19 Quinn
Quinn
Two weeks before the fall
I agree to go to the party but tell Joey I have to go to my dad’s right after.
We turn the corner from my house, on our way to Tanner’s. The weather is changing. I think there’s rain coming. For now, night settles in, resting on our shoulders. The trees are the first to go black. She makes a sound like hmm, and we walk on.
It’s a lie, of course. I don’t have to go to my dad’s. I wonder, momentarily, if she knows, if she is reading me. I twist my gold ring with its hefty black stone and raised droplet of gold around my middle finger. But she just says, “We have to go to the spell circle tomorrow. Will you be around?”
“Possibly.” I say. “What’s up?”
“We need to update the illusion spell to keep the trail hidden.” She sounds impatient. It’s my fault we’ve started to grow distant. This party is the first time we’ll all be together outside of school in I don’t even know how long. Weeks, I think. “It’s important,” she says. And she’s right. I nod.
Her hair is pulled tidily into a hair tie, not loose like mine, which picks up every tiny wisp of wind.
I feel so weird lately, like a snake folding out of my old skin and growing a new one underneath.
With Joey and Sophie and Elena, it’s been a little awkward.
That’s why I wanted to come tonight. To put in some face time and maybe see if things could be normal.
I’ve been busy with him, but truthfully, I’ve missed us a little.
I look over again and see that Joey is watching me carefully. She pulls her ponytail to the front of her shoulder. “What’s going on?”
I scuff my shoe against the dusty pavement. “What?”
“You can tell me.”
I open my mouth, and I can feel myself reaching for another lie. When did lying become so automatic? “Nothing,” I say. “Just stuff with my dad. I don’t know.”
We see Sophie waving at us from the corner of First Street, and Joey drops it.
The night adds greasy layers of darkness around us, and the peaks of the Three Elks are somehow darkest of all, three hulking shadows in the night sky.
The streetlights flick on with a hum, illuminating all the closed-up shops.
Voices from a couple of restaurant-goers trickle down the wide street, but no cars pass. It’s a ghost of a night.
Elena crosses the street, lighting a cigarette without breaking stride.
Slivers of thigh are visible through slashes in her tight jeans.
“Quinn,” she says, approaching, her mouth full of smoke.
“Glad you could make it.” I don’t respond, even though I can feel all their eyes on me.
She exhales and pulls a bottle of schnapps from her coat pocket, trading a drag for a sip.
Everyone takes a drink when she offers it around, even me.
I feel like if I don’t, I’ll just get more questions, so I push through the smell and swallow it down.
“Party time,” says Elena.
Tanner’s parents are out of town for a wedding, and so we descend on his house like moths, eating up all available space. He stands in the middle of the room, with a stocky frame and the same buzz cut he’s had forever, looking out over his domain.
More people are filing in now, a maximum of twelve or thirteen, which is a lot for this tiny town.
We gather around Tanner’s kitchen island as he doles out shots and encourages people to set up beer pong.
Sophie takes two shots right in a row, and I want to tell her to slow down, but she’s laughing with Joey, and they both look like they’re having fun.
The hairs on my arm prickle, and I glance at the sliding glass door.
I think I see a flash of something out there, but it’s so dark outside and so bright in here that I’m sure it’s just my own reflection, my tie-dye maxiskirt and lavender hair.
A patched denim jacket I have yet to take off.
I feel strange. If someone was out there watching me, they would be able to see me clearly.
It should scare me, this thought, but instead it gives me a little thrill.
I slowly run my hand under my denim jacket and push it down to expose my shoulder, watching my pale flesh in the reflection.
“Hey.”
The rumbling voice comes from behind me.
I close my eyes as I feel River’s body heat next to me, and I slide my jacket back up onto my shoulder.
He wraps his arms around my top half and gives me a tight squeeze.
His head rests on top of mine, and I wonder if he can tell what I’ve been thinking, if he can see my desire circling like a vulture.
“All good?” he asks. I look at our reflection again, watch his hair fall into one eye.
I grab his hand, and he looks surprised.
I pull him away from the kitchen and into the front hall, toward the stairs.
At the edge of my line of sight, Elena slips out the front door into the night, and I wonder where she is going.
I don’t stop to check, though, because suddenly I need to do this now.
