Chapter 35
As a result of a series of events that occurred in the spring of Ingrid’s eighth-grade year, when she was thirteen years old, Edie pulled her out of Hubert Middle School.
It all started with a girl named Destiny Amos. Destiny was a talkative redhead Ingrid sat next to in social studies. Destiny was a born ringleader, organizing trips to the movies, pottery painting dates, and sleepovers like she was a miniature CEO of Pubescent Girls.
Destiny’s parents lived in a modest town house on Lafayette Square just one square north of Ingrid’s.
The Amoses had enough money to send their two daughters to the private Savannah Country Day School, but as her mother had political aspirations to run for Georgia’s U.S.
Senate seat, she saw the benefits of keeping her in the same classrooms as the children of her future constituents.
Destiny, a precocious girl who could intellectually trounce everyone in every class, occasionally even her teachers, lorded it over the other girls.
The girls, in turn, worshipped her. On Valentine’s Day, Destiny gave out full-sized candy bars to everyone in her class.
For her birthday, she invited every girl in the grade out to Pooler to play paintball.
To Ingrid, Destiny Amos was perfection—the best friend for whom she felt an almost suffocating sense of loyalty.
At night, on her bed, Ingrid would imagine possible disasters that she might be called upon to save Destiny from.
A freak tidal wave on the river walk that threatened to sweep Destiny out to sea.
A hundred-year-old live oak, struck by lightning and about to topple onto Destiny’s head.
A rogue street sweeper about to squash her friend, that Ingrid would throw herself in front of, sustaining bruises, cuts, and a few broken bones in her selfless sacrifice.
In real life, Ingrid was as loyal as in her fantasies.
More than a few times, on the playground, she took on the toughest, meanest boys in her class when they dared to insult her friend, going at them gladiator-style until they ran.
No one was allowed to bad-mouth Destiny, as long as Ingrid was in earshot.
Ingrid was beside herself to be invited to Destiny’s birthday party and carefully selected a gift for her friend—a pair of nearly new, black-and-white checkered Vans, in Destiny’s exact size, that a client had given Edie.
After the paintball and present opening, the paint-spattered girls gathered for cake and ice cream on a picnic table at the edge of a muddy field.
“Here’s the schedule for tonight,” Destiny said. “We’re going to watch Aquamarine and have snacks, then Ingrid’s going to do a séance for us.” She gave Ingrid an indulgent smile. “At midnight under the full moon.”
Ingrid squirmed. It was only a quarter moon, Destiny was wrong about that, but that didn’t actually matter. You could do a séance anytime. And certainly, Ingrid had experienced plenty of séances, but always under her grandmother’s guidance. She’d never led one.
Besides that, Edie had always warned her that messing around with spirits wasn’t a thing to be taken lightly. Spirits were like dogs, Edie said. They could just as easily give you slobbery kisses as bite your hand clean off.
Ingrid said maybe they shouldn’t do a séance, but Destiny insisted. She wanted to speak to Nanna, her only grandmother, who had died when she was in third grade. It hit Ingrid unexpectantly, the shock of what it must be like to lose someone like that, and, tears pricking her eyes, she relented.
In the garden level of Destiny’s town house, the girls ate Doritos and guzzled Cherry Coke while they watched the movie.
When midnight came, Destiny, wearing a crown she’d won in some Little Miss Something-or-Other pageant, lit a bunch of candles and then instructed the girls to pull their sleeping bags into a circle.
Looking in their expectant eyes, Ingrid’s earlier feeling of doubt became full-blown panic. She thought she should probably cast a circle and call the corners but even doing that felt wrong. Like sharing a secret known only to her and Edie.
Under her breath, she mumbled a quick prayer of protection to the Goddess, then told the girls to join hands and close their eyes.
She announced to the room that only friendly spirits were welcome and that she wished to speak to Nanna.
Destiny’s nanna, she added, in case some rogue spirit in the Amos house happened to overhear and get the wrong idea.
The room stilled. The candles flickered. Destiny seemed surrounded by a nimbus of fuzzy light. Now, Ingrid felt the strength and unity of the girls as a fierce circle of its own, linked by their hands and their single intention. All desiring their friend Destiny to reach her beloved grandmother.
