Chapter Twenty-Six
The next day at school, it’s already been lunch for six minutes by the time I reach my locker, but I was late getting out of PE after Coach Porter made me and three other girls drag the wrestling mats back into the equipment room after class.
The muscles in my arms and legs feel sore, but I know it’s not just PE that’s made me so exhausted.
Last night – exactly as predicted – I barely slept.
Except it wasn’t just remembering the way Max’s fingers had clung on to me like I was being pulled away by a current that kept my eyes permanently fused open.
I spent all night huddled under my comforter with my phone for a flashlight, poring over Austin Taylor’s spell book.
By the time the sun came up, I’d read Hexes on Lovers Past so many times I could recite the entire spell by heart.
From what I understood, it looked like Austin Taylor would’ve had to bind the spell to an object.
It didn’t have to be anything magical or weird per se, just something that specifically belonged to the person you wanted to curse, i.e.
my mother. Only when it was imbued with magic would the object feel magical, a kind of current or something coursing through it.
But once I found it, I’d need to destroy said object in order for the curse to be broken.
It was actually pretty simple and straightforward.
Except it wasn’t. Like, at all.
Because all morning, I’ve been sifting through my memory of the locker in Austin’s office, going shelf by shelf, inch by inch, trying to recall if anything there looked like it belonged to my mom, but nothing stood out.
Everything just appeared to be standard magical crap, which was almost worse.
My mom is the queen of hoarding woo-woo tchotchkes – any and none of the contents of the locker could’ve been hers.
The only way to figure it out that I could think of would be to go back to Max’s house and destroy any or all of it, but even the idea filled me with panic.
How could I talk to Max again after what had happened last night?
He’d Snapped me twice, once with a picture of him eating the leftover Chinese food for breakfast and the other asking me how many times I thought Rick could correct someone’s salad dressing technique in a single day (the correct answer, as it turned out, was eleven).
But I couldn’t bring myself to answer either time, embarrassment, guilt and maybe, possibly, something that felt a little bit like aching, the hungry type, heating up my entire body.
I twist my locker combination and groan. How can I have screwed everything up so badly? Again?
When I pull open my locker door, my brain is so occupied that it takes me a few seconds to realise the reason I can’t see any of my books isn’t because I’ve been robbed, but because there’s something big and black obscuring the locker’s insides.
It’s a garment bag, hanging from one of the hooks at the top.
It wasn’t here when I got my physics book in between second and third period.
Frowning, I unzip the bag. A sliver of familiar, glossy blue fabric appears.
Somehow, the slip dress Sam bought me at Seconds has been transported here from my closet, except it’s almost half the size.
Someone has altered it, the swaths of extra fabric trimmed off and the edges neatly stitched back together, the zipper replaced with one that actually goes all the way to the top.
Taped to its hanger is an envelope I pluck down, but as a pit slowly opens up in my stomach, I have a feeling I already know what’s inside.
At the front of the envelope is a scrap of black paper, the words ‘A Night on the Potomac’ written across the top in curly gold writing. It’s a ticket to prom. This, combined with the dress—
‘Sam,’ I growl.
Is she really so desperate for me to go to prom that she’d somehow steal my dress, have her mom alter it in secret, and buy me a ticket? What happens if I say no again? Is she going to wrap me in a straitjacket and drag me to the waterfront?
Behind the ticket is a matching one, along with a folded piece of white paper.
‘What, for my non-existent date?’ I mutter. ‘Who would I even …’
My thoughts stutter to a stop as I smooth out the paper, my fingers shaking with rage. In big bold letters is the headline: TICKET APPLICATION FOR NON-MOUNT LUTHER STUDENTS.
‘Non-Mount Luther …’ I start to say. But once I read the words underneath, my anger transforms into fury. All-out murder.
Because just above his signature is the name of the applicant: MAX TAYLOR. And below that, the application status: APPROVED.
The walk to the cafeteria is mostly a wrath-fuelled blur.
I’m aware I elbow Maya Lincoln out of my path so hard, she actually stumbles into some sophomore, but other than that, it’s like I snap my fingers and I’m there, charging across the linoleum-lined room, the thunderous chatter of half the school drowned out by the roaring in my ears.
Sam is at our usual spot, pelting red grapes across the table into Julian’s mouth. At first, she actually smiles when our eyes meet. But when my scowl registers, combined with the garment bag I’m death-clutching between white fingers, her gaze widens with dread.
‘What the hell is this?’ I say, throwing the garment bag and prom tickets down in the middle of the table.
They land on top of Julian’s lunch tray, knocking over his carton of strawberry milk.
There’s a mixture of outraged gasps and shouts of surprise.
The pinky-white liquid immediately spills over the sides of the table and into Julian’s lap.
He rushes to his feet, trying to avoid it. ‘Jesus Christ, dude,’ he shouts.
‘Indie,’ Sam says slowly. ‘Calm down.’
‘Calm down?’ I seethe. ‘Is that really all you have to say? You want me to calm down? You went behind my back and asked Max to prom for me.’
Max, the boy I basically tackled last night. Even if I could go to prom, how would I be supposed to take him, when I can barely fathom facing him again at F’resh?
Elliott blinks up at me, his mouth hanging open.
‘I didn’t ask him to anything,’ Sam says. ‘He has no idea I got him a pass, I just wanted to surprise you.’
