Chapter Thirty-Nine
The house looks asleep.
All the curtains are drawn across the front windows, no slivers of light peeping around the edges. Clearly no one is home. Now that I know what’s been going on inside for the last few months, the house feels different, and yet still somehow looks exactly like the one I’ve known my entire life.
Austin Taylor’s phone lights up in my hand.
It’s a text from Sam, saying she’s five minutes away.
I thumb one back, telling her I’ll meet her inside, then jog up the stairs.
With my clutch still in the wreckage of the gala green room, I don’t have my keys, so I retrieve the spare from its spot under one of the porch table legs and let myself in.
Even though the house is silent, I have to be fast. Get into the bedroom upstairs, find whatever’s binding this curse and destroy it, then get out before anyone comes home. It’s eerily similar to my plan for breaking into Max’s house, except this time, I don’t feel guilty about doing it.
I scramble through the living room and reach the stairs, my footsteps pounding in time with the almost deafening beat of my heart.
It’s so loud that I don’t hear the person moving down the hallway, pausing at the top of the second-floor landing.
Only when the light flicks on behind them, casting their form in shadow, do I stop halfway up the stairs, my hands gripping the railing so tightly, I’m not sure how the wood doesn’t splinter.
‘Indie?’ the person calls.
At the sound of their voice, horror surges through me.
This person, who has been terrorising the people around me.
All while knowing what it did to my mom. To me.
All while pretending to be my friend.
Is here.
‘Elliott,’ I say, my voice weak.
He jogs down a few steps so the shadows ease away, his face taking shape under the light. He looks so concerned, his mouth softened, his forehead scrunched, like the friend I’ve always known. But it’s him. He cast this curse.
Because who else knew about my crush on Tyler, must’ve noticed me disappear with Avery at the prom party?
Sam called me out for talking to Max when they all came to visit me at the zoo – Elliott must’ve clocked the same thing.
He would’ve had ample opportunity to eavesdrop on my mom and Laura talking about the curse after my mom came clean to me about it.
I still don’t know where he might’ve gotten a spell book from, but the internet is a vast place. Really, he could’ve gotten it anywhere.
He stops a few steps short of me. ‘What’re you doing here?’
The house had looked dark from outside. What is he doing here?
‘I – I lost my keys,’ I say, holding out my hands, empty but for Austin Taylor’s phone. ‘My mom’s out, so I was just gonna grab the spare you guys have. I would’ve knocked, but I didn’t think anyone was home.’
My throat locks as I wait to see if he’ll accept this explanation, but he just squints at me. Nothing I said explains why I’d need to come upstairs. The spare key to my house is in the kitchen.
I need a new approach. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ I say, lunging forward and wrapping my arms around his middle.
At the feeling of him, his T-shirt pressed against my cheek, saliva floods the back of my mouth.
I swallow, fighting the urge to gag, but Elliott immediately relaxes.
‘I’ve had the most insane night and I – can we go to your room and sit down? I feel like I might be sick.’
Because touching you makes me feel physically ill.
‘Of course.’
He laces his fingers through mine and guides me upstairs, where he switches on his bedroom light.
We sit on the edge of his bed, close enough for his shoulder to touch mine.
It takes everything in me not to shrink away from him, but I have to do what I came to do.
Just keep it together until he leaves his room and I can find what I need.
‘What happened?’
His voice is syrupy with concern. I want to push him away, scream at him, This is fake. Everything about you is fake! But I can pretend too.
With a sniffle, I tell him about the gala, Max turning, the way he ripped a door off its hinges like it was made of paper.
As I’m talking, a new idea occurs to me.
‘It was insane,’ I say. ‘It made me think about your party, with that – that thing, that just came out of nowhere.’ I swivel on the bed to face him, pulling my leg up underneath me and dropping Austin’s phone in my lap.
Elliott shifts away so we’re not touching any more.
It feels like taking a breath after being trapped underwater.
‘I know the police said it was probably just a random pet lizard or something, but what if it wasn’t?
What if it was actually someone we know? ’
I watch Elliott closely, looking for any spark of recognition in his face, any panic that I might know what’s going on.
When describing tonight, I was careful to leave out anything about the curse, because I don’t want him to know that I know, sense my suspicion.
But Elliott maintains that perfect expression of worry, his hands once again finding mine.
