Chapter Fourteen
Chrys did her best to avoid Lily at school for the rest of the week. She couldn’t in their shared classes, of course, but she spent Thursday’s and Friday’s lunch periods in the library, silently fuming and contemplating taking up journaling. She’d tried her hand at songwriting a few times in the past (Isaiah was constantly suggesting that they, Chrys, and Anushka start a band), but she needed a more immediate release for her emotions than trying to awkwardly cram them into lyrics that lacked satisfying rhymes and rhythms.
If only she had a friend she could talk to about the situation, that would help. But neither Anushka nor Isaiah was a witch.
Her first Saturday working on the Historical Society’s library passed mostly silently and uneventfully. Mr. Stephens spent the morning going over the task with Chrys and Lily in more detail, and they spent the afternoon cleaning and prepping the room for painting. She and Lily communicated only when necessary, and then, only by glaring.
At three, she was released, and she couldn’t bolt out the door fast enough, a mood that had little to do with the work and everything to do with getting out of Lily’s presence. Chrys escaped to the town library to catch up on homework, and afterward, she went for a walk through the small park that connected the library and town hall. The first trees had begun to rain down golden leaves, but it was the bite in the wind that helped clear her head, a sharp smack straight to the brain.
She should let the whole thing with Lily and Luke go. If Luke decided he wanted to date Lily, then wasn’t he getting exactly what he deserved? This way, Chrys could go back to pretending Lily didn’t exist. Life had been simpler that way.
Life was always simpler when you could pretend other people, especially those who had hurt you, didn’t exist. If you pretended hard enough, then no one could ever hurt you again. You could see right through everyone around you, like they were ghosts. Their words and actions became an inconsequential shimmer in the passing breeze.
Chrys’s meanderings had taken her from the park down a short stretch of road to the old Thornhaven church and its ancient cemetery. Centuries-old tombstones and crypts rose from the grass like they’d been planted there, their faces worn down over many, many years by the sun and the Atlantic storms. Chrys loved it here. As with old buildings, her appreciation for the time-beaten cemetery gave her a sense of peace. Ancestors of hers were buried in here. Their feet had walked this dirt, too.
But today, the chill in the air left her uneasy. The headstones weren’t monuments to people’s lives but reminders that death marched relentlessly forward and that one day it would catch up to everyone. If she breathed deeply, she could almost smell it. The sweet scents of woodsmoke and earthy decay that she associated with autumn had been replaced by something sinister that she couldn’t quite put a finger on … but it touched a memory, one that she also couldn’t place.
A fresh shiver ran down her spine as she thought of the way she’d spat out her feelings toward Lily on Wednesday. Chrys pulled her hoodie tighter around her body. She didn’t know why that memory had sprung to mind, but with it came the realization that there had been a slightly off smell at school the last couple of days, too. That was the familiarity—the connection—that was prickling her brain. But she didn’t understand it.
She had to be imagining things, but this also had to be a sign that she was right to give up on this war with Lily.
Declaring Lily her mortal enemy wasn’t worth her time. Any issues Lily had with her, those were Lily’s problem.
She wasn’t admitting defeat. Just moving on.
As far as Chrys was concerned, from now on, Lily was nothing but a dead leaf beneath her boot. She stepped on the nearest one, and it gifted her with a satisfying crunch.
Chrys wasn’t exactly eager to go back to school Monday morning and test out her plan, but, to be fair, she was never eager to go to school, and least eager of all on a Monday morning. But she was determined to prove to herself that she could put this new plan of hers into action. Or rather, no action, since that was the plan.
Everything started off great. She studiously did not so much as glance in Lily’s direction during math class, which was easy since Lily sat behind her. And if she flicked her pen faster around her fingers when Lily was talking, that was, no doubt, a coincidence.
The real challenge would come at lunch, because Chrys had decided she was done avoiding Lily, which meant it was back to the cafeteria. That might require some willpower, but she was confident she had it in her.
But, as it turned out, the day took a turn for the weird during choir, banishing all thoughts of Lily from her head.
