Chapter Twenty-Four
She and Lily pored over those books for hours, looking for any clues. Had she trusted her talent, Chrys would have known it was a waste of time, but the books belonged to Lily’s family, so she’d figured they might have spells on them that blocked her.
They had not. And around six, when her mother texted to ask if she was coming home for dinner, Chrys decided to leave.
“Do you want to stay?”
Lily asked, and Chrys dropped the book she was halfheartedly perusing in shock.
“Won’t your parents care?”
Lily shrugged.
“Not really. My mom has an ER shift tonight, and my dad …”
She glanced at her phone, but it remained silent.
“I’ll probably just order food when I get hungry. We could keep reading … or watch TV if you’re tired.”
Chrys didn’t know what to make of the offer except that Lily’s house was big and empty, and it had gone quiet since Lily’s sister had left for a sleepover. Lily must be desperate for company, but part of Chrys couldn’t help but consider it. She loved her mom, and their apartment was nice, but everything at home was cramped. There was something luxurious about being able to sprawl on the floor and not have furniture pressing in on her from all sides.
Plus, Lily was acting strangely pleasant. She was incapable of coming up with good insults, so she’d taken to tossing things at Chrys whenever Chrys called her princess. Chrys had started doing it more and more, just to make Lily have to search for objects to throw—pen caps, paper clips, the popcorn they’d been snacking on, a little felt pillow with the Thornhaven High School insignia sewn on it.
Chrys panicked. A collaborative Lily was risky enough. A friendly Lily was worrisome. A Lily who hugged rabbits and forced down laughter as she tossed popcorn was downright alarming. If Chrys couldn’t justify hating her, she might start to like her, and that could not be.
So Chrys lied and said her mom needed her home, and when Lily offered to drive her because it was getting dark, she refused. A long bike ride home ought to burn the fun right out of her body.
By the time Chrys arrived at the Historical Society on Monday afternoon for their break-in attempt, she’d picked off half her nail polish.
True, nerves about sneaking around where they didn’t belong were part of it, but Chrys knew the rest was down purely to Lily. That made her angry. This getting-along stuff was a bad idea. She had to stay tough and keep her defenses up.
That turned out to be easier than anticipated.
Lily never showed.
After waiting an hour and sending Lily a series of increasingly pissed-off texts, all of which were ignored, Chrys stormed home. Her frustration did wonders for hardening her heart.
Tuesday morning, Chrys locked up her bike outside school, determined to hold on to her anger but also worried what it might do. Assuming she and Lily were correct and the hex was related to them, it didn’t seem impossible that strong emotions would affect it. Although she wanted to yell at Lily, the best course of action would be to stay far away.
But before she could put that plan in motion, she heard Lily’s voice behind her.
“Sorry about yesterday.”
Chrys took a deep breath. If only the frost in the air could cool her frustration into a chilly indifference. She was overheating, though, burning up with indignation.
Lily stopped several feet away.
“Did you get my text?”
Lily had finally texted her around nine last night. A simple Sorry. Reschedule? that had only reignited Chrys’s anger, and that she hadn’t bothered to respond to.
“I waited an hour.”
“I’m really sorry.”
Lily picked at her fingerless gloves. Her cheeks were prettily flushed from the chill, and that only made Chrys more irritated.
“I was meeting with Mr. Gevry, and it would have been rude to text you in the middle. I forgot we were supposed to meet.”
“And it wasn’t rude to ignore me while I was waiting for you?”
A bus pulled up to the school, and Chrys tugged her zipper higher despite wanting to rip off her jacket. People were going to get off that bus, see her and Lily talking, and gawk. Chrys loathed being the center of attention.
Lily, strangely, didn’t seem to notice or care. She pulled on a loose thread on her left glove.
“I got a B on my physics test,”
she said, as though that were some kind of explanation.
“So?”
“So!”
Lily let go of the thread and stared at her, and when Chrys didn’t respond, she let out a growl of frustration that provided Chrys with some small satisfaction. It was no longer just her who was pissed off. Good.
“I had to meet with Mr. Gevry to go over what I did wrong and figure out how to make up the lost points. This could affect my GPA—although I’m sure you’re thrilled about that.”
“You couldn’t have met with him another time?”
“I told you—I forgot. As soon as I saw my grade, I couldn’t think about anything else. It was a B! What would you have done?”
“It’s just a B. There’s a whole other”—Chrys jabbed her finger at the school to indicate whatever was going on while she fumbled for the correct word—“problem to deal with.”
Instead of looking abashed, Lily flung her hair back.
“Well, I’m sorry I’m not as perfect as you. That everything doesn’t come as easily for me, and that it stresses me out.”
“What exactly do you think comes easily for me?”
For that matter, what, exactly, was Lily’s point? Chrys was having a hard time following her train of thought.
