rising somewhere in the air, an orchestra beyond the trees, singing to us.
“Together, as a group, we will save Chloe.” Bella Marie hums, and I’m lifted, my head a balloon on my neck. “Come.” We huddle together, all ten of us, hands held. Everyone’s energy surges into me, their support palpable. “I hear you, Chloe,” Bella Marie says, louder now, hoarse. Her voice is a blistering crackle, burrowing straight into the mushy parts of my brain. “I feel your hurt. Your agony. Your rage. Your pain for yourself and your twin.”
Then, everyone else says it back to me. I hear you. I feel your hurt. Your agony. Your rage. Your pain for yourself and your twin. Even Iz says it, though her voice is softer than the others, a slight slowness, perhaps confusion, resistance. I feel like I’m truly heard. Like they’re listening. They understand my pain, my rage, they’re sharing my burden without complaint, and they’re pushing everything to the surface, my repressed frustration burgeoning to a point.
“What do you want, Chloe?” Bella Marie asks. “What do you want to happen to your aunt?”
“I…” The world blurs. I’m out of breath, though I’ve barely moved. It’s like I’m shoplifting; I’m hyperaware of some watchful presence that may catch me at any minute, but my heart also beats with an unmistakable rush. “I want her to suffer like I have. I want her to be fearful of me. To never bother me ever again.” Warmth creeps down my cheeks and I realize I’m crying uncontrollably. Hiccuping.
Bella Marie holds me as I sob ugly, salty tears, her breath warm on my skin. Her tenderness is beautifully suffocating, yet I crave it.
“Then that is what you shall have.”
It takes over us, a mass hysteria, a frantic energy that compels our limbs forward. We come together in an act so ungentle, so ungraceful, so ugly, as we kick and smash the bundle of sticks under our feet, cracking and breaking each twig, screaming and huffing, until it becomes a brown pile of wood chips and paper waste.
Bella Marie scoops the remnants of the nest, soil between her fingers, staining her nails, and hands its corpse to me. The fire before me is raging, an inferno, heat pulsing through my body, calling me forward. I scream, a guttural sound, releasing and cleansing, and toss the bundle of broken sticks into the flames. The Belladonnas whoop and howl, their dancing shadows crisp against the oscillating orange tendrils. My body is alive, like the gesticulating trees around me. I gaze into the clear twilight, and it’s like something releases itself from my chest in a hot burst. I look back in the fire, the burning bundle, and see my aunt’s face in the dancing wisps of orange and yellow and red—see her burn to a crisp, to a char, to nothing. And I feel—I believe—that she won’t bother me anymore. I know it. I just know it.
I am free.