For the first time in her young life, Ingrid felt herself taken by the moment, and to her surprise, she floated gently and easily out of her body.
She began to see and hear and feel many things.
She was only dimly aware of the room, the girls around her, of what she was saying.
And boy, was she saying stuff. Words she couldn’t quite string together in coherent sentences.
Or at least sentences that made sense to her.
… your mother isn’t … your mother …
… your sister …
Your sister is your mother …
Destiny suddenly came into sharp focus. No longer surrounded in the light, she leaned forward, face pale and eyes blazing, and grabbed the front of Ingrid’s pajamas.
“Shut up,” she hissed in Ingrid’s face, then released her. “She’s lying!” she announced to the girls, then jumped up and ran out of the room.
The others edged away from the circle, murmuring amongst themselves and eyeing Ingrid dubiously. Ingrid felt herself reeling, a sensation that felt like she was falling off a cliff, scrabbling for purchase. Two girls went after Destiny.
When Destiny came marching back into the room, flanked by her two adolescent deputies, Ingrid knew she was in trouble.
Adrenaline flooded her small body, and she tasted something sour in her mouth mixing with the Cherry Coke and Doritos.
Destiny’s face was shiny and red. The two girls on either side of her, pale and wide-eyed.
“We’re going to pray for you now, Ingrid,” Destiny said in a dramatic voice. “Because you’ve got a demon in you.” She fixed the rest of the girls with a fierce look. “You were definitely talking to one just now, and I think he’s still in the room.”
The girls screamed and clutched at each other. One started crying to go home.
But Destiny stood firm. “We have to cast the demon out of her,” she insisted, and she pulled a chair into the center of the room. “Sit down,” she ordered Ingrid.
Ingrid sat meekly as Destiny directed the girls to use socks and belts to tie her arms and legs to the chair.
When they were finished, Destiny produced a Bible from which she started reading.
Ingrid didn’t really understand what it was saying, but it sounded very ominous.
And by now she had to pee so bad it hurt.
“Please let me go to the bathroom,” Ingrid begged.
Destiny leaned close to Ingrid’s face, enveloping her in the scent of Cool Ranch Doritos. “First you have to renounce the devil. If you renounce him, then you still have a chance to go to heaven.”
Destiny got the girls to chant with her: Renounce Satan, renounce Satan, renounce Satan … Destiny waved her arms, and marched around Ingrid in the chair, holding up the Bible and screaming at the demon to leave her house. She commanded the girls to help her, and they obeyed.
RENOUNCESATAN, RENOUNCESATAN, RENOUNCE SATAN! they all screamed as they marched.
At last, Ingrid was sobbing. Sobbing and renouncing the devil, sobbing and renouncing witchcraft, sobbing and, in the end because she couldn’t hold it any longer, wetting herself.
“It’s the demon!” Destiny shrieked, pointing at the puddle of urine that dripped off the chair. The girls screamed again, one breaking down in tears. Finally, hearing the ruckus, Destiny’s mother came downstairs, broke up the exorcism, and called all the girls’ parents to come pick them up.
When Ingrid was finally home, bathed and tucked in her own bed, Edie lay beside her.
She stroked Ingrid’s hair and sang her favorite old John Denver song, “Sunshine on My Shoulders,” in a soft voice.
After the song, she muttered something else, some unintelligible words—spells, Ingrid thought hazily, but she wasn’t sure because during them, she fell asleep.
The next day, Edie found Ingrid in her bedroom, black candle burning on the floor, chanting an improvised hex intended for Destiny. Edie admonished Ingrid, blew out the candle, and immediately performed a cleansing ritual.
“We don’t do baneful magic, no matter how richly someone may deserve it,” she explained to the girl, then added, “and anyway, the One True Will of the Cosmos can take care of that girl without our interference. Some pirates fly flags that belong to another.”
“What does that mean?” Ingrid asked.
Edie waved her hand like it was irrelevant.
On Monday morning, she informed Ingrid that from here on out, she, Edie, would take care of her schooling.