Chapter 31 #2
That was too simple, it was something that could only happen in a story.
The real reason Magic isn’t pervasive, isn’t widely practiced is because there isn’t a formula.
It was years of study, years of clawing your eyes over text you could barely understand, of practicing combinations of words and sounds until your lips cracked, until your fingers scuffed and bled, and that was not something people wanted to hear.
I couldn’t recite the steps to find your objects, to reach the level of understanding you needed to be able to access Magic.
There was no easy way to make you understand that Magic was not there to be your equal or your subservient.
It was there to be a part of you, and if you let it in, you had to be prepared to deal with it.
But people didn’t want to hear that. They wanted me to write it out on a sheet of paper, a step-by-step recipe to follow to make all their dreams come true.
Words that they could repeat over and over again to make something happen.
And I got tired of telling them no, that Magic wasn’t fantasy, that it was nothing like a fairy tale.
Luckily, there weren’t many of those people. Most were just members of a silent audience, people who quietly kept tabs on Max and me, watching to see what we did next.
The group dissipated as the boys zeroed in on a group of girls who walked into the room, and I faded into the background of the party.
The taste of moonshine was less harsh on my tongue than it was before, and I wondered why I’d ever thought it tasted like gasoline to begin with.
A guy walked upstairs to grab something from a bedroom, and my eyes followed him up.
That was at least one good reason to be a fly on the wall at these sorts of things.
My feet carried me to the stairwell and the door to Basile’s office beside it, which had now been shut.
I nursed my drink, looking at a picture on the wall.
Next to the World of Warcraft and Call of Duty posters was a framed print of what looked to be an Ancient Greek philosopher, with a long beard and robe.
He stood beside a stone table with a hexafoil carved into the front.
I tried the door handle, locked. Again, my eyes traveled up the stairs. Which bedroom was Grant’s?
Another old song played on the stereo, following a string of Third Eye Blind hits from the nineties, and though I was here with the brothers, I was thinking about someone else entirely.
Stuck in a different time, a memory I couldn’t escape, lyrics pumping through the stereo making me remember things I would rather stay forgotten.
Not because they were bad memories, but because they were just the opposite.
Bits and pieces of “How’s It Going to Be” drifted over to me, and I was hit with a wave of nostalgia so hard I could barely breathe. Max’s hands on my face, lips on my forehead, hot breath against my neck.
A scribbled lyric slipped into a book and left outside my door. He knew I’d liked them, had discovered it during one of those games you play when you’re first trying to get to know someone.
Favorite band? he’d texted one night.
Too easy. The Offspring. No, wait! Smashing Pumpkins. No!
Can’t decide?
Okay, okay. Third Eye Blind.
Final answer?
Final answer.
Ohhh, straight nineties girl, huh? What a millennial. I’m a Randy Houser fan myself.
Okay, somehow that doesn’t surprise me at all.
Not only had he remembered it, but he’d listened to the whole album, and for the next six months had slipped the lyrics into our conversations.
“You might call that … Losing a Whole Year,” he’d said, or “Gah. What a Semi-Charmed Life,” in typical Max fashion.
Now I made it up the stairs—my compliments to an extremely sturdy banister—and slipped into a room on my left.
The room was empty of people, but full of stuff.
I rummaged through notebooks lying on the desk in the corner, looking for any indication of its owner, but I was getting dizzy and lightheaded.
My pleasant buzz had veered off into something a lot less pleasant.
The alcohol had hit me faster than I expected.
Definitely harder than any mixed drink I’d ever had.
I quickly sifted through a folder of history notes when something caught my eye below the nightstand.
A loose slip of paper sticking out of a composition book. I picked it up and smoothed it with both hands.
It must have been the alcohol hitting me because when I tried to focus on the words, I couldn’t make any sense of it, one side effect of my blood alcohol content veering off a steep cliff.
The note was only two lines long.
Cut not fire with a sword. When the wind blows, worship the noise.
Music reached me from the hallway and downstairs, and I spun to the door, not remembering if I’d shut it behind me. The room started to tilt a little on its axis, and I stuffed the note into my purse and stumbled to the door.
I’d made it back into the hallway when the ground did a swan dive and I fell flat on my face.
“Whoa,” someone said, a hand falling on my back. “Are you okay?”