My fingers entwined with his, I pull River upstairs to a quiet room where we can be alone.
The door slides closed behind me, and I realize we’re in Tanner’s parents’ room. The bed is made, the window cracked so a little of the night seeps inside. The music from downstairs thumps distantly.
“I want to break up.” I blurt the words out quickly.
He stares at me, blinking. “What?”
I don’t respond.
He perches on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his long bent legs. After a few seconds, he lies back, sliding his hands beneath his head, elbows out wide. “Honestly, I’m surprised, but also not. You’ve been…distant lately. I was actually shocked you came tonight.”
I can’t tell if his words are meant to be sharp or resigned. I look down at my shoes. “Sorry, I didn’t know the best way to tell you.”
“It’s fine.” He turns his head so his eyes are focused on me. There’s something there, anger maybe, and it makes me retract. But then, his eyes are closed and he’s inhaling deeply.
“Do you want to talk?” I ask because I’m not sure what else I should do.
He offers nothing but a small “Hmm,” but he doesn’t move. I interpret that as a dismissal.
As I reach for the door, I hear him sit up. “Is there someone else?”
I pinch at the bottom of my jacket. “No. I just want to be by myself for a little while.”
He eyes me. Another dark look makes me step closer to the door. I grip the handle. His gaze drops to my hand, and after a second, his expression softens a few degrees. “Friends?” he asks.
I nod.
When I close the door quietly behind me, I know I should feel bad.
I should feel horrible for hurting him. But I just feel free.
It was a lie, of course. There is someone else.
And now, I let myself think of him. He’s there, in my mind, looking at me, looking into me, eyes like glaciers.
Suddenly, with a passion so fierce it stings my throat, I want nothing more than to tangle myself up with him and watch the stars. With him, I can be myself.
As I descend the steps, I hear a muffled noise from one of the other bedrooms. It’s Tanner and Marissa Berg in there, I’m guessing.
Dating on and off for a tumultuous ten months.
The kind of thing you are forced to care about in a town where your whole school can fit into one picture in front of the school’s front steps.
Everyone’s business becomes your business.
Downstairs, I poke my head out the front door, expecting to see Elena having a smoke. But the night is thick with silence, and it smells of pine. No Elena. I could just make my escape now. It’s tempting, but I don’t want to have to explain anything tomorrow, so I duck back inside.
Inside, the living room opens seamlessly to the kitchen.
Calvin Harris thumps from the speakers. Someone has spilled a drink on the Persian rug and made a vague attempt to clean it up by throwing a striped kitchen towel over top, which is now soaked through with a cherry-red stain.
The smell of beer and Kool-Aid is strong.
A cheer goes up from the small crowd that sticks to the kitchen island like a swarm of flies.
They all tip their cups up to their faces at once.
I don’t see Sophie or Elena, but Joey sits on the couch by the window, nursing a drink.
She shoots me a smile, then looks past me.
I follow her gaze. It’s River. He makes his way into the room, squeezing my shoulder as he passes.
His grip is tight, and I think for a second he’s going to squeeze harder, and my breath catches, but then he just lets go.
Joey is watching me from her corner of the room.
The disconnect I feel is hard to explain.
At parties past, I would have plopped down next to her on that couch and started up a game of Guess Who’s Going to Puke Tonight.
Elena and Sophie would have eventually pulled us up off the couch, and we would have danced and changed the playlist to only our favorite songs, as if the party were just for us.
Now, I glance at Joey and then away, feeling torn because I miss the way things used to be, but I also feel alive in a way that I haven’t since we first learned about the magic. Something is changing within me.
I accidentally connect eyes with Marissa Berg, who stands leaning against the refrigerator.
She wears two long braids like some kind of horror movie doll.
A bejeweled silver cross gleams at her neck.
I half smile with no teeth, wondering, briefly, who is upstairs in Tanner’s room if Marissa is down here. She shuffles over.
“What’s going on there?” I can smell her cloying, trying-too-hard perfume.
In middle school, Marissa used to follow us around, constantly trying to push her way into our conversations at recess, always running to catch up as we walked home from school.
But once we were initiated, we spent every waking hour just the four of us. She was muscled out of the group.
“What?” I ask.