Chapter 23 #2
“This is my biggest spin!” whoops Ella.
“Wow, Els!” I call, a little shaky—I need her to stay there.
Joel looks up, startled.
“Keep watching!” she commands, looking a little queasy as the swing slows. She begins the long process of rewinding the chain, around and around.
“Your grandmother,” I say to Joel. “Did she teach you?”
He shakes his head, frustrated. “She had dementia. She was saying a lot of things. No one believed her. I didn’t, either. Until . . .”
“Until what? What happened?” I’m surprised he’s told me even this much.
He shakes his head. “A couple things. You were one of them.”
I stare at him. “You didn’t know until—until Adam was in a coma?”
“No, I knew something. But it didn’t make any sense. None of it ever makes any sense.”
“Adam told you about me?”
“He didn’t really make the connection. He mentioned you. I figured it out. We’re done talking.”
“You said you wanted to talk.”
He grits his teeth, shifts like he’s thinking about standing up.
I reach out, touch his leg. He snaps my hand up in his, holding it like it has fangs, like it’s about to attack him.
We look up at the same time. He goes still.
Then he turns my hand over in his, and his thumb traces the line of my knuckles.
I shudder, tilt toward him, making a small, involuntary sound of blatant longing.
He inhales, his gaze intensifying. Something heavy sweeps across his face, leveling the emotion, clearing it like a wrecking ball.
“It isn’t real,” he whispers.
“I’m real.” I look at his mouth. I can just kiss him.
No, I can’t, I remember, but barely. Not in front of Ella.
She won’t notice. She’s spinning. We will be a blur.
What am I thinking?
“We’re here for a reason,” he whispers. “People like me. She told me. It runs in our family. We’re supposed to protect .
. . people.” His words are slow. His fingers explore my wrist, slip up my arm.
He is pulling me gently but insistently toward him.
“From you. We only have this power because of you. Because you need to be stopped.”
I nod. “I didn’t ask for this,” I manage to say. “The curse. I hate it.” I’m not sure I hate it anymore. This might be outdated information.
“I didn’t ask for it, either.” His mouth is close to mine now.
“I’m sorry,” I say, by accident, too quiet to be real words. I don’t want to think about what I am apologizing for. Maybe it’s just a general apology along the lines of, Sorry it turns out there’s magic and now we have to kill each other.
“I— ” he says, and then Ella screams and we jerk apart. I’m on my feet as though flung there.
She’s flailing, tangled in the swing—luckily she’s facing away. “A bee! A bee!”
I run over. It seems too late in the season for bees, but sure enough, there’s a lone confused one buzzing around the swings.
“It’s trying to sting me! It’s trying to land on me and sting me and I can’t get out of here! Not again! Why would this happen to me again?” (Once, last year, a wasp chased her in our yard.)
It takes at least five minutes to get Ella under control.
“I want to go home!” she cries. “I’m done with the playground now! You didn’t even watch me on the swing!”
“I watched you!”
Joel is standing by the bench, hands at his sides, looking like he isn’t sure how he’s supposed to look.
“You didn’t really watch!” I know this domino spill of negativity well. It can wind through whole rooms of grudges and regrets. I have very little patience for it now.
“Get your helmet. Time to go.”
“You sound like Mommy. That’s such a strict voice.” She seems knowing, sometimes, when she compares us, when she pits us against each other. I will not rise to the bait.
“Sometimes strict is necessary.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“Get your helmet.”
She sulks over to it, her shoulders drooping like everything inside has wilted.
“Can Joel come home with us?” she asks, clipping the helmet back on with automatic diligence.
“No,” I say, and he says simultaneously, “Not this time, Ella. Sorry.”
“Bye, Joel,” she says, looking tragic.
“Bye, Ella.” He sounds a little sad, too.
He steps toward me as I pass him.
“I meant what I said.” He lowers his voice.
“Three days?” I hiss. “Or do I get a whole week this time?”
“Just tell me. I’ll spare them.”
“I told you; I don’t know where he is,” I snap, grabbing the skateboard and my canvas bag with our water bottle and some books and chalk and two string cheeses and a banana and a container of blueberries in it.
* * *
“There’s a truck in our driveway,” says Ella. The little brown house has just come into sight.
I glance up. It isn’t a truck. There’s an RV—dingy tan with an awkward brown stripe—parked, poorly, in our driveway.
One wheel is jutting into the fairy garden, a dark rut carved just short of the little whale sculpture with the chipped tail.
Someone has spray-painted a scrawl of lime-green graffiti on the back, above the peachy Georgia license plate, but it seems they were interrupted in the act, and it’s completely illegible.
“What the heck— ” I say.
Mom is sitting on the front porch. I forget for a second why she’s here in the middle of the day, then remember it’s Sunday. She’s laughing, talking to someone who is obscured by the dangling brown leaves of the vine.
Ella and I come up the front path.
“Oh, Tempest! You’re home!” She gets up. “This is Al.”
Oh no. I wasn’t even aware of there being a new boyfriend. I’ve been distracted.
But sure enough, there he is—a stubby guy, a solid three inches shorter than her, wisps of hair combed optimistically across the shine of his baldness, a blunt bulb of a reddened nose, intent little beaded eyes under extravagant brows.
He’s wearing—what is he even wearing? Pin-striped dress pants that seem to belong with a suit that went out of style half a century ago and a formfitting T-shirt that declares MY BODY IS A WONDERLAND in hot-pink cursive letters.
He is grinning straight at me. Something is really strange about this one— Mom is sinking to a new level.
And then she says, “He’s your father’s cousin, Tempest. But don’t worry! He doesn’t like him, either!”
The man walks forward to greet me, reaches the edge of the steps, and suddenly jumps over them, landing directly in front of me.
I lurch back.
“Oh, ow,” he says, his voice hoarse, whispery like a mobster in a movie. “That hurt!” He’s surprised.
“Oh my goodness!” Mom sounds impressed.
“Why did he jump?” Ella whispers, scuttling behind me.
“Tempest Dunlap.” The strange man speaks my name like a pronouncement in an exotic new language.
He executes a small bow. “My name is Alabaster. But you can say Al.” His old-school Staten Island voice strains against the limit of its range as he pushes to speak louder than it sounds like it naturally goes.
And then he lowers his voice precipitously to say just for my ears: “I am sent by your father. I am a bringer of pain. I am here to destroy the life of the one who hunts you. I will make him suffer until he begs for death. I will then give him his death.”