I jerked away. “Sorry,” I mumbled. I just needed to get to the bathroom.
Bathroom, bathroom, where the fuck was the bathroom?
The upbeat melopop rhythm of Third Eye Blind shrieked in my ears—why were they playing, like, their entire freaking discography—as my fingers braced against the wall.
Max’s face popped up in my vision, singing along with the song playing. He’d downloaded them, and we sang along in the car. He looked over to see if I was pleased, pulling my hand to his mouth so he could give it a quick kiss.
I shut my eyes tight. Please, please play another song.
When I opened my eyes again, the ground violently swooped and swerved.
It looked so far away and was shifting as though made of tectonic plates.
I could see the floor down below, people partying and screaming to their friends.
The party was so much louder now. I clutched the rail with both hands to avoid losing my balance.
I looked down at the Solo cup I was still miraculously holding. I’d only had one cup of the moonshine; this shouldn’t have hit me this hard, this fast. Sure, I’d drank it fast, but it was still only one cup.
I thought back to any time I’d left my cup unattended, but I didn’t know a single female who would do that—it was preached into us from a young age.
Always get a new drink; never return to one you’d left on the counter.
Because that was something that was normal, that we should worry about guys drugging us so they could fuck our semi-conscious bodies while we were too weak to move.
No. I hadn’t left it alone. And I’d kept my drink covered with my hand. Most of the time, at least.
But—I swore inwardly—the cup that Alex had handed me, had I actually seen him pour it?
There were other times it could have happened, too, when I was looking at the posters on the wall outside Basile’s office, when Grant, moving stealthily across the room, had drawn my eye when someone else could have slipped something in.
All it took was one quick movement, dropping it into my cup.
I certainly wouldn’t have tasted a difference.
I pulled out my phone to text Max, but the numbers blurred on the screen, and I kept typing in the wrong passcode.
Images wafted across my vision, bits and pieces of another party, of another night, drunk and stumbling up the stairs to the bathroom.
And, just like now, there in the memory is the dark teal green of the walls outlined by a squeaky oak banister going up the stairs.
I’d been here before?
Had I blacked out then, too, and it was only coming back to me now? God, what did they do to my drink?
A sick feeling twisted in my stomach. All my cleverly made plans, and for what? Was this what they did to Emma Garcia? To Joselyn?
But that couldn’t be right. My memory was playing tricks on me.
I’d never been here before. The fraternity wasn’t even a fraternity when I was on campus.
I half-climbed and half-crawled forward, fingernails digging into the banister that lined the upper level.
I imagined my nails instead digging into Basile’s neck and ripping out a chunk.
Another flash. Of me, another time, laughing, a red Solo cup in hand. “Attention, everyone, I have an announcement to make!” and laughing hysterically.
An echo popped into my mind, What has happened once, happens again.
What the fuck, what the fuck.
Miraculously I made it to the bathroom and locked the door, frantically looking for something I could shove up against it.
If they’d roofied me, I’d much rather pass out here, in the bathroom, without anyone able to drag me off into a bedroom. I ran the faucet, dousing my face in cold water.
Open your eyes. Keep them open. Keep them the fuck open, Cella.
I fought against the tunnel vision. My pulse, which should’ve been spiking in my neck, had slowed to a dull thud, and if I listened to it, I could almost feel the lazy way it thrummed.
I was overcome with sleepiness, and looked down at the floor for somewhere to lie down.
I was so, so tired, could no longer fight against the blackness overtaking my vision.
Pressing in on me, my vision clouding with spots.
I ran water over a hand towel and pressed it to my forehead, praying the cold would snap my eyes into focus. That was when I saw it.
Nearly invisible against the scallop-shell wallpaper. Someone had drawn it with black marker. A circle with a ten-dot triangle inside it.
“I have to tell Max,” I said. It meant something, I knew it did.
Then everything pressed in too close, and I was falling. Cloth still in hand, head smacking hard against the floor.
Before everything went black, I imagined the lock of the door twisting to the side and I thought, hazily, I need to reach out.
Put a hand out to stop it. But when my fingers stretched, I only caught the metal chain to the toilet.
The shadows at the edge of my vision expanded until they blotted out everything. The floor was cool against my cheek.