“Good morning, everyone. Happy Monday. Get in your spots.”
Despite having retired from performing years ago, Ms. McNeil ruled her domain like a first-class prima donna.
Chrys, Isaiah, and Luke abandoned their conversation, each shuffling to their respective place on the risers before Ms. McNeil could start snapping her fingers and telling them all to make haste.
Satisfied with the scurrying, Ms. McNeil nodded in approval.
“Let’s warm up.”
Class always started the same way. The same scale, the same flick of Ms. McNeil’s wrist to get them singing. Only today, when Chrys opened her mouth, she didn’t hear her voice or the voices of her classmates.
She heard a racket.
The noise was so loud, so jarring that she cut off mid-note, as did everyone else. As soon as the last student stopped singing, the cacophony died down. A few people giggled nervously.
Confused along with everyone else, Chrys searched the room for a cause without finding one. The choir had its own rehearsal room next to the band room, but that was definitely not the band. Not even on their worst day. And there was nothing in the room with the class aside from Ms. McNeil’s music stand and an old whiteboard.
Hands on her hips, Ms. McNeil sighed into the ether.
“Mondays. Let’s start again.”
Her baton moved, everyone started singing, and a second later, the racket returned. This time some instinct had prepared Chrys, and she attempted to home in on the source as best she could, but it wasn’t coming from only one spot. The sound thundered and crashed from overhead and from the walls themselves. Half the class stopped singing, but Ms. McNeil urged them to continue for several more notes before the noise grew so loud, there was no way she could possibly hear them. Chrys could barely hear herself.
“I think it’s the pipes,”
the girl next to her said.
That made sense. What didn’t make sense was that the noise had stopped again as soon as the singing did.
They tried a third time to warm up, and a fourth.
Ms. McNeil’s frown deepened with each failed attempt.
“This is absurd. What on earth is going on with the building today? Give me a minute.”
Chrys kicked at the risers with her boot, watching with a sense of foreboding in her gut as Ms. McNeil headed into her office and disappeared from view.
Around her, the classroom descended into a rumble as everyone discussed the situation. Pipes was the most common culprit suggested, but a sophomore boy joked about the ceiling collapsing, and Isaiah maintained that the island’s ghosts were getting active early this year.
It wasn’t until a soprano on her right—an annoying junior who thought she was destined for Broadway stardom—raised her voice above the din that Chrys had to acquiesce to what logic had been whispering all along.
“What’s going on? Where did Ms. McNeil go?”
Chrys jerked her head in the girl’s direction. The junior’s memory wasn’t the only one fading, as was evident by the expressions of confusion on the faces near her. Almost all of them, anyway. Chrys caught the eye of another witch, Tessa, and the girl shrugged at Chrys, clearly as befuddled by this turn of events as she was.
When Ms. McNeil returned a minute later, she looked as baffled as Chrys felt, although Chrys would have bet anything that it was for different reasons—that is, she probably couldn’t remember why she’d left the room in the first place.
Sure enough, their choir teacher raised her baton, blinking away a memory lapse she’d probably later fret about in private.
“Let’s begin.”
They began again.
So did the noise.
In the fifty-minute period, Ms. McNeil left the classroom three times in total, and the normies who were more sensitive to magic, like Isaiah, were starting to express a strange sense of déjà vu. As for Chrys, she wrapped her arms around herself, making more eye contact with witches she wasn’t friendly with than she ever had before, hoping one of them might offer a clue as to what was going on. If someone had cast a spell on the choir, it stood to reason that a witch in the class might be responsible, but no one seemed guilty.
In frustration, Chrys searched the room for sigils or tinge or some other indicator that a charm or spell had been placed on the classroom, but she found nothing of that sort, either. Nor could she make sense of what kind of spell could have caused such a specific effect, never mind why someone would have done it.
The news would travel fast, though, and the Society would look into it. Of that, Chrys was sure. She just hoped they’d be as fast in responding. Choir was the one class she actually enjoyed.