“Everything does.”
Lily waited a breath, as though Chrys could have a response to something so absurd.
“The way you flew through the math homework on Saturday. The way you’re so powerful that you cast a hex without even trying.”
“So I’m better at math than you, so what? I’m sure you’re better at other subjects than me. You think things come easily for me? What the hell do you know about easy? You live in a mansion. You drive to school every day in your own car. Easy is your normal. I work extra hard for my grades because I’m counting on scholarship money. When I’m not working a job over the summer, I’m practicing my magic. What are you doing—hanging out at your pool?”
Lily flinched, suggesting at least one of those shots had hit its mark, so Chrys went on, letting the anger pour out of her. But instead of emptying her, more sprang into existence with each word.
“Why do you want to beat me so badly? Because of your ego? Because you were the best until I showed up? I’m sorry I make something about your life difficult, but I’ve never had it easy like you. You don’t get to diminish how hard I work to throw yourself a pity party.”
With that, she spun on her heel and stormed into school.
Chrys spent the morning stewing, wondering if she’d said too much. She didn’t much care about the lashing out—Lily deserved that—but the stuff about Lily’s house and Lily’s car could give Lily the impression that she was jealous, and that would feed Lily’s ego. Lily’s ego was obviously big enough.
And anyway, Chrys didn’t think she was jealous. Not really. The apartment she and her mom shared might be small and money might be tight, but there was a feeling of emptiness in the Allerton house.
If she thought about that emptiness for too long, her anger subsided, and Chrys didn’t like that. It shouldn’t be so hard to stay furious.
“You know,”
Luke said, as they sat down to lunch later.
“I forgot to mention it yesterday, but I appreciate the town’s dedication to Halloween. My last school did not go all out like this.”
By this Chrys assumed he meant the decoration blitz that always went up the first day of October. The school currently looked like it had been turned into a pumpkin patch, after which one of those tacky Halloween pop-up shops had vomited all over it. (Only, in Thornhaven, those Halloween shops were open year-round and everything cost too much.)
In the cafeteria alone, black and orange crepe papers were strung across the ceiling, decals had been stuck on all the windows, and fake spiderwebs (studded with fake spiders) stretched across the walls. A skeleton sat in a chair at the end of the food line, too (an appropriate commentary on the offerings).
“You don’t think it’s a bit much?”
Isaiah asked.
“I’m good with streamers and skeletons and pumpkins, but the spiders should not be anywhere near food.”
Chrys didn’t hear Luke’s reply as Lily, Sonia, and the rest of that group strolled into the cafeteria. Sonia was talking animatedly, but Lily hung slightly back, her face strained. She glanced at Chrys’s table, and Chrys snapped her head back to her sandwich.
Shit. After lecturing Lily about forgetting things, she’d forgotten that she was supposed to be eating in the library. Chrys started to pack up her lunch to leave, but she paused as Anushka asked her a question.
“Chrys, you there?”
Chrys blinked. “What?”
“We were telling Luke about the Halloween ball the Historical Society holds every year,”
Anushka said.
“Your mom’s selling tickets again, right?”
“Uh, yeah. They go all out for the Halloween ball. It’s a real Thornhaven tradition. People from the mainland come over for it.”
Normally, at this time of the year, the ball would loom big in her future, but current events had been a bit too distracting. Still, the ball was the one social event she enjoyed—for the spectacle, if nothing else. She didn’t know if it was the thinning veil around Samhain or what, but it was also the one night of the year when Thornhaven truly let loose with its power. When the witches dared to be brazen and magic lingered in the air. Memories of the night would fade over time, but for a few hours (instead of a few minutes), the normies would see and believe.
The ball was always held the Saturday before Halloween, and since that was October 30 this year, it would be a bigger deal than usual. At the stroke of midnight, Samhain would officially arrive.
“Sounds fun!”
Luke said.
“Do you all actually go?”
“Everyone goes, even my family.”
Anushka complained regularly about how strict her parents were, and she assumed Chrys didn’t have much of a social life for the same reason. Chrys had never had the heart to correct her.
“Even Chrys goes.”
As a member, albeit a junior one, of the Society, Chrys didn’t have much choice. All members were expected to put in an appearance, and those fifteen and older were recruited as volunteers. The last two years, Chrys had been roped into helping collect tickets.
No one had asked for her help yet this year, though. Maybe getting in trouble had marked her as too irresponsible.
“See?”
Isaiah said.
“If Chrys shows up, you know it’s wild. The decorations alone are unlike anything you’ve ever seen.”
“If you think this is dedication, wait until the ball’s decor,”
Chrys told Luke, gesturing to the cafeteria.
But whatever Luke did or did not think on the topic, she never found out. At that moment, a pumpkin exploded.