‘But that’s like something out of a movie,’ he says. ‘That stuff’s not real. Maybe Max took something that made him go crazy, like steroids.’
I stare down at my lap, where Elliott’s hands are knotted with mine. Calm. I have to stay calm. ‘Max wouldn’t do that,’ I say, my voice trembling with anger that I hope sounds like fear.
‘Maybe not.’ Elliott sets a light hand on the side of my arm. ‘Indie, you’re shaking,’ he says gently. ‘Do you want me to call your mom? Or Sam?’
Sam.
‘No,’ I say suddenly, my head snapping up. Elliott startles slightly. ‘Sorry. It’s just – they’ll only think I’m crazy.’
Sam was supposed to be here. Where is she? If she walks into Elliott’s house without knocking and comes looking for me, he’ll know something’s up. I have to warn her.
‘Do you think you could make me some tea or something?’ I say to Elliott. ‘I know I could just do it at home,’ I add quickly, then flash him a watery smile. ‘But it’s just – it’s nice to be with someone right now.’
Elliott squeezes my hand that’s still laced with his. ‘Yeah, absolutely,’ he says. ‘Peppermint?’
I nod and he slips out of the room. I wait until I can hear his footsteps on the stairs before whipping out my phone and texting Sam in all caps that Elliott is home and under no circumstances should she come inside. I’ll get what I need and meet her at my house.
The kitchen is directly beneath Elliott’s room, so the sound of cupboard doors opening and closing filters up through the wooden floors. I’ll have to be especially quiet.
Sliding the heels off my feet, I slip off the side of the bed and kneel down so I can see underneath.
Using the flashlight on Austin’s phone, all I can see in the dark space are a few old pairs of shoes, some empty Doritos bags and enough dust bunnies to fill an entire vacuum.
I sit up and assess the rest of Elliott’s room.
The next logical place for him to keep something like a spell book or binding object would be his desk, which sits just opposite the foot of his bed.
I tiptoe across the room, careful not to put too much weight on any floorboards that start to squeak.
On Elliott’s desk is a laptop and TV monitor that’s connected to an Xbox.
There are four desk drawers underneath. I slide them open one by one, quietly rummaging through each, but the only things inside are normal desk stuff like pens and pencils, notebooks, Chapstick, a few loose Lego bricks and one very chewed eraser that’s shaped like a hamburger.
Pipes groan as Elliott turns on the kitchen faucet, probably to fill the tea kettle.
Panic buzzes heavy in my chest as I take in the four opened drawers, the useless crap inside.
None of it looks or feels even a tiny bit magical.
Could there still be a chance that it’s not Elliott doing this?
He’s the only person who fits all the criteria, but maybe I’m missing something.
Maybe the concern on his face was genuine, and he really does just want to help.
Frustrated, I sift through the top drawer again, rattling its contents.
Something metallic clinks against the drawer’s base.
The hamburger eraser is made up of layers, a little rubber patty, lettuce, a tomato and two buns.
When I jostled it with my hand, I knocked the layers apart.
Now sitting at the bottom of the drawer is a small silver key.
It must’ve been hidden inside the eraser.
I pluck the key up and lay it flat in my palm. It looks frustratingly average, big enough to fit a door, or even a large chest. But there aren’t any trunks in Elliott’s room, no big storage boxes. Just an ordinary dresser, a drawer-less nightstand, his closet—
‘Wait.’
Elliott’s closet. On the night Avery turned, I ran to Elliott’s room, and when I tried to hide in his closet it was locked. Who locks their closets?
The tea kettle whistles from the floor below, but I barely register it as I pad delicately across to the closet. The key slides into the doorknob’s lock like twine through wet clay, shifting the mechanism inside so that when I twist, the door opens with a satisfying click.
Sitting on the closet floor is a small desk lamp that’s placed atop a maroon silk scarf.
The pool of orange light the bulb creates is dim, only bright enough to illuminate the cluster of objects underneath: a red Yankee Candle, a guitar pick, a pearl hairclip, what looks like an old ID card, and an opened spell book.
Holy. Shit.
‘What’re you doing?’
My heart hurtles into my throat as I slowly turn away from the closet. Elliott is standing in his bedroom doorway, a steaming mug in either hand.
‘I – I …’ I say, gesturing weakly at the closet. My whole body feels like lead.