My shoulders sink with relief, if only a fraction of an inch.
‘But I told you I didn’t like him like that,’ I say. ‘I told you a thousand times I’m not going to prom.’
Sam’s head swivels around the cafeteria where, for the first time, I realise I’m the centre of attention. The rest of the huge room, once filled with deafening noise, has gone so completely silent, all I can hear is the faint plink, plink, plink of Julian’s strawberry milk dripping on the floor.
‘Can we do this somewhere else?’ Sam says quietly.
My shoulders swell again and I’m tempted to scream back that she doesn’t deserve privacy after the way she’s violated mine, but my gaze snags on Avery, sitting a couple tables over to my right.
Pinched between her fingers is a small chunk of pink-glazed donut that’s frozen en route to her opened mouth, her eyes trained on me.
Seeing her, my cheeks heat. I swallow down my retort and turn on my heel, not stopping until I reach the hallway outside.
Only a few people are out here, either grabbing things from their lockers or slumped against a wall with AirPods dangling from their ears.
‘How did you even get my dress?’ I say, spinning. Sam stands behind me, arms crossed. ‘How did you get Max a pass, if he doesn’t know about it?’
She hasn’t brought Max up again since that time we watched Little Women at my house. Even though I knew better, I let myself hope she’d dropped it, but really, I was right the first time. She’s just been plotting in secret.
She shrugs, but I can tell she’s only trying to affect nonchalance. ‘I shoved your dress in my backpack when you went to the bathroom during Little Women last week,’ she says. ‘My mom did a really good job. You can barely tell the zipper—’
My mouth drops open in horror. ‘You stole my dress?’
‘And then the whole Max thing – I may or may not have forged his signature …’
‘You forged his signature?’ I shout.
‘Oh my God!’ Sam lunges towards me. ‘Stop screaming. Do you want me to get suspended?’
‘Stop scream …’ My thoughts are whirling so fast in my head, I can barely breathe. ‘What is wrong with you?’
‘I just wanted you to come with us,’ Sam insists. ‘You’ve been so weird the last couple months, I thought maybe—’
‘Why is it so hard for you to accept that I don’t care about prom?’ I say.
Sam throws her arms out to either side. ‘Because I don’t get it, Indie! I don’t get you any more.’ It’s clear from the way the sentence erupts out of her that it’s been on the tip of her tongue this whole time. Maybe even for days, weeks.
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘Prom, Flirty Fridays – all the stuff we used to love, you don’t care about any of it.
You won’t even be in a room with Tyler and you don’t like Elliott, fine, but I know how you feel about Max.
I’m your best friend. I see the way you look at your phone when you’re texting him, which is, like, all the time. ’
‘I do not text him all the time,’ I sputter. I don’t.
‘Yes, you do,’ she says. ‘Why can’t you just admit you like him?’
‘Because it’s not true!’ I say. And even if it was, I couldn’t take Max to prom. It’s the danger zone. ‘We’re just friends. So why don’t you go back to perfecting your prom poses with Julian and just forget about it?’
Sam squints at me. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Her question, innocent on its surface, sends a flush across the back of my neck.
Because she doesn’t get it. No one does.
Suddenly my fury about everything – the unfairness of it all, the injustice of the fact that I can’t risk going to prom like Sam, that I can’t admit I might’ve liked what happened with Max last night, all because of some stupid curse that has nothing to do with me – rockets to the back of my throat like a geyser, so forceful that if I don’t let it out, I might choke.
‘It’s all you care about, Sam,’ I say, almost gasping. ‘You haven’t stopped talking about prom for the last month. It’s exhausting, and, and – kind of pathetic.’
‘Pathetic?’ she says. ‘I’m pathetic? At least I can admit I care about something. I mean, what happened to you? Pretending you don’t like Max, hating on prom, when it was you who made the first prom moodboard of our friendship. Not me.’
That’s true. I did do that.
‘Oh my God, that was five years ago,’ I exclaim. ‘Grow up, dude. This is real life, not some stupid rom-com where a hot British guy spills orange juice all over you and then you’re soulmates.’
She flinches as though I’ve slapped her. ‘But Indie – you love love,’ she insists, her voice suddenly small and unsure. ‘We both do.’
‘Did,’ I say coldly. ‘I did. Because you don’t get it yet. Love is horrible and dirty and mean, and when Julian screws you over one day, don’t come crying to me and expect anything other than I told you so.’
Sam presses her lips together and stares at me, the two feet between us feeling like two thousand.
‘You’re a bitch, you know that?’ she says, her voice shaking.
Behind her, one of the cafeteria doors swings out. Julian keeps it propped open with his foot, looking concerned.
‘Sam?’ he shouts down the hall.
Seeing Sam’s eyes, glassy with tears, I’m filled with the familiar instinct to wrap my arms around her shoulders, put on Little Women and cram her full of candy until everything wrong feels far away.
I can feel the truth on the tip of my tongue, that it’s not that I don’t care about love, that I don’t want to, but that I can’t.
Not yet. And the harder she pushes, the harder this all gets.
But Sam blinks away her tears and turns before I can even open my mouth.
Julian waits until she’s crossed back into the cafeteria, his eyes fixed on me until the door shuts behind them.
The hallway is now completely empty except for me. It’s a good thing